by Zoe York
Jared Sutter looked at the text message from his brother Jackson again. Something’s come up. We’ll do Colorado in the new year.
“Something” would be a mission. His brother was an ex-Navy SEAL turned mercenary who lived in the Caribbean and did the jobs Jared and his SEAL teammates couldn’t be asked to do.
Jared could go to Colorado on his own, but that would get complicated. He preferred to play wingman—help his brother or a buddy sweeten up their target, and then pay some attention to her less eager friend who was always relieved to find out that Jared didn’t want to get in her pants.
At least, not all the way. Every girl liked an orgasm or two courtesy of his fingers, and if they got to the naked stage, his tongue. He’d gotten pretty talented in both areas over the last eight years.
But it didn’t look like there’d be snow, skiing, or ski bunny hook-ups for his holiday break this year. Oh well. Staying home would give him a chance to finally furnish his apartment. He’d lived in California for almost two years, had rented his own place in Coronado Beach for almost one, and all he had to show for it was a bed, a big-ass TV, and the world’s most comfortable couch. The couch was a hand-me-down from Drew Castle, a friend of Jackson’s and former senior enlisted SEAL who’d recently switched to reservist duty to move to Los Angeles with his fiancée.
Drew had come home from overseas just in time to teach some courses on Jared’s SEAL Qualification Training course, and while Jared had to put up with some extra ribbing for being Jackson’s little brother, he’d gotten a couch out of it in the end, so he couldn’t complain.
No, his only complaint as a Texas-born, California-trained Navy SEAL who was living the dream was that he once again wouldn’t have a white fucking Christmas. Boo-fucking-hoo. Time to go to IKEA and get over himself.
He lived on the third floor of a walk-up apartment complex in the heart of Coronado Beach, close enough to base that he could get there quickly, far enough away that he wasn’t entirely surrounded by uniforms when he stepped out his door. A few guys he knew lived in the complex, but his next-door neighbors were civvies and that suited him just fine. His door opened onto a balcony of sorts that ran around an interior courtyard with a pool. He usually swam in the ocean, but when the girls from the apartment to his right decided to lay out by the pool, he could be convinced to join them.
Something that Cassie Bronson—the woman in the apartment to his left—gave him no small amount of grief over.
Unlike Jemma and Brittany, Cassie wasn’t one to parade around in a bikini. Damn shame, because under her suits and silk shirts he had no doubt she was rocking an awesome body. No, Cassie was a grown-up, through and through, right down to the gourmet dinners she cooked and the fancy wine she drank.
And even though they were like night and day in so many ways, they’d struck up an odd friendship. It had started with a very reluctant tap on his door a few months earlier.
“You’re strong, right?” she’d asked, hanging back from his doorway like she wasn’t sure what might come snapping out at her.
“Why yes, ma’am, I guess I am,” he’d offered back, laying on the polite Texan-smooth in a way that would make his mama proud.
“I need your muscles, if you don’t mind.”
And he hadn’t—not for carrying that desk up to her apartment, or for opening a ridiculously sealed jar of pickles a few weeks later. Each time she’d paid him back with a few containers of the most delicious leftovers.
Then he’d gone away for a fourteen-day training mission, and when he returned she gave him a weird look and said she was glad to see he was all in one piece. The next night she invited him over for dinner. He’d graduated up from leftovers, and before he could worry about whatever strings might be attached, she whipped out the proverbial scissors and assured him there weren’t any. She was recently divorced and her rebound relationship had fallen apart in a big way. She was in a man-free period in her life and happy for it.
“Men and women can just be friends, right?” She’d held out her hand like a challenge she didn’t expect him to take, but the joke was on her. Jared had never been anything more than friends with all the women in his life, except one. And his mama didn’t count.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” he’d drawled, enjoying the way her cheeks pinked up. They’d shook on it, and the odd-couple friendship was born.
So it wasn’t strange that he took just three steps away from his door before turning around to knock on hers. She’d do a better job of picking stuff out anyway.
“Ikea?” Cassie stared at him after he repeated the invitation again. She’d answered the door wearing jean cut-offs, an oversized T-shirt that fell off one shoulder to reveal a matching tank-top underneath, and flip-flops. An uncharacteristically casual look for her, but it had been warm the last couple of days. Fucking Christmas in southern California, man. Well, at least the view was nice.
“What’s so crazy about that?”
“You’re not exactly a throw cushion kind of guy.”
“I’m a bachelor. I need a swinging bachelor pad.”
She snorted. “Right. You’re not the entertaining type. When was the last time you invited someone back to your place?”
Well, never. But that might change at some point. And when it did, he’d probably do better if he had some damn throw cushions.
She searched his face for a punch line that wasn’t coming, then shrugged. “Sure, I like IKEA. Come on in. I’ll grab my purse.” He followed her into her apartment, which probably was a mirror image of his, but looked completely different because, unlike him, she had decorated.
Cassie watched Jared try to navigate his cart around a family of six picking out curtains and bit back a laugh. She should have directed him to the IKEA website instead, but he had muscles and she’d wanted to go to Costco, so having some company for a big box store run sounded like fun. Even on a Saturday, five days before Christmas.
It was fun, even if he was cursing under his breath about rules of the road and needing to be aware of one’s surroundings.
Her phone rang and she dug it out of her purse. Melissa.
“What are you up to? I have a mad craving for dim sum.”
Cassie smiled at the sound of her best friend’s voice ringing loud and clear through the phone line. “Just at Ikea with Jared, actually.”
“Bring him. He’s hot. We’ll go to that place with the cute gay waiter and get better service.”
Jared gave her a funny look, like he could make out part of the conversation and wasn’t sure what to think of it.
Mel was the type of woman Jared usually went for. Beautiful, fun, and totally uninterested in commitment. The type of woman Cassie had watched him flirt with, sometimes make out with, and once-in-a-blue-moon get dragged home by. But at some point over the last few weeks, his easy playboy attitude had started to grate on her.
“Can’t, sorry. We’re stuck in box-store hell. Costco’s next. Call you later?” She hung up before Mel could protest further. Cassie wasn’t in the mood to share Jared.
Her impulse to keep Jared to herself wasn’t fair. They were friends, nothing more, and they’d even shook on it. Who he wanted to play with was none of her business.
Except at some point in the fall, she’d started to want him to play with her.
The shift in how she saw him had snuck up on her. She’d thought she was done falling hard. She’d done that with her ex-husband, Mitch, and look where that had gotten her. Then she’d had a whirlwind affair with Craig the dentist that had fallen apart as quickly as it started.
It turned out her being barren was a real turn-off for guys. What a joke. She’d spent her teenage and early adult years using two or three kinds of birth control at once, terrified of getting knocked up, when all along getting pregnant hadn’t been possible.
And she was fine with it—when she met someone who she wanted to have a family with, and when they were ready, they’d adopt. Or maybe look into the advanced fertility treatment opt
ions like IVF or surrogacy.
But all the guys she was attracted to seemed keen on having a family the old-fashioned way. Didn’t that just make her feel special—and kind of stupid, because obviously she’d trained herself to fall for the wrong kind of guy.
Her gaze fell back to Jared. His cart was tucked neatly out of the way, and he stood there, arms crossed and legs planted wide, looking at some rugs like they were topographic maps of a battlefield. Jeepers, the man turned shopping into a serious mission.
He had a chameleon face. Boyishly handsome one minute, fierce and determined the next. No one should get between him and his goal.
Fair enough if it was part of his job in the Navy or buying a rug. But his goal of only having uncomplicated hook-ups with women he didn’t know? She had a feeling she was about to get in his way on that front, big-time.
A tiny twinge of guilt made itself known in her tummy. You had a deal, her conscience reminded her. Yeah, but that was before he proved himself to be completely irresistible. And something told her he wasn’t actually a player. He made all the right noncommittal noises and flirted his way through all encounters with the female sex, but there was something noble about him.
Not that having casual sex wasn’t noble.
No, with the right person, it might practically be a civic duty.
Her, for example. And that twinge of guilt faded away, a hurricane of butterflies taking centre stage in her midsection instead. Yes, Jared turning his sexy bedroom eyes on her would be good for everyone involved.
He strode decisively toward a black woven rug that she really liked and hefted it over his shoulder with one hand. She smiled to herself and moved to catch up.
Two hours later, they were hauling that rug, a new armchair, a lamp, four oversized cushions, some art, and three giant bags of groceries from Costco up to their apartments. Or rather, Jared was hauling. Cassie carried the lamp up first, setting it down outside his door. Then he gave her the bag of cold groceries, and by the time she’d made room for the turkey in her fridge, he had everything else carried up.
He’d thrown the latch so she could just walk in to his apartment. She found him already assembling the lamp.
“Did you run down the stairs?”
“Down and up, yes.”
“Carrying furniture.”
He frowned. “The chair is disassembled and in a box with a handle. I wouldn’t call it furniture yet.”
“I’ll stop feeling guilty for not helping more, then. Listen, Mel called earlier today and I blew her off, so I’m going to meet her at the Coronado Brewing Company for beers later. Do you want to come?”
He shrugged, which she understood to mean yes because he had a screwdriver gripped between his teeth.
She left him to the assembly and went back to her place to make a giant salad for dinner. She tossed some garlic toast in the oven, even though she wouldn’t eat it, and pulled three servings of sliced steak from the fridge. One for her bowl, two for Jared’s.
She picked up her phone to text him that dinner was ready just as he gave a quick double tap on the door and let himself in. How had she ever thought she wouldn’t be attracted to this man? He was almost over-the-top masculine, all rugged and raw and rough, until he smiled his boyish grin and then his looks took a hard right into gorgeous territory. She liked both sides of his exterior, but what had really awakened her interest was getting to know the Jared on the inside.
Because the man was nice. In an age when selfishness seemed to be elevated to an art form—figuring out what was in it for you before doing anything—Jared was the good-guy exception. Wrapped in a delightfully sinful package.
“Dinner’s ready,” she said weakly. He smoothed his hand down the outside of her arm as he passed her. How could he do that without feeling a zap of sexual energy? His casual touch on her elbow made her think of his hands on her knees, spreading her open. Gripping her ankles…
“Smells great. Are you okay?”
She blinked away the dirty fantasies in her head and nodded. “Yeppers. Let’s eat.”
“Should I call a bunch of the guys, make it a big group thing tonight?”
She shrugged. “You could.”
“Groups are more fun,” he said as he forked up some salad. “This is good. I like the seeds in it.”
There it was—the nugget she needed to hang on to if she had any hope in hell of not falling head over heels for Jared Sutter. He was a man-child of the highest order. All of his maturity was channeled into his job, where she had no doubt he was a leader among men.
But if life was high school, and in so many ways she’d learned it totally was, Jared was a perpetual grade-niner, his voice cracking at the thought of a one-on-one date with a girl.
Which was ridiculous, because he was so damn smooth with women. She’d seen him disappear to dark corners of bars and come back a little while later with a very satisfied looking woman trailing in his wake. But when she picked apart the memories, she realized it was a rare time that he actually left with that woman. And when he did, he almost always came home not long after.
She should know. She always left the bar right after he did.
Cassie sighed into her salad. She needed to get laid.
“Everything okay?” Jared put his fork down and flashed her a helpful smile. “Do you need anything?”
Even as her face warmed, Cassie couldn’t help smiling back. “Yep. I just might.”
Chapter Two
Jared glanced at his watch. Cassie had said she needed a few minutes to get changed before they headed out and twenty had passed. He didn’t care, but he had shit he could be doing instead of sitting on her couch reading Real Simple.
“Hey, Cass,” he said, walking toward her bedroom door. “I’m just going to pop back to my place until you’re ready.”
Her response was muffled, so he asked her to repeat it.
“No, I’m almost done,” she said breathlessly, whipping open the door. “Can you zip me up?”
Jared wasn’t immune to temptation, but he’d learned to avoid facing it in the first place. And Cassie was just Cassie, his pretty neighbor who didn’t want anything to do with men. So he didn’t think twice about approaching her bedroom door, didn’t think to blink or turn away when she opened the door—and she completely blindsided him.
He was fucked. Cassie had poured herself into a tiny black dress. Her left arm held the silky fabric against her tits. Fuck. His dick was already thick and rising, and his tongue felt like it was made of lead. He blinked hard and looked down, but that just led to her legs. All of her legs. Even though the dress was longer than the pair of shorts she’d had on before, there was something completely different about her legs sliding out from beneath that short, fluttery skirt.
Something hot and forbidden and utterly appealing. Something dangerous.
And when she turned around, showing him a deep triangle of skin bisected by the prettiest spine he’d ever seen and a narrow band of a bra, he knew fucked barely scraped the surface of his current situation.
“Zip?” she asked helpfully, tossing her hair out of her eyes as she blinked back at him. An innocent blink that made reality click back into place. Cassie wasn’t flirting. She didn’t do the Bambi eye thing. She was smart and sassy and sarcastic.
He ground his back teeth together and gripped the zipper pull in one hand and a pinch of the dress fabric in the other. “Going on the prowl tonight, Cass?”
She gave him a weird look. “Maybe.”
“Good,” he said, stepping back. He needed space to ensure he didn’t just bodily toss her onto the bed and grind against her. That would feel so good, his dick protested. Those tits in your hand, that neck under your mouth.
Those tits and that neck belonged to his friend. His neighbor. His off-limits-for-real-no-exceptions Cassie. Whatever game she was playing, she could play with someone else. Because there’s no way she’d still be having fun at the end of the night if he gave in. No, she’d hate him, or be
embarrassed for him, and either way their friendship would be over.
“Will you be my wingman, Sutter?” She bent down, way down, to do up the straps on a pair of heels that he hadn’t noticed before and now he couldn’t un-notice. He glowered at the backside of the woman who was going to be his undoing tonight. One way or another, this wasn’t going to go well.
“Maybe we should let Melanie handle that,” he grunted, turning and heading for the door. She followed him, somehow surrounding him with a delicate perfume that defied the laws of physics and bounced around him like an invisible cloak of seduction. “I’ve got an early morning tomorrow, I can’t stay out late.”
Strictly speaking, that was true. He was leading PT the next day. But it wasn’t different than any other day, and Cassie wasn’t one to stay out late. She was usually in her flannel pajama shorts by the ten o’clock news.
He knew, because just the other night they’d watched the news together, curled up on her couch with hot chocolate.
Where the fuck had that dress come from? It wasn’t Cassie. She was sexy, sure, but in a cute-librarian kind of way. This vixen was playing tricks on his eyes and messing everything up.
“I’ve got cash for a cab to come home. It’s okay,” she murmured as she locked up.
She’d slipped on a jean jacket over her dress, which helped him cage his inner caveman, but just barely. There was no way he was going to leave her anywhere in public looking like that. Wait, what? He thought about that reaction as they waited out front for their cab. Man, you need to get right with the idea that she’s looking for something you can’t give her tonight. Or ever. And if she wants to go home with someone else…
His stomach twisted in a new and disconcerting way. It wouldn’t be the first time he walked away from a woman he was attracted to. He’d get over the grating regret of letting Cassie go, too.
But when they arrived at the brewpub, and Novak, Steyner, and Dumbrowski arrived at the same time, he kept his hand floating behind her back in a not-so-subtle, back-the-fuck-off sign to the guys. Which they all respected because they weren’t dicks.
