by Paige Tyler
He didn’t actually mind the training, or the desolate landscape. It was nicer than a lot of other places he’d spent time. But he’d hated not being able to talk to Hayley for the whole week, especially after the amazing weekend they’d had before he left.
He had to admit, he’d been a little worried when he called her a couple of hours ago and told her he was back in town. Had his sudden week-long departure caused her to change her mind about seeing him? Hell, would she even take his call?
But when she’d answered the phone, she’d seemed genuinely thrilled to hear from him, immediately asking if he wanted to get together that night. He assumed everything was copasetic. Now he was thinking that might not be the case.
Chasen moved into Hayley’s line of sight and caught her eye, trying not to let his confusion show too much. If this was her strange way of telling him they were done before they’d actually gotten started, he’d be pissed. He’d deal with it, but he’d be pissed.
Then turned her head and saw him and a huge smile lit up her face. She laughed and hurried forward to meet him, moving past the blond man to stand up on tiptoes, wrap her arms around his neck, and give him a warm kiss on the lips.
Realizing he’d read the situation completely wrong, Chasen returned the kiss out of pure lusty instinct, slipping a hand behind her back and pulling her closer to him so he could feel that beautiful body of hers pressing up against him.
“I didn’t see you come in,” she said when they both finally broke the kiss and stepped back to breathe a little.
He motioned around the crowded entryway “How could you? This place is packed.”
Hayley twisted in his arms, motioning toward the guy she’d been standing with. Chasen turned to see him regarding them expectantly.
“Chasen, this is Brad Oliver. He’s my photographer, right-hand man when we’re traveling on assignment, and also happens to be one of my very best friends,” she said. “Brad, Chasen Ward.”
Brad made a face. “She forgot to mention I’m also the one she makes eat all the strange foreign food first, in case it tastes like crap.”
Chasen held out his hand, recognizing the man’s name the moment he heard it. It had been in his Team’s initial briefing file handed out before the mission in Africa. “Nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, you too,” Brad said. “Thanks for what you did over in Nigeria. Saving Hayley. I owe you big.”
“I’m glad my Team and I were able to get there in time,” Chasen said.
Hayley looked like she was about to say something, but then smiled and waved at someone over Chasen’s shoulder. He turned to see a tall redhead hurrying over.
“Sorry I’m late,” the redhead said as she hugged Hayley. “Traffic was crazy.”
“Don’t worry about it. Chasen just got here, too.” Hayley turned to look at him and Brad. “Chasen, this is Jillian Brennan.” She glanced at the redhead. “Jillian, meet Petty Officer Chasen Ward.”
Jillian smiled and shook his hand then turned her attention to Brad, a slow, almost shy smile spreading across her lips. “Hey, Brad. Long time, no see.”
All it took was one look at the sudden, wary expression on the woman’s face, and Chasen quickly realized what was going on. This was a double date. Hayley had set Brad up with Jillian.
Apparently Brad had figured out the same thing, because he definitely didn’t look thrilled. Chasen couldn’t blame him. No guy liked getting set up on a blind date. Even worse with the friend of a friend. If the date didn’t go well, Brad knew Hayley would be getting a blow-by-blow synopsis of the entire evening.
“Jillian has been crushing on Brad for a while,” Hayley told Chasen softly as the hostess led them to their table. “I figured this would be a nice casual way to get them together.”
“How do you know they’ll even like each other?” he asked.
Hayley looked at him like he was crazy. “Of course they’ll like each other. It’s obvious that they’re perfect together.”
Chasen shook his head, thinking that was something only a woman would say. But he pushed those thoughts aside while he watched Hayley’s butt sway back and forth as she moved ahead of him between the grill’s close-set tables. Damn, what an ass. The way it moved when she walked had him thinking about all kinds of things he’d like to do to it. Of course, those thoughts immediately had his cock hardening in his jeans, making it difficult to walk. He clenched his teeth to stifle a groan. Damn, what this woman could do to him.
Chasen had been able to spend a lot of time over the last week thinking about what he had developing with Hayley and it seemed obvious he was really falling for her. The first date had been great and the day spent hanging out at the cookout with the Team had been even better. It was easy to see the guys liked her, and she got along with them well, too. And Melissa had definitely liked her. As the senior chief’s wife, she’s was something of a Team mommy bear, always keeping an eye on him and the other guys and making sure they didn’t do anything stupid. And while she was always nice to anyone the guys brought over, you could tell if she wasn’t crazy about someone. It had been different with Hayley. The two women had immediately connected. That meant a lot to Chasen. If he wanted things to work out with Hayley long-term, she was going to have to be able to fit into the SEAL lifestyle. Clicking with Melissa was the fastest way to know if that could happen.
Then there had been the weekend full of wild sex at his place. He’d slept with other women before, but he’d never experienced anything like he had with Hayley during that weekend. They were so perfectly in sync sexually it was almost scary how good they were together. He’d barely made it to work on time Monday morning. He would much rather have stayed in bed with her the whole day.
Sitting up there in the mountains above Fort Irwin at 0300 in the morning waiting for missions to start, he’d tried to tell himself to pump the brakes on things and slow down a bit, that he’d only met the woman a short time ago. But that wasn’t him. Since when had he ever taken anything slowly? From the day he’d decided to bail on college and join the Navy instead, he’d been jumping into everything he’d ever done with both feet. True, it had gotten him into trouble more than once, but for the most part, going with his gut had usually paid off. And right now, his gut was telling him this thing with Hayley could turn into something special. And that if he wanted it to happen—if he truly wanted the same thing Kurt and Melissa had—he needed to act, not sit around and think about it.
Jillian was already deep in conversation with Brad about photography by the time Chasen and Hayley caught up with them and sat down. Actually, Jillian was doing most of the talking. Brad mostly nodded and gave her one-word answers as he studied the menu.
“Were you guys digging into William Nesbitt again today?” Jillian asked Hayley after the waitress took their order.
Chasen frowned. “The city councilman?”
Hayley nodded at Jillian as she sipped her iced tea. “Yeah. Not that we have anything to show for it.” She glanced at Chasen. “Brad and I have been digging into the rumors the man is getting some kind of kickbacks from the Imperial Beach SEAL construction project. That he’s in bed somehow with the prime contractor. We’ve been rattling cages for the last week and still haven’t uncovered anything solid yet, but we will. Sooner or later, someone will talk.”
Chasen was surprised at how his heart started beating faster as Hayley spoke. He knew this was her job, but he didn’t like how cavalier she made the whole thing sound. “Nesbitt might not be a big deal outside of San Diego, but if everything I’ve read about the guy is true, he’s pretty ruthless. He’s got money and a certain amount of power. I doubt he’s going to take kindly to your poking around.”
On the other side of the table, Brad scowled. “That’s what I keep telling her, but sometimes she’s like a bull in a china shop.”
Hayley waved a hand dismissively. “We’ve gone after scarier people than Nesbitt. Besides, he’s a politician, not a mob boss. It’s not like he’s going to ta
ke out a contract on my life.”
Brad looked like he wanted to disagree, but the waitress showed up with their food before the photographer could say anything. After the woman left, Hayley blatantly changed the subject, asking Chasen how the week’s training had gone.
“It was okay. Mostly tracking and hostage rescue stuff,” he said, trying to figure out how to tell her something interesting to satisfy her curiosity without getting into the details of exactly what they’d been doing. Because all that running around the rugged mountain terrain of Fort Irwin had been with a very specific target in mind. Somewhere at a SEALs headquarters, some really smart people were taking the lessons he and his Team had learned during that training and applying them to a future mission—if not for his Team, then for another one.
“I guess you guys have to do that kind of training a lot, huh?” Jillian asked. “With terrorist groups like Boko Haram kidnapping so many people.”
“Pretty much,” he said, answering the question without really saying anything.
“Well, I’m certainly glad you do all that training,” Hayley said. “Though I have to admit, I’m shocked the ambassador actually had the pull to get you guys over there. Nigeria isn’t exactly a high-profile posting.”
“Actually, it wasn’t the American ambassador who got us over there,” Chasen said with a shake of his head.
“It wasn’t?” Hayley said. “Who was it?”
Chasen sipped his beer before using the top of the bottle to point at Brad. “He did.”
Both women turned to look at Brad, but he was staring off into the distance. Chasen wasn’t even sure the man heard what had been said until he spoke.
“I didn’t even realize Hayley had left the university compound we were staying at until Kalu—one of the local kids who did odd jobs for us—asked me if she’d come back yet,” Brad looked at Hayley, and Chasen could see his eyes were filled with anguish. “I freaked when he told me you’d taken one of the Land Rovers that morning and gone to Dalori hours before.”
Brad picked up his beer and took a swig, his hand trembling. “I went looking for her right away,” he said, glancing at Chasen. “I found the Land Rover flipped over in a ditch ten miles outside the village. She wasn’t in the Rover, though. I found blood and lots of footprints like a bunch of people had been walking around the wreck, so I went to the village hoping someone had found her and brought her there, but no one had seen her.”
He gaze down at his beer bottle, as if memorizing the label. “I tried to look for her myself but realized it was a waste of time, so I went back to the compound. For all the good it did. Those morons kept telling me Hayley was probably woozy and had wandered off somewhere. I finally had to threaten to go public with an article saying the government had failed to protect a foreign journalist before the soldiers got off their asses and started looking for her.”
“That was pretty ballsy,” Chasen said. “They could have just as well shot you.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t care. Still, I didn’t have much faith in the Nigerian Army or their government finding Hayley, so I called every international correspondent Hayley and I ever worked with, getting them to put pressure on their countries and the US to do something before those assholes…”
Brad’s voice trailed off, but Chasen knew what he’d been going to say. Before those assholes killed Hayley. The thought made Chasen want to shoot someone.
“I was so relieved when they found you alive I almost passed out when I heard,” Brad finished quietly.
“I’m sorry I put you through all that,” Hayley whispered.
Hearing the story had obviously hit her hard. There were tears in her eyes and she looked a little pale.
Brad shrugged, giving her a small smile. “You’re a friend. You would have done the same for me.”
She reached over and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. “I sure as hell would have.” When she sat back, those earlier tears were about to start rolling. “Now look what you did,” she complained with a sniffle. “Is my makeup running?”
Brad and Chasen both shrugged, so it was up to Jillian to grab Hayley’s hand and head to the bathroom with her.
“Hayley owes her life to you as much as she does to the SEALs,” Chasen said after Hayley and Jillian left.
Brad shook his head. “I didn’t do much. It’s not like I stormed into that hellhole and got her out.”
“Maybe not, but your calls to those international journalists got Hayley’s abduction on the Department of Defense’s radar,” Chasen said. “You’re the reason the DOD sent my Team over there to rescue her. Without a friend as stubborn and bullheaded as you, she wouldn’t have made it.”
Brad flushed. “I’m just glad she’s safe.”
Chasen considered that, then figured he needed to go ahead and scratch the itch that had been building since they’d all sat down. “Have you and Hayley been working together long?”
Brad studied the label on his beer bottle again. “Ever since she started working at the paper ten years ago.”
The anguish Chasen had seen on the man’s face earlier suddenly made a lot more sense. It seemed obvious Brad was interested in Hayley as more than a friend. There would have to be something more between them after so many years together. “Does she know how much you care for her?”
Brad looked up sharply and for a moment, it seemed like he might deny it, but then he shrugged. “We both made the decision a long time ago that our friendship was too important to risk it by trying to be anything more. It’s a decision I’ve never regretted.”
Chasen nodded and they were both quiet for a while, sitting there drinking their beers. “Mind if I ask you something personal about Hayley?”
“Depends.”
The guarded look on Brad’s face told Chasen the man wasn’t going to share any secrets about his friend. Chasen could appreciate that.
“I don’t know her as well as you do, but is she okay?” Chasen asked. “Sometimes I get the feeling she’s still trying to deal with the stuff that happened over in Nigeria.”
Brad relaxed. “I think she is, too. But she’s stubborn and worried about her place in the pecking order at the paper. The boss is trying to give her some time, but she’s more interested in going after this story on Nesbitt and the damn hacktivists who first leaked the rumors. Truthfully, I’m not sure who she should be more scared of—Nesbitt or the hacktivists. But she’s blind to both of them. It’s like she doesn’t have an off button when it comes to putting herself in the line of fire.”
Chasen frowned. He’d never thought about that. Which was stupid considering Hayley was a journalist who clearly spent a lot of time overseas on assignments. Usually he was the one running headlong into danger all the time, not the woman he was dating. It felt a little uncomfortable and for the first time, he wondered if this what Melissa felt like when the chief went on a mission.
Across from him, Brad straightened in his chair. “They’re coming back. I guess it’s time to be a good sport and play nice with Jillian.”
Chasen chuckled. This guy was okay.
Even though Chasen had a better time on the double date than he thought he would, he was still glad after dinner when Hayley suggested they take off and give Brad and Jillian some alone time. Brad didn’t look thrilled to be on his own with Jillian, but he gave Hayley and Chasen a smile and a wave as they left anyway.
Finally, he could have Hayley all to himself.
“See?” Hayley said after they were in his truck. “I told you Brad and Jillian were perfect for each other.”
Chasen didn’t bother to correct the misconception. He got the feeling Brad would be a good wingman and take one for the team. The problem would come if Hayley tried to push the relationship further. What the hell would Brad do then? Jillian seemed nice, but Chasen didn’t think there was anything there as far as Brad was concerned.
* * * * *
Hayley had missed Chasen, but she hadn’t realized how much until she’d seen him walk
into the restaurant tonight. That’s when her heart had started to speed up and a weight she hadn’t even known was there lifted from her shoulders. She knew she probably shouldn’t be getting so geeked up over a guy she’d only recently met. But there was something inside her that didn’t care about how long she and Chasen had known each other. He was special and that was what mattered.
She was thrilled at how well the evening had gone. Okay, she hadn’t been too happy when the conversation had veered into a discussion of her kidnapping in Nigeria and she’d been forced to go to the ladies’ room with Jillian afterward and fix her makeup. But the entire rest of the night had been awesome. The food had been great, Brad and Jillian had gotten along swimmingly, and she’d been stoked to have Chasen back from his training exercise.
She was even more excited at the prospect of getting him alone for some quality make-out time. The man had spent an entire weekend teasing, pleasing, and satisfying her in every way imaginable then left her high and dry for five whole days. That was plain cruel and there probably should be a law against it. But in the meantime, she intended to do as much catching up as she could, starting the moment they walked into her apartment.
To that end, she turned to Chasen as soon as he closed the door behind them, then wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. Her Navy SEAL didn’t seem to mind the ambush. He slipped his warm tongue between her lips to tease hers and spun her around to press her up against the door. Then he placed his hands on the wood on either side of her like he was trying to keep her from escaping. As if she wanted to.
One kiss was all it took to make her knees weak. She was glad she was leaning against the door, otherwise she might have melted into a puddle on the floor.
