The Socialite and the SEAL

by Jenna Bennett

  “I guess that depends on what you want from the girl,” Max said. “It’s not like her money’s coming into the bedroom with you.”

  JB shook his head. No, if he got Tansy into bed, the last thing he’d worry about was money. It was the rest of the time that was the problem.

  “If you’re interested in something beyond the bedroom,” Max told him, “and beyond the kitchen table and up against the wall in the foyer, I guess you’re gonna have to figure out how important her money is.”

  “To her?”

  “Or to you,” Max said.

  “I don’t care about her money.” He liked Tansy. Not Tansy Leighton, the heiress. But the woman who, after two days of captivity, had had enough determination left to break his collar bone with a paperweight when he came to rescue her.

  It wasn’t every woman who could do that. Heiress or not.

  “You care enough about her money to let it stop you,” Max pointed out. “You’re the one who said you were out of her league. Not me.”

  “But she has to be thinking it.” He shook his head. “She tried to teach me about utensils earlier. I had to explain that we have to attend fancy dinners all the time, and I know a salad fork from an oyster fork. I hurt her feelings.”

  “She probably hurt yours,” Max said. “She probably wasn’t trying to put you down. She was trying to help.”

  She had been. JB knew that. But it still rankled.

  “I’m not sure I can go through life with a woman who’s ashamed of me.”

  “Then it’s a good thing she’s out of your league,” Max said with another of those bracing shoulder slaps.

  He got to his feet. “You, me, and Rusty are gonna have to sleep in shifts tonight. Three hours on, three off, from ten to seven.”

  JB nodded. “I’ll take the one to four shift.” That way Max and Rusty could get a solid five-and-a-half hours at the beginning or end of the night. It was a lot more than they sometimes got. And JB wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep anyway.

  “Turn in now,” Max ordered. “You must be feeling that fall from the horse this morning. I’d take you off duty if I could, but since Ms. Leighton asked for you specifically, I don’t suppose you’d go.”

  JB shook his head.

  “You were damn lucky you didn’t fall off the side of the house this afternoon, too. I hope you know that.”

  “Our man’s either a lousy shot—which doesn’t sound like either el Saud or Cooper. Or he wasn’t trying to hit me.”

  “Even if all he was doing was trying to shake you loose,” Max said, “you would have broken something if you fell. A leg or an arm or your skull. You got lucky.”

  “It was skill.”

  “Call it whatever you want,” Max told him. “Just go get some sleep. I’ll wake you at one.”

  “Just let me tell Tansy what’s going on.”

  Max nodded. “The guest room’s at the top of the stairs, first door on the left. There are sandwiches in the kitchen if you get hungry.”

  “I already ate. With a knife and fork.”

  JB heard Max chuckle as he headed out of the room and up the stairs to find Tansy.

  9

  Being awake during the small hours meant that JB was awake to hear the sounds from Tansy’s room.

  He must have been in worse shape than he thought, because after he’d knocked on Tansy’s door and told her what was going on, and had taken himself off to the guest bedroom across the hall, he’d dropped off to sleep as soon as he put his head on the pillow. And he didn’t stir again until Max put his hand on JB’s shoulder and shook him awake at a couple minutes to one. “Your turn.”

  JB rolled out of bed. “Just gimme a minute in the head.”

  Max nodded and sat down at the edge of the bed. “Been a long day.” He began to untie his boots.

  JB ducked into the bathroom to empty his bladder and brush his teeth. When he came back out, Max was already under the covers. “Have Rusty wake me at seven,” his sleepy voice said. “He’s in the bedroom next to the office downstairs. Get him up at four to relieve you.”

  JB promised he would, and closed the door behind him.

  He walked the second floor in his stocking feet. It was easier than stopping to put his boots on, and might be quieter, too. They’d all learned to move silently, but there was no denying it was easier to do in socks than boots.

  Everything was quiet on the second floor. No one was there who shouldn’t be—or if they were, they were hiding too well for JB to find them.

  Walter Leighton was snoring behind his bedroom door. He was clearly not in distress, although JB was happy he wasn’t married to the man. His late wife, Tansy’s mother, must have slept with cotton balls in her ears.

  JB moved silently down the hallway to the window at the end, and—staying off to the side—peered out.

  The formal garden lay dark and quiet in the pale light. The moon was new, just a tiny sliver in the sky, so it didn’t give off much light. Just enough to cast deep shadows behind the hedges in the garden.

  JB sharpened his gaze. Was that a movement down there?

  It was. But it only took him a second to recognize Gus. Someone else must have taken over guard duty at the rear gate, and Gus was prowling the perimeter of the house.

  No need to worry about anyone being able to get inside, then. el Saud was supposed to be good, but he was no Gus. And James Cooper wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of coming within fifty yards of the back door.

  With Gus outside, JB could relax and focus on the interior of the house, and the handful of people inside.

  He left the window and headed back down the hallway, to put his ear against Tansy’s door.

  She was sleeping quietly. He could hear the faint rustling of bed linens when she moved, and a small complaint that sounded like Mimi.

  He pictured them together, curled up on the bed. Mimi had probably been a warm, comforting presence after Tansy came home from the Mediterranean last year.

  He took the stairs to the first floor, and sat down on the bottom step to put on his boots before making his way through the downstairs, checking doors and windows.

  Everything was quiet. The room where they’d had their meeting earlier was empty, and so was the small cubby next door, where the video screens were. JB spent a couple of minutes familiarizing himself with the cameras. One showed the guardhouse, where one of Mick’s guys was staying awake with the help of a girly magazine and a thermos of something that was most likely coffee. Like all the others, he was dressed in the white shirt and black windbreaker, and his hair was dark. JB studied him for signs of a guilty conscience, but couldn’t see any.

  One of the cameras was trained on the formal garden, and occasionally, Gus would wander into the frame and out again. Unlike the guard, Gus looked wide awake and alert.

  One camera showed the front door. The light was on, and nobody was trying to get in. The same was true for the back door into the conservatory. Not that JB was surprised. Anyone out there had to have gotten past Gus, and nobody got past Gus.

  There were cameras set up for the stables, the pool house, the pool itself, the garage... and things were quiet everywhere. Someone had even rigged a camera for the back gate, and nothing was going on there, either. The gate was closed, and although JB knew that one of his teammates had to be set up somewhere in sight of the gate, he couldn’t see anyone in the frame.

  A SEAL could lie quietly in the underbrush for hours, though, without making a sound, so he wasn’t worried. Whoever was out there, was keeping watch. There was nothing to worry about.

  The kitchen was empty, and a tray of sandwiches sat in the middle of the island, covered by plastic wrap. They looked like excellent sandwiches, with little frills of lettuce and parsley sticking out around the edges, but after probing inward, JB decided he wasn’t hungry. If they were still there in the morning, he might have one then.

  He walked through the rest of the downstairs, checked that Rusty was where he
was supposed to be, and then headed back upstairs again. For no other reason than that he wanted to be closer to Tansy. He wasn’t worried that anything had changed upstairs. He wasn’t worried that anyone could get into the house, either. Not with people guarding both gates and Gus prowling.

  What he should do, was go sit in the control room and keep an eye on the cameras. That’s where he’d be in a position to notice the first sign of trouble, if there was one.

  He just couldn’t settle down without checking on Tansy one more time. So he made his way back up the stairs and down the corridor, tiptoeing past the guest room where Max was, hopefully, asleep.

  He stopped outside Tansy’s room, and put his ear to the door. And this time, heard her voice.

  “No. Don’t. Please.”

  The tiny whimper that followed could have been either Tansy herself or Mimi.

  JB reached for the handle and turned it. The door was locked.

  Dammit, hadn’t he told Tansy not to lock her door?

  Maybe he hadn’t. When he went up to talk to her earlier, before going to bed, he’d been a little distracted by the fact that she was dressed in a bathrobe, with—his mind insisted—nothing underneath, and with a scrubbed-clean face and her hair hanging in damp waves over her shoulders.

  She was stunning when she was all made up and in full heiress mode. But like this, with no makeup and her hair wet, she looked like someone a guy like him could fall in love with, without getting his heart broken before it was over.

  So no, he might have forgotten to tell her to keep her door unlocked. Or maybe, with so many strange men in the house and on the property, she’d decided to lock herself in anyway. She talked a very good game, about how being hijacked hadn’t been so bad and about how much worse it could have been, but he had a feeling that a lot of it was public bravado, and in private, she wasn’t as easy in her mind about it as she wanted him—wanted everyone—to believe.

  While she whimpered again—unless it was Mimi—he dug in one of his pockets for his lock picks. They all had their specialties, and picking locks wasn’t one of his, but Cisco had taught them all, and he did know how. He just didn’t do it as well, or as quickly, as some of the other SEALs. But since he was the only one here, and since he’d probably knock out anyone who tried to beat him to Tansy anyway, it looked like it was up to him.

  And it might have been an easy lock, or maybe just a powerful need to get to Tansy, but he got the door open in record time. As he crossed the floor toward the big bed, he dropped the lock picks back into his pocket.

  Mimi lifted her head and looked at him. And she must have recognized him, because she didn’t bark or growl. Instead, her tiny tail beat a greeting against the fluffy comforter. The light of the moon caught her tiny black eyes and made them shine.

  She wasn’t the one whimpering. No, it was Tansy. She was tossing her head on the pillow, still begging whoever she was talking to in her dream to stop. “No. Please. Don’t.”

  JB sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her. Her face was scrunched up, her eyes tightly shut, like she didn’t want to look. “No. Don’t.”

  He leaned over her and put a hand on her shoulder to wake her. “Tansy.”

  And she jack-knifed up in bed with a scream tearing out of her throat.

  Mimi jumped to her feet, barking hysterically.

  And JB did the only thing he could think of. Pulled Tansy forward so he could muffle her scream in his shoulder while he spoke in her ear. “It’s me, JB. John. Listen to me, Tansy. You’re safe. You’re home. It’s me.”

  It took several seconds for his voice to penetrate, and by then, the shoulder she’d broken a year ago was wet with tears. Her father and Max were both standing in the doorway—Max with his gun in his hand—and Tansy was sobbing in JB’s arms while Mimi tried to get close enough to lick her mistress’s tears away.

  “Nightmare,” JB told them both over his shoulder, while Tansy clung to him, shuddering. “It’s under control.”

  Max nodded. The gun disappeared, and Max nudged Tansy’s father toward the hallway. Walter Leighton looked uncertain. On the one hand, Tansy’s father probably didn’t like the idea of leaving JB in his daughter’s room in the middle of the night.

  On the other hand, if JB was taking care of her, Walter didn’t have to, and chances were Walter had dealt with plenty of this on his own, especially the first few months after the hijacking.

  Eventually he went back into the hallway, and Max closed the door behind them. JB could hear them shuffle off to their respective bedrooms, and the clicks when the locks caught.

  The whole time he sat with Tansy in his arms, rubbing circles on her back and rocking back and forth to calm her down. Her sobs quieted to wet hiccups, and then she was just sniffing, her face still buried in his chest. His shoulder wasn’t the only thing wet by now.

  “It’s all right,” he told her, for the fifteenth or twentieth time. “You’re safe. You’re home. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  She sniffed.

  “You can go back to sleep. It’s safe. Nobody’s in the house who shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m afraid to go to sleep.”

  She sounded exhausted, and JB couldn’t blame her. He felt exhausted too, just from listening to her.

  “It all comes back.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “When I’m awake, I can rationalize it, you know? It’s over. Nothing happened to me. I could have been hurt, but I wasn’t. I was rescued before anything bad couldn’t happen. Anything too bad.”

  JB nodded. Being hijacked and left in fear for two days wasn’t nothing. It was good that she acknowledged that, even as she knew it could have been worse.

  “I wasn’t raped. I could have been, but I wasn’t.” She shuddered again. “I could see it in their eyes. There was this one guy...”

  She lifted her head to look at him, her eyes drenched with tears and her cheeks wet. “One of the ones you shot when he came out of the salon.”

  JB nodded.

  “He looked at me like he wanted to hurt me. That way. But Kareem told him no. So he didn’t.”

  He would have. JB was sure of that. Sooner or later Kareem would have said yes. Or the other hijacker would have decided not to listen to Kareem. And what Tansy was worried about would have happened. Not just in her dreams, but in reality.

  Another long shudder ran through her body, and he tightened his arms around her. “It didn’t happen. But when I go to sleep it does. I’m back there, and he’s looking at me, and Kareem doesn’t tell him no. Instead he smiles, this evil smile, and tells the guy to go ahead. And...”

  She caught her breath on a sob.

  “It’s OK,” JB told her, holding her tight against him. “I can guess what comes after that.”

  “They hold me down. And they hurt me. And I can’t get away. I can’t wake up.”

  He nodded. Nothing much he could say to that. “It’s a dream. Just a dream. Even if it feels real, it’s just a dream. It didn’t happen.”

  “It feels like it’s happening,” Tansy said. “Every night.”

  She drew another shuddering breath. “I thought I had stopped dreaming. For the first couple of months after I came back, it was pretty bad. I was afraid to close my eyes. But then it started to fade. I didn’t dream about it every night anymore. And then it was once a week, and then maybe once a month.”

  JB nodded.

  “But now it’s back. Ever since the note came, and Daddy and Mick thought it was about me, it’s all coming back.”

  She burrowed deeper into his arms.

  “I’ve got you,” he told her, into the soft cloud of her hair. She smelled like sunshine and roses. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Kareem’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore. His friends are dead. You saw them, on the yacht.”

  She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest.

  “The man who looked at you like that is dead. He can’t look at you again. He can’t come near you.” And a good thing, too,
because if he tried, JB would kill him. With his bare hands if he had to.

  “And if Kareem’s father sent Mohammed el Saud to hurt you, we’ll stop him. He won’t touch you. I promise.”

  He sat rocking her quietly for a minute. Her breathing was finally slowing down, and her heart was beating normally. Mimi had stopped dancing around on the bed, showing her worry about her mistress, and had circled twice before settling down into looking like a round, fuzzy pillow. Her nose was buried in her tail, and with her bright eyes closed, there was no telling where the small dog began or ended.

  “You’ll leave,” Tansy said, into JB’s chest. “You’ll catch whoever’s behind this, and you’ll leave.”

  “I’ll have to. I work for Uncle Sam. And Uncle Sam likes his sailors to be where they’re supposed to be, in case of trouble. So does Commander Baker.”

  “I don’t want you to leave,” Tansy said. “You make me feel safe. And you were there. On the yacht. You know what happened. I can talk to you about it, and you understand. I don’t have to pretend to be OK so you won’t worry.”

  “Do you have to pretend with your dad?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just that if I don’t seem like I’m OK, he worries.”

  Of course he did. “He loves you. But that doesn’t mean you should lie to him.”

  “I’m not lying,” Tansy said. “Most of the time I am OK. I was getting better. I swear. It’s just... this new situation.”

  JB nodded. “It’s understandable that it would bring it all back. You’re not confined in a stateroom anymore, but your movements are limited. You can’t go where you want when you want to, and there are a lot of men you don’t know walking around in your safe space. I can tell you they’re all good guys and won’t hurt you, but that doesn’t mean you won’t worry.”

  Tansy nodded.

  “But it’s only for a few days. We’ll get him. And then your life will go back to normal.”

  Tansy sighed. She had settled comfortably into his arms now. She wasn’t clinging to him anymore, although she didn’t show any signs of wanting to move, either. “My life hasn’t been normal for the past year. I’m not sure it’ll ever be normal again. Maybe I don’t want it to be normal.”