by Anne Marsh
Her sunglasses make it impossible to see her eyes, and I don’t like that. I gently tug the glasses from her face and toss them onto the sand.
“Hey.” She snaps a finger in my face. “Neanderthal much?”
“My beach, my rules.” And rule number one is that I get to look at her.
Her hair is longer and less colorful than it was six years ago, but her eyes are exactly as I remember. They’re brown and full of challenge as she slowly focuses on my face. Our kiss hello seems to have scrambled something in her head, but I’m sure it’s only temporary. She’s never at a loss for words—she’ll bounce right back like the ball Jack loves so much. Hindi’s my Kryptonite. I fucking happy-quiver when she’s near, like a search dog scenting explosives.
“Rules aren’t my thing. We should have met for coffee,” she decides.
As if we’re barely acquaintances. As if I haven’t had my dick in her, my balls slapping against her ass as I ride her hard and she screams my name. As if I can sit here, this close to touching her, and not remember. Thinking about her may not make my top ten list of preferred activities, but she’s permanently tattooed on my small head. And yeah—that’s as painful as it sounds.
“Talk.” I force my hand to stop its irritated drumbeat on my thigh.
She eyes me dubiously. “Are you familiar with a little word called please?”
“Six letters. Generally prefaces a request—which that wasn’t. Talk, Hindi.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She mutters something else under her breath that I can’t quite catch and then her eyes narrow. “You’re still bossy.”
I should let it go, but I’m not feeling nice. There was only one place I told Hindi what to do and that was in our bed. I lean toward her, deliberately invading her space. She’s taken over my beach, so it’s really only fair. “And you liked it.”
Her spine stiffens, practically levitating her ass over the sand. Okay. So the truth isn’t a hit with her, but her patent dislike doesn’t make it any less true. Hindi fucking loved taking orders in bed.
“Good thing you’re my ex-wife.” Somehow, my mouth brushes her hair as if it’s perfectly natural for my lips to be so close. I should work on reestablishing the distance between us.
“About that?” Yeah. That’s a question mark at the end of those two words. I do some straightening of my own, and not the dick-in-my-pants kind, either.
“Hindi.” Her name is pure growl and I don’t give a fuck.
She shrugs, half-covering her face with all that gold-brown hair. It’s the color of caramel and for one too-long moment I want to fist it, draw her head back and lick a path from the soft valley between her tits to her mouth.
Focus, sailor, focus.
“Explain yourself,” I snap.
Hindi sucks in a breath and drags her skirt closer around her. She’s always loved that floaty material stuff. It’s as hard to pin down as she is, and for just a moment she looks fragile. Then she inhales a second time, exhales (which shoves her tits against the flimsy bodice), and explodes to her feet.
Then she launches a verbal strike at me with unexpected precision. “We’re still married.”
Bet you didn’t see that one coming. I lean back on the sand, braced on my elbows. While she paces back and forth in front of me, trying to explain what did or did not happen with our divorce, I try to make any kind of sense of her words. How do you file for divorce but not actually get the damned thing? Given that over half of all marriages in the US of A end in divorce, marital endings are not uncharted territory. I’ve known plenty of divorced people, too, and not one of them has up and said, “Oh yeah—I thought I was divorced, but turns out I wasn’t.”
The words shoot out of my mouth, interrupting her stream of babble. “What went wrong?”
Always take care of business yourself. Don’t leave shit up to others or you’ll end up in the center of a shit storm. No chances, no uncertainty. Just fucking do it. These are important rules that I should have remembered.
She aims a blinding smile in my direction. Hello, evil smile of misdirection. I remind myself that I’m entirely, completely Hindi-proof. “I’m sure we can get a real divorce pronto.”
“We’re married?”
She nods and holds up two crossed fingers. “Pinky promise.”
I swear to God, she’s seconds away from levitating in place because she shifts nervously from foot to foot, all but hopping. I’ve never, ever fucking hurt her, so I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve the nerve show.
“How?”
“Apparently, a piece of paper never got filed.”
“I signed all of the paperwork you sent me. You were responsible for delivering it to the courthouse.” Since divorce lawyers aren’t exactly a dime a dozen in Afghanistan, I’d let Hindi handle this one. Plus, since we didn’t have kids or joint property acquired after our wedding, it hadn’t been complicated. She’d kept what was hers; I’d kept what was mine. I’d insisted on depositing a check in her account, however—she’d always been tight on money, and—sue me—I didn’t want her going without.
She nods vigorously. “You were awesome.”
Great. Just what any man wants to hear.
“So what happened?”
“I forgot to take the papers to the courthouse.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, which only makes me realize that, fuck, now I both look and act like my dad. And while I love the man, I don’t need to mimic him. I force my hand back down to my side.
She sort of squints at me. “You’re upset.”
Right there? Understatement of the year.
“How do you forget to take care of something that important? Christ. The IRS alone is going to have a field day with us.”
Hindi flaps her hands, making these little spluttering noises. Clearly, she has no idea how she overlooked this massive, critical, non-negotiable step in our divorce, either. At least we’re agreed on that. The dress she’s wearing has one of those clingy, puckered fronts held up by tiny ribbons that crisscross her shoulders. Hindi loves that kind of feminine shit. I watched her TV show once, right after we split up, and the underwear she made was similar. Delicate, lacy stuff that seems like it would tear with one good tug and yet damned if it doesn’t cup and hold and scoop.
Guys love lingerie. We look at a matching bra and panty set as an engraved invitation to take you to bed (since clearly you were thinking about it when you put that kind of effort into getting dressed). I enjoy a nice pair of tits as much as any man, and a bra that holds your girls up is like a fantastic silver platter. It’s like Hindi read the minds of guys everywhere, because her bras do just that—and yet they still maintain the illusion that one good tug and you’ll pop out into my hands. Or better yet, I’ll rip the silky straps from your skin, toss the scrap onto the floor, and give your main attraction my undivided attention.
Hindi’s tiny, tight bodice inches down with each indignant breath she takes, revealing the creamy edge of a strapless bra. She may suck at paperwork and follow-through, but she is one hell of a designer. My fingers itch to help the scrap of fabric down. Do some of that tearing I just mentioned.
My dick is stupid. It still likes Hindi Alvarez just fine.
She inhales. The dress slips lower. There are little yellow ribbons on whatever’s standing between me and her tits. “Look,” she snaps. “I’m sorry. I screwed up. I’m staying in a rental in Angel Cay. We’ll fix it and then you can get on with your life, okay?”
There’s a long, long pause. I’m supposed to fill in this silence with words. It’s my turn in our game of conversational ping pong and I’ve got my paddle in the air, aimed at the plastic ball hip-hopping its way toward me. I could tell her it’s fine. That it doesn’t matter and I’m not mad or upset or bothered even the teeniest fucking bit.
I don’t believe in lying.
I don’t fill in the silence.
You’ve seen the signs in stores full of fragile, overpriced shit, right? The ones that promise if you b
reak it, you’ve bought it? As I stare at Hindi’s chest, trying to drag my eyeballs back to her face because this is so not okay, I have a whole new sympathy for those store owners. Maybe it’s not a set up. Maybe they’re just really fucking tired of everyone prancing in there, messing shit up, and then expecting them to deal with it. I’ve spent a lifetime cleaning up after other people, and while I don’t regret it and I absolutely believe in what I’ve fought for, I’m tired.
“God.” She actually throws her hands up in the air. “You never say anything. It was always like living with the original mountain man.”
She wants words? I have some for her.
“You fix it,” I growl.
“Gotcha,” she squeaks and then she turns and sprints up the beach. Great. I’ve fucking run her off. That’s a new low, even for me.
Hindi Alvarez-MacCarthy drives me fucking nuts.
I’m not married to her.
I will not be married to her.
Uh-oh.
You remember Sam-I-Am and his adamant dislike of green eggs and ham? Yeah. I can hear the similarities too, but trust me. This is a no way, no how situation. Hindi is messy. She’s emotional. Just think of her as the invasive pondweed that moves into a perfectly nice, self-contained body of water and explodes everywhere. No way. No how.
Something smacks hard into the door of my bungalow. From the length and pitch of the reverberation, I’m guessing shoulder rather than palm or knuckles. Yes. I lock my door. You can never overestimate the importance of security, plus it’s the only way to guarantee I have any privacy—or a heads-up about incoming company. My friends and co-partners in Search and SEALs have zero social skills and even fewer manners. I pause the show on my TV and count. I’ve just made it to five when Finn’s face appears in the open window to my right. I should really get around to investing in screens.
He leans his arms on the sill and rests his chin on his forearms, giving me puppy dog eyes. “Whatcha doing?”
Finn made one hell of a SEAL, and there’s no better man to have at my back, but he’s completely shameless and he actually loves people. When he hooked up with Vali, I hoped the constant banging and female company would get him off my back, but he still insists on coming round to bug me on a regular basis. And honestly? I appreciate it, although I’m certainly not going to let him know that. He’d give me shit for years.
“Research.”
“Can I help?”
Why not? Since it would take an act of God to keep him out anyhow, I pat the couch beside me. “Come on in.”
Finn climbs in. His fitting through the window requires some gymnastics—Finn’s never been a small guy and he’s bulked up even more since we left our SEAL days behind us. He claims it’s because he doesn’t have to worry about plummeting to the ground when he jumps headfirst out of a plane anymore. I blame his girlfriend’s spectacular cooking. His hair sticks up on end, one endless wave after another. Vali described him as her lion because he’s got all that gold and brown hair, plenty of stubble, and a dimple the size of the Grand Canyon. Not sure what the dimple has to do with anything leonine, but it’s always been his Get Out of Jail Free card with the female sex. When I gave him shit about the lion thing, he pointed out that lions are more likely to eat you up than not. Then he waggled his brows. Yeah. Fucking TMI right there, but he and Vali are happy, so they can play all the zoo games they want as long as I don’t have to hear about it.
Finn detours into my kitchen for the beer I keep there for him before dropping down onto the couch beside me. Since my living room furniture consists of a big-ass TV and a leather couch, his seating options are limited.
“What are we watching? Porn?” He sounds hopeful, but we both know that Vali would kill him. Slowly. She’s creative, and she’d have made an amazing mercenary, because she’s definitely a take-no-prisoners kind of woman.
I don’t bother to reply—just press the play button and make sure to keep the remote on my side of the couch. Finn has the television-watching attention span of a gnat with ADHD. The last time he got his hands on my remote, I had whiplash from the channel bouncing. For a few minutes, we watch the stream of half-dressed models prowling down the runaway. The girls don’t just need a steak—they need the entire herd of cows with a side of butter. The lingerie’s pretty fucking stunning, though—Hindi’s gone with a camouflage theme.
Beside me, Finn gapes at the screen. “We never wore shit like that in the field.”
Great. Now I’m mentally imagining Finn in a push up bra with green and brown gauzy stuff draped over his non-existent tits. That’s bad enough, but then the girl on the runway strikes a pose and pivots, flashing us and the rest of the television-viewing world her ass. And there’s lots of ass on display because apparently Hindi is a big fan of the thong. How the hell can they show this on TV?
“Maybe we should have,” Finn continues. “Woulda made things even more interesting, right?”
He beams at me, clearly enjoying the mental image. Since our last deployment was to a country where the majority of the inhabitants cover their women from head to toe, interesting is not the word that comes to mind. Plus, we’re all way too fucking hairy for thongs, and we’ve got way more real estate to cover. The image of eight badass SEALs in thongs is pretty ludicrous. An answering grin tugs at my mouth.
“This show have stuff for guys? You think Vali would like that bra?” Finn squints at the screen, holding his hands up in the air like he’s mentally trying the lingerie on for size. Christ. I don’t want to imagine Vali’s tits, either. The lion thing was bad enough.
“Just wait,” I grunt. No way I spoil the surprise for him.
The camera pans to Hindi, sitting cross-legged at the end of the runaway. Her multi-colored hair sticks up where she’s run her fingers through it. She wears a skin-tight white T-shirt embroidered with Team Hindi, and yes, that’s a bright-red bra beneath the cotton. She comes across as fierce and determined, and even though I already know she wins this challenge and the whole goddamned design show enchilada, I can’t help rooting for her. I want her to win.
“Dude,” Finn announces in awed tones, popping his beer open. I hold my hand out for the cap because otherwise it will end up across the room, underneath a couch cushion, or aimed somewhere in the direction of my flat screen. A stream of buffed, polished male models saunters out onto the catwalk. They’re wearing slightly more clothing than their female colleagues, but not by much.
No sane guy would ever walk around with camouflage tidy-whities cupping his junk and—
“Never seen a flak vest work quite that way,” Finn says thoughtfully. Yeah. His eyes practically pop out of his head as the guys pivot and stalk back up the runway. Hindi’s taken full advantage of the real estate she does have to work with—each guy’s ass reads on fire. Maybe I should give Vali a Christmas shopping list for Finn.
The host pops up onto the runway and settles in next to Hindi. The online fan sites claim Hindi won the hearts of America because she’s real and authentic. No one would ever mistake the host for possessing those particular qualities. He wears a red velvet suit that seems two sizes too small, a striped shirt, a bow tie, and the biggest, shit-eatingest grin ever. When Hindi smiles at the host like they’re besties, however, he practically melts. Or maybe that’s because the guy’s taller than she is and he has a great view down the front of her halter top.
Fucker.
“So, Hindi,” he drawls, sounding pretentious as fuck. “Can you tell us what your inspiration was for tonight’s show?”
She beams, her face bright enough to be seen from Mars—and I’ll bet the little green men orbiting up there in outer space like them some hot lingerie, too.
“Well, Puck,” she starts, and I ask you: what kind of name is Puck? It belongs in a hockey game and nowhere else. “Some of the finest men I’ve known have served in our military, and I wanted to honor them.”
Let’s be honest. Honor is not the word that comes to mind. The models strut down the runwa
y and pose behind Puck and Hindi. There’s a side of tits and ass to go with all those skinny arms and concave faces, and who am I to judge? God didn’t make us one size fits all.
Finn snort-laughs. “You think I can order that shit for Vali?”
I lean back. Just wait—he hasn’t heard the punch line yet. “I can introduce you to the designer.”
“Just have her send me a care package.” He shapes the air with his hands and I once again try hard not to fill in those swoops and curves with Vali’s figure. Yes, she’s fucking hot. And yes—she’s completely, entirely off-limits. I no more want to think about her boob size than she wants to imagine the dimensions of my dick. This is as much a testament to how much we both care about Finn as it is the complete mismatch that we are for each other.
On screen, Hindi is still fielding questions.
“I envision all different shapes and sizes of women wearing my lingerie. Some guys, too,” she says, gaze glinting with mischief.
“I can imagine it,” Finn mutters beside me.
And then my picture flashes up on the screen. Hello, spoiler.
Finn promptly toasts me with his beer. “Now I do believe you know her. You’re famous.”
The voiceover on the screen explains that Hindi has one very special SEAL in her life. They zoom in on my picture. I don’t know when it was taken, but I’d tried visiting Hindi once in New York City, to try and talk our shit out. Even then, things had been headed south, and a face-to-face had seemed like the best solution. We’d spent the weekend together, more in bed than out, and this must have been snapped during one of those brief out moments. My hair’s a little longer than my usual military buzz cut and I look—happy. Okay, so I’m not smiling and I look like a gruff, mean motherfucker, but I know I was happy. Mostly.
As Hindi’s models clear the runway and she disappears, replaced by the next contestant, Finn looks at me. He’s clearly ready to launch his own personal sequel to the Spanish Inquisition. “When did you get to know a fashion designer? And just how well do you know her, Mr. Very Special SEAL?”
