by Julie Miller
“—will still be there when we get back.” Craddock waved aside her concerns. “I’d give you a medal for dedication if I could, but you’re being ridiculous. Captain Black will be there Monday. He’ll answer the phone and manage the filing until we get back.” He patted Eileen’s shoulder. “We’re here to relax, remember?”
“Kyle filing?” She touched her fingers to her temple as if that answer gave her a headache. “All the more reason to head back to the city.”
“Eileen, Kyle can alphabetize as well as you…”
The debate continued, but all Travis heard was the name. “Black?” He let his gaze slide with an ominous portent to his big brother. As the conversation buzzed around them, he whispered, “Kyle Black? The same guy who used to be your aide?”
Ethan nodded. “When I got promoted to Embassy Guard Training School C.O. at Quantico, Black moved up to work for the general.”
Not even Ethan knew the history he and Kyle Black shared. Not all of it, at any rate. If Travis’s file crossed Black’s desk enroute to General Craddock, he knew there’d be a damn good chance his paperwork could get misplaced for a few days. Maybe long enough for S.O. 6 to find a new captain before he ever had a decent shot at his old job. Yeah, calculated and underhanded—that would be Black’s style of revenge.
Ethan’s gray-blue eyes narrowed. “Something wrong?”
Before anyone else picked up on his suspicions, Travis shook his head. “Nah. It just feels like a bad omen whenever that guy’s name comes up.”
“I know the feeling.” Ethan reached for J.C. and pulled her to his side. Travis frowned. Had big brother had some kind of run-in with Kyle Black, too? And why the protective gesture with his wife? “I never could knock him for his efficiency and resourcefulness, but he’s definitely a man with a hidden agenda.”
A knock on the door sidelined Travis’s curiosity to follow up on Kyle Black. His entire mood lightened instantly when he saw Tess’s beaming smile through the screen door.
“I haven’t missed the party, have I?”
At his father’s urging, Tess opened the door and came inside. There was another round of introductions and then the whole group moved into the living room.
“Do you and Travis have plans this afternoon?” Hal asked.
“Sure do,” Tess answered.
Even though it was a Sunday, she wore one of her uniform polo shirts with the hospital’s logo over one proud breast. Nice touch. No one could doubt that he would continue to heal under her watch.
“We’re finishing up some last-minute preparations for the festival. Without Travis’s help, I won’t be ready for the onslaught of tourists we’re expecting.” She gave Travis a wink that sent a dozen unexpected smiles skittering through his veins. “I warned you I was going to put you to work when you volunteered.”
Now he wished he had. He wished this wasn’t an act for his father and Craddock’s benefit. Yeah, he’d enjoy spending some extra time with Tess while he was home this summer. He’d tote and carry whatever load she asked of him, repay her any way she asked—not just because his father had visibly relaxed since her arrival, but because his mood had improved upon seeing her.
He owed Tess for that.
He just wished that repayment could be something a little more enticing. Something that involved kissing and getting naked and full body contact instead of driving and hauling and unpacking a few boxes. Travis closed his eyes and silently chanted his current mantra: Tess—friend. Any other woman…
Hell. Now that the changes he’d seen in Tess filled his head, he was having a hard time thinking about any other woman. His eyes popped open to find her still standing among the circle of friends and family—still sexy, still smiling.
Travis swallowed hard. He’d better keep his focus on the masquerade at hand. He’d talked her into providing an alibi to relieve Hal’s concerns and help him look good in front of General Craddock. The absolute least he could do was to play his part as well as she was playing hers.
“So much for my vacation.” Laying a hand over his heart, Travis sighed. “Duty calls, I’m afraid. I can’t ignore a damsel in distress, can I? You see why I have to bug out on the boat trip.”
He made a point to glance toward General Craddock. Do you get it? This woman needed him to work—knew he was capable of hard work. She was counting on him to get the job done. The trust in Tess’s voice and expression said he was a man that a woman, his community—even his country—could rely on.
But Craddock was focused on Tess. “I can see why he’d rather spend time with a pretty thing like you than a bunch of old farts like us.”
“Pretty thing?” For an instant, confusion marred Tess’s smiling facade.
Millie Craddock rescued Tess from the general’s flirting. She nudged her husband in the shoulder. “Who are you calling an old fart, Walter Craddock? Speak for yourself. I intend to have a grand adventure out on the water.”
Craddock dipped his chin and pressed a quick kiss to Millie’s lips. “Honey, you will never be old. And I’ll be right there beside you, having that adventure.”
“That’s the spirit.” Hal slapped his friend on the back and grinned at Millie. “You keep this one in line, or we’ll be tossing him overboard.”
Everyone in the room laughed, except for Eileen, who’d perched stiffly on the edge of the sofa and was playing with the hem of her cotton sweater. “Just how adventurous are we going to be? I haven’t been in a pool in years, much less the ocean.”
“C’mon, Eileen.” General Craddock eased himself onto the sofa beside her and tried to cajole his fretting assistant. “You told me you loved the water.”
“To look at,” she snapped. “To wade in.” Then she visibly drew a breath to calm herself. She crossed her arms, smoothed a misplaced hair into her bun with shaky fingers. “I haven’t been swimming since high school,” she muttered under her breath, but in a voice loud enough for most of them to hear. “What if someone falls overboard?”
Poor woman. She likely didn’t have anything against vacations. But she seemed a little shy. And she was definitely afraid of the water.
“That’s why I insist everyone wears a life-jacket on my boat.” Hal propped his hands on his hips and looked down at Eileen as though it was his solemn duty as captain of the ship to reassure her personally. “That’s why I run the weather-band constantly, so I know if there’s a storm or choppy seas two days, two hours or even two minutes out. Besides, I’ve made this trip dozens of times. You’ll be fine.”
Was his father’s chest puffing out? Or had he sucked in his stomach? Travis couldn’t tell if Hal liked the woman or if he felt the need to defend old sea salts the world over.
“Don’t worry.” Hal leaned toward the doubting tilt of Eileen’s chin. “If you fall into the water, we’ll come back to get you.”
Eileen’s face blanched lily-white.
Ooh, Dad. Strike one. Never mention falling overboard to a woman afraid of the sea.
Time to move on before his father talked Eileen out of going and the trip got cancelled. He didn’t need his dad standing guard over him, and he didn’t want him moping around because he’d been cheated of his chance to fish.
Travis clapped his hands. “We’ve got an hour or so before Ethan and J.C. head back to Quantico and you sailors disembark to find the Great White Fish. How about I get everybody a cold drink. What’ll you have?”
A chorus of responses followed him into the kitchen.
“I’ll help,” Tess volunteered.
Once he reached the relative privacy of the kitchen, Travis expelled a heavy breath. “It seems to be going well.”
He pulled the bag of ice from the cooler on the counter and opened it, keeping one ear tuned to the hum of conversation in the living room, listening for any mention of him and his condition or job situation. He dumped the ice in the cooler.
Tess came up beside him, grabbed the empty plastic bag he’d tossed onto the counter and threw it into the trash. “Hm
m. No brace, no limp. You must be hurtin’.”
He tossed her a package of disposable plastic cups, which she caught like the error-free shortstop she’d always been. “Or I might just be feeling better.”
“Overnight miracle cure, huh?” She undid the twist tie and pulled out a stack of cups.
She set the cups beside the cooler while he retrieved two beers and a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge. “Mind over body, that’s all. And a damned determination to de-stress Dad’s life and get my life back.”
“I want you to kiss me again.”
Every muscle inside Travis jerked in response. The pitcher clattered onto the counter, and if not for the lid, he’d have been wearing the contents. Travis steadied the pitcher and looked down at her over the jut of his shoulder to see if he’d really heard those words or just imagined them. The slight tremor in her fingertips as she lined the cups up in equidistant rows told him the invitation was for real. “Right now?”
After keeping everything cool, calm and collected in front of his dad and the general, the insistent hammering of his pulse now interfered with his ability to keep a coherent thought in his head. The only image that seemed to stick was the memory of Tess bending over the counter in her kitchen. This kitchen would do just as well. Knock the cups into the sink. Lift her onto the counter. Apparently, his body wanted to do a lot more than kiss.
But kissing was a place to start. Sidling close enough to feel the summer heat on her skin, he leaned in to grant her wish.
Tess braced her hand against his shoulder, pushed him back and denied him the pleasure. “Your father and two superior officers are just on the other side of that wall. I wasn’t talking about doing it here.”
“But you were talking about doing it.” He pushed against the resistance of her hand, teasing her with the double entendre. “Who would have thought a good girl like you—”
“Travis. Your father—”
His father stormed into the kitchen.
“Did you get a load of that redhead? Talking about my boat and my skills like I’m some kind of amateur.” Hal reached between Tess and Travis to grab one of the bottles of beer. He twisted off the cap and pitched it before downing a long, cold swallow.
“Problem, Dad?” he asked, watching Tess plunge her hands into the ice to fill the cups to their rims. Travis considered diving inside that cooler himself now that her surprising invitation had gotten his juices flowing.
Hal backed to the center of the kitchen and plopped his beer on the table. He raised his voice to a nasally, mocking pitch. “‘Is there enough room on your ship?’ ‘How far out are we going?’” He pulled a tray of veggies and dip from the fridge and dropped his voice to its usual gruff tone. “What, does she think I’m taking her out in a row boat?”
“I doubt she means it personally, Dad.”
“I’d bet money that Millie’s trying to set me up with that woman. We have absolutely nothing in common. Your mother would have trusted my judgment without questioning every word I say.”
Ah, so Eileen Ward was suffering from an unfair comparison to Travis’s beloved mother. Knowing how set in his ways Hal could be, Travis thought the woman deserved a break.
“Maybe she gets seasick,” he speculated. “Or has an allergy to fish.”
His father rolled his eyes and reached for his beer. “She acts like she has an allergy to me.”
Tess stopped fiddling with the ice and reached for a tea towel while Hal drank past the halfway mark on his beer. “It sounds to me like Eileen hasn’t been around the water much. Or else she’s had a bad experience and tries to avoid it now. She said she wasn’t much of a swimmer. Her reticence to get on the boat might have nothing to do with you or fishing.”
Hal paused, frowning over the tilted neck of his beer bottle in a moment of subtle, yet genuine concern. “You mean like a phobia or something?”
“Possibly.” She took the beer from his father’s hand and replaced it with a glass of lemonade. Smooth move. “I’m sure she’s nervous about meeting all of us. And how hard must it be to admit you’re afraid of something in front of a bunch of strangers?”
“Don’t write her off just yet, Dad.” Travis picked up the tray, put a hand on his father’s shoulder and walked him back toward the living room and their guests. “Give her a chance to fit in and relax.”
“Relax? Ha. She’s as uptight as that bun of hers.” But his blue eyes softened as he shook his head. “That wasn’t very charitable, was it? Maybe she doesn’t know anything about boats. But I could teach her. I’d better give her a tour before we launch.”
Tess came up on the opposite side and went up on tiptoe to kiss his father’s cheek. “You’re a kind man, Hal McCormick.”
Hal dipped his head and returned the peck on the cheek. “Thanks, sweetie.” Then he looked up at Travis and winked. “Keep an eye on this one, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
He did just that as soon as his father left the room. Blue eyes met those verdant gold beauties as Travis smiled down at Tess. She was better at calming his father than one of his blood pressure pills. Funny, she seemed to be having the opposite effect on Travis.
Since they stood so close to the archway and their guests could be in eavesdropping distance on the other side, Travis mouthed the words, “I want to kiss you, too.”
Rosy color dotted Tess’s cheeks before she turned back to the counter to finish pouring the lemonade. “I think he likes her.”
Travis grinned and followed behind. She knew exactly what he’d said. Maybe she’d even guessed all the subtext behind that simple statement. “That’d be a real Romeo and Juliet scenario, wouldn’t it? Dad falling for someone who can’t stand fishing and life on the water.”
“Eileen has certainly gotten his dander up. I haven’t seen any woman in Ashton get under his skin like that. Not since your mom, of course. And it’s been ten years since she passed away?”
Travis stopped right behind her, reaching around her for the unopened bottle of beer. He moved in close enough so that his thighs brushed against her bottom. The rounded temptation flinched, nudging against his groin, and a jolt of electricity winged through him as if it had been an intentionally seductive move. Picking up the beer without retreating an inch, he leaned in and whispered against her ear, “Tell me why you want to do this kissing thing again. I thought we decided that was weird.”
Tess held herself perfectly still, as if avoiding actual contact would make the tension thrumming between them go away. “I had a chance to think more rationally at home. If it was weird, then we couldn’t have gone that far. I don’t know why the chemistry between us has changed, but—”
Her deep breath closed the centimeter between them, and the sudden brush of her citrus-scented hair against his chin made his own breath catch. He put the bottle back on the counter. Then he braced his hands on either side of her, gripping the edge of the sink to quell the carnal urges rocketing through him.
“—It’s changed,” he finished. He turned his nose and nuzzled her scent, unable to deny the lure that pumped heat into his veins. “It’s like you grew up while I was away. Grew sexy.”
“I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.” She tried to hold herself still within the circle of his body, but her shallow breaths revealed that he wasn’t the only one fighting to keep the libido in check. “But you said I could ask you for anything. I’m asking you for two weeks. I’m not happy with my life. I want something more. Something exciting. Something magical.”
“For two weeks?” An affair with Tess would throw this forced R and R into an entirely different light.
“I know it’s a cliché, but…when I think summer romance, I think hot and fast. And then it’s over and we move on. If we both go into this knowing it’s just a temporary—”
Her words stuttered to a halt as he closed his teeth in a gentle nip at her earlobe. Then she turned her head, inviting his lips to graze at her temple and cross the velvety warmth of her cheek. She
made that helpless noise of abandon in her throat and Travis moved his fingers there, feeling the vibration buzz through his skin and quicken his pulse.
“I’ll give you hot and fast.” He dragged his hand down the placket of her shirt, seeking more neutral territory. But he found the swell of her breast and palmed her instead.
Her purr became an outright moan. “We shouldn’t…next dad…room…”
Man, he loved how her words got all tangled up when she was turned on.
“Stop…catch us…” She pleaded even as she twisted her bottom against him.
Travis groaned with the need to thrust against her. But some sixth sense warned him a split-second before they were discovered, and Travis leaned forward, trapping Tess against the sink and stilling the subtle gyrations of her body. “Shh,” he whispered.
A woman’s bright voice entered the kitchen behind them. “Do you two need any help with the drinks?”
He did the gallant thing, reaching around Tess to turn on the faucet, blocking Millie Craddock’s view of the type of physical therapy he and Tess were practicing. “No. We’ve got it covered.”
He noted how Tess looked down at her breast and tensed. He had her covered. Okay, so maybe his efforts were just as self-indulgent as they were gallant. But unless Millie had X-ray vision, this would remain their own private therapy.
“You’re sure?”
“Thanks, Millie. We just needed to clean up a little mess. We’ll be out in a second.”
“Great. Your dad is taking us down to the dock to give us a tour of his new boat.”
Travis gently squeezed Tess’s breast, catching the distended nipple in the crinkle of his palm. The running water masked her tortured sigh. His body masked the white-knuckled grasp she held on the edge of the sink. The blood surged through his veins. How could this woman be so responsive to the slightest touch? and not think she was sexy? The men of Ashton who hadn’t noticed were either blind or stupid. And now they were going to be out of luck because he intended to be a very hands-on teacher.
For two weeks.
“What did he call it?” Millie asked.
