Erick would have a physical and emotional connection to his infant son that he’d never experienced with any other human being.
*
Watching the changes in his expression, Rylie knew a regret so deep her chest ached. She should have told him. God, she’d screwed up. She might never be able to make it up to him for denying him those monthly updates on the baby’s progress. What if she damaged his ability to bond with the baby because she denied him those moments?
A nurse came in to check her progress and Eric stepped aside to give her room. He set the phone on the bedside table but his eyes lingered on the ultrasound.
“Both of you need to rest as much as you can. It may be awhile,” she said before leaving the room.
“You look like you could do with a power nap,” Eric said.
Rylie’s breathing hitched and her heart sped up. Her father had been more interested in controlling her and punishing her for embarrassing him than caring about the baby. He was all about control. What if he used that control to punish Eric?
Eric sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I need to tell you something, Eric.”
The expectation in his expression had her courage crumbling. If she told him now, she didn’t know what he might do. He’d be angry. He might leave. And she needed him here. Not only for her, but for the baby. She needed him to feel close to her again. After seven months apart, though they’d been in touch once a week…
She needed to punch through this awkwardness between them, because it was important for them to stand together, once the baby was born.
“Do you remember how we first met?”
“It’s kind of hard for me to forget. You crushed my bike.”
And that led her right back to the lie she held onto the whole time they’d been together, and why she held onto it.
Because owning up to who her father was would have ended things between them before they ever started.
She didn’t regret one moment of being with Eric. She loved him. Loved him with everything in her. She hoped he loved her too.
CHAPTER 3
‡
10 MONTHS EARLIER
Rylie hammered the steering wheel with the heel of her hand.
She wanted to kill Black Jack Stewart.
She wanted to jab a knife between his ribs and twist it.
Because that’s what every word he just said to her felt like. He’d done things in the past that hurt her, but what he said to her tonight… He might as well have called her a whore.
And the funny thing was, all she did was wear a blouse that fell off her shoulder and flashed a hint of cleavage. But he went off like fourth of July fireworks.
Tears erupted, blurring her vision. She could barely breathe as they flooded up from the depths of her heart. She whipped her Toyota into the nearest parking slot—and slammed on the brakes as a shadow shape rose up in front of her.
The sound of crunching metal turned her stomach, and she jerked the steering wheel to the right. It was something big.
Dear God! What if she just hit someone? She shoved the gearshift into park, released her seat belt, and leapt out of the car, swiping away the tears so she could see.
A large motorcycle lay on its side like a dying dinosaur. The rear fender and wheel were crushed, the tire flat, and the exhaust pipes were flattened. The chrome had a just-polished gleam, and the red metallic paint decorating the gas tank and fenders was spotless. The word “Indian” in gold cursive embellished the tank.
Can this day get any worse?
As much as she wanted to blame her father for this, it was her own damn fault. She let her emotions get the better of her, and she should have pulled over miles ago. She should be grateful that at least the machine was parked and no one was hurt.
She pulled her cell phone out of her purse and took a quick picture of the license plate on the back fender. She’d never seen a motorcycle like it before. What if it was some kind of custom-made, one-of-a-kind bike? What if it couldn’t be fixed? Her stomach pitched.
The stores along this stretch of street were already closed except for McP’s Pub, a hangout for the local SEAL teams because it was owned by a retired SEAL.
Explaining this mangled, formerly pristine bike to anyone of the SEAL persuasion wasn’t what she needed right now. She sent up a murmured prayer. Please don’t let this bike belong to a SEAL.
She stashed her cell phone in her purse again and threw the strap over her shoulder, locked the car, and started up the street. She heard male laughter coming from the walled outdoor eating area even before she reached the front door to the pub.
Her phone rang, and she paused to pull it out again.
Her father. He couldn’t possibly have anything to say that she wanted—or needed—to hear. The hurt he inflicted tonight was eating away at her already, and she wasn’t about to give him another shot at her.
She declined the call and strode into the pub, pausing for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. One of the waitresses approached her, but before the woman could seat her, she asked, “Do you happen to know anyone here who rides a motorcycle?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Yeah.” Nerves dried her mouth, and she swallowed. Some men treated their vehicles better than their girlfriends. If the owner of the bike was like that, she could be in trouble. “I just hit it, and I’m looking for the owner.”
“There’s a guy here…Eric Anderson…who rides some kind of specialty bike.”
Oh, shit!
“Could you point him out to me?”
“He’s with a group of his friends out back. Maybe I should just tell him you need to talk to him.”
Facing one angry probable-SEAL sounded bad enough without adding the supportive outrage of a group. “I’d appreciate that.”
“You look a little pale. Why don’t you take a seat, and I’ll bring you a drink of water first.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Rylie didn’t realize how nervous she was until her butt hit the seat. What if he got irate and abusive?
As abusive as her own father’s verbal attack. All the awful things he spewed came back to hurt her again.
She sipped the water, but it didn’t dull the replay of her father shouting about how cheap she looked. She gazed into the clear liquid in her glass, but could find no explanation for why he attacked her so viciously.
She wanted to go home and lick her wounds instead of sitting here dealing with an accident and a justifiably angry SEAL.
Where exactly had the picture Black Jack painted of her come from?
She wasn’t anything like what he described. She had only two long-term boyfriends all the way through college. She didn’t go out cruising bars and picking up guys. She didn’t get drunk and sleep around. Was that really what he thought of her?
Two men walked in from the exterior tables area, but she barely registered them as they crossed to the bar.
She sipped more water, mostly because she needed something to do with her hands than anything else.
“Hey,” a deep, masculine voice said from directly in front of her.
She braced herself and looked up, and up, trailing over snug jeans hugging long legs and narrow hips, and on to a lightweight gray T-shirt that did nothing to disguise muscular abs and pecs. The sleeves banded tight around upper arms bulked from either manual labor, lifting weights, or both, and his biceps flexed as he pulled out a chair and sat down across from her.
Her mouth went dry as dust as her attention snagged on his chiseled jaw, the perfect shape of his mouth, and his pale blue eyes, though his face was saved from being too perfect by the minute crook of his nose. Had it been broken sometime in the past?
His quick smile had a punch to it. He extended his hand. “Eric Anderson.”
Oh, shit! She clasped it briefly. “Rylie Stewart.”
“Tina said you want to speak to me.”
Rylie took another sip of water, then set the glass down. “Mr. And
erson… Do you own a red motorcycle with the name Indian painted on the gas tank?”
His expression flattened and his eyes narrowed. “Yes.”
Drawing a shaky breath, she said, “I’m sorry, but I just hit it. With my car, I mean.” That was stupid. What else would I have hit it with? “I’ve damaged the back wheel and fender and the exhaust pipes. But I have insurance, and I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to get it fixed.”
He moved so quickly she jerked and caught her breath.
*
Eric was up out of his seat, out the door, and jogging down the street before he even thought about it. The bike lay on its side and had obviously been knocked forward a couple of feet.
Jesus! The damage was just as bad as she described, except it was probably also scraped and scratched all to hell and back on the other side. She really hit it hard. It was a wonder it hadn’t been knocked into the car in front of it. Jesus! This was his only ride. And he loved this bike. Loved the grace and power of her. She’d been beautiful. Damnit!
And she cost him nearly ten thousand dollars.
“Fuck!” He breathed the word aloud to expel some of his frustration and grief.
“I’m sorry.”
He hadn’t been aware of her approach and whipped around to face her.
“How the hell did this happen?” he demanded, barely in control.
“I had something in my eye and couldn’t see clearly. I whipped into the parking space to get out of traffic and overshot the space. Do you want to call a wrecker?”
No. He didn’t want to call a wrecker. But he had to.
He jerked out his phone. At least he knew where to have them take his bike. The only place, the only person he’d trust it to. “Todd, I have a problem. My Indian has been hit by a car and has major damage to the rear end. Can you pick it up?”
Todd’s curses were worse than his own. When he finally wound down, he asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. It was parked, I wasn’t on it.”
“What the hell happened?” The man’s anger sounded so much like his own, he almost smiled.
“The rear bumper, wheel and exhaust are crushed. And there are probably plenty of scrapes and dings on the side I can’t see.”
“Shit! Where are you?”
“Just down the street from McP’s.”
“Dan’s on a delivery, so I’ll call him to come pick her up. You’ll need a ride to get to work, won’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll take care of it. I have a rebuilt nearly ready to go. She needs detailing, but she’ll get you to and from until yours is fixed. I can drop it off at the base in the morning. Tell me the guy who hit you has insurance.”
“Yeah, she does.”
“Blind bitches,” Todd muttered with feeling.
Eric swung his attention back to the woman responsible for the damage. Her thick, dark hair was caught back in a clip, the defined widow’s peak and her high cheekbones exaggerating the heart shape of her face.
And now he’d calmed down, he noticed the faint smudges of eye makeup beneath dark eyes he thought were brown in the dull lighting of the pub. He now realized they were the darkest blue he’d ever seen, and surrounded by thick, black lashes. And she had a mouth lush and wide enough to give the Naked Warrior sculpture a hard-on.
“It was just an accident,” he heard himself say, and her head came up and those dark eyes pinned him.
Todd laughed. “She must be hot as hell for you to say that.”
“Time’s a-wastin’, my friend, and I have a steak with my name on it waiting for me at McP’s. I’ll have to call and tell them to keep it warm for me until we deal with this.”
“Dan’s on the way.”
Eric closed the call and dialed a familiar number. “Hey, Tuck. Ask the waitress to hold my steak until I come back in. I need to take care of something out here.”
“Don’t tell me you’re answering a fifteen-minute booty call from some anonymous woman.”
“No, dumbass.” If he told him his bike had been trashed, all the guys would pile out on the street to check it out, and Rylie Stewart didn’t look up to dealing with the whole team right now. “I’ll explain later.”
He closed out the call.
She hadn’t mentioned the damage to her car, but he could see the grill was dented and the Toyota emblem mashed in. Luckily, though, nothing seemed to be leaking from beneath the vehicle, so it was probably still roadworthy.
“When Dan gets here, I’ll ask him to look at your car and make sure it’s okay. You’ll need to have a little body work done to the front end.”
She moved to take a look at the damage and rested a hand on the hood. “Are you sure your bike can be fixed?”
He glanced down at the crushed wheel and exhaust system. “Todd’s a magician when it comes to fixing motorcycles. But it won’t be cheap.”
She opened her tiny purse and withdrew a small note pad, a pen, and her insurance card, and wrote down her information. “Here’s my insurance information, my contact number, and my driver’s license number. I’ll call my insurance company first thing tomorrow morning and notify them of what happened. Here’s my business card. If you have any trouble, please don’t hesitate to call me.”
“You’re not going to just drive off without letting Todd look at your car. Stay and let him look at it.” He looked down at her business card. Rylie Stewart. Where had he heard that name before?
He didn’t have time to ask, because he spotted the tow truck with Todd’s logo painted across the top of the windshield. It drove past them until the trailer was positioned properly, came to a halt, and the caution lights of both truck and trailer started flashing.
A man leaped out of the truck. “Hey, Viking. Dad said someone ran over your girl. I was on a delivery, so he told me to come pick her up.” Short, stocky, and built like a street brawler, Danny Davis strode toward the motorcycle and whistled. “Damn, that’s a sickening sight.”
Eric glanced at Rylie and saw her bite her lip.
“At least the damage is limited to the back end. We’ll take care of her for you.”
“Thanks, man.”
“We ought to be able to get her onto the trailer. Let me lower the ramp. You can get on one side, I’ll get on the other, and we’ll half-roll, half-carry her. Let the front tire do all the heavy lifting. We’re going to tilt her onto it and roll her up the ramp.”
His plan turned out to be easier said than done, but finally they were able to manhandle the bike up the ramp and onto the flatbed trailer. Because of the rear tire damage, they laid her on her side and strapped her down.
“Can you take a look at Rylie’s car to make sure it’s roadworthy, Dan?”
“Sure.” Todd nodded to Rylie. “Release the hood for me so I can check it out.”
It took only a few minutes for him to rule that the car could be driven, though, like Eric said, she’d need some bodywork on the front end.
Dan left with a wave, and for a moment Eric remained silent.
“I’ll need your contact information for my insurance,” Rylie said.
“Sure. Want me to put it on your cell, or use that pad?”
She took the pad back out of her tiny purse. He flipped it open and wrote his name, cell number, and his address.
“Can I see your purse?” he asked.
She stared at him for a moment, her expression wary, then finally handed it to him.
He opened it and looked inside.
“Why are you looking inside my purse?”
“It looks about the size of a postage stamp. For a few minutes there I thought it was one of those bottomless magician bags. You know, the kind where they just keep pulling shit out of it.”
Rylie laughed. She’d been pretty in a California-girl way before, but when she laughed, she was gorgeous. And she had just enough of a rasp in her voice that it was sexy as hell.
He handed the purse back. “A bunch of us are sitting in the back, eating wings
and hanging out. Why don’t you join us? I’ll share my steak with you.”
CHAPTER 4
‡
Rylie cocked her head. The way he went from being upset about his motorcycle to asking her to join them seemed too surreal. “Do you always invite strange women to join your party when you’re here?” She bet he had to peel women off him all the time.
“No. Actually, you’re the first.”
She raised one smooth, dark brow. “I think your nose might have grown an inch or two with that one.”
Eric chuckled. “I usually bring a date, but I’ve been out of town for a while…and it was spur of the moment.”
Military. He had to be. His body was too toned and fit to a be a civilian. And oh, boy. Her father would shit if she hooked up with a sailor. Suddenly the idea was appealing. “Are you in the Navy?”
“Yeah.”
She shook her head, suppressing a smile. “I don’t know. I’ve heard stories about you guys. A girl in every port and all that.”
He grinned. “I’m usually too busy to find a girl in every port.”
“And here at home?”
“It’s kinda challenging here, too. My schedule’s a little erratic.”
A SEAL. He had to be. But he didn’t play the SEAL card, and she liked him for that. But then a lot of the guys were careful about owning it.
“What do you do for a living, Rylie?”
“I’m an interior designer. I work for a firm downtown.”
“I could use your expertise at my apartment. It looks like a cross between a locker room and…you don’t want to know.”
She laughed. “I heard you guys are self-disciplined and everything has its place.”
“Only on post, darlin’. The rest of the time we’re just like everyone else.”
She started cleaning her room for inspection when she was six. Her dad made it a game, but the need for order had been ingrained in her.
“What do you do in the Navy?”
“I’m a dive supervisor. Do you dive?”
“Yes, I do. Though I haven’t been diving in a while, I’ve kept my certification up to date.”
Hot SEAL, Taking The Plunge (SEALS IN PARADISE) Page 2
