Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (140 page)

“You okay, Coop?”

He nodded but still didn’t look at her.

“You sure?” She laced fingers through the hair along his temple, then dropped to the back of his neck and gave him a one-handed massage. “So sorry about your family, hon.”

Coop removed her fingers from behind his head, placing them back in her lap. He patted them onto her thighs, and then withdrew his hand. He felt like a complete dumb shit. Being close to anyone female was painful.

“Sorry. Guess I’m not very good company tonight.”

“I understand. No worries, Coop.”

She waited. She’d hung around SEALs long enough to know that if they didn’t want to talk, there would be no talking. Then she broke the silence, and sighed. “Well, another time, then. You take care, Coop, hear?”

Are you fucking nuts?

“Thanks. Daisy…” He tried to look at her face, but couldn’t. “I’m going to call things off for a bit. Got some stuff to sort out, if you don’t mind.”

“Take all the time you need.” Her voice was brittle, delivered on an icy tray of indifference, masking her hurt. He found himself nodding to her backside as she stepped down and quickly exited the home. He watched every beautiful curve of the derriere he loved to run fingers over in bed. And he felt terrible.

Cooper’s carefree world had changed. He hadn’t gone into detail about his trip back to Nebraska, and perhaps he should have. Instead, he’d resisted her advances, let her know his attention was elsewhere. He guessed Daisy was wounded and holding back tears.

This had never happened before. Shut down by a woman who he
wasn’t
banging, and
he
shut down the one he
was
.

Coop grabbed a mineral water and headed down the beach towards the surf. Moonlight danced on black waves in the water.

Dr. Brownlee’s daughter hadn’t even told him her name, but he couldn’t get her face out of his mind. Was he going back tomorrow at six to see the good doctor, or his daughter?

Fuck.

Maybe he should have taken Daisy up on her generous offer. But no, he had to agree to show up at the good doctor’s home with an open wound the size of San Diego. Now that wound just got bigger.

He sat just out of reach of the surf, keeping all visible activity from the beach behind him. He needed the lack of distraction, the white noise of the pounding surf. After a few minutes, he didn’t even want to go out to find his Team buddies and commiserate. Usually, there wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t share a meal with at least one or two of his buddies on SEAL Team 3. Even if he’d just drive by and watch some of them eat ice cream on the Strand or sit out and sip cappuccino and watch the lovelies on parade, every day he checked in. Saw someone. Even if it was to give them the finger from his scooter.

What the fuck is happening to me?

Back at the motor home, Cooper made some dinner for the two of them, tried to watch a little TV, read a book, even thought about putting some decals on his new remote controlled toy he had to have. The experimental drone he bought off a crazy inventor in Silicon Valley a week ago had been the only thing he thought about in the days before the tornado. Except, of course, for Daisy. But nothing pleased him now. Nothing.

His phone rang.

“Hey, Fredo.”

“You back in town, man?” Cooper could hear the background noise at Gunny’s.

“Yup.”

“You okay? We was worried. Everything get settled?”

Coop thought about the empty coffins, the near-sex with Cora and his lack of interest in anything. “Everything’s perfect.”

Fredo chuckled. “You’re full of shit, Coop.”

“I just need some down time. Needed to think.”

“Think about what?” Fredo barked back at him.

Cooper felt his anger begin to boil. “Shit, Fredo. I just fuckin’ buried my parents. Can’t you give me a break?”

There was a long pause. “Well, sometimes thinking’s a bad thing. Gotta work it out. We’ll come for you.”

“Not tonight, Fredo. I already got in a run.”

“You got plans? Gotta date?”

“No.”

“Well then, we’ll see you in 20.” Fredo hung up.

Tonight I really don’t want to do this. But he knew it was for his own good.

* * *

Coop heard Fredo’s battered pickup arrive in the gravel parking lot. He kenneled Bay and locked up.

So Armando Guzman’s cologne hit Coop enough to make his eyes water. “Shit, Armani, you’re gonna cause Fredo here to pass out and we’ll all be killed.”

“I been trying to tell him,” Fredo shot back. He began to pull out of the parking lot, grinding gears in the old beater as he did so. “You make me wheeze and send me to the hospital and I’m suing your ass for cruel and unusual punishment.”

Armando grinned his dangerous Latin Lover smile that worked so well on all the girls, “Only if we were married, sweetheart.” He winked at Fredo who got steamed.

“In your dreams, you Puerto Rican prick.”

“Well, you’re definitely not in
my
dreams, Fredo.”

Armando was the dresser of SEAL Team 3 and his LPO’s best friend. With his movie star good looks, he was the one all the ladies fell for. Runs along the beach were almost red carpet events the way the girls chased him. Although he looked like the biggest player in Coronado, Coop knew Armando was devoted to his mother and sister, and was extremely picky about his dates, unlike some of the other Team guys who were less discriminating. Coop also knew Fredo envied him.

Armando turned to face Cooper. “When did you get in?”

“Yesterday.”

“How was it?” Armando asked.

Cooper glared at him.

The handsome SEAL nodded. “You have to go back soon?”

“I got a shitload of paperwork for the insurance claims. Makes the Navy look like Kindergarten compared to the forms I gotta fill out.” Coop wasn’t looking forward to any of it. “Not going back until after our next workup and deployment.”

“Timmons clear you for workup?” Fredo asked as he looked at Cooper in his rear view mirror.

“Sent me on that goddamned mission. What a waste.”

“But you better do it or he’ll mess with
your
paperwork,” Armando said as he winked.

“Roger that.” It was true. Cooper had no choice but to complete the job Timmons had given him, not that he liked it at all. Even with the doctor’s delicious daughter.

“So, what do you feel like tonight, Coop?” Armando asked.

“Stop!” Fredo barked. “Don’t fuckin’ ask him that. He’ll pick tofu and steamed vegetables, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, all that green shit. Pee-ew!”

Cooper had to laugh. Their side trip to Silicon Valley via Monterey had taken them through just-harvested fields of cabbage and broccoli, and the pungent odor made Fredo carsick. Anything green, except lettuce, guacamole and cilantro was off Fredo’s food plan.

“You need to eat more steak, man,” Armando volunteered.

“Yeah?”

“Cooper’s gonna live to be 100,” Fredo said, his nose wrinkled and his unibrow bunched at the center of his face looking like a huge asterisk.

“What’s the point of being 100 if you can’t fuck?” Armando always equated everything to sex.

* * *

The trio stuffed themselves at a local steakhouse, Cooper begging off the trip to
Ta-Ta’s
,
the local strip club. He was grateful for the company, but it was wearing thin and he really needed to get to bed if he was going to keep his promise to young Leonard to go surfing at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. They dropped him off at his motor home and he said his goodbyes.

His sheets still had the faint scent of Cherries and it was too distracting. At this rate, he’d not be able to sleep. He got up and changed the them, stuffing the dirty ones in his closet. He would do his laundry at Fredo’s when the closet got full.

Coop didn’t mean to hurt Daisy, but he could see, if he continued to give her the brush-off, he was going to be painfully removed from her Blackberry, just like the tattoos she removed from his buddies’ arms and chests when they got divorced or tried to cover up an everlasting memento from a night of partying. As he slipped on his jeans and a shirt, he realized that when he was nervous or tense, Daisy knew how to love it out of him. But no, like an idiot, he’d sent her home.

No woman deserved that kind of treatment. He wasn’t good enough for even the casual relationship with Daisy. He was all used up. That’s why he wanted to stay single forever. He’d gotten real good at telling himself it was the only way to do what he needed to do and stay sane. There was no comfort in relationships—either casual or otherwise. Not with the things he’d seen over in the war zone. Where human life was cheap and accidents happened to good men and women every day. The randomness of the danger required he be on alert 24/7.

He’d been with buddies who’d gotten the “Dear John” letters, the women who’d divorced their brave men after running up huge credit card debt while their guy was out getting his head nearly blown off. No, best to stay free of the cobwebs of a serious relationship. Keep a clear head. Best to avoid heartache, complications, and distractions. He wondered if he ever could be ready for that type of closeness.

That’s why this is such a shit-freaking bad idea.
He didn’t need this family. Rich people who couldn’t care less how the other half lived, and died. Were these the people he was fighting for? Nothing was wrong with the family he buried. They deserved to live. What the fuck was Timmons thinking? The Brownlees didn’t want anything to do with him, if he guessed right. No more than he wanted to have anything to do with them.

“We don’t speak military.”
That’s a fine legacy for a young man who was probably scared out of his mind and who paid the ultimate price, he thought.

Died for all of them. Even the ones who couldn’t be bothered.
He studied his face in the mirror. He looked the same, but he clearly was not anything like the man he’d been a week ago. The whole fuckin’ world had shifted.

But an order was an order.
Just get ‘er done.
And he did owe it to the Fallen to do his job. That much was clear. He hoped he didn’t have too much
incoming
when he went back tomorrow afternoon. Wasn’t invited for dinner. Hell, he probably couldn’t eat anyway. And who’d want to be social with a psychiatrist?

What the hell do you say to a man who analyzes people for a living? An excellent living, from the looks of it.

Well, Sir, I sometimes get night sweats, and some awful nightmares when I get back from tour. I like to hole up with a woman the first twenty-four hours when I get home. There are girls only too happy to do this for our community.

Yeah, analyze my dick, why don’t you? But leave my head alone.

Chapter Six

The next morning, Libby woke up to the bright sunshine of San Diego. She lay in bed, lazily watching the patterns on the ceiling. She heard her father leave for work, heard her mother leave for a tennis date with her girlfriends.

Libby stayed busy all morning, cleaning her room, sorting through things she’d left behind when she went off to school. She condensed all her keepsakes into one box. The rest went out to the trash. She looked at Noodles, her tabby cat, curled up next to Morgan on her bed. Some day her favorite teenage toy would have to go, too. But she wasn’t ready yet to do that to the faithful companion who had listened to all her preteen secrets about the boys she liked and hoped to kiss some day. And besides, Morgan kept Noodles company while she was away, in a strange dog and cat thing.

It felt good to say goodbye to part of her past. Get rid of things that no longer meant anything to her, get rid of her prepubescent idea that life and love were meant to be a fairy tale. Time to grow up, accept the challenge she’d been handed, and get on with life. The interchange with Dr. Gerhardt had only cemented her resolve that she needed to recover from the myopic view of life that came from being a trusting, wide-eyed student too long. It had warped her vision. She hoped getting away from it all, coming back home, would give her that chance to regroup.

Soon she realized she was doing whatever she could do to keep her mind off the tall, muscular sailor with the fluid gait who had waltzed onto their porch and awakened something in her soul. Last thing she wanted was to see a guy who wanted to get in her pants. Men were all alike, she thought. Focused on one thing only.

Maybe this sailor is one of the good guys.
It was hard to tell. God knew, she couldn’t trust herself to make that judgment any longer. Not yet.

Everything that’s good for you is bad for you sometimes,
her father had told her one day. She ruminated those words round and round in her head until they made her dizzy.

She had friends who were married, and she shuddered at the thought. She wasn’t ready to get caught up in the childbearing and soccer practices some of her friends had opted for They looked happy enough, but she knew herself well enough to know it wasn’t on her radar. Not even close.

Libby put three large boxes destined for Goodwill in the garage outside the kitchen door. She made some tea and watched her father’s new gardener work silently on his knees by the walkway that ran from the garage to the house. He lifted his gaze up to her, and then lowered his baseball cap to completely cover his face and eyes. He stabbed the black soil in the grassy mound at the edges of her mother’s zinnia patch, exposing plastic PVC tubing.

Still in her pajamas, Libby brought her tea upstairs and flopped back on the bed. She began reading one of her favorite romance novels
.
The hours ticked by. She finished the book just as the sun was beginning to lower toward the horizon. She heard her mother return home and deposit groceries for dinner on the kitchen counter, so Libby made a dash to the shower.

She thought about the hero in the novel. Though the author had described him as dark-haired, Libby saw the face of that SEAL bending down to kiss her, just like she’d imagined the Brazilian painter would do in her novel. She put on a black pair of lacy underwear, which made no sense at all. She slipped on her jeans and an oversized deep pink cotton shirt she felt comfortable in. She walked through a spritz of her favorite perfume.