Hot SEALs: Her Special Alpha (Kindle Worlds) (X-OPS 3.5) (6 page)

Eden smiled as she ate her own gooey ice cream. Suddenly, all she could think about was spending the day at her sister’s wedding and the night with Travis in one of the country club’s elegant rooms. She remembered from the brochure Emily had shown her that the beds were ridiculously big. She could think of three or four things she’d like to try with Travis in a bed that big, and judging by the hard-on he had earlier, he’d definitely be
up
for most of them.

* * * * *

Travis was sitting outside the coffee shop on the boardwalk, staring out at the moonlit waves so wrapped up in thoughts of Eden that he didn’t even realize Jon was there until he sat down at the table across from him.
Shit
. Where the hell had he come from?

“You Special Forces guys usually aren’t so easy to sneak up on,” Jon said.

Usually he wasn’t daydreaming about a beautiful feline shifter. He wasn’t going to tell Jon that, though.

“That’s because we’re on the beach and you SEALs smell like fish.” Travis grinned. “You blend right in.”

Jon laughed. “Funny. The clerk at the front desk of your hotel said I could find you here. By the way, I think she has a crush on you, dude. That, or she’s a stalker. Either way, it’s a little freaky that she knows exactly when you left and where you’ve gone.”

“I’ll remember to watch my back,” Travis said. “So, what’s up?”

“I haven’t heard from you, so I thought I’d check in to see if you’ve come up with any questions.”

Shit
. He hadn’t meant to leave Jon hanging, but the truth was, he hadn’t even thought about the job offer. Something Jon must have realized if the frown on his face was any indication.

“Everything okay with you?” Jon asked.

Travis was about to give him the standard non-answer, but changed his mind. He’d been friends with Jon long enough to know he wouldn’t have asked the question if he didn’t want to know the answer. Maybe talking would help to get some of this stuff in his head out in the open.

“Have you ever met a woman so incredible that it changed your whole outlook on everything?” he asked.

Jon grinned. “Hell, yeah. The day I met Ali at that Fourth of July party was like the first day of my new life. Okay, to be fair, it took a little while for me to realize it, but once I figured out what I had with her, being in the navy wasn’t as important to me anymore. That’s the biggest reason I got out.”

Travis chuckled. “Okay, I guess that was a stupid question since I already knew the answer to it.”

During their downtime between missions over in Africa, Alison Cressly’s name had come up a lot. And there’d always been a smile on his face whenever Jon said it.

Jon leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “What’s with the deep, meaningful stuff all of a sudden? You go out and stumble over the love of your life in the last few days or something?”

That was exactly the same question Travis had been asking himself. And it sure as hell seemed like the answer was yes.

After Eden had left to go see her sister, Travis sat in his rental car for fifteen minutes trying to get his heartbeat—and his arousal—under control. He couldn’t believe how fast he was falling for her. It wasn’t just sexual attraction, either, although there was a truck load of that going on to. No, what he was feeling for Eden was way more than lust. He’d never been in love with a woman before, but this had to be what it felt like.

Even now, he was practically counting the minutes until he could see her again. He’d dated women he knew longer than Eden and hadn’t ever felt that way about being apart from them whenever he deployed, and that was for months at a time. If he took the job at GAPS, it would still be too far away even though she lived three hours from Virginia Beach. He was seriously considering moving his job search efforts closer to DC simply so he could be closer to her. It was insane and terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time.

“Actually, I think maybe I did,” Travis finally said in answer to Jon’s question. “I met this incredible woman right after you and I talked a couple nights ago.”

Jon smiled. “That’s awesome. How the hell did you meet her?”

“That’s the crazy thing.” Travis snorted. “I went for a walk around after we talked—just thinking, you know? Well, I heard the sounds of a scuffle in an alley and when I went to check it out, I found five guys beating the hell out of a couple of suits behind this restaurant. I stepped in and started dealing with the situation, and the next thing I know, guns are coming out and I’m figuring I’m actually going to buy it right here in the good old US of A after surviving eight years of nonstop warzone deployments. Then, out of nowhere, this gorgeous DHS agent comes running out of the back of this restaurant and commences to kick some serious ass. She saves my ass, and I save hers. Now I’m going with her to her sister’s wedding on Saturday.”

On the other side of the table, Jon’s mouth was hanging open. “That was you in the shootout behind the Bluefin Bar and Grill? That’s been all over the news for the past two days. The reports are saying those guys had automatic weapons. How the hell did you and this woman get out of there without getting your asses perforated?”

It wasn’t like Travis could say it was because Eden was a government-trained agent who was also a shifter that could sprout claws and fangs, and run like Usain Bolt on a caffeine high. So he just shook his head and shrugged.

“Mostly we got lucky,” Travis said. “But when the bullets stopped flying, Eden and I just clicked. I gotta tell you, man, she’s frigging amazing.”

Jon regarded him thoughtfully. “She sounds like one hell of a woman to me. So, why are you out here on the boardwalk staring off into the ocean like you’re wrestling with a major problem?”

Travis sipped his coffee, trying to figure out how to explain it. Considering he really didn’t know what the issue was himself, that was easier said than done.

“Eden
is
one hell of a woman, and then some,” he finally said. “I guess I’m worried I might be making something out of nothing.”

Jon frowned. “What do you mean?”

Travis blew out a breath. “I met Eden less than forty-eight hours ago and I’m already thinking about looking for a job up in DC so I can be closer to her. Frigging forty-eight hours! I mean, I know I haven’t been in a real relationship with a woman since I joined Special Forces, but this whole thing seems damn fast to me. It’s like I’m a teenager at his first keg party. I’m not just drinking a beer for the first time. I’m having it poured down my throat with a firehose.”

“And now you don’t know if what you’re feeling is a real buzz since you’ve never been drunk before?” Jon asked.

“Yeah, pretty much.” Travis ran his hand through his hair. “I mean, am I really falling for a woman I only met a couple days ago? Or am I just going a little crazy because I finally have the freedom to actually see a woman more than once or twice before a deployment?”

Jon sighed. “I get where you’re coming from. Special Forces is no different than the SEAL teams. Most of us run from one-night stand to one-night stand because there doesn’t seem to be any point in starting a real relationship with a woman you probably won’t see for months on end.”

“Exactly,” Travis agreed. “Why start something you can’t finish?”

But it was different now. He wasn’t in Special Forces anymore. He didn’t have to worry about how to keep a long-distance relationship going while he was deployed. Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe he should just enjoy being with Eden and stop channeling Dr. Phil.

“Let me ask you a real simple question,” Jon said. “And I don’t want you to think before you answer it. Just say the first thing that comes to mind.”

Now who was channeling Dr. Phil?

“Okay,” Travis said.

“How would you feel if you could never see Eden again?”

Travis didn’t have to think about how he’d feel. The thought of it punched him in the gut so hard he could barely breathe. “I think I’d probably die.”

Okay, that sounded melodramatic as hell. But it was true.

“Well then, I guess that answers the question as to whether or not you’re in love with her,” Jon said. “All that matters now is whether she feels the same about you. Does she?”

Jon was damn good at cutting through the bullshit, wasn’t he?

“I honestly don’t have a clue,” he admitted. “It’s scary as hell to think she might not feel any of the things I’m feeling right now.”

“Since when is scary a problem for people like us?” Jon grinned. “Scary just means you’re alive. Tell her how you feel and see what she says. Worse that can happen is that she’ll tell you to get lost.”

Right.

“So, Eden’s an agent with Homeland, huh?” Jon asked.

Travis took another swig of coffee, relieved to switch gears and talk about something other than Eden telling him to take a hike.

“Yeah,” he said. “As a matter of fact, one of the suits who got beat up is the fiancé. The other one is his best man, who may or may not have a gambling problem. Eden and I are going to pay a visit to the bookie, see if he was the one who sent those guys.”

John shook his head. “When people owe money to a bookie, they might get their fingers or kneecaps broken, but they aren’t likely to get shot full of holes with automatic weapons. Sounds like there’s more to it than that. If you need backup, give me a call, okay?”

“Will do,” Travis said.

Jon took off a little while after that, saying something about making dinner for Ali. It wasn’t until he left that Travis realized Jon hadn’t mentioned the job offer. Good thing, too, because Travis wasn’t sure what he would have said to him.

Chapter Six

Eden and Travis sat in his rental car a couple blocks down from the sports bar in Norfolk Kendra had told her about that morning. On the outside, it looked reputable enough with its classy sign and promise of more than a dozen giant TVs for fans to watch their favorite games, but Kendra said this was where Tim did most of his betting. Even though the place wasn’t open yet, there were a lot of people going in and out, and they didn’t look like they were there for take-out.

“The guy who runs the place is named Sammy Spillane,” Eden said. “The bar and grill is a legitimate business, but all the real money comes from his bookmaking. Kendra told me he does almost everything through member-only chat rooms and websites on the net, which is all very clean and hard to track. He’s probably pulling in at least a quarter million dollars a month. Organized crime figures from New York, Washington, and Chicago have tried to move in on his business several times over the years, but he’s fended them all off. He has a reputation for being prone to violence.”

“Shocking.” Travis eyed two men who just walked out of the bar, then glanced at her. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Nothing complicated,” she assured him. “We go in, introduce ourselves to this Sammy guy, make a little small talk, then ask him what he knows about Tim and his little gambling problem.”

Travis’s mouth quirked. “I take it you’re kind of new to this planning thing, huh?”

That was actually true. When she worked personal security details with the other members of her DCO team, she mostly let her instincts lead the way. Of course, Travis couldn’t know that, which was why she didn’t stick her tongue out at him.

“Very funny.” Eden reached behind the seat and pulled out her purse, opening it up to dig out the small frame Glock 9mm she’d carried with her since starting at the DCO. “I don’t need a plan. I’m simply going to politely ask him to leave Brandon and my sister completely out of any beef he has with Tim.”

“And if he isn’t interested in chatting?” Travis asked.

She smiled. “I’m sure I’ll have no problem convincing him to talk. I can be very persuasive.”

Travis chuckled. “I have no doubt.”

Eden glanced at the bar again. She was guessing the people going in and out must be involved with the betting operation, but she didn’t know enough about how the criminal enterprise worked to say in what capacity. Hopefully, they were just runners or something like that. If she was lucky, most of them would bail the second things started getting tense.

If not, this could be an interesting morning.

Eden handed Travis her weapon. He immediately dropped the clip, then checked for a round in the chamber. His hands moved so fast and efficiently she could barely follow them as he slid the clip in and tucked the weapon behind his back.

“What about you?” he asked.

She held up her right hand and let a single long, curved claw extend from her index finger. “I’m good.”

Eden wasn’t sure what to expect when they walked into the sports bar, but no one paid any attention to them at first. Probably because everyone assumed she and Travis were there to grab an early lunch. But when they stopped and scanned the bar, the tone in the room abruptly changed. Every one of the guys who’d been casually leaning back in their chairs watching baseball sat up straighter, eyeing her and Travis suspiciously. The only person who wasn’t looking their way was a big guy in a loud Hawaiian-style shirt sitting in a booth near in the back watching five different TVs at once.

“We’re closed,” an older man behind the bar said.

Eden ignored him. Instead, she walked toward the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. “Mr. Spillane, we’re here to chat about a common acquaintance, Tim Ainsley.”

She hadn’t gone more than a half dozen steps before three big, muscle-bound goons, slipped out of one of the closer booths and blocked her path. Two had dark curly hair while the third was blond, and they all had tattoos their arms. She looked past them to their boss.

“We’re just here to talk, Sammy. This doesn’t have to get nasty.”

The blond stepped closer. “I’ll show you nasty, you stupid—”

Eden imagined the man was probably going to call her something rude, but he never got the chance because Travis stepped in front of her and punched the guy straight in the jaw. As a trained combat killer, Travis clearly had a lot of practice punching people. The hulking bodyguard flew back into the booth where he’d been sitting earlier, unconscious and definitely not going to be getting up anytime soon.

Silence reined over the bar for a fraction of a second before it erupted into absolute bedlam. Stools crashed to the floor and tables got shoved aside as four other guys all came rushing in their direction. Okay, this was not the way Eden hoped the meeting would go. She had no doubt that after this was over, Travis was going to look her square in the eyes and say,
I told you so
.

She threw a quick glance in his direction, not sure how he was going to handle this. He was a soldier, and when threatened, it was normal for a soldier to pull a weapon and start shooting. She really didn’t want that happen. If it did, they’d be spending the rest of the day and night trying to explain to the local police what the hell had happened.

But Travis didn’t pull out the handgun she’d given him. Instead, he turned to face the oncoming tide of new arrivals with an almost lazy grin. Like getting in a brawl with a bunch of lowlifes was the most amusing thing in the world to him.

She prayed he knew what the heck he was doing because the other two big goons were moving in her direction and they looked really pissed.

The first one to reach her took a swing. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo about it being wrong for men to hit women. It wasn’t like she was going to let him land a blow, but it was the principle of the thing. Couldn’t he have the decency to at least hesitate for a second?

Eden ducked under the massive fist coming her way, then stepped around the guy and delivered a mule kick into the center of his back. The look on his friend’s face when the guy hit the floor as if he had actually been kicked by a mule and not by a woman who looked like she couldn’t hurt a fly was priceless.

The second guy must have realized she was faster and more dangerous than she looked because he didn’t to take a swing at her. Instead, he bull rushed her, figuring he could overwhelm her with his greater size.

She stood her ground, then just as the big guy spread his arms wide like he was going to tackle her, she sidestepped to the left and brought her right fist up and rammed it into his solar plexus. The breath exploded out of him and his knees immediately sagged. Eden caught him before he collapsed to the floor, spinning him around in a circle and tossing him across the room.

It wasn’t until then that she realized she’d thrown the guy right into the middle of the brawl between Travis and four other men on the far side of the room.

* * * * *

Travis almost laughed as he ducked the punch aimed at his face. He hadn’t had this much fun in years, not since that big barroom brawl in a nightclub in Germany a few years ago.

The man throwing the punch was committed, Travis had to give him that. He obviously hoped to end this fight with a single blow, but fortunately, the man’s abilities didn’t match his enthusiasm. When he missed, the force of the swing overbalanced him and he stumbled forward a little. That left him completely open to a counter, and Travis laid him out with a heavy fist to the side of the jaw. The man fell heavily to the floor, not out cold, but probably not in the mood to get up anytime soon. Since Travis had already headbutted one of the men into unconsciousness in the first five seconds of the fight, that meant two down, two to go.

But the other two men must have realized they might be in over their heads because neither one seemed interested in taking him on next. That was a good thing. Unless one of them decided they didn’t feel like being a punching bags anymore and pulled out a weapon, of course. Then things were going to get nasty fast. Travis knew these guys weren’t angels, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kill them. He wasn’t exactly sure if Eden’s position in the DHS—or the DCO—or whatever she’d tell the cops, would get him out of that.

Fortunately, neither lowlife reached for a weapon. Instead, they got smart and split up, trying to get into positions where they could come at him from two directions at once. Damn, these last two might actually be sharing a brain cell between them. The space among the tables and chairs was tight, but if they could actually get it right and hit him with a synchronized attack, they might cause some damage.

Travis risked a quick glance in Eden’s direction. It had only been thirty seconds at most since he punched the guy who’d been about to call her a bitch, and he wanted to make sure she was okay.

She was standing still and calm while a guy who must have outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds rushed her like a psychotic bull. It took everything in him not to say the hell with the two guys he was dealing with and leap to her rescue.

Travis didn’t do it, though, because he knew Eden could more than handle herself. It was still gut-wrenching to see her in danger. That was the biggest reason he’d agreed to drive up here to Norfolk with her. The idea of her doing something crazy on her own without him there to keep an eye on her made him feel physically ill.

He’d pegged Eden absolutely right, too. She was definitely the leap-first-and-look-later kind of person. He was okay with that. He’d met hundreds of guys just like her in the special operations world. It simply meant he was going to have to keep close to Eden and make sure her aggressive nature didn’t get her into trouble.

Travis was just thinking about how the hell he was going to be able to do that, not just today and tomorrow, but all the days that came after that, when a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.

He didn’t realize what the hell was coming his way until after he dived to the side and hit the floor. The guy who’d been trying to circle around behind him wasn’t as fast and ended up getting crushed under a two-hundred-pound flying human dodgeball.

Travis whipped his head around in Eden’s direction to see her turn and head toward the booth where Sammy was sitting. Damn, he guessed she was even stronger than he thought.

Then he saw Sammy’s arm move under the table. Shit, the bastard was going for a gun.

Travis jumped to his feet. He needed to deal with these guys and help Eden.

But the man she’d tossed across the room earlier wasn’t going anywhere, and the guy he’d landed on was lying on the floor groaning. The last lowlife must have decided he’d had enough because he turned and bailed, running for the door.

Travis spun around to see Eden approaching Sammy’s booth. His gut clenched as the bookie swung his right hand out from under the table, bringing a big revolver up in her direction.

Shit
.

Travis bolted across the room, praying he’d reach her in time.

But Eden moved faster. Sammy’s eyes widened in shock as she covered the last ten feet in the time it probably took the bookie to take a single breath. She caught Sammy’s gun hand, easily disarming him. Even if she hadn’t been stronger than the bookie, it still wouldn’t have been that difficult. The man’s right hand was wrapped in thick gauze and he could barely keep a grip on the weapon as it was.

Eden slung the revolver across the room with a growl, bouncing it across the bar and into the big mirror on the far side. It cracked the mirror and fell to the floor behind the bar with a thud. The way the bartender’s eyes tracked the weapon as it fell had Travis pulling out the 9mm Eden had given him before they’d come in. He pointed the weapon at the bartender and shook his head.

“Just leave the gun on the floor and go take a break,” Travis said in a soft voice, motioning the man away with the tip of the Glock.

The bartender took a long look at the gun on the floor, then glanced at his boss before locking eyes with Travis. Whatever he saw apparently made up his mind because he lifted his hands in surrender and slipped out from behind the bar, then scurried for the door.

Travis turned around to see Sammy getting to his feet. Eden snarled and thumped him in the chest hard enough to knock the big man back into the booth.

Travis slid into the bench seat opposite the big bookie, keeping his gun trained on the man. “Like she said—we’re just here to talk.”

Sammy eyed Travis—or more precisely the 9mm in his hand. He must have finally figured out Eden was never going to let him get out of the booth because he gave up and sat back with a sigh.

Travis figured he and Eden only had a few minutes. This might be the type of place that didn’t like cops paying them a visit, but at some point, one of the people who’d hauled ass out of the sports bar would call the police.

“What the hell do you want to talk about?” Sammy demanded, his voice gruff from years of smoking cigars like the one on the table in front of him.

Eden joined Travis on his side of the booth, gracefully sliding in as if they were joining Sammy for lunch. Sammy wasn’t eyeing her like she was his usual customer, though. Then again, he had just seen her toss one of his big-ass bodyguards half way across the room.