Make Mine a Ranger (Special Ops: Homefront Book 4) (2 page)

She watched him take the skeeball and
lift it backwards very slowly so that Abby could see the arching line of his
arm as he rolled the ball onto the machine. What he didn’t realize was that the
slow motion movement accentuated the rigid lines of his triceps, drawing the
attention of at least three nearby moms.

Bess cracked a smile. Yep, ladies, he’s
with me, she wanted to boast. Even though he wasn’t really “with her,” she
could at least enjoy the moment.

Seemed his time with the Rangers had definitely
added more bulk to his frame. The muscular bulk, not the soft and squishy kind
that Bess had reluctantly gained since becoming a mom, putting guys like Tyler
even further out of her reach.

As the server brought out the pizza, Bess
frowned at the fat calories staring at her.

“Pizza’s here,” she called out just as
Abby rolled the ball smack into a 5000 point hole.

Jumping, the little girl’s ponytails
bounced as she let out a squeal. “I did it! Mama, did you see?”

“Awesome, honey!”

Grabbing Tyler’s hand, Abby dragged him
back to the hard seats of the booth, and curled up her lip at the sight of
pepperoni and sausage on one side of the pizza. “This side is mine,” she said
possessively, pointing to the cheese-only side. Abby had recently declared she
was a vegetarian when Bess had offered her sausage one morning and she
responded, “I like pigs, Mama. I don’t eat them.”

Bess reached into her purse. “Hands,” she
ordered, as Abby automatically extended her hands so that she could squirt some
hand sanitizer on them. “Want some?” she asked Tyler.

“I embrace germs,” he said playfully.

Bess narrowed her eyes. “Not around my
kid, you won’t. Hands,” she repeated firmly.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said with a dramatic
sigh and turned to Abby. “You’ve got a good mama, Abby.”

That was probably the best compliment a
man could have possibly given Bess. “I don’t know how good I am, but I do know
that I’m always armed with hand sanitizer.” She glanced at the sticky jar of
parmesan cheese, victim to a hundred grubby kid hands, as Tyler reached for it
and resisted the urge to wipe it down first. She had to draw the line
somewhere.

“So where are you looking to live,
anyway?” Bess asked casually.

“Are you moving here?” Abby asked,
wide-eyed.

Mouth full of pizza, Tyler nodded his
reply.

“You should live with us, Tyler!” Abigail
burst out.

Bess felt the heat rush to her cheeks. “I
don’t think Tyler would like living with a mom and a three-year-old, honey.”

“Why not?”

Tyler shot Bess a deliberate grin. “Yeah,
why not, Bess?”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “Well,
honey,” she began, turning to Abby, “men like Tyler like to have some privacy.”

“Why?”

Tyler saved her. “We’re always hogging
the bathrooms and the TV.”

“Oh.” The little girl nodded sagely.

“Besides, isn’t Lacey still staying with
you?” he asked.

Bess shook her head. “She and Mick just
bought a condo in DC. He got stationed at the Pentagon after his treatment at
Walter Reed was over.”

“That’s good.” He angled his head. “How’s
he doing now, anyway?”

Bess felt awkward, not knowing how much to
share. She was protective of her friends, and it had been a hard recovery for
Mick. Even though he was now able to take a SEAL job at the Pentagon in Special
Ops planning, he still wasn’t quite back to his old self. “He’s doing much
better,” she responded vaguely.

“TBI’s serious. Glad they got him into
the program at Walter Reed. There’s actually a long wait list for it.” He
reached for a piece of pepperoni. “Bet Lacey’s glad to be back home on the East
coast for a while.”

Bess grinned at the thought of her
friend. “She’s madly in love. Her home’s wherever he is.”

Tyler’s smile seemed to fade slightly,
though Bess wasn’t sure.

“Good for them,” he said.

“They sold their house in San Diego and
made a great profit. So Lacey’s hoping to do the same thing with the place in DC.
It’s got a nice view of the zoo, but it’s kind of a mess inside. Nothing Lacey
can’t fix though. All cosmetic.”

“Aunt Lacey has lions in her backyard now.
I saw them,” Abby chimed in.

“Not really in her backyard, honey. In
the zoo across the street, remember?”

Abby ignored her. “They were sleeping. They
didn’t roar.”

 “So do you like having the house
all to yourself, Abby?” Tyler asked.

Abby frowned. “I miss Aunt Lacey and Aunt
Maeve. Aunt Vi, too. She promised she’d do a lemonade stand with me this summer.”

“Aunt Vi?” Tyler looked at Bess.

“Lacey’s sister. She lived with us for a
few months. Didn’t you meet her at Maeve and Jack’s party last year?”

“Can’t recall. There had to be a hundred people
there.”

“More like two hundred, but they filtered
in and out through the night, so it didn’t seem that bad.”

“Someone new is coming to live with us,”
Abby volunteered.

Tyler raised his eyebrows. “Who?”

Bess shrugged. “We’re not sure yet. But
we’ve had a couple people in to see the place. I’ve got to get a housemate. Maeve
said she’s not worried about it, but I know she is. And besides, I need to
split the electric bill with someone.”

“She hates kids.”

Tyler looked to Bess for clarification.

“The last woman who came to look at the house,”
Bess explained.

“She hates kids,” Abby repeated. “She
said so.”

“Well, I hope you showed her what the
door is for,” Tyler commented before turning to Abby. “She wasn’t nice, Abby. Who
couldn’t love a kid like you?”

Abby beamed.

“How much are you asking for the room?”
he asked Bess.

Bess told him the amount and bit her lip,
seeing his eyes widen in response. Were they asking too much? “But it’s really
two rooms that would come with it. The master bedroom upstairs and the little
office on the main floor.”

Tyler shook his head. “You’re asking way
too little.”

Relieved, Bess sighed. “Oh, I thought you
were going to say it was too much.”

“No way. For waterfront? Are you kidding
me? That’s dirt cheap.”

“Yeah, but it comes with a catch, you
know?” Bess glanced at Abby who was pulling the cheese off a slice and putting
it in her mouth. “I run a pretty clean house. No overnight guests. No music
with foul lyrics blasting through the place. That sort of thing.”

“You need a nice Amish woman.”

Bess laughed. “Exactly. Know any Amish
who are looking to make their way in the big, bad world of Annapolis?”

“No. But I will keep my ears open. Fort Meade
is a huge base. I might hear of someone who needs a place.”

“Thanks.” Bess smiled. “And let me know
where you end up, okay? I might be looking for an apartment soon.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it. If Maeve didn’t
have Abby and me at that house, she could be renting the place for so much more
money. Every month, I’m costing her.” Frowning, she nabbed another slice of
pizza from the tray. “If this keeps up, I feel like it’s time for me to do the
right thing and… you know.” She glanced at her daughter, who was looking
blissfully unaware of the conversation around her as she examined something on
her pizza, no doubt ensuring it wasn’t a stray piece of pepperoni.

Bess couldn’t imagine leaving that house,
which had been her home for nearly four years now, the only home that Abby had ever
known. But if she couldn’t find a housemate, she really didn’t have a choice.

***

Tyler stood on the balcony, blankly
staring at the parking lot of the cookie cutter apartment complex just west of
Fort Meade. It looked exactly like the other two he had seen this afternoon.

“Can you keep a grill out here? Throw on
some steaks?” he asked.

The leggy blonde who worked in the rental
office grinned at him from the frame of the sliding glass door. “You’re not
supposed to. But I doubt anyone would report you,” she said, glancing him up and
down. “Especially if you were willing to share your meat.”

Tyler laughed at the innuendo. She was a
bold one, that’s for sure. Funny and definitely interested. At another time he
might be interested, too. Right now, though, he’d rather focus on finding an
apartment or he’d be stuck living on base for the next year. Base living wasn’t
for him—always feeling there was some commander looking over his
shoulder.

“The view’s not very promising,” he said
skeptically.

“We don’t have any two-bedrooms available
that have a different view. If you could manage a one bedroom—”

“No, I definitely need two bedrooms.”

“You have a roommate?” She looked curiously
hopeful, and Tyler briefly wondered if an image of a threesome was floating
into her mind.

He grinned. “No, just a lot of crap.”

It was almost embarrassing that he had
accumulated so much in his 27 years, and every year he swore he’d whittle down his
haul to a more manageable size. But there was always something pulling him away
from the task. Deployments, usually. With his last two jobs, he had spent more
time OCONUS—outside the Continental U.S.—than CONUS.

Now with a year in a stateside military
intelligence job in his immediate future, he might actually have some time to
make a run to Goodwill and unload some stuff.

Glancing again at the view, a sea of
economical cars with a couple BMWs thrown into the mix, he couldn’t help
imagining Bess’s little Cape Cod overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. He had been
there once last year when he was passing through town. He had called Bess to
see if she and Abby wanted to meet up for lunch, but he had ended up getting an
invitation to her friend Maeve’s party that day instead.

The house was a little slice of heaven
with a shoreline where he could launch his paddleboard easily for a quick tour
of the coastline. A good dock for crabbing. He could picture popping open a Sam
Adams and watching sunsets on that screened-in back porch any night when he
managed to come home from work at a halfway decent hour.

Compared to this generic apartment with its
cream-colored wall-to-wall carpet and the sound of someone’s bass speakers pulsating
through the walls, the house suddenly seemed like a pretty damn nice option.

He wondered if Bess would consider having
a male housemate for a change. He’d had lots of friends who had female housemates,
and only heard that they were generally clean and quiet compared to men. The
only problems that ever seemed to arise were when some kind of attraction built
up in the close quarters.

That wouldn’t be the case with Bess,
Tyler was certain. They’d known each other almost four years, and there wasn’t
the slightest spark between them. She was more like a sister, he thought, which
made sense since her situation with Abigail had always reminded him of his own
sister, so many years ago.

But living with a three-year-old as his
other housemate? Was he ready for that?

Tyler stepped back into the bedroom of
the apartment, with the rental associate in tow.

“There are two bathrooms,” she pointed
out. “And they’ll paint the place before you move in.” She traced her long,
French-manicured hand along one of the scuffs on the wall. “Looks like it got a
little messed up when the last people moved out. And then in here,” she pointed
out, placing her hand on his arm as though to guide him across the room, “you
have a linen closet.” Her eyes fell to where her hand met his arm. “You have
some pretty powerful arms,” she said, perking up a smile. “Do you box or
something?”

“Mixed martial arts, actually,” he
stated, trying not to sound like he wasn’t completely uninterested in her. Once
he found a place, he’d have the time to focus on his social life again, and her
inviting eyes might be more intriguing to him. “And PT every morning.”

She bit her glossed lip. “That’s right. I
remember reading on your form that you’re military. You’re at Fort Meade?”

“Yeah. Ranger Battalion sent me up here
to work in an intelligence support role.”

“A Ranger…” she said, voice trailing.

And there it was. The Look. That look
that he saw in women’s eyes just about any time he said he was a Ranger. Something
about Special Ops always made women melt.

He wandered into the second bedroom. It
was a good size, and certainly big enough to hold his workout equipment. Holding
his breath in anticipation, he moved to the window and frowned. More cars. Certainly
not the best view for a workout, but it was pretty much par for the course for
apartments around here.

Yet somehow, after hearing about a dirt
cheap vacancy with a waterfront view, the sight of endless cars from his window
made his stomach tie up.