Make Mine a Ranger (Special Ops: Homefront Book 4) (3 page)

At Bess’s, he could roll out of bed and paddleboard
every Saturday morning. Put out a hammock and wile away his Sunday. And when he
had a date…well, he’d just have to head to her place if things heated up rather
than to his place. He doubted that would turn a woman off, he figured, glancing
at the lust-struck eyes of the rental associate leaning seductively against the
wall. Women were pretty easy to come by when a guy wore a Ranger scroll on his
right shoulder.

“So, are you interested?” she asked, clearly
implying something other than his interest in the apartment.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said, looking
back at the window with a frown.

She handed him her business card before
he slipped out the door, inviting him to a party on Saturday night. Why did he
bet the party was a party of two?

She wasn’t what he was looking for. At
least not at the moment. He’d keep the card handy in case he changed his mind.

Picking up his cell, he texted Bess. “How
do you feel about a male roommate?” he wrote.

And he hit send.

He paused a moment and picked his phone
up again, typing, “And I should add, I mow the grass and am good with plumbing.”

Better to increase his chances. After
all, it was one hell of a view.

“
Tyler
? Are you serious?” Maeve’s
voice rang through the cell phone, and Bess could picture the wide grin on her
face.

“Well, I like your reaction better than
Lacey’s. She thought I was out of my mind.” Bess stood at the kitchen sink with
her phone in hand, struggling to make some kind of dent in the morning dishes
with her one remaining hand. She would have put the phone on speaker mode, but
Abby was upstairs playing in her room. And Maeve had a tendency to let too many
colorful words slip during a conversation.

“Hell, no, you’re not. I couldn’t have handpicked
a better housemate for you. You’re a lot safer there living with a guy you can
trust as opposed to some random bozo. And he’s certainly not going to do
anything wrong with Mick and Jack looking over his shoulder.”

Bess stooped to open the dishwasher. “You
don’t think they’ll give him a hard time, do you?”

“Not if he behaves himself. When does he
move in?”

Bess hesitated. “He actually already
moved in last week.”

“You waited this long to tell me?”

Bess sighed, loading the plates into the
rack. “I wasn’t sure how you and Lacey would react. I know you both think I’ve
had a crush on him or something.”

“Yeah-huh. We might still think that.”

Bending low to retrieve the detergent
from underneath the sink, Bess struggled with the child safety lock on the
cabinet door. “But I don’t. I mean, anyone would find him attractive, of
course. But the thing is, he’s so out of my league he doesn’t even tempt me.”

“Girl, he could tempt an eighty-year-old
nun.”

“Better watch that talk about nuns. You’re
not Catholic, but your hubby is.”

“Yeah, yeah. So what kind of a housemate is
he?”

Shutting the dishwasher door, Bess paused
thoughtfully. “Quiet, actually. Barely even here. His work hours are killer. He
doesn’t get home till after eight and he leaves at 4:30 for PT.”

“Not much opportunity to impress him with
your cooking skills.”

She filled a cup with water from the tap.
“I’m not trying to impress him, Maeve. Out of my league, remember? And if you
don’t remember, I’ll email you a picture of my thunder thighs.”

“Will you stop cutting yourself down like
that? It gets old, Bess. Really.”

“Oh, and you’ll hate this. He planted a
recliner in the middle of your living room.”

“Ugh—no!” Maeve all but hissed. “A
recliner? In my house?”

“Serves you right for taking most the
furniture with you to Little Creek.”

Maeve groaned. “Just tell me it doesn’t
have built-in cup holders.”

“It doesn’t.” Bess grinned at the sigh of
relief on the other end. “So anyway, except for the recliner, he’s really the
perfect housemate for us. I sleep so much better with him around.”

Maeve scoffed. “Well, that actually makes
me worry. A single woman living with a guy that looks like him should be seeing
her estrogen levels at least double. You should be ordering a vibrator online
just to get through the night.”

Taking a sip of water, Bess rolled her
eyes. “God, Maeve, you are so crude.”

“Well, I have to get all the crudeness
out of my system.”

“Why?”

“Are you sitting down?”

Bess’s heart rate picked up in pace. Knowing
what she hoped to hear, she sat at the kitchen table. “I am now.”

“The adoption went through. On Wednesday,
we’re picking up the kids.”

From head to toe, Bess was covered in goosebumps.
“Oh my God, Maeve.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’m a mom, twice over, and I didn’t even
have to get any stretch marks.” Her voice crackled with emotion.

Bess laughed. Maeve had been unable to
have children of her own, and Bess admired her sense of humor about it. “Did
you tell Lacey yet?”

“Nope. You’re the first. I’m calling her
as soon as I get off the phone with you.”

“You must be so excited.” Bess could
picture the kids’ faces from the photos Maeve emailed her when she and Jack had
first met them. The little girl was eight years old and her brother was three. They
had been bounced around for years in the foster care system, just hoping
someone would open their home to a pair of siblings.

“I’m beyond excited,” Maeve said, the
smile in her voice seeping through the phone. “I’ve already picked out the
paint for their rooms and their furniture is ready. Everything won’t be perfect
by Wednesday, but it got finalized a lot quicker than we expected.”

“Jack must be over the moon.”

“You have no idea. Mom and Dad are coming
up from Charleston tomorrow to help me paint the rooms. And Jack’s parents are
coming down to meet their new grandchildren later in the month.”

Bess stood to refill her glass of water.
“Abby will love this news. It will be nice that she and your boy are the same
age, you know? What’s his name again?”

“Marcus. And my girl is Kayla. Oh, I
can’t wait for you guys to meet them. We’ll bring them up for Vi’s wedding, of
course.” Lacey’s sister Vi was getting married in a couple months and Bess
would be a bridesmaid.

As Bess stood to refill her glass,
Maeve’s excited ramblings continued. But Bess suddenly couldn’t hear the words.
She caught the image of Tyler, standing on his paddleboard rowing, looking like
a Greek god floating upon the water. Feeling the steam rising from her body,
she gulped.

“Keep your shirt on” should have been one
of the house rules she had laid out for him when he signed the rental
agreement. Because Abby would grow up with a warped view of what men were
supposed to look like with him hanging around the house looking like…
that
.

“Bess, are you still there?” Maeve’s
voice snapped her out of it.

“Um, yeah. Sorry. Got distracted.”

“He’s there, isn’t he?” she said
knowingly. There was no hiding anything from Maeve.

“Honestly, Maeve, if you could see what I
am seeing from this kitchen window, you’d melt into a pool of liquid lust.”

“I’m married now. I only melt for Jack.”

“Well, you’ve never seen Tyler shirtless
on a paddleboard.”

“Oh, yum. I’m telling you, stake your
claim on that muffin. Cook for him, and he’ll be yours, Bess. No man alive can
resist your cooking.”

Bess snorted. Not a recipe she knew could
make up for her expanded waistline and trunk-like legs. “Tyler goes for model
types. Remember, I met his girlfriend from a few years ago. She could have been
a cover girl for
Vogue
.”

“And they broke up. So maybe he doesn’t
go for that sort of thing long-term. Make that lasagna that Jack and Mick
always rave about.”

Bess gave herself a shake. “Stop it. I
can’t think about things like that. I’ve got a good thing going here. I can’t
mess it up by making a move on him. Hell, I wouldn’t even know how to make a
move. It’s been so long.” She watched him step onto the shore and head toward
the house. “Oh, no. Gotta run. He’s back on land.”

Maeve laughed. “Just don’t get yourself
hurt, okay? Or I’ll come up there and beat the crap out of him.”

“Language, Maeve,” Bess reminded her.

“I know. Four more days. I’m talking like
a sailor till then because it’s rated G around here from then on out.”

“Tell Jack congratulations for me, okay?”
She put her dirty cup in the sink.

“Will do.”

“Love you, new mama.”

“Love you back.”

Bess clicked her phone off and pulled
herself away from the kitchen window.

Maeve was going to be a mom. It was so
right, so perfect, and yet Bess felt a dull ache in her heart from how quickly
time was passing by. Maeve and Jack would stay in Little Creek for another year
at the last word from the Navy. How soon would it be before they moved back
here and filled this house to capacity with their new family?

Even while she was thrilled for Maeve,
she knew she had one year left to get her and Abby situated for this next stage
in their lives.

Where would the road take her this time?

Abby bounded down the steps. “Did you see
Tyler walking on the water?”

Bess smiled. “He was paddleboarding. Want
to go see?”

Abby nodded enthusiastically and raced
out the back door towards him. Bess watched from the back deck as Tyler showed
Abby the board and how he moved the oar across the water. Abby was captivated,
and he put the board on the ground so that she could stand on it. After about
five minutes—the full length of Abby’s attention span—Abby came
flying back up the lawn to the patio.

“Did you see me, Mama? Did you see me paddleboarding?”

“I did, sunshine. You looked like a pro.”

Tyler came up behind Abby and it was all
Bess could do to not drool. His chest had a sheen of sweat that glistened in
the afternoon sun and accentuated every perfectly shaped ripple of his abs. But
it was always his forearms that distracted her the most. They were wider than
most, with fists that could pack a punch, she imagined.

Years ago, a physique like that would
have terrified Bess. Dan hadn’t even had much of a build on him, and look at
the damage he had been able to do.

Mick and Jack had fixed that perception. Either
one of them could be lethal if he wanted to, but would never do anything except
protect someone who was in need. From them, she had learned that some men could
be trusted.

Over the years they had known each other,
Tyler had proven himself to be cut from the same cloth as the husbands of her
two best friends, or she never would have let him step foot in the same house
as Abby.

“I better hit the shower,” he said
casually, clueless that image made Bess’s heart stop momentarily.

“Going out tonight?” she asked
innocently.

“No way. I’m beat after that week at
work. All I want to do is relax.”

As he started to walk away, Abby took his
hand so naturally it made Bess’s breath hitch.

“Do you like Italian?” Bess found herself
calling out from behind them.

He turned back to her. “Who doesn’t?”

“Great. I’m making lasagna tonight.”

***

Tyler had died and gone to heaven.

He was generally a pretty easy person to
please when it came to food. Enough time in the field eating MREs will do that
to a man. If Bess had thrown in a frozen lasagna, he would have been happy she
went to the trouble.

But this…

Teeth sinking into another bite, his head
shook slowly and his eyes fell to half-mast. A succulent blend of tomatoes and
ricotta seeped into his mouth. There was a slight texture. Was it zucchini? Peppers?
He wasn’t even sure. But the fresh basil—he recognized that by the
scent—had been picked by Abby just that evening from the pots they kept
alongside the back porch.

“I think I love you, Bess,” he said. It
was only a joke, and she laughed lightly in response, the tiniest hint of a
blush creeping up her cheeks.

After this many years, he knew Bess well
enough to know she’d never take it the wrong way. It was like that with her. She
was one of those women who didn’t seem to have some kind of ulterior motives in
anything she did. There were no pretenses about her. She was just as
straightforward and reliable as a person could get.

And natural, he couldn’t help thinking,
glancing at her. Not flashy at all, she could walk into a bar and never get
noticed.

What a loss for the men who overlooked
her, he thought as he took another bite. He knew guys who would propose to a
woman after a meal like this. It was just that delicious.

She waved her hands dismissively. “Oh,
it’s just lasagna. Anyone can make lasagna.”

“No. It takes talent to make something
like this.” He found himself talking with his mouth full. It was hard not to. He
simply couldn’t stop putting more food in his mouth.

“I’m done,” Abby exclaimed, immediately
crawling out of her booster seat.

Amused, Tyler looked at her plate. She
had diligently removed every chuck of meat from her lasagna and formed it into
a pile at the side that looked a bit like a brown snowman.

Bess frowned. “You barely ate anything.”

“I ate noodles. Can I play with my Duplos
now?”

Heaving a defeated breath, Bess gave in.
“Okay. Put your plate by the sink, please.”

Carelessly leaving her silverware behind,
Abby toddled over to the sink with her plate and disappeared up the stairs.

Bess looked at Tyler. “It’s nice to cook
for someone who actually appreciates my meals,” she confided. “I’ll cook for
you anytime.”

“Abby has no clue what other kids have to
eat. The only Italian food I ate at her age came from a can.”

Bess laughed.