Rescued (Navy SEALS Romance Book 1) (7 page)

O
ne week
after her only date with Tanner, Taylor got up, went for a run, washed her hair, ate a high protein breakfast, gave Monster his breakfast, homemade and expensive but not as bad as the cow or two a day she'd told Tanner, shook herself to get Tanner out of her head, and called the volunteer organization. Could they use an IT person to game with their rehab kids? They could, and there were morning and evening hours as well as weekend. Just to make certain she really felt guilty if she got this far, balked, and told herself she was too busy. Taylor didn't promise the person on the phone anything but she promised herself and went to work.

"You look better, girlfriend," Jason told her, gliding past her in the halls.

"So do you, girlfriend," she quipped and he smirked, flipped her off, turned it into a friendly wave as one of the supervisors passed them.

And I
feel
better, too
, Taylor told herself firmly.

Lied to herself firmly.

"
I
could get myself here
," Mike said as they left the bright sunlight and stepped into the decrepit medical center building.

"But you don't," Tanner said, following him in onto the ultra slick linoleum floor. The building seemed set up to cause more injuries than cure them. "Besides, it's the only time I get to see you use the cane, Grandpa." Most of the time Mike used it to try and fetch things that were too far away in the office. When he walked, he chose to hop or cling to things, anything no matter how much more likely to re-injure his leg, than to use the cane.

"Ha, ha. What about you?"

"I don't
have
a cane," Tanner emphasized.

"No, you have a shoulder. When's the last time you PT'd it?"

The day he'd run into Taylor in the elevator. Or rather, she'd run into him. The memory made him uncomfortable. He missed her, and that made no sense. They'd had one date. How could he miss her?

"Shoulder's fine, bro. It's your leg we have to worry about." He made a sweeping gesture for Mike to go ahead, like a host showing dinner guests to a restaurant table, but Mike stopped in Tanner's path and turned to face him, a grimace of pain as his bad leg took his weight for a second.

"Your shoulder probably is good. I know you're healing." He held up both hands when Tanner tried to interrupt, the lowered the cane back to the floor in a hurry. "Sucks. I've heard of all sorts of kinky things people do with canes. Hobbling on one isn't what I want. But hell, I'm getting better. One week and there's improvement. Probably going to be six weeks total. Get my drift?" He waggled his eyebrows at Tanner.

"No, I don't, apparently even such
subtle
messages can miss me by a mile." He indicated the PT office again. "I just came – "

"With me. I know. Boss, you're scared."

"When did you start calling me boss?"

"When did you start deflecting everything that sounds like somebody caring about you?"

Tanner stared at him. "What is this, a declaration of romance?"

Mike shook his head angrily. "If I didn't need this thing to stay upright, I'd show you one of the other uses for a cane. And not," he interrupted the next barb coming his way, "in a kinky way. Tanner, we all have to be ready for everything at a moment's notice and there's nobody on the team that's expendable. You're scared they're going to say you're not up to snuff, that your shoulder's not going to be the same and you'll be washed up at twenty-nine."

"Twenty-eight," Tanner said automatically.

Mike shrugged in a
proves my point
kind of way Tanner didn't care to follow up on.

"Look, I think you're recovering. Far as I know you've got full range of motion and you're building back strength. What I
don't
want is to find out you're
not
one-hundred percent when you're fishing a victim out of a fire or flood. They deserve better. So does the team. So do you. If you're missing any percentage of ability, it's low, bro. We all know that, given how you've performed. But if you're missing ability and you hurt that shoulder again? That might be all she wrote."

Tanner didn't let the wince show.
All she wrote
was what he was worried about. Which meant maybe Mike had a point. Tanner prided himself on facing adversity head on – until it came to adverse conditions he might not be able to fix.

Mike was still watching him.

"Fine. If they've got a therapist free, I'll do a torture session. If they don't – "

"Oh, they don't," Mike said with a big, evil grin.

Tanner narrowed his eyes. "And you know this because?"

"Because I scheduled you when I scheduled me."

Smug bastard.

"But now that I know it's the
pain
you're afraid of, calling a little PT girl a
torturer
– "

Tanner screwed up his face and shook his head. "Get in there before
I
show you some alternate uses for that cane."

T
he first session
of volunteering had gone spectacularly poorly. The medical office had given her two kids to work with who had the personalities of badgers and were as distractible as a politician on a filibuster. Neither had cared about gaming, and one of them had never stopped complaining about the prosthetic arm. Plus Taylor was rapidly coming to the conclusion she had no skill at working with kids.

"It'll be better next time," the doctor's wife said, walking her out. Taylor wondered if senior staff members walked out every volunteer or if she was the first to make it ninety minutes with these kids and they were afraid she would now flee.

"Next time? Those two don't need a next time. They'll have taken over the planet by then." She almost looked behind her and thought the better of it.

The doctor's wife gave a bright, fake laugh. "They've been through a lot. That's all. But if you persevere they will too. Losing a limb is like a sort of death. They're processing the stages of mourning and they're required to get on with the business of living at the same time. It's perfectly all right to tell them you get what they're going through and then bowl right over them and keep going and force them to catch up."

"That
is
what I did," Taylor said. They were standing at the threshold of the office. Freedom – if that's what she could call the day at Boring World that was about to begin – was so close.

The doctor's wife, whose name Taylor couldn't remember, laughed again, brittle and unconvincing. "You did good work, Miss Adams. I hope you'll come back again."

"Um," Taylor said without conviction and then sudden shouting inside the office drew her escort back inside and Taylor made a beeline for the elevator, pushed the button and tapped her foot, waiting. Volunteering had buoyed up her spirits a little, and the one kid who had briefly tried had made her feel like she might make a difference. But being in the building again wasn't doing anything for her. Last time she'd stood in front of the highly polished metal elevator doors they'd opened and she'd run straight into –

"Tanner!"

He caught her when she jerked back, catching her heel on the strip of metal between the elevator and the hallway floor.

"Taylor." He drew her inside the compartment as the door closed and she felt a wave of déjà vu sweep over her.

Except before there hadn't been an equally huge, equally buff, devastatingly handsome sandy haired guy sharing the space with them.

That didn't stop Tanner. His hands stayed on her waist. His eyes locked on hers. The elevator doors closed, sealing the three of them in, and the lift began to descend.

She noticed Tanner watching her like he expected her to vanish out of his arms. She felt the same way, like some kind of white magic had just changed the nature of time and space, bringing them both here.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. Wasn't that what she'd asked the first time?

"This," Tanner said, and ducked his head and kissed her, his mouth burning hot on hers, his hands sliding from her waist to wrap around her back and press her close.

The third person in the elevator cleared his throat. "You two know each other?" He sounded both curious and like laughter trembled on the edge of his words.

Taylor didn't know him, didn't say anything. She was watching Tanner, wondering what she was doing. He had disappeared. The old male fadeout that never hurt any less, the
you're not worth the phone call, text or scene
that broke hearts even after one date.

Tanner, though, was turning, not quite letting go of her, but looking back over his shoulder at the third person in the elevator. "Standard elevator greeting, man. Get out next floor and in again and I'll show you."

That made the guy snort. "Yeah, right. I have this cane – " He didn't finish the threat.

"Not into that, thanks," Tanner said easily. With another man there, he seemed more comfortable than he had last time. "Taylor Adams, this is Michael Hancock. Mike for short."

"He's anything but short," Taylor said. "I should know." She was five-foot-two. Everyone in the elevator had at least twelve inches on her height.

"Taylor," Tanner continued, "Was fished out of a wildfire on Mt. Palomar."

"It's supposed to be catch-and-release, man," the guy named Mike said and apparently instantly realized he'd said something wrong, because he said, "Look, here's our floor, let's exit, shall we?" and waited for the two of them to exit ahead of him.

Catch-and-release is what Tanner had already done and no matter what Mike had actually meant, Taylor suddenly wondered at her enthusiastic greeting. She colored, and began digging for something she didn't need in her purse. "Nice seeing you again," she said to Tanner, and nodding at Mike, who looked ready to take the elevator back up and away again, "Nice meeting you."

She turned and walked out of the building.

"
A
re
you going to stand there and let her go?" Mike demanded from behind Tanner.

Tanner stood, legs braced wide apart, looking past the mother with children she was leading across the open first floor, toward the elevators, looking out into the brilliantly sunny summer morning where Taylor was moving fast to her car.

"Don't know what you mean," he said without looking at his friend and business partner.

Who snorted. "Of course you don't. Let me explain, o Prince of Darkness. You've gloomed around the office for a solid week, ever since I got broken. You've checked your phone once every half a second and sent no texts and made no calls. You're as friendly as someone who has just backed into a cactus and today in the elevator when a tiny chick barrels into you is the first time I've seen you smile in a week. And y'know? That happened right after you kissed her. Pretty obvious. You going to let her just go?"

"It's complicated," Tanner said.

Mike sighed and used his cane, hobbling far more than he had to, and circled in front of Tanner. "No, it's not. I get you're scared of physical therapy, afraid to find out the damage is more pervasive and more permanent than you thought. I get that. I even get that what we do? Not running a preschool or – something else safe and cuddly I can't think of."

"Working with kittens," Tanner said, looking over Michael's head at the parking lot. Taylor was only just still in sight.

"Right. But whoever it is you're protecting, you or her? Tan? That's fucked up. Life's risk. You knew what when you went BUD/S training and got into SEALs. The only question you should have is if
she's
willing to take the risk. Not if you are." He paused just long enough for that to sink in and added, "You've already decided she can't take the pressure. She deserves better than that.

"So do you."

Tanner hadn't turned yet when Mike said, "Forgot something," and got back into the elevator and went away.

"No, you didn't," Tanner said aloud, but it didn't matter. He was already running, heading for the parking lot, scanning in the direction he'd last seen her heading. There were people in the parking lot, and more cars arriving, but only one pulling out, already starting the drive up the hill to the edge of the parking lot that would lead to the road that circled down the minor foothill back to a main road. If he cut across the landscaping and out to that road, he could probably catch the car as it came down from the lot.

He sprinted hard, wove around a cluster of parents and children determined to slow him down the way commuters in airports did when you were late for a plane. Over the river rock and between the city trees in their iron enclosures and then he was bounding just off the sidewalk onto the downward curving road that led to the main road and even now Taylor was just turning onto the street, heading his way.

Slowing when she saw him waving both arms.

Slowing.

And stopping.

T
aylor put
the emergency brake on and cut the motor. Tanner stood on the other side of the street, a few cars moving in between them. Stepping out of the car was one of the hardest things Taylor had done in a while. Being dumped by Trace had hurt. Being dumped for all intents and purposes by Tanner had left her bottoming out. After a week she'd just started picking herself back up. There had only been one date, she told herself. Maybe they'd both just been awed by the events that led to it, the fire, the rescue, the crazy elevator meeting. She'd been putting the pieces back together.

And there he was again.

You knew
. A delivery truck came between them as they waited for a break in the cars to dash across the street.
You knew when you decided to volunteer that you might –

Maybe. She never had asked him what he was doing in the building that day. Too soon, too personal to ask about anything medical and he hadn't asked her anything, either. They had enough to discuss, enough conversational sparks and personal histories and Monster and storms and her rescue and his job. So it was entirely possible he'd been there for a one time thing or even taken a friend, like the Michael person with his cane and leg brace.

A hole in the traffic opened up and she saw Tanner again, instantly jogging across the wide curving road to her, black hair nearly blue in the sun, it was getting longer, she noticed, and his eyes were fixed on her.

Crazy or not, nothing else mattered. Whatever this was, she had to give it another chance. Maybe she was stupid. Or trusting or gullible or naïve. But she'd been miserable until he'd appeared in the elevator like a flashback that turned out to be real.

Now it felt like the sun had come out again after a long, gray winter.

She met him partway. Their arms went instinctively around each other like they were longtime lovers, not new. They fit together, like the answer to a question. Except? There was still all the newness, the magical beginning of something She still had butterflies in her stomach just at the sight of him, still felt delight at the way her heart leapt. There was hope, and sunlight, and the feel of his arms, brawny, muscled, wrapping tight around her and pulling her hard against his chest.

Her hands went there of their own accord, snaked up from beautiful pecs to shoulders and neck and then her hands were wrapping around his neck, she was up on her tiptoes, he was pulling her closer, their mouths were pressing together and the kiss was deep, hot, full of promise.

Jessie would tell her she couldn't just ignore the last week. Jessie would be right.

But Jessie's intuited advice could wait.

S
everal long minutes
later they both realized they were standing on a busy street, kissing, passing vehicles getting an eyeful.

"Maybe we should go somewhere and talk?" he asked.

She nodded, dreamy, willing to go anywhere he wanted –

--or to work.

Damn! She could miss it, couldn't she? But the answer to that was no. She was on the tail end of a project. Her entire team was meeting in – she grabbed her phone – just over half an hour. Which was how long it would take her to drive there.

"I want to," she said, looking straight into his eyes. So much light there, the pale blue with flecks of gold and green. "But I've got a meeting at work in thirty minutes and that's how long it will take to get there." She bit her lip and thought
Please tell me you're not doing anything tonight. Please ask me if I am
.

"Tonight?" he asked. "Do you have plans?"

None I can't cancel.
Jessie was going to kill her. "No. I was going to grab a pizza and watch scary movies."

"Alone?" His voice was teasing.

"It'd be better with company." But she was falling into the trap. She might not want to consider Jessie's probable advice yet but she couldn't just let the last week go. "But I think we need to clear the air before eating." She searched his eyes. If he didn't think he'd done anything that needed clearing up – if it was normal for him to say
I'll text or call
and mean the next day and then not do it at all and just run into her in a medical building, totally random – it was best to know that now.

"Probably." He didn't sound anxious to do so. What guy would? "I'll bring wine. Or beer. And the pizza. And the movie?"

She allowed herself a small smile but now the nerves were taking over and competing with the feeling of drowning that had washed over her again and again over the last week. She'd had margaritas with Jessie, donuts with Jason, even a long phone call with her mother who insisted everything would be all right. If it was, her mother was going to be intolerably smug.

She thought she could deal with a smug mother.

"Is seven too late?" she asked. Cars were speeding by them like crazy. As far as she knew the only thing up the road was the decrepit medical building. Considering the amount of traffic coming and going from the place, the owners ought to be more than able to remodel.

"I'll see you," he said. "The only thing that would stop me would be an emergency."

She thought he started to reach for his phone, maybe meaning to wave it in the air again like a false promise.

She was grateful she didn't.

They didn't kiss again before they went off to their respective jobs.

I
ran into him again
.

Literally?
Jessie sent back.
Where are you? Isn't today big meeting?

In the big meeting.

?? Aren't you leading it??

Yep.

!!

Can't think. Besides, Jason's talking.

Oh. Wait, you ran into HIM?

Who did you think?

Wasn't thinking. AND?

She stopped, savoring the feeling, the expectation, the delight, the slight nerves, the anticipation, the heady sense of wellbeing coupled with the thought she might explode in nerves and anxiety and impatience.

Dinner tonight.

You and me?

Smile.
Me and him.

Call me after BM,
Jessie wrote.

?????

"Big Meeting." Sheesh.

S
he did
. She texted and chatted and called Jessie in the two hours between getting off work and when Tanner was due.

"You're making yourself a nervous wreck," Jessie said. "He disappeared for a week. If you have a hair out of place, it will probably be all right."

Taylor laughed. Nervously.

"It will probably
serve
him right," Jessie said.

Taylor laughed nervously again.

"Go," Jessie said. "Fix your hair. Clean your clean house. Worry. Call me after."

S
he met
him at the door with Monster by her side, straining at his collar, desperate to welcome the man he'd met once. Or a serial killer. A friendly serial killer. All people were good in Monster's opinion, unless they turned out otherwise.

"Is he like this because I haven't been around or because I'm back?" Tanner asked, giving the dog's ears a friendly scratch. "Or because I was around before?"

"Yes," Taylor said, but she'd noticed his hesitation when he said
before.

She felt a little hesitant too. Despite the whirlwind of emotions all day, the dragging horrible afternoon that hadn't wanted to end, the excitement and speed cleaning of the house, the shower, the home manicure, the purchasing of beverages – despite it all, she now felt the tiniest bit reluctant.

"Where can I wash up?" Tanner asked, and she showed him to the guest bath, then went into the kitchen to move the pizza from one counter to the other, fidgeting.

She wasn't mad. Particularly.

Nor was she completely not mad.

That her trust had taken a hit – that was undeniable.

But the reluctance? She hadn't wanted to greet him, really. Her kiss had been halfway there. Her heart wasn't in it.

The idea that she might not be truly glad to see him made her sad.

"Except I am glad," she whispered. "I'm just reluctant."

That word again. Because it made sense. Even as she heard him coming back up the hall she understood. She was reluctant to have him there because Tanner there meant Tanner explaining. She couldn't fathom a way in which she could go forward without having him explain.

As long as he hadn't explained yet, the future was infinite and full of possibilities.

When he explained, things changed. Or they might change.

There was no way to know they'd change for the better.

"Can I pour you a glass of the wine?" she asked. "Thank you for bringing it. I haven't seen this brand before."

"Corkscrew?" he asked, and set about with it while she put the pizza onto plates, something she'd never consider when alone, and fetched a green salad out of the refrigerator. That would make Jessie choke. Taylor considered green food a sign from Mother Nature that the food had already gone bad.

They sat down together in her tiny dining space. She got back up to let Monster out. He got back up to fetch the wine they'd left on the counter. She started to get up again and suddenly sat, heavily, pushing her plate away from her.

"I'm going to break the girl code," she said.

"The what?" There was humor in his eyes but he wasn't smiling.

"We're supposed to go on like nothing has happened when nothing has happened."

His expression said she hadn't clarified anything.

Taylor waved one hand. "We talk about asking guys out and calling and texting and not being passive but sometimes we want the guy to make the move. And then the code says you don't ask."

"This code," he said. "Is it in a book?"

She smiled. "It's apocryphal. And at the same time real."

"Girls are still expected to just sit and take it?"

"Or grin and bear it. Or eat ice cream. It's old school. And I'm breaking it. I like you, Tanner Davis. I don't know you very well. I don't know you well enough to ask why you've been in that ratty medical building two times. What I know I like." He started to interrupt and she held a hand up against it. "Let me finish, OK? I'm sure I have a point somewhere."

"I like the parts about you liking me," he said quietly.

She smiled at the table, and pinned down her spinning thoughts. "We met weird and moved fast. Maybe it's the nature of what you do or the fact that I thought I was going to die so I saw a direction I wanted to explore and I did."

His face fell. "And now?"

"Not what I meant," she said, answering his expression. "Not that I'm through with it. But you said you were going to call or text me. We'd had a really awesome first date and I know it was a first date and I'm not looking for a relationship check or pushing the idea we have a relationship." She stopped, took a breath, wished Monster was sitting next to her so she could focus on him.

"But?" Tanner gently prodded.

"But." She nodded. "You said you'd be in touch. You weren't. I tried to reach you. I couldn't. Eventually my calls weren't even being answered." She stopped and searched his face. "That's guy behavior when he's just taking off. And we got back together because we ran into each other in the same building. That's too convenient for me to just let it happen. Not that I don't believe you were there with your friend. But that I can't just make random meetings and no explanation OK." She stopped and looked at him longingly. "Now you say stuff. Make me feel everything I said is stupid."

A half smile lit his eyes. "You're not wrong."

Her heart plummeted.

Tanner slid a hand under her jaw, angling her head upward again so her eyes met his. "When I left, I meant I was going to call. But after that? I wasn't coming back."

If she'd had the energy, she'd have asked him to leave. Instead, she sat and watched him, her eyes sparkling with diamond facets of tears she was never going to shed. "Why? What did I do? Or what happened? Are you – married?'

That made him smile. Square jaw, sharp cheekbones. She thought he'd shaved before coming over and already his jaw was a dusky blue-black. "Hardly. Kind of the opposite."

Taylor frowned. "What's the opposite of marriage? Divorced?" That sounded a little too cute.

"No. I just – I don't get into long commitments. Guys on my team? There were married and single, engaged and divorced, guys living with chicks and those who had perpetual girlfriends and those who had a number of them."

She nodded, confused. If this was his version of clarifying something, she'd hate to see what he did if he wanted to obfuscate.

But even Tanner looked frustrated with what he was saying. He ran one rough hand over his mouth. "I wasn't going to call you because I could see myself caring about you. Easily. Fast."

Taylor narrowed her eyes. "And that would be bad?"

She didn't expect him to nearly knock his chair over getting up. He hit his head on the low-hanging chandelier over the table and reached up to steady it as shadows careened around the room. She was still reaching out to him or the light or something when he caught her hands and drew her up into his arms.

"As a SEAL my first responsibility is to my team. We're reserve but if we get called back up, that relationship is number one. As a civilian in search and rescue, when I'm working, when I'm on a job, my responsibility is to my team of buddies, coworkers. I never understood how anyone in special forces could hook up casually and just take off and she didn't even know where he'd gone. Those guys with wives? They're asking a woman to live with a shitty job, a dangerous job, with missions he can't tell her about and knowing any time he does go out he might not come back. She's got the worst job, too – Because he's actually doing something. She just waits."

Taylor could feel the frown like it was engraved into her skin. "You were going to dump me because you cared about me? You were dumping me for my own good?" Should she laugh or cry? Or try to force her hands out of fists?