Saving the Seal: A BWWM Navy Seal Interracial Romance (14 page)

Genevieve arched a brow, but said nothing. She merely nodded, grabbing her bag from the table before briefly meeting his gaze. Then, just like that, she was off towards the ammo counter to speak with the private manning the window.

Which left him alone with two commanding officers. Owen tried to read the poker expressions on each man’s face, failing miserably, before he finally opened his mouth to demand answers. Technically, he was retired. It was this that allowed him to ask what an enlisted man couldn’t. “What’s going on here, sir?”

“Owen.” Sean’s voice held not the slightest tinge of humor when he spoke. “There’s been a development in Fallujah. We know you’re not an enlisted man anymore, but seeing as how it deals directly with what happened to your team, we’ve decided to allow you access to the information…if that’s what you want.”

Owen felt his blood turn to ice in his veins.

Fallujah.

Sean was implying that they’d received intel on the group that had cut down his men – that had tortured him and his team and driven them to the edge of sanity. The cell of outlaws had all but disappeared in the wake of the incident, and it had added to Owen’s guilt that he thought he might not ever encounter them again.

Never be able to return the
favor
they had paid his unit.

He stared at Sean, taking deep breaths as Genevieve had taught him to steady himself. Every muscle in his body felt taught, and it was as if his blood turned from ice to fire in the space of a few seconds.

He errantly remembered what Genevieve had told him about returning to active duty. That it might not be a good idea for the immediate future, but a long-term goal. He had agreed at the time, but if what Sean was offering was a chance for him to avenge those who had been killed – murdered in cold blood…

That was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.

He glanced off to where Genny was conversing with the private at the ammo counter. She would be upset if she discovered what he was contemplating, but she would have to understand. This could help him.

It could ease the guilt that had been seared into his mind.

“Tell me. Tell me everything.”

**

Genevieve was working late.

Not so seldom an occurrence with her – especially with all the paperwork she had to file on Owen’s progress. However, where the stack of forms had once been her most dreaded chore, over the past few months she’d come to anticipate writing about Owen’s particular case.

He was making progress.

After they’d been at odds for almost six weeks, he’d finally begun to open up to her. The man had begun to come into the office – to speak to her in low, halting tones as he tried to put words to the way he felt about the emotions warring within him.

And it had all begun the night she’d given herself to him.

Of course, at the time, Genevieve had done it as an act of trust. She would trust him with her body if only he’d entrust her with his mind. Slowly, surely, what was between them had become so much more than that.

She had thought that she could detach herself from his treatment completely. That everything she was doing she did for him alone.

How quickly she’d been proved wrong.

Genevieve was a woman who had let her work consume her. Everyone in the office, Stella more than most, commented on her lack of a social life. How she never took time off for herself. The vacation she’d taken just before she’d met Owen had been the first of her career – and she hadn’t planned on taking another one.

Owen pushed her outside of her comfort zone. He demanded that she make time for them to do things outside of the office; and when said things started to progress beyond merely sleeping together, Genny had slowly but surely found herself beginning to enjoy the time they spent. Once she'd gotten over how Owen made her knees weak every time his low baritone drifted through her consciousness, she’d discovered that she liked going to dinner with him. Enjoyed when he showed her his favorite places to take Eddie for walks, and indeed, how he’d trained the gentle giant.

Sometimes, they just wasted evenings in his house, planted in front of his television as he attempted to teach her the rules of the sports he watched. Others, he took her to barbecues at Captain Sean Morales’ house, where she met his fiery wife, and eventually, the women became companions of a sort.

Gina seemed to understand uniquely the tough time Owen faced trying to ease back into society stateside. After all, her own husband was an active duty SEAL. She comprehended what it was like to watch someone you loved leave you without ever knowing if they would return.

Gina had told Genevieve multiple times what a good man Owen was – a good man with a big heart. He just needed help finding himself again – and Captain Morales’ brand of tough love, while well-intentioned, wasn’t quite doing the job. Owen needed a softer touch, Gina suggested. A woman’s touch.

Indeed, Owen seemed to react to her general presence almost as much as he did to the treatment she gave him. It was becoming more and more apparent with each passing day that one could not exist without the other. As much as he needed her to banish his mental demons, he also needed her by his side to soften his rougher edges.

He wasn’t such a surly monster when she was around. He growled less, glared less – tolerated things he normally wouldn’t. While some of the things she asked him to do during treatment still routinely frustrated him, the time it took him to cool down became less and less.

She thought that within the year, he might be able to see her professionally much less often than he was now. Once a month would be sufficient. The man was making admirable progress – overcoming hurdles that he hadn’t been able to before. However, it would still take time for him to be able to stand on his own two feet.

Time, Genevieve realized, was dwindling before her eyes.

She now had less than a month to prove that the man was ready to return to active duty – when she knew that he wasn’t. It was either that, or lose her job. And if she did that, they would shuffle the man back into duty anyway, and there would be nothing she could do about it.

When Owen wasn’t by her side, Genevieve found herself more and more nervous about her approaching deadline. He wasn’t ready. A man with trauma like his needed to be able to handle himself outside of the office effectively before he could even be considered for missions of the caliber he was used to.

If he returned…it could potentially set him back months – perhaps even erase all the progress they had made.

And she couldn’t stand to imagine him that way.

When she had come to Owen on the night they had first made love, she had seen a broken man. One with no faith in himself, or the life he led. It had tugged at her heartstrings not only professionally, but also in a very personal way. It wasn’t about seeing her patient suffer…it was about seeing a man she’d come to care for very much slide down a path from which there was no return.

Watching the improvements that he’d made…she couldn’t remember ever feeling so elated. Every time he smiled at her, every time he laughed – her heart skipped a beat. As attached as he’d become to her, she had also begun to crave his company in return.

To need him beside her.

When he was with her, she momentarily forgot all her deadlines. Forgot the war she waged with her supervisor and forgot that she was supposed to be the foundation upon which her patients rested their hopes and dreams. When she was with him, she was just Genevieve – someone she hadn’t been in a very, very long time.

Of course, the only other person she’d admitted this to was Stella. While, at first, her friend had been rightfully hesitant about her budding relationship with her patient, as she watched how Owen had begun to liberate Genevieve from the shell she’d always been wrapped in, she began to encourage her companion.

“He’s what you need just as much as you’re what he needs.” The redhead had once told Genny with a wide grin. “And lucky you for meeting him before you buried yourself in paperwork for all eternity.”

Unfortunately, Stella didn’t know about the conditions Kant had placed on Owen’s treatment. That, Genevieve had decided to keep to herself – and it was eating her alive. The more time passed – the more of her heart Owen stole from her – the more she was compelled to tell him about the conspiracy surrounding his recovery. Surely, he understood that his returning to active duty before he was ready could be devastating not only for him, but for everyone under his command. If he lost his cool – if he forgot how to handle himself under pressure…the slightest trigger could cost him everything.

And to see him so broken would kill her.

As Genevieve stared at the paperwork before her, she decided.

She had to tell him. With the deadline so near, she had to let him know what Kant was planning, she couldn’t depose her supervisor, but she could at least give Owen the option to refuse the admiral’s expectations for him. As he was technically retired, it wouldn’t be considered refusing an order.

He needed to know. She knew he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if anything else went wrong on his watch.

Quickly, the young woman finished filling in the reports she needed for the next day before placing them in the cabinet next to her desk. She grabbed her coat and headed out to her car. Owen was waiting for her at his house – and he’d said something about cooking her dinner. As nervous as she was, the young woman smiled at the thought.

The man had effectively proved to her in the past few months that he couldn’t so much as boil water without coming close to setting his own house on fire. Dinner should be interesting.

Surprisingly enough, when she walked through his front door, after greeting an enthusiastic Eddie with head rubs and kisses, she caught a whiff of something heavenly. Arching a brow in surprise, the young woman made her way into the front entryway and past the living room to the kitchen, where she came upon two place settings.

Were those candles? And wine glasses? This was a man who could hardly be bothered to stick a Hungry Man in the microwave. Genny rounded the corner to see Owen’s broad, bare back stationed before the stove and her breath caught in her throat. Every time she watched the muscles of his shoulders and deltoids contract, her throat dried. Pockmarked along his back were a series of scars from injuries – bullet wounds, old incision marks, places where shrapnel had been dug, carefully, from his body.

They were a part of him – and so she adored each and every one of them.

Setting her bag down in one of the kitchen chairs, she made her way over to him to wrap her arms indulgently around his trim waist. “Are you
really
cooking?”

The man didn’t even jump. He had ears like a hawk and had, no doubt, heard her enter. Instead, he merely stirred what looked like a simmering meat sauce before turning to face her with a wry smile. “I told you I would.”

Genevieve couldn’t help but laugh. “I didn’t believe you.” The next thing she knew, the man’s mouth was fused to hers and she lost herself in the heat of his kiss. God, she couldn’t get enough of him. Before she’d met Owen, kissing was a function of two mouths – something she’d never seen as very pleasurable. But now, she’d grown to crave the taste of him.

“Sit down.” He murmured against her mouth softly as Eddie wound around her feet. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Once her haze of desire had cleared, Genevieve managed to gather her wits enough for another healthy snipe at the man. “Am I going to be poisoned?”

“Hope not.” He grinned at her over his shoulder as she made her way to her seat. “I followed a recipe. Didn’t explicitly call for arsenic.”

Had a man ever cooked for her? Genevieve couldn’t recall. It was a sweet gesture – one that meant far more to her than bouquets of roses or outpourings of affection. Owen was willing to learn a new skill for her – not unlike her very dodgy practice with the sniper rifle.

At the memory of their practice the week before, she frowned.

He still hadn’t told her what it was Captain Morales and Captain Ryce had wanted to talk to him about. Owen had said it was nothing, but there had been a darkness to his gaze when he’d come to retrieve her from the ammunition booth that she hadn’t liked one bit. Since then, whenever she’d brought the subject up, he’d changed the subject.

But then again, she had her own secrets, didn’t she?

As Owen served plates of fragrant-smelling pasta with meat sauce, Genevieve tried to work up the courage to tell him about Doctor Kant and the admiral. She would do it as gently as she could. After all, she didn’t want to cause friction – only for Owen to be able to make informed decisions.

When she took her first bite of pasta, however, those thoughts were momentarily banished. It was absolutely delicious – with hints of rosemary, oregano and thyme that drew a low sound of appreciation from her. Genny’s gaze rose to meet Owen’s in surprise. “Owen, this is
amazing
.”

His lips curved upwards in a satisfied smirk. “There, you see? I
can
make something without burning the house to ash.”

Apparently, he could. They dug into their meal with gusto, and within half an hour, the bottle of wine Owen had bought to accompany it had been half depleted. As Genevieve’s thoughts once more turned to the information she would have to divulge, she clung to her wine glass as if it were her lifeline. Finally, as Eddie began nudging Owen for leftovers, she spoke. “Owen?”