SEAL for Her Protection (SEALs of Coronado Book 1) (7 page)

“My senior chief and his wife are having a cookout tomorrow at his house. Want to come with me?”

She smiled up at him. “You think you’ll be up for it?”

He lifted a brow and gave her a teasing look. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

She couldn’t help laughing. Of course, she’d been talking about him being tired, but if he thought she was talking about something else…oh well. “Forget I said anything. I will never doubt your ability to be up for anything. I’d love to go to the cookout with you.”

He kissed her again. “I’ll pick you up around noon.”

“Can’t wait.”

Giving her another quick kiss, he walked down the hall. As he waited for the elevator, he turned and looked at her.

“Don’t worry about missing the movie at the park. I have
Top Gun
on DVD and can bring it over sometime for another screening.”

She smiled. “There was a movie?”

He laughed and stepped into the elevator. A moment later, the doors closed and he disappeared from sight.

Hayley stood there staring at the elevator for nearly a minute before going into her apartment. Then she leaned back against the door and closed her eyes, savoring the taste of his lips on hers and replaying the evening in her head. The date had been amazing. She wasn’t sure she could even pick the part of the night she’d enjoyed the most, but if she had to, she’d say the make out session under the stars in the park. Maybe the next time they went, she might even watch the movie.

She laughed. Who was she kidding? The next time Chasen took her to that park, she was going to do the exact same thing—make out with him the entire time.

Chapter Four

N
ORMALLY, CHASEN DIDN’T mind training at oh-dark-thirty with the guys. In fact, he usually enjoyed it. But to say he’d much rather be in bed with Hayley right at that moment instead of dragging a frigging Zodiac boat all over the place was an understatement.

Walking away from Hayley last night had been hard as hell. Not only was she gorgeous and smart, but she’d actually been interested in him as more than a uniform full of muscles. Not that he had an issue being appreciated for his body, but it was nice to know she was interested in him as a person, too.

And man, had they definitely clicked in the sexual chemistry department. He and Hayley were going to scorch the sheets when they finally made it into bed. He hadn’t been lying last night when he said he didn’t want to rush their first time together. When they had sex, he intended to make love to every part of her body—slowly.

“Dude,” Logan Dunn called. “I don’t mean to interrupt whatever daydream spread that goofy ass grin across your face, but you want to do the rest of us a favor and pick up your side of the fucking boat?”

Chasen looked down and realized he’d let his corner of the Zodiac drop down to his waist, making it damn near impossible for the other three guys—Nash, Dalton, and Logan—to carry their part of the load with any speed. He glanced up and realized they’d fallen almost twenty feet behind the other four-man team carrying the second Zodiac across the base’s amphibious training range.

He cursed and jerked his side of the boat back up to his shoulder. “Shit, guys. Sorry about that,” he said as he focused on the task at hand, namely humping the boat and the two full-weight body dummies strapped inside it.

“Yeah, yeah. Save your breath for running, not apologies,” Logan muttered.

At thirty-two, Logan was closest in age to Chasen and had been his swim buddy in BUD/s. They were good friends, which meant Logan had no problem calling him out when he screwed up.

Soon enough, he and his guys caught up with the others. Then they all settled into a comfortable pace and started eating some distance. The sun was well above the horizon now, which meant they’d been on the move for more than two hours. That meant they probably only had another thirty minutes or so to go until they finished this morning’s training exercise. Unless the chief decided they’d been dogging it and extended the course for another couple of miles to motivate them for next time.

They’d left the beach area in front of the main base a few minutes after 0400 this morning, motoring their two Zodiac boats northward up the shoreline from there, moving slowly in the pitch-black darkness. When they reached their insertion point, they’d cut the engine and paddled their way through the surf and up onto the beach. Then they’d hidden the boats and run in full tactical loadout for an hour to get to their objective.

This morning’s training scenario called for their eight-man team to assault a small, three-building compound where four hostages were being held. They were supposed to take out the guards—a series of simple silhouette targets—then save the hostages and get them back to the boats.

They’d moved in soundlessly and easily taken out the “guards” using silencers and subsonic ammo, then found that the four hostages—man-shaped body dummies that looked like creepy full-sized voodoo dolls weighing in at about a hundred and eighty pounds each—were too “injured” to walk on their own and had to be carried. So they’d taken turns in teams of two, humping the heavy ass dummies until they gotten them back to their Zodiacs. The dummies had gone into the boats then Chasen and the rest of the guys had carried the whole heavy load in a nice long jog back to main base.

It was a good thing SEALs liked to run. They already sprinted two miles and still had three more to go.

* * * * *

An hour and a half later, they sat outside one of the SEAL training buildings eating breakfast burritos from this great place right outside base while they cleaned their gear and ragged on Chasen for being so damn slow in between telling complete BS lies about how easy the morning’s joint training and PT session had been.

While Chasen laughed and talked smack like the rest of the Team, more of his thoughts were focused on Hayley and last night than ribbing his teammates. Their first date couldn’t have gone any better. Just because you wanted something to go right didn’t mean it would though. That was why he hadn’t mentioned the whole movie night in Waterfront Park thing up front. If the dinner had gone to hell, they could have ended the evening right there and been done with it. But it turned out the movie had been the highlight of the evening.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the movie that had been the highlight, but being there on that blanket in the park sure as heck had been. Her mouth tasted so sweet he could have made out with her all night. And the way she’d moved her bare, sexy thigh back and forth across his jean-covered cock while they’d kissed was the stuff of fantasies. The mere memory made his shaft go hard inside his tight swim trunks. He stifled a groan and rearranged his FN assault rifle a little on his lap to hide the bulge. The last thing he needed was for the guys to see him sporting wood in his shorts.

“There’s that goofy ass grin again,” Logan said suddenly from across the room.

Chasen glanced up to see everyone looking at him.

“What’s got you so happy this morning?” Wes asked, regarding him with curious blue eyes.

Petty Officer 3
^rd
Class Wes Marshall was straight out of SQT—SEAL Qualification Training—and the newest member of SEAL Team 5. He was the FNG, as in the effing new guy, and he was finally starting to come out of his newbie shell and integrate with the Team.

“He had a date last night with that cute journo we rescued in Nigeria a few weeks back,” Nash said before Chasen could answer.

“No shit,” Logan said, throwing a shocked look at his friend. “How’d the hell did you two end up stumbling into each other? That’s got to be like a one-in-a-million type thing.”

Chasen opened his mouth to reply, but this time, it was Dalton who beat him to it. “He ran into her the other day at the dog and pony show on Imperial Beach.”

Holden Lockwood glanced up from where he sat amongst a pile of motor parts, his hands black with grease and oil. “Where’d you guys go on your date?”

Holden was a big guy with dark hair, brown eyes, and a slightly crooked nose thanks to a fight with some asshat in BUD/s who ended up washing out a few days later. He was one of those good old boys from Texas who seemed to have an affinity for mechanical things. At the moment, he was “fixing” the motor from one of the Team’s Zodiacs, claiming it had been running poorly during this morning’s exercise. Chasen thought it had been running fine. He hoped the guy could put it back together and make it work. If not, it would probably fall on him to tell the commander they needed to buy a new one. That wasn’t a something Chasen looked forward to.

Chasen waited to see if one of the other guys wanted to answer this question too, but they all looked at him expectantly.

“Oh, you want me to answer that one,” he said drily. “I thought maybe you guys had someone following us or something.”

That earned him a laugh but at least no one admitted he was right.

“We went to Kitchen on the Bay then took in the movie at Waterfront Park.”

On the far side of the room, the platoon’s lieutenant, Dean Hanley, let out a low whistle. Unlike the rest of the Navy, on a SEAL Team, the OIC—officer in charge—was one of the guys. “That place is pricey. You must have really been trying to impress her.”

“More than I would normally spend for dinner,” Chasen admitted, especially including the bribe he’d slipped the hostess. “But I figured Hayley would be worth it.”

Logan raised a brow. “So you see her as something more than the usual temporary thing?”

Chasen knew what Logan was asking, even if he didn’t say it in so many words. He was politely asking if Hayley might be a SEAL groupie—better known as a frog hog. While there weren’t many women who could handle being in a serious relationship with a SEAL, there was never a shortage of women who simply wanted to bed one.

Chasen had tried that route when he was younger, but these days, that kind of thing didn’t hold any interest for him. He’d never admit it to the guys, but he was getting older and looking for a woman to be more than a bedmate. He wanted someone to be there when he got back from training and missions and long, hard days at work. His gut told him there was a chance Hayley could be that someone. Mostly because she wasn’t looking to bag herself a SEAL for bragging rights. She was a brilliant investigative journalist who was brave as hell and took risks doing what she believed in. She was the kind of woman he could respect, the kind of woman he could see himself with long term.

“No, I’m not thinking temporary here,” he finally confessed. “Hayley’s special.”

The guys fell silent at his announcement. They might rag him about going out and spending a lot of money on a date with a woman he’d just met, but they all knew firsthand what it was like to fall for a girl and have her bail when she realized what being a SEAL truly entailed. If he thought Hayley might be different, that changed everything.

“I get that you like her,” Logan said slowly. “But don’t you think you should be cautious? You saved her life and all. Don’t go mistaking gratitude for something it’s not.”

Chasen had thought that angle through too, that she’d agreed to the date out of a sense of obligation because he’d rescued her in Nigeria. But after last night, it didn’t feel that way between them. He could sense the spark there. She liked him, maybe as much as he liked her.

“I won’t, even though I don’t think that’s the case,” he said.

“You sure?” Dean pressed.

“I’m sure.” He finished cleaning the bolt on his weapon and slid it back into the upper receiver group then glanced up. “Is it so hard to believe a woman could be interested in me simply because she finds me attractive and enjoys the fact I can carry on an intelligent conversation about something other than military tactics?”

Dalton snorted. “Yeah, that is hard to believe. I mean, if it we were talking about me, I could see it. But you? No. There has to be some other rational reason. Maybe you should have one of our medics check her out. She might have sustained a head injury during the rescue and thinks you’re way more attractive than you are.”

Everyone laughed, including Chasen. The guys might appreciate that he was trying for something more than a weekend hook-up, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to rag him about it anyway.

“Why don’t you bring her to the cookout this afternoon? Melissa would love to meet her.” Chief Petty Officer Kurt Travers jerked his head in Dalton’s direction. At forty-five, Kurt was the oldest guy in their platoon and had forgotten more about being a SEAL than any of them would ever know. “If Hayley passes the Melissa gauntlet, maybe these idgets will stop giving you so much grief.”

Chasen grinned. “Already invited her, Chief.”

“Good deal,” Nash said. “I’ll make sure to give her my number. That way, once she wises up and realizes you’re not all that, I can be there to console her.”

Chasen chucked along with the other guys and threw a cleaning rag at Nash. The other man was a teammate and a friend, but at the same time, he had no desire to let Nash or anyone else anywhere near Hayley. Maybe that meant this thing with her was a real as he thought.

* * * * *

There were almost a dozen cars parked along the street by the time Hayley and Chasen got to Kurt and Melissa Travers’ Clairemont Mesa home that afternoon. Hayley picked up the container of brownies she’d made that morning from the seat beside her. She hadn’t wanted to come to the cookout empty-handed and brownies were one of the few things she knew how to make. Opening her door, Chasen took her free hand and helped her out. Following the sound of voices and laughter, they walked across the lawn and around to the back of the cute ranch-style house.

Hayley spotted Nash and Dalton immediately. Nash was with a petite redhead while Dalton had a leggy blonde at his side. Both men grinned, nodding at her and Chasen.

“Come on,” Chasen said. “Let’s drop off the brownies, then I’ll introduce you around.”