SEAL's Promise - Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 01
Read SEAL's Promise - Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 01 Online
Authors: Sharon Hamilton
Tags: #Military, #SEALs, #Romance
SEAL’s Promise
Sharon Hamilton
Author’s Note
I always dedicate my SEAL Brotherhood books to the brave men and women who defend our shores and keep us safe. Without their sacrifice, and that of their families—because a warrior’s fight always includes his or her family—I wouldn’t have the freedom and opportunity to make a living writing these stories. They sometimes pay the ultimate price so we can debate, argue, go have coffee with friends, raise our children and see them have children of their own.
One of my favorite homages to warriors resides on many memorials, including one I saw honoring the fallen of WWII on an island in the Pacific:
“When you go home
Tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.”
These are my stories created out of my own imagination. Anything that is inaccurately portrayed is either my mistake, or done intentionally to disguise something I might have overheard over a beer or in the corner of one of the hangouts along the Coronado Strand.
Wounded Warriors is the one charity I give to on a regular basis. I encourage you to get involved and tell them thank you:
https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org
.
Copyright © 2014 by Sharon Hamilton
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. In many cases, liberties and intentional inaccuracies have been taken with rank, description of duties, locations and aspects of the SEAL community.
Table of Contents
Other Books by Sharon Hamilton
Author Bio
NYT and USA/Today and Amazon Top 100 Bestselling Author Sharon Hamilton’s SEAL Brotherhood series has earned her Amazon author rankings of #1 in Romantic Suspense, Military Romance and Contemporary Romance. Her characters follow a sometimes rocky road to redemption through passion and true love. Her Golden Vampires of Tuscany earned her a #1 Amazon author ranking in Gothic Romance.
A lifelong organic vegetable and flower gardener, Sharon lives with her husband in the Wine Country of Northern California, where most of her stories take place.
She loves hearing from her fans:
Her website is:
http://www.authorsharonhamilton.com/
Find out more about Sharon, her upcoming releases, appearances and news from her
newsletter
.
Newsletter
**
Sharon’s Blog
**
Sharon’s Website
**
Facebook
**
Twitter
Chapter One
‡
T.
J
.
T
ALBOT LIKED
weddings because he could always enjoy generous helpings of his two favorite things: alcohol and young lovelies.
Whenever a buddy got sweet on a girl and was contemplating ‘walking the plank’, as he liked to call it, T.J. was only too happy to help him celebrate. He never did mind the cost of the tux rental, the dinners and bachelor parties he had to spring for. It was all a means to an end. And his end was usually hooking up with someone and getting it on.
That was why he usually went to weddings stag. He’d sometimes promise to meet this or that lovely there, but usually he would go alone and play the field. Playing the field was much better for everyone involved.
He didn’t think of himself as a one-woman guy. He doubted anyone would be able to satisfy his appetites, especially his appetites in the bedroom. Experimentation was the norm for him. He didn’t want anyone crying to him after the fact, so he was careful. Yes, it did occasionally mean he went home alone. Far better to do that than to go home with a woman you had to console or peel off your skin the next day.
Tonight he had his eye on one of the bride’s best friends, Cindy. She had a funny little laugh, and he liked the way her tits jiggled whenever she did it. Her big blue eyes struck him right away as being interested in whatever he could dish out.
He always liked it when he could surprise a girl, help her learn new things about her sexual nature, and Cindy seemed like the perfect type, all spunky and full of sexual tension. He was going to pace himself, make sure he stayed in her line of sight a lot, and hope she’d chase him. He didn’t like it that way … unless he orchestrated it. Hell, he’d almost forgotten to line up with the other groomsmen he was thinking so hard about where he could take her for a bit of minor relief until he could have an all-nighter with her.
Four other SEALs were in the wedding party, and he had to admit they’d make a wedding portrait which would look good on the cover of any bridal magazine, except for their dark glasses. Only Frankie, the groom, posed without shades. Shannon had wanted them all without the shades, but T.J. smiled at her and put his back on in open defiance, and the others followed his lead.
She’d flounced off in a huff, a flurry of white cream puff material, and her perfume that made him sneeze. He knew about that hellcat streak she had. He angled his head to the side and intently studied her as she marched off to whatever mythical place brides hide when they go crazy. Even he had to admit that.
Frankie was white as a sheet as they gathered. “I wanna pray first,” he’d said to his best buddies. Tyler was there, of course, and Kyle. Ollie and Rory were as well. But T.J. was Frankie’s best friend, and that meant he had to be best man.
“Fuckin’ going to need a lot more than fuckin’ prayin’. Gonna need a miracle, Frankie. Shannon’s had the evil eye on me all morning…yesterday, too, and that means I don’t think you’re getting any tonight, not that you haven’t—”
“Fuck’s sake, T.J. It’s my fuckin’ wedding and has nothing to do with how my bride looks at you. Get that fuckin’ thought out of your head.”
“I was just sayin’—”
“Not what you’re sayin’ I have a problem with. It’s what you’re
thinking
.” Frankie was so nervous he was seeing conspiracies behind every plant, guest and bouquet.
“Just be glad we didn’t send you to Alaska,” Tyler said, making it worse. Last year, one of the young recruits was honored with time off from BUD/S to get married—a request which was almost never granted. The boys thought it necessary to save him from his quickie wedding in Las Vegas, and so they got him stinking drunk and put him on a plane to Alaska so he missed his own wedding. They incurred extra wet and sandy for that one, and the toilets were cleaned so many times you could eat out of them.
This had worried Shannon, and worried her mother even more. Mrs. “I Want Moore” was one of the hottest women T.J. had ever seen, a toned marathon runner in her fifties. He had never before had fantasies about the mother of the bride. Mrs. Moore was twenty-five years his senior, but he knew she could clean his clock. He’d enjoy chasing her around a few places.
Turning to face Frankie again, he felt a tad sheepish about his lusty thoughts. He wiped his mind clean and decided to concentrate harder on Frankie’s day. His buddy was so crazy in love with Shannon, he needed extra protection to keep him from stepping out in front of traffic, or bumping into caterers, which he’d already managed to do several times today.
“Come on, Frankie. Lighten up.” T.J. slapped his cheeks to redden them up. “You need to stop looking like a dead man if you’re really gonna do this.”
“Yup. I’m doing this,” Frankie said to the auditorium full of people, the organ music now swelling up to the rafters. “I’m fuckin’ doing this.”
T.J. had a hunch he was looking for his courage and had come up short. He glanced down the hallway. Cindy was leaning against the wall right outside the bride’s dressing room, keeping guard, but also giving him the long vacant look he knew only too well. He unabashedly scanned her entire body and let her see he couldn’t wait to get her naked.
She abruptly turned, blushing.
Perfect.
Several minutes later, T.J. thought he might have to prop Frankie up he was so pale. “You okay?”
“Fuck you,” Frankie whispered a little too loudly. Mrs. Moore in the front pew frowned. Her eyes swept over the row of SEALs, but zeroed back in on T.J.’s face with an admonition he couldn’t mistake. Merely the little tilt of her chin down and the knotted brow told him he was on probation. Didn’t help he’d given Frankie more tequila than he usually drank in a whole month. Frankie was spacing out and losing track of where they were and what they had to do next. T.J. had never seen him so fuckin’ scared. Even in firefights overseas.
So he’d screwed up, been a bad influence on the groom.
So what else is new?
With a past of foster care home rejections and “repositioning” he was used to being on probation. It felt normal. Not until he got into BUD/S did he feel like he’d found home. A real home. Guys who finally shared his intensity for life and irreverence for batshit rules that everyone else thought applied to him. The SEAL’s ethos was the only set of rules he wanted to live by. And the beginning pretty much said it all:
In times of war or uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.
…I am that man.
He didn’t have to be a perfect man, and hell, there were very few on the Teams. He was good enough. He’d never be perfect anyway, and who would want to be? No, he was that guy who wouldn’t give up. That was all it was. Not ringing the bell. No matter what.
He thought about it while he watched Shannon’s white dress fill the aisle as she began her stately walk along the burgundy carpet to her willing but completely shitfaced groom. Her father was proud, as any father would be, to have such a radiant daughter, pink and soft in all the right places. She possessed the steady gait of a fearless warrior princess, and the purposeful way she advanced, like she was intent on a plan she was going to fully execute, was just like any SEAL. Her eyes nailed Frankie, who didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into.
That made T.J. smile and check out his shoes. She was the kind of woman who would call the shots, run the household, run Frankie, manage the hell out of his schedule and get her future soccer players up on time and off to everything moms did with a house full of hellions. He saw lots of them in their future for some reason. Kids with snotty noses and hair a bit too long. Band-Aids and skinned knees. All the things he never had as a child.
But he’d watched those kids play through chain-link fences. Watched their parents cheer. Watched the juice breaks and the encouragement he never got from a single coach or foster mom. He was never noticed. Never special.