Trusting the SEAL (Saving the SEALs Series Book 3) (3 page)

He started to put his phone away when it buzzed again. Spencer pulled it back out and snorted at the new text, this one from Scotty, the team’s hand-to-hand combat expert who was flying commercial coach with the rest of the guys.

On the heels of that message came another, this time from Gage, their explosives guru.

Spencer sighed and shut off the device before jamming it back into the pocket of his jeans. He and the guys had played poker well into the night the evening before and he’d unwisely bet Gage he couldn’t sneak a C4 pack and his handgun into his carry-on bag past the TSA agents. Honestly, Spencer should’ve known better, especially considering the guy had helped design the new safety protocols the TSA agents were now following, but he’d had one too many beers and his mind was still partially preoccupied with a certain brunette who was strictly off limits.

Besides, needling Gage was fun these days, with all the romance novel covers his girlfriend, Anna, had shot of him finally hitting the virtual shelves this week. Spencer couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed as hard as he did when he saw an oiled-up, plastic sword wielding Gage decked out as a Viking marauder.

He chuckled. Talk about pussies.

“What are you laughing at over there?” Toni asked, drawing his attention to her once more, not that it had ever gone far.

“Nothing.” Spencer settled back into his corner of the bench seat for the nearly seven-hour flight ahead. “Funny text from a friend.”

“Hmm.” She closed her laptop and pulled a blanket around herself tight. “Well, you better get some sleep now. Things will be crazy once we arrive.”

“Yes, mother.”

She hurled a pencil at his head and he ducked to avoid it.

“Hey now. I’m pretty sure the tossing of sharp objects within the fuselage is considered a violation of safety laws,” he teased.

Toni stuck her tongue out at him then pummeled her flimsy airplane pillow with more force than was necessary. Given this was Coran Williams’ private plane, he’d half-expected everything in here to be plated in gold and sparkling with diamonds. Instead it was the standard brown leather and all-purpose dark carpet.

Coran Williams wasn’t known as a style maven per se, but the man did love to flaunt his wealth when he could, at least from what Spencer had seen in the tabloids. Homes around the world, an art collection to rival most museums, fancy sports cars galore. Word had it the man hadn’t set foot in a department store himself since Eisenhower was president, as evidenced by the fact the guy dressed like Montgomery Burns from the Simpsons, all creased jeans and Italian loafers. Then again, someone with a net worth greater than many small countries needn’t bother with buying his own clothes, he supposed. Personal shoppers for the rich and famous were a dime a dozen these days.

Spencer closed his eyes, hoping to avoid the dreaded jet lag ahead, only to open them again moments later as Toni cursed and changed positions. He watched her fuss and cuss for several seconds, then quirked a sardonic brow in her direction. “Problem?”

“No. Yes.” She punched the pillow again and scowled. “I can’t get comfortable.”

“So, you think beating up the pillow will help?”

She flipped him off in response.

Every time Spencer thought he might be about to drift off, a muttered oath or a violent pillow punch from Toni would jolt him back to wakefulness. Finally, once they’d taken off and the Fasten Seatbelts sign cleared, he unclicked his belt and waggled his fingers at her. “C’mon.”

“What?” Toni snapped, decidedly cranky.

He patted his shoulder and grinned. He knew he was pushing boundaries, but he had his reasons. “Let’s snuggle.”

“I am
not
snuggling with you.” She tucked her body into a tight ball. “You’re my employee.”

“Exactly. Meaning you’re paying me to be your pillow.”

“I’m paying you to be my bodyguard.”

“Which I’ll do an even better job at if I get adequate sleep. Which I won’t be able to do with you swearing like a sailor every two seconds and causing a ruckus.”

“I was not causing a ruckus,” her tone sounded as outraged as she looked. Still, with her dark eyes glittering and her cheeks flushed, Spencer couldn’t remember ever seeing a prettier sight. “And I can’t help it if I’m preoccupied.”

“Preoccupied? By what?”

“Everything.” She curled her stockinged toes under and he had the crazy urge to pull off her fuzzy pink socks and suck said toes until she screamed with pleasure. “Flying isn’t exactly my forte, okay?”

“Kind of strange for a gal in your line of work, isn’t it?”

“I can’t help it. Sorry.”

Spencer watched her for a long moment, her whole demeanor tense and scared and something inside him, tight and knotted, unfurled. He took a deep breath and patted his shoulder again. “C’mon.”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

“Right. You’ll be sleeping
on
me. Nothing untoward, I promise. Women tell me I make a very comfortable pillow. I come highly recommended.”

“How nice for you.” The snark in her tone made him grin.

“Well, it’s your loss.” He relaxed back into his corner and closed his eyes, the weight of her stare making him want to pull her closer despite his resolve to steer clear. After several seconds, he peeked one eye open to see her scooting a tiny bit nearer. “I don’t bite,” he said. “Unless you like that sort of thing.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.” The fact he liked a bit of pain with his pleasure wasn’t something he was really ready to share with her. He didn’t know why he’d even let that slip. Instead of answering, he closed his eyes again. “See you in Jubail.”

She waited to make her move until he was almost asleep, until he’d managed to get his mind quiet, to push away every thought of just how close she sat beside him and how much he wanted her pressed into him again. He just barely registered her saying, “Dammit,” under her breath and then, a millisecond later, her warmth moved in alongside him, her head slowly coming to rest on his chest.

He made himself stay still, forced his breathing to stay low, though he was certain she could hear his heart pounding, especially when she clutched the front of his shirt.

It took every ounce of willpower he had not to pull Toni across him and stroke every inch of her luscious curves. Instead, he let her settle in and kept his hands to himself as his body tightened involuntary. Okay. Perhaps this hadn’t been his most brilliant idea ever after all.

“I’m only doing this because I need my rest too,” she whispered. “I’ve never slept well alone.”

“Of course,” he rasped. The smell of roses from her perfume and the citrusy fragrance of her shampoo blended into an intoxicating cocktail. Eyes squeezed shut, he did his best to snooze. It had been too long since he’d had a woman. That had to be it. Totally explained his complete overreactions to her. Toni Williams was his target, his job, his employer. Not to mention the fact Kyle would have Spencer’s ass in a sling if he got personally involved with her.

Still, as she snuggled closer and his arms somehow found their way around her and they both drifted off to dreamtime, all Spencer could see in his mind was the two of them together, entwined in satin sheets of the deepest scarlet, her dark hair curling down her back as she rode him hard to orgasm after orgasm.

“
G
et
your lazy ass up and help me load this gear…”

Nick’s wide grin loomed over Spencer’s face, the hot desert sun beating down.

Spencer groaned then yawned and stretched as Nick kicked his booted feet hard. “Fine. I’m up. I’m up.”

He scrubbed a hand through his buzz-cut red hair and swung the nearest bundle of supplies over his shoulder toward the awaiting transport truck. “Bet you can’t wait to get home, eh, buddy?”

“Got that right.” Nick glanced at Spencer over his shoulder before facing front again. “Can’t wait to hold my Natalie. Marriage is the best thing ever, bud. You should try it.”

“Yeah, right,” Spencer said, skeptical. “And maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass too.”

Gage snorted from behind him. “Give me a heads up before that happens dude, so I can get the hell out of the way.”

“If you ladies are done yapping, let’s get this shit loaded so we can get on the road.” Kyle stood in the back of the truck, hands on hips, grinning down at his brother. “That okay with you, team leader?”

“Sounds like a pl—”

The shot came out of nowhere, clipping Gage’s right earlobe then whizzing past Spencer before he even knew what was going on. Next thing there was blood and who knows what else everywhere and Nick was lying face down at his feet. Kyle cursed as Gage tackled Spencer to the ground and the world tilted on its axis.

There was something warm and sticky on his hands.

Blood. Nick’s blood, mixed with chunks of—Spencer’s stomach rioted.

Fuck. Oh, fuck…

Spencer snapped awake, blinked into the bright afternoon sun streaming in through the airplane windows. It took him a moment to realize where he was, who he was, and that the warm weight of Toni resting against him was gone. He squinted around the cabin trying to locate her, the drone of the jet engines humming loud. She couldn’t have gone far, he knew. They were airborne after all, and the only parachutes were in the locked front cabin with the pilot, as his comprehensive search the day before had shown. So, yeah. Straightening, he rolled his stiff neck and shook off the painful images of his buddy’s death.

Truth was, he hadn’t been sleeping all that well since that bogus article about him had made front page news in Coran’s tabloid and dredged up memories best left buried. Hell, he’d loved Nick like a brother. All the guys felt the same. In fact, the guy
was
Kyle’s flesh and blood younger brother. To be accused of his murder, even by some trashy news outlets that no one believed anyway, hurt. Big time.

Not as much as the intense scrutiny of the Navy they’d had to endure after the murder, of course. Nor was it worse than being forced to sit through congressional hearings and law enforcement inquisitions, each man on the team made to relive the excruciating moment when their beloved team leader, Nick, had taken a bullet to the back of his head, his skull exploding right before their eyes, over and over and over again.

Thank God, Commander Brighton had assigned them on the down low to search for Nick’s killer themselves. Staying busy had been their salvation, keeping them focused and preventing them from drowning in the sorrow they all felt from the loss of their friend.

Still, the dreams had never been quite this vivid before.

Hoping to take his mind off the horrible images still circulating in his head, Spencer sat up and grabbed Toni’s e-reader from the seat beside him, flicking on the screen and staring at the pages of the same romance book his teammate Gage had gone undercover at Williams Publishing to find. Too bad they’d discovered afterward that the dumb book came pre-loaded on all of Coran Williams’ donated devices and this story written by Nick’s widow under her pen name, N.T. Smalls, had already been distributed to countless readers worldwide. The same story Hayley was working on, trying to crack the encryption and find the secret SHEEPSKIN network codes.

So the fact the book was on Toni’s device didn’t concern him. The fact she’d had it open and was reading it did. He’d started to let his guard down with her, but this was a reminder that she might be more in cahoots with her father than she was letting on.

He scrunched his nose and scrolled forward several pages in the book, scanning the words without really reading them. And then there was Michael Becks. A former Navy SEAL himself, he’d gone rogue against his own team and killed them all in the jungle, setting fire to their corpses to go in search of this damned file too. He’d resorted to kidnapping Anna, bribing Natalie, even joining forces with some crooked FBI agents to try and get this romance novel. Man, if Spencer ever got his hands on that deep-fried turdbiscuit, he’d make goddamned sure Becks rued the day he’d ever been born.

Spencer sighed, squinted at one of the sentences, then grimaced.
Throbbing manhood? Jesus, did people actually read this crap?

Shaking his head, he tossed the e-reader aside and stared out the window at the white clouds and hints of the blue Arabian Sea thirty-five thousand feet below. Not much chance of any throbbing body parts on his horizon, not with the only female on his present radar being his heiress target whom he’d been warned by his team leader to steer clear of under threat of very slow, very painful death.

Good thing it wouldn’t be a problem. And, of course, there was his persnickety ways where women were concerned. Cold as ice, that tabloid had called him. He gave a derisive snort. The opposite was true actually. Just because they’d interviewed the last girl he’d dumped, the one who’d started talking love and marriage the second she’d woken up beside him, before she even knew a thing about him. And since when was having high standards a sin?

Spencer wanted what his grandparents had—their level of commitment and trust and honesty—and wouldn’t settle for less. End of story.

Restless, he pushed to his feet, heading for a small mini-bar and pulling out a bottle of OJ. He’d just cracked the cap off when the sound of a door opening echoed behind him.

Glancing over his shoulder, Spencer stopped mid-sip at the sight of Toni. She’d changed and was now wearing a crisp white sheath dress that hugged her curves in all the right places. Her hair and makeup were also done to perfection, just enough to enhance her already pretty face, but nothing too heavily applied or bright. She eyed him warily from where she stood. There was nothing trashy or overtly sexual about how she looked—perfect for the highly conservative Muslim area they’d be visiting—yet he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. In truth, she just might be the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.

Toni gave him a small half smile, pretty pink coloring her cheeks. “Do I look all right?”

Momentarily speechless, Spencer lowered his bottle of juice and faced her, taking her in from the tips of her sensible white flats to the top of her head, her dark hair slicked back into a low ponytail. Throat tight, he forced the words out. “Uh, yeah. You look…uh. Wow!”

Her smile grew and his pulse pounded loud in his ears. “Thanks.”

He nodded, not sure what to do next. “So.”

“So.” She walked over to where she’d stashed her storyboards at the beginning of the flight. “I don’t usually stress about these presentations, but this one is special. Initial reports from the sheik’s assistant said they were expecting several thousand people for the initial PR spot at the airport alone.”

“That’s impressive.”

“Yeah.” She smoothed a hand down the back of her skirt before taking a seat and Spencer couldn’t help following the movement with his gaze, wishing it were him running his hands over her pert little ass. “Important too. If I can get Sheik Saaed and his allies on board, I’ll have access to their vast distribution channels. This could be huge for our foundation. We could get these e-readers into the hands of children all over the country, including some of the remote desert tribes.”

“Remote desert tribes?”

“Yes, like the ones you mentioned before. Some of the outlying provinces in the mountains, a few along the borders too.”

Spencer chugged his juice then stashed the empty bottle in the seat pocket. If Kyle’s hunches were right and those so-called tribes were part of SHEEPSKIN’s network, then they’d be ripe for radicalization and those e-readers would play right into the terrorists’ hands. In fact, word from some of his buddies still working in black ops said there were some major dormant cells of rebels lurking in those outlying regions.
Shit.
He needed to let Kyle know so the team could be ready to provide extra security, if needed. If those rebel bastards tried to hijack one of Toni’s PR events and took her captive to gain access to her father’s media feeds or worse, killed her for the simple reason she was a high-profile US citizen…

“You better get changed,” she said, glancing up at him. “We’ll be there in about an hour.”

“Right.” Spencer forced his tense muscles to relax and unclenched his fists, walking to the back area and grabbed his garment bag and his polished dress shoes along with his charged cell phone. This case would put him in the public eye more than usual, as he would need to stick close to Toni’s side during her appearances. Plus, he didn’t get many opportunities to dress to the nines in his line of work, so he liked to make damned sure he looked fine as hell when he did. He opened the door to the tiny airplane bathroom, then called to her over his shoulder. “Be out in a bit.”

“Take your time,” she said, without looking at him. “We won’t land for at least an hour.”

After sending Kyle a quick update, he stripped and took a quick shower in the tiny space provided, toweled off and shaved before pulling on a crisp black suit. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, especially for a guy of his height and build, but Spencer did the best he could. Finally, he knotted his emerald green tie in a perfect Windsor knot, then gave himself one last once-over before exiting. Not exactly GQ cover model, but it would have to do.

He put away his garment bag then walked back to the front of the plane, doing a quick mental rundown of all the things he needed to handle once they landed. Assess the area, coordinate with the local security forces, contact Kyle again to let them know they’d landed safely then get the location of their team’s next rendezvous point.

Spencer glanced over at Toni and bit back a grin at her lingering appraisal of him. Her gaze traveled over him from head to toe and left a tingle trail of awareness over his skin in its wake.

To distract himself from the pink rising in her cheeks and the way she was biting her lower lip, he pulled down his carry-on bag from the overhead compartment then strapped on his holstered weapon around his waist, only to hear Toni gasp. Spencer swiveled to face her, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“Is that necessary?”

“What?” He scrunched his nose. “You mean my gun?”

“Yes.”

“Considering the possible circus we may walk into down there and the fact terrorists have ramped up their attacks in this area recently, I’d say yeah. It’s necessary.” He pulled out his Desert Eagle and chambered a round before clicking the safety back on and returning it into its holster. “Don’t tell me you’re one of
those
people.”

Indignation sparked in her eyes at his disdainful tone. “If by ‘those people’ you mean, intelligent individuals who prefer non-violence to bloodshed, then yes.” She used air quotes for emphasis. “I’m one of ‘those people’.”

Perfect.

Spencer shook his head and took his seat, refastening his seatbelt. Now, she wasn’t just a beautiful, bullheaded, bewildering distraction. She was against one of the fundamental aspects of his job too. “Sometimes sacrifices are necessary for peace, you know. Sometimes good people have to do bad things for very good reasons.”

She harrumphed. “I disagree.”

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m in charge of your security and you’re in charge of smiling and looking pretty for the camera.” He picked up a nearby copy of that day’s newspaper and flicked it open, effectively blocking her out.

“Excuse me?” Her angry tone made her voice lower and damn if he didn’t feel that husky vibration all the way in his groin. Annoyed, he shifted in his seat and did his best to concentrate on the reasons why he and this woman would never work. As she laid into him, he tried not to think about how he wanted her more right now than his next breath. “What I do for a living is much more than smile and look pretty. My work has value and importance and can change people’s lives. And what does your work do? What positive thing comes out of beating people up and threatening them?”

“Is that what you think I do?” he shot back at her. “You think I’m just some glorified thug? Let me tell you something, lady. You hired me to protect you and that’s exactly what I intend to do, by any means necessary. And just because I carry a weapon doesn’t mean I go around shooting at anything that moves. I’m licensed to carry and better trained to use this gun than ninety-nine percent of people on the planet. I only pull the trigger as a last resort, when all other methods of defense have failed and only after weighing the cost of sacrifice I’m making. You think it’s easy to kill a target? Even when that kill is justified? Well think again.” He forced himself to breathe and relax his stiff jaw. “Taking a life is never easy. Never. And if it is, then you better stop and seriously reconsider your life choices because you have gone down a dark and demented path. A path so twisted I can’t imagine you’ll survive. So don’t ever presume to know what I’m thinking or feeling about what I do or the weapons I carry, okay?”

Adrenaline and sexual energy buzzing through his system, Spencer lowered the paper and glared at her while the captain’s cheerful voice echoed over the PA system once more. “Please fasten your seatbelts and stow all of your mobile devices. We’ve been cleared for landing at Al-Hambra International Airport and should be on the ground in Jubail in approximately twenty minutes.”

They eyed each other across the space of the cabin in stony silence.

Finally, Toni tucked her story boards next to her seat again then buckled her seatbelt, mumbling under her breath about stubborn, exasperating men, while pointedly not looking at him.