Hot SEALs: SEALed For Life (Kindle Worlds Novella) (2 page)

Her heart still had a soft spot in it for the SEAL—always had if she wanted to be real honest with herself. Her devastation had been so complete that day, she’d stood there staring until Chris had finally raised his head from the woman and seen her gawking in shock.

Yet despite catching him with someone else, if they’d kept talking just now, Chris might have actually finagled his way back into her life. Then she’d have to go through that betrayal hell all over again. She’d discovered the hard way that she wasn’t the kind of woman who could hang on to a slippery SEAL.

Melina couldn’t prevent herself from grumbling aloud as she tucked the phone into her pocket and hobbled back to her office to call a cab.

“And that’s why when I get horny next time, I’m only letting a fellow jarhead into my pants. He better live
Semper Fi
in every sense of the phrase or I’ll kick his cheating ass too. I’m too old to deal with anyone’s shit but my own.”

The jostle Melina felt behind her made one of her crutches slip a bit as she tried to move forward. She halted where she was and looked to her side as the clumsy culprit caught up with her. Judging from his youthful face and the smirk lighting it, the bump had been enjoyed even if it hadn’t been intentional.

She snorted about having dressed appropriately as she glared. She was happy now that she’d wiggled on her split leg jeans over the freaking cast this morning.

“Sorry there, ma’am. I didn’t see your crutches. If I’d tripped on one, we’d have both been kissing pavement this morning.”

Years of facing off with green recruits had given her fortitude against dealing with young men like the one currently laughing at her. Melina spoke tersely as she nodded at the young man’s half-ass apology. She let her Latino side seep through a little as she lifted a crutch and pointed it at him in mock warning.

“At least you didn’t knock me over,
Pendejo
. Guess that was a lucky break for both of us, eh? Otherwise I might have had to chase you down and beat you.”

Both the kid and his buddies laughed even harder at her verbal retaliation. Their widening smirks over her obvious inability to chase anyone down further validated her instincts that his apology had been smart-ass instead of sincere. Her first thought was that the five of them seemed like a gang to her. They were dressed in similar clothes and had matching shitty attitudes. Did they have those sort of groups running loose around DC?

Her gaze wanted to look around for cops, but she was afraid to look away from the kid’s gaze. No way were the little shits going to cause her to break into a nervous sweat over their presence. They could screw up her time, but they weren’t going to distract her from her goal.

“Okay. I gotta run now. Hope you don’t fall over today. Later, Lady,” he said.

Melina’s eyes narrowed as the sneering kid and his friends speeded up and veered around her slow paced progress toward her destination. She’d promised herself for years that she would one day visit the Viet Nam Memorial and find her father’s name on the wall. It was one more irony in her life that her first chance to go was because of a bum foot impeding the rapid completion of her pilgrimage.

“Buck up, Melina,” she ordered herself after the five of them jogged several hundred yards ahead of her. “You knew this was a higher risk time of day to freaking do this. Get your ass moving.”

Few people were out at seven in the morning, but she’d wanted less crowds for her first visit. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to deal with seeing the name of the dead father she’d never known. There had been boyfriends and male friend-friends in her mother’s life over the years, but Rosa Maria Angel had never remarried. It had sucked being an only child with nothing but hordes of distant cousins they rarely saw. She’d often blamed her mother’s decision for why she herself had married young and badly. Joining the Marines after her divorce was really the only good decision she’d made in her life. The military had given her a sense of purpose bigger than her own deficits of character.

Every step was starting to feel like a battle. Her foot was now aching and making her tired. The damn cast was awkward… and restraining. The so-called walking cast really hadn’t been that for her. She had yet to be able to get around without both crutches.

Melinda snorted. Up ahead, she saw two lone people standing at the part of the wall she was planning to visit. “
Mierda!
Where are the freaking cops when you need them? I’ll tell you where they are, Melina Angel. They are having their damn breakfast right now like normal people would. How are you ever going to adapt to civilian life?”

In retrospect, traveling from Virginia Beach to Washington DC on a walking cast and crutches was a bad idea. She blamed the foolish idea on the Marines and all those years of doing what was needed, regardless of difficulty. You didn’t make it to her level of command wimping out every time something got hard.

Her frustration had gotten the better of her yesterday as she’d watched her squad load up and leave without her for only the second time in twenty-one years. Her spontaneous trip to the wall was born from the fucked-up rationalizing she’d done about it not being nearly as hard as what her team was doing today.

Gritting her teeth, she continued to walk—step after painful step. Damn suck-ass generator. If she’d only been a fraction faster getting out of its way. The heavy piece of equipment had strained the ropes holding it and the chopper had veered sharply with no choice. She’d dove out of the way of the swinging load, but not fast enough. Over the weeks of her recovery since she’d fallen, she’d lost count of all the comments about how she was slowing down in her old age.

Her attention snapped back to reality with the force of a stinging rubber band when the hairs on her body all raised in alarm. She noticed the five kids she’d just tangled with were now facing off with some guy—one of the two people she’d seen. She watched him tuck his kid behind him as he talked to their smart-mouth leader.

“
Qué chingados!!!
”
Swearing in her mother’s language, Melina looked around for potential help.

There was a cop off in the distance, but he was hell and far away from them… and walking steadily in the opposite direction of their location. No amount of yelling would gain his attention fast enough to thwart the problem ahead. That left just her and the guy to deal with the little irreverent shits.

Great. Just what she needed. More to deal with this morning.
Melina swore steadily under her breath as she quietly covered the rest of the distance.

“Uh… excuse me… sir.”

Gower sighed when he heard the snarky attention-getting line. There were no others nearby, so he knew the kid was addressing him. He turned slowly to face the speaker and steered his too-curious eight year old behind him at the same time.

“Stay behind me, Dillon,” he ordered, then he lifted his chin and stared hard at the talkative smart-mouth. “What can I do for you?”

Amid a shower of snickers, the four kids not speaking pulled switchblades from their pockets and flicked them open down the sides of their legs. They held them tight against the loose fabric of their pants with their hand shielding the majority of the weapon from view. No one was nearby and onlookers wouldn’t notice much from a distance.

“If you’d just pass along your wallet to us, we’ll happily be on our way,” the leader suggested with a soft but grave tone.

“There’s nothing in my wallet but my military ID, driver’s license, and plastic I’m not ever going to let you use,” Gower said coldly, his tone just as grave but not as soft. He pulled a couple twenties from his front pocket and tossed them to the ground near the speaker’s feet. “Here. That’s all you’re going to get. I suggest you take it and run.”

He watched the lead kid look down, snort, and shake his head.

“No… I don’t think so. Toss me your cell. You know I can’t let you call the cops on us.”

Sighing, Gower pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and tossed it underhanded to the kid who caught it only after almost dropping it. His friends snickered about him being clumsy but it didn’t phase the kid. He could have taken the leader out with a hard enough throw of the phone at the kid’s head, but he didn’t want to engage them with Dillon behind him. For one, his son had never seen him fight—or anyone fight—so far as he knew. And second, he for sure didn’t want Dillon to see him get cut if one of the punks got in a lucky swipe with one of those damn blades.

Everyone’s attention moved to the back of the group when two of them hit the ground and started moaning. A woman on crutches stood over the two who were now rolling around in the grass. Gower heard that both had cut themselves with their own weapons as they fell because they were now moaning about the blood.

“Whoops. My bad. Looks like I’m the one who tripped you guys this time. Now how about you give the man back his cell phone, pick up the money he gave you, and run like hell? Those blades you’re packing are illegal, you know. 911 sometimes takes a bit, but I’m guessing you won’t get far without having to ditch your hardware if you don’t start moving. Leave now and you might actually outrun them.”

Gower stood there—in shock he supposed—as another blade carrier went after her to retaliate for his friends.

“Really?” the woman said, glaring at him.

She stood on her one good foot and used her crutches to defend herself. The guy screamed in pain when one hard rubber tip smashed violently against his temple. The second she flipped in her hand so she could use the arm piece to hook his leg and take him down. The kid’s blade flew at her and she hopped on her good foot trying to miss it.

Gower couldn’t prevent a chuckle when she yelled
“Shit”
as it bounced off her thigh. If it had stuck in her leg, he’d have felt guilty as hell for laughing.

“Hey Beckett—stop staring and get these punk-asses off me. If you don’t, I’m going to tell your team that you stood there while I fought them all on my bum leg. I’ll make damn sure you catch hell for the rest of your life.”

“Who are you?” Gower demanded.

“Gee… I like you too. Thanks a lot for remembering me,” Melina said, slapping her free hand on her now bleeding leg. “Damn it. These were my favorite pair of jeans.”

Still clueless about who she was, Gower reached out and yanked the leader up closer and gently popped his chin to get his attention. His stolen cell phone fell to the ground as the kid yelled about the punch.

Dillon scrambled around both of them to retrieve his phone from where it had fallen. At least his son didn’t seem too traumatized, Gower thought.

Chuckling over his greater concern for Dillon’s mental health than any he felt in facing the punks, he lifted the now dizzy leader by the shirt until the kid’s feet cleared the ground. Then he threw him with as much force as he could into the remaining knife holder. They both went down in a pile of arms and legs.

The remaining blade fell to the grass as both kids swore and scrambled to their feet. Both also ran without looking back at their struggling comrades.

Gower’s satisfied gaze went to Dillon once more as his son yelled in triumph. He snorted when his son snatched the two twenties up from the ground.

“Look Dad. We can still eat lunch!” Dillon declared.

Gower laughed at the statement. His son showed no shock over witnessing a fight. Just concern for keeping the money. Dillon had gotten that from his mother. Maybe the kid would grow up to be an accountant or something.

Then he turned to the woman again. She’d had to put pressure on her cast to stand. Looking at the remaining kids climbing to their feet, she lifted her remaining crutch in warning. Seeing their cowardly leader running in the distance, they swore and took off in a run as well.

Putting the one solid crutch back under her arm, she hobbled over on a bum foot to pick up the other broken one. He heard her swearing softly under her breath as she examined it.

“You’re bleeding all over your clothes.” Gower stated the obvious, because she seemed to be ignoring the fact her jeans were being saturated with blood around her wound.

He watched her gaze lower from her broken crutch to her bleeding leg. Her shrug was followed by a sigh of resignation.

“Yeah. Flesh wound,” she said. “What I’m more concerned with is getting out of here on one crutch.”

Gower snorted. “No worries. Dillon and I will make sure you get back where you’re going. Seems the least we can do.”

Now that he got a good look at her, Gower finally noticed her thick black hair which was cropped very short, almost like a man’s. It was framing a very feminine face though, one with clear green eyes and unblemished olive skin.

He concluded her face was very nice, but the body inside her well-fitting clothes was equally intriguing. She’d used some serious force to knock down those kids. The woman must have some highly trained muscles to swing those heavy wooden crutches… which he suspected were military grade. If she was in the service though, why hadn’t she gotten the lighter aluminum ones?

“Still don’t recognize me, do you, Beckett?” At his blank look, Melinda snorted and shook her head. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I didn’t know you at first either. Civilian clothes tend to change things.”

“I’m working on it. You sound familiar. Am I supposed to recognize you?” Gower asked, walking closer.

Melina lifted a shoulder before repositioning her crutch under her arm. “No… probably not. I’m not the kind of woman men tend to remember, especially SEALs.”

Gower felt an eyebrow go up. How did she know he was a SEAL? “I’m not sure what I’m hearing in that comment. Did we ever…
you know
?” He glanced discreetly at his son.

Her laughter rang out loudly around all three of them. It was genuine and from the gut. Gower noticed his son couldn’t look away from her anymore than he could.

“No, Lieutenant Beckett. We did not do anything you forgot. As I recall, even after you turned thirty you still tended to date the college age daughters of your superiors.”