SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (142 page)

“You want to date me?”

“Wrong question. Do
you
want to date
me
?”

Oh, yes.
Her girl parts had definitely cast their vote. The hope that sprang up in her was stupid. Luke was a nice guy, and he was only asking her out on a date because that was what nice guys did when they met a girl they wanted to sleep with.

“Is
date
a euphemism for
have wild sex with
?” Because she totally rocked the sex thing.

He snorted. “You’ve got a one-track mind.”

Well, yes, but no one had ever complained about that before. “Guys don’t come knocking on my door because they like the way I think.”

And again, that was true. She was easy, and Strong’s guys got lonely too or wanted a quick hookup.

“Give me two weeks.” He looked at her, and she couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. The man had a poker face that didn’t quit, but his body language screamed all sorts of things. Like
interested
and
in her space
. So what did he want? Two weeks of exclusivity? Two weeks of marathon sex? Two weeks before they
started
any of the above? That last option would probably kill her, so it was definitely time to seek clarification.

“To do what exactly?”

“To convince you to be mine.”

Wow. He didn’t pull any punches. “I’m not into the whole possessive caveman thing.”

He shrugged. “I’m not going to drag you off by the hair, but I think we belong together and I want a shot at convincing you.”

Definitely
time to establish some ground rules. “No kinky stuff. No ropes, no bondage, no demanding I call you Sir or Master. You don’t get to ask where I’ve been or what I’m doing.”

Although she preferred to break rules rather than follow them herself, he was a guy, and guys, like pets, did best with some guidelines. Sometimes, when she got too lonely, she’d treat herself to a guy. Have a little sex, have a little fun. If her loaner guys tended to think less of her because she wasn’t a virgin princess who’d been saving herself for the one perfect man, that was their problem. In all truth, the female population of Northern California should be thanking her because she was like quality control for the dating pool. She’d probably found every single loser out there.

Then Luke said the magic words. “I dare you.”

“Really? Are we ten?” Never mind that glee warred with excitement somewhere near the pit of her stomach—or lower. God, who knew Luke Dawson could be so much fun
out
of bed?

His answering grin was slow, wicked, and downright panty melting. “Does that mean you’re not going to do it?”

He had her number. He also had the most gorgeous brown eyes. It simply wasn’t fair for a guy to have such long lashes—or to know how to use them. Because she was almost certain that Luke was working her. For some reason, he really, really wanted to date her. She’d tried to tell him that she didn’t require euphemisms. If he wanted sex, she was on board with that plan. It would be nice to have someone to spend the nights with, a little less lonely making, although it was going to get awkward fast since she was currently between places.

“Stop thinking so hard,” he said.

Funny how most guys believed she didn’t think at all but Luke was convinced her head worked overtime. That was kind of nice too, being appreciated for her more than her boobs.

She made one more attempt to explain. “I don’t date. I just have sex. Most guys don’t have a problem with that.”

He stared steadily back at her. “I’m not most guys.”

Hello, Captain Obvious. “I like variety.”

It was always easier to be the one who walked away. She’d learned that the hard way. She had a feeling that if Luke walked on her this time, she wouldn’t be able to wave it off like it didn’t matter. There was something about him. Something that told her he’d be the kind of man you wanted to keep by your side even if she didn’t do permanent.

“And I’d like a chance to convince you otherwise.”

“We need ground rules.”

He snorted. “I thought you were anti-the-rules.”

“Most of the time.” It was true she’d never met a rule she didn’t need to break, but apparently, Luke was going to be the exception to that particular rule.

He nodded slowly. “I get to date you. For two weeks.”

Yeah. He’d already stated that particular need, so she got to make a demand of her own. “And I get to have hot monkey sex with you.”

Grin curving his mouth, he stepped closer, between her legs. “You’re going to have to define ‘monkey sex’ for me, but I’m happy to oblige. Tell me where to pick you up tomorrow.”

Crap. That was a problem. She chewed on her lower lip while she thought it over. “I’m probably going to be at Laura Jo’s.”

The small pucker in his forehead said it all. Mr. I-Can-Fix-Everything had just smelled a potential issue. “Just give me your address. I promise I’m not going to stalk you.”

“Yeah. Problem. I’m between places.”

Silence.

She snuck a peek at his face, but he clearly had come to the correct conclusion.

“You were camping in your car because you lost your apartment,” he said.

It didn’t sound good when he put it that way. “It’s not a problem. I’ll have the deposit for a new place in another week or two.”

He exhaled roughly, clearly moving on to problem number two. “Tell me all your stuff wasn’t in that car.”

It was just stuff. It sucked to lose it, but she had Vicious and she wasn’t dead. Those were two wins for the Plus column right there. “I put some of it in a friend’s garage, but yeah… I’d like to get my car back.”

He cursed, but she didn’t think it was directed at her. “I’ll pick you up at Laura Jo’s tomorrow at ten.”

They needed to finish getting their ground rules straight. “Is that our first date?”

Part of her really hoped he’d say no, but that piece certainly wasn’t her girly bits or any other hormone-affected part of her body. She had one secret she’d managed to keep. It was funny, really. The rest of her life was pretty much an open book. Living in Strong, California pretty much from birth until her thirty-second birthday two months and six days ago (which meant she could no longer pretend that she was “almost” or “just” thirty), everyone knew everything about her, from her first grade report card (the start of a not-so-illustrious school career) to who she’d dated.

And there had been lots of dates.
First
dates.

He gave her a look that she couldn’t quite interpret but then nodded. “It’s a date.”

Okay then. Perhaps she should warn him. Somehow she never made it to the second, third, and fourth dates. She was easily bored, too hard to please, and almost always plagued with buyer’s remorse.

The guy who’d looked so good the night before when he’d been buying her drinks at the bar tended to look not so hot the morning after when he was flat on his back and snoring in whatever cheap motel room they’d ended up in. The night before, she’d been convinced that he was The One or at least Someone Who Mattered.

If he slept with her, she could almost convince herself that
she
mattered. He’d liked her enough to stick with her, which counted for something. She’d made him feel good, and while her mouth was sliding up and down his penis, she’d been the center of his goddamned universe. A goddess and not a loser, a screwup, or a disappointment. That was the power of the orgasm right there.

Unfortunately, right after the orgasm (and sometimes “right after” had really
meant
right after, leading to painful memories she preferred to forget), her guy had remembered an appointment, a work obligation, any face-saving excuse to slink out of their shared motel room and hit the road. She’d gotten pretty good at guessing which excuse she’d be hearing.

The other disadvantage to living in a small town was that the dating pool was horribly small. While she hit up Sacramento whenever she got too lonely, most of the time she was in Strong—and Strong had precisely one bar and a dearth of eligible men. She wasn’t all that picky—single, decent hygiene, and a place of his own because she never, ever took a guy back to her place.

Conveniently, since she was between places and her car was sitting out in a campground by its solitary self, she wouldn’t be able to break that rule.

See? Another win for the Plus column.

‡

T
he hotshot team
had returned to the ten-thousand-acre burn. Someone, somewhere, would come up with a clever name because people were always labeling stuff, but for now Luke just thought of it as the Campground Fire. The flames had jumped the hill all right, burning through the campground like a marshmallow on a stick. He was just grateful that he’d been able to find Deelie and get her the hell out of there.

The team had spent the night of the fire on scene, catching catnaps on the ground and in the back of the trucks. Good thing he hadn’t made Deelie wait for him, because she would have been in for a long night. After they’d cut themselves a semblance of a safety zone, they’d spent the night busting spot fires because, even after a fire had passed through, hotspots would break out for the next few days as smoldering trees went up and leftover embers found fuel to work with. As a result, the team had dug ash for the next twelve hours straight. By the time he’d staggered into Ma’s, he’d been out in the field for four straight days and had just had his first shower of the week.

Yeah. He’d singlehandedly blown the romantic stereotype of the firefighter to hell and back. He stank. His eyes were bloodshot. And all he really wanted was a twelve-hour nap on a decent mattress.

Fortunately for him, he wasn’t shacked up in the bunkhouse for the temporaries. Some of the locals like him had their own places, so he wouldn’t be fighting for hot water that way. He had plenty of room for Deelie too.

Focus on the work
. A cockstand right now would be embarrassing as hell, but he didn’t seem to be able to stop thinking about her. The way her chin went up right before she insisted on doing something impossible. That grin she got when before she said something outrageous. And the way her body all but melted into his, in the best kind of invitation…

He drove his Pulaski down into the dirt.
Dig more. Fantasize less.
Today’s line needed to be five feet wide and two inches deep. Given the rocklike consistency of the dirt, digging wasn’t going to be quick.

A Pulaski slammed into the ground beside him, and he shot a glance left. Pick nodded briefly, matching his Pulaski to Luke’s rhythm. “Saw you dancing with Deelie Jacks last night.”

The downside to working a twenty-man crew was that everyone knew his business.

“If you can call it dancing.” Baryshnikov he was not, although Deelie hadn’t complained.

“Didn’t know you were tapping that,” the guy said, oblivious to the sudden surge of anger that had Luke’s fingers tightening on the tool’s handle. The trench was only eighteen inches deep, which was nowhere near deep enough to bury a body. Plus Pick undoubtedly had motorcycle-club friends who were probably of the eye-for-an-eye opinion.

“She’s a friend. I pulled her ass out of our fire. She wanted to buy me a beer.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“Uh-huh,” Pick said mildly.

Luke had no idea how the guy could put so much subtext into two syllables. “You might as well say it.”

“You don’t drink.” Pick pounded his Pulaski into the iron-hard dirt.

“It was a gesture.”

A nice one too even if Deelie hadn’t had any way of knowing he was on the wagon. She’d worked around it. He had to smile remembering the cherry-filled Coke. Sweet as shit, that stuff, and kind of funny too. Deelie wasn’t predictable.

Pick paused and leaned on his Pulaski. The guy looked like a zebra, his face ash-striped. Not that Luke himself was winning any prizes in the looks department—he had ash in places ash had no business being. “Deelie gets lonely. Hell, man, we all get lonely sometimes, and I’m not judging her for that. Or maybe she just really, really likes sex.”

“You really want to go there?” Luke muttered.

Apparently, Pick did, because the idiot kept right on talking. “She’s hooked up with half the guys in Strong.”

“Maybe you all suck in bed. Did you ever think of that?”

He was
not
going to ask if Pick had slept with Deelie.

Pick shrugged. “I’m not worried about my dick’s performance, but she tries on guys like my last girlfriend tried on shoes.”

Hitting his teammate with his Pulaski wouldn’t be nice, but it would be satisfying. Unfortunately, it would leave the hotshots short a man right as fire season was heating up, so Luke restrained himself. He deserved a fucking medal for being such a team player.

Pick cursed as Luke “accidentally” dropped a load of dirt on the guy’s boots. “Deelie’s a legend. Every week has a weekend—and she’s the weekend gal. She’s fun and she’s all about the good times, but her relationships come with a forty-eight-hour shelf life. She’s just not the kind of woman you go home to.”

“People change.” He’d survived more than one firefight in Afghanistan by listening to his gut, and right now his gut said Deelie was exactly right for him. Joining the hotshots had been his fresh start. He’d cashed out of the SEALs, earned a shiny new degree in forestry management on Uncle Sam’s dime, and now he had a new team at his back. When the guys weren’t going all Dr. Phil on his life, they had his back. What he didn’t have was a good woman in his bed or his heart. He planned to fix that.