Pleasing Her SEAL(33)

"Understood," he said, because he did. He'd had his chance. He'd blown  it. He and Maddie being anything more than a quick vacation hookup had  been a fantasy, and fantasies stayed on Fantasy Island.





14

TONIGHT'S MISSION HAD been the SEAL version of ringing the doorbell and  running. Mason's unit had been tapped to bring in one of the Marcos  brothers' higher-profile lieutenants. The lieutenant, being neither  stupid nor possessing a death wish, had gone to ground inside a compound  just outside Belize City. The guy had played possum for so long that  the higher-ups had started to wonder if he'd had another escape route  planned and backdoored it out of the compound unseen. Mason and Levi had  been charged with spooking the guy. Catch a ride on the Black Hawk,  drop in and make a little noise. See if anyone startled and ran.

The chopper set down, hovering over the ground and kicking up a cloud  of dust. The rotors chewed up the air, announcing their arrival with a  loud whap-whap-whap only a dead man could have missed. He and Levi  jumped down and started a quick run toward the compound walls.

"Maybe next time the CO will issue us cowbells," Levi quipped, stroking  a hand down the barrel of his cut-down grenade launcher. The man liked  things that went boom a little too much sometimes.

"Or get us some instruments and we could lead the parade." Behind them,  the Black Hawk lifted off. The pilot would make a few circles and be  back to extract them in ten minutes, unless they discovered their target  hiding inside.

Mason doubted it, though. The place was terminally sleepy, a small  collection of run-down houses that didn't even qualify as a town. In  addition to one small square that was little more than hard-packed dirt,  there was a sorry-looking tree, a dilapidated church and one street.  Set back two hundred yards from all that exciting action, the  lieutenant's compound was the biggest, the windows covered with iron  bars. It needed a paint job, though.

He got on the radio. "We got any signs of movement?"

"Negative" came the spotter's voice.

Okay, then.

He took a knee against the wall and looked at Levi. "You ready to ring the bell?"

"Hooyah." Levi flashed him a thumbs-up and then took aim, firing a stun grenade over the compound wall.

Lights flew on at the other houses. There were plenty of folks home  there. Mason watched as the metal grille covering the nearest house  slammed open, Mrs. Homeowner storming out to give someone a piece of her  mind. She skidded to a halt four steps outside her door when the Black  Hawk started to descend. A guy who was likely her husband came barreling  out the door behind her, pulling on her arm to get her to back up.

"True love." Levi sighed as the couple retreated inside. "A woman like  that would be perfect for us. Too bad we can't invite her along."

Mason did his job. He went in, he kicked ass, he pulled out. It was a  nice, simple formula that worked for him. He'd never considered getting  married again. His marriage with Bethany was proof enough that he wasn't  husband material. He didn't check any of the boxes on those magazine  quizzes about the perfect guy and the perfect husband.                       
       
           


       

But the perfect woman? He had a bad feeling that he'd watched her  gorgeous ass storm away from him on a naval cruiser. As soon as he'd  gotten Maddie to the ship waiting off the coast of Belize, she'd walked  away without so much as a backward glance, a muttered curse or an  attempt to get even. He'd seen SEAL teams take a stretch of sand with  less determination. Her initial hurt and anger weren't unexpected, but  her willingness to believe he cared for her? Yeah. That was a knee to  the emotional balls he hadn't realized he'd grown. A woman hadn't made  him think about playing for keeps since Bethany.

Which made this whole situation with Maddie difficult. He'd been  pursuing her since he'd spotted her on Fantasy Island, and he wasn't  good at the whole dating thing. In fact, he pretty much sucked at it.  The sex was fantastic, but he was seriously out of practice at having a  relationship. Maybe he should have been asking Gray for pointers,  because the last he'd heard, his lieutenant commander was getting mighty  serious with the surgeon he'd met on Fantasy Island.

Levi eyed him. "You gonna sulk all night? Or are you just striving for perfection as the strong, silent type?"

"Don't push your luck." He wasn't in the mood for Levi's brand of shit.

"Okay." Levi bumped his shoulder companionably. "Then, think less  loudly about your AWOL girl, because your mental whining is louder than  the skeeters they're growing down here, and it's clear Mr. Fantasy  Fodder misses Maddie."

"I'm never living that down, am I?"

"In about a century." Levi sounded way too cheerful. "She took photos  of your ass and shared them with ten thousand women. You're an internet  sensation."

"I'm imagining introducing your head to my fists. Or the ground," he growled.

Levi, being Levi, didn't back off. Nope. He just wiggled his hips  suggestively and kept right on talking as they sprinted toward the  extract point. "You're gonna have to watch out for the paparazzi next  time you're on the mainland. You'll have women stuffing dollar bills in  your wetsuit."

"Maddie's better off without me," he said, because he wasn't touching Levi's vision of him as a male stripper.

His teammate blended into the shadows, dropping low as the Black Hawk  started to drop overhead. "You bet. Santiago's neutralized and she's  back on her home turf. She doesn't need a bodyguard. If I was the kind  of guy who had feelings, though, I'd tell you I was worried about you."

Okay. Despite knowing that he should let her go because she deserved  far better than his sorry ass, that didn't really make him feel any  better. Bottom line? He couldn't stand the idea of losing her for good.  He wanted to be with Maddie in ways that had nothing to do with standing  guard from the shadows and everything to do with that relationship he  didn't know how to have.

"I don't know how to do this."

"Sure you do. You wait until the chopper is about two feet above the  ground and then you run like hell, hoping the Marcos brothers haven't  hired a team of snipers to shoot at your fine ass."

"Relationships," he gritted out, surveying their surroundings. Given  the lack of welcoming gunfire, he doubted the lack of movement inside  the compound was a decoy. "I'm completely out of practice at having one.  Hell, I'm reading articles from girlie magazines."

"Actually, you're following the directions." From the gleeful  expression on Levi's face, the other SEAL was enjoying this way too  much.

"Screw you," he said, without heat, because Levi was right. It was kind  of desperate, but this was Maddie... Apparently, he'd do whatever it  took to win her. He hated the idea that he'd lost her.

"If we're getting our grade school on, I need to tell you that I think  Maddie likes you. I should probably write it down and pass the note to  you in study hall, but I'll give you the heads-up now since we're going  to be busy extracting later on."

"She doesn't like me." Funny how that hurt. "She likes Mr. Fantasy  Fodder, aka the guy pretending to be her perfect boyfriend based on a  bunch of stupid magazine articles."                       
       
           


       

"Wake-up call." Levi forged ahead. "What did you do as the perfect boyfriend?"

"It's not as though we had a real relationship."

Levi grinned. "I'll try it a different way. Did Mr. Fantasy Fodder do anything that Mason Black wouldn't have done?"

Mason opened his mouth. Closed it. Because the answer, honestly, was no.

"I'm betting not," Levi said quietly. "Which means it wasn't a lie, was  it? You're still the same guy you were. She just had your job  description wrong."

Damn it. Levi actually had a point. Just because he'd never done well  in the relationship department didn't mean that what he and Maddie had  had was any less real. It just wasn't something he'd been ready to slap a  label on.

"SEALs and relationships don't mix." He and Bethany had learned that together.

"It's not easy." The carefree smile vanished from Levi's face. "It's  tough as hell, actually. We both know that, but you've got family  stateside. They're okay with waiting for you to come back, right? Maybe  they'd rather have you full-time, but they understand you've got a job  to do and that you're gonna be back when and if you can."

Yeah. He did. The emails always piled up in his account when he was on a  mission, but they understood that he couldn't communicate while he ran  an op. But all those emails were just words, while he missed the little  moments. An inbox full of photos couldn't really make up for all of  that.