SEAL the Deal(31)

“That’s not what happened, Mick.”

“Look, Lacey, I am obviously attracted to you. But if you’re going to break your rule about men right now, you should probably do it with someone who can offer you some kind of a future.”

“What do you mean?”

“I won’t be staying here. I fully intend to go back to the SEALs when I’m done with this tour. That means I’ll be headed to San Diego and then overseas. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you’re looking for a relationship that has an expire date.”

Lacey bit her lip uneasily, desperately wanting to lie. If she could just enjoy the passion, with no thoughts of tomorrow. But she could lose her heart to a man like Mick. And then she’d lose him, too.

The silence between them was almost painful. “You’re right,” she finally admitted.

They stared out at the water blankly as the boat approached the dock.

Lacey let out a slow breath. “So you’ll never settle down? You know, down the road?”

Mick shook his head. “Not while the SEALs are still a part of my plans, anyway. Some guys do fine in the field, in combat, knowing they have a wife and child waiting for them at home. But I’m not one of them. As a single man, I can focus on the mission. I can put myself in harm’s way without thinking twice. I don’t know if I could do that if I was remembering the family I left behind.”

Lacey saw the irony. “Distractions. Yeah, that’s just what I was talking about avoiding in my career right now, too. We’re in the same boat.” She raised her eyebrows at their surroundings. “No pun intended.”

Mick nodded in accord as they arrived with a gentle thud against the dock. He sent her a feisty smile as he offered her his hand to disembark. “If you are ever looking for just mindless sex with no strings attached, you’ll call me first, though, right?”

She laughed. “You’ll be the first call I make.”





CHAPTER EIGHT




Since becoming a real estate agent, Lacey could not help feeling as though some houses had souls. Not all, of course. The houses she and her sister shared as they grew up each held good memories, but had an emptiness, as though they were still shells waiting for the right owner to fill them with warmth.

But there was a different quality about some—like the simple waterfront Cape Cod once owned by Maeve’s grandparents. The house seemed to glow when it was filled with laughter.

Sitting on the back porch with her housemates, along with Mick and Jack adding to the atmosphere, Lacey felt as though the little house was sighing with contentment down to its very foundation.

The sun had long set beneath the blue horizon and its warm rays were replaced the by hypnotic chirping of crickets. Maeve’s little piece of waterfront was heaven on fall nights like this, and Lacey felt remarkably lucky to call this place home, even for a short while in her life.

Lucky, despite the pathetic assortment of letters that were staring at her, which included one sorry Q with a U nowhere to be found. Why had she voted for Scrabble tonight rather than Monopoly?

Mick was looking intense as he eyed the game board. Apparently, he approached board games with the ferocity of going to battle. There was no such thing as friendly competition for a hardened SEAL.

Sometimes when their eyes met, Lacey could still feel the warmth of his lips on hers when the memory of their kiss on the water taxi came washing over her like a gentle fall breeze. Each of them had accepted the boundaries of their friendship, but flirtation was unavoidable and sometimes unbearable. An electric current sparked between them every time they touched, even in the most casual way.

Lacey glowered as Mick placed an S at the end of Maeve’s last word. “‘Unsafes’ is not a word.”

Mick and Jack looked at each other and said in unison, “Yes, it is.”

Bess raised her eyebrows. “Use it in a sentence,” she dared.

Mick looked nonplussed. “The officer safes his weapon. He then unsafes his weapon, preparing to fire.” The two men exchanged mutual nods, satisfied.

“What?”

“He unsafes his weapon,” Mick repeated condescendingly, as though he were using a word they had all learned in the first grade. “Unsafes—as in make not safe. Makes it easy to fire.”

“I repeat, what?”

“It is a word.” Mick glanced over at Jack.

“It’s a word,” Jack agreed.

Maeve’s eyes narrowed. “I challenge your word.”

Bess, the keeper of the dictionary, searched its pages. “Maeve wins the challenge. It’s not in the dictionary.”

“But it is a word.”

“Well, we agreed upon this dictionary,” she said, waggling the pocket dictionary from her college days in Mick’s face. “Not some Dictionary of Weird Military Terms. Here’s your S,” Bess said with authority pulling his tile off the board. “You lose your turn.”