Burning For Nero (SEALs Going Hot) (2 page)

“How are you, Tony?” She walked into his embrace, his one arm going around her. Polite. Friendly.
No breasts touching his chest.
She hugged him, her affection discreet. She cupped his cheek, her hand sweet against his hot skin. “You look yummy as ever.”

“Glad you think so, babe.” He hadn’t seen her in far too long and he needed to look her over thoroughly to detect how she really felt deep inside. Her grief for Ray had gone long ago, exactly when he wasn’t certain. And the last few times he had gone over to her house to take Jon out, she had seemed distant. Today, the breezy white dress and her bouncy gold curls made her look happy. He had to be sure. “Take the shades off, lemme see how you are.”

She did.

And Christ, wrong of him to have asked. Her forest green eyes laughed up at him. Wisps of her brilliant hair grazed against her high cheekbones, framing her in a golden glow like a Renaissance Venus captured in candlelight. She got to him always—elegant, statuesque Cassandra. Lady with the flawless complexion and the classy looks of a Hollywood forties movie siren.

She arched a long, blonde brow, an uncharacteristic teasing gleam in her eye. “Do I pass inspection?”

“Done.”
All too well. You’ve got me drooling, and we’ve barely said hello.
“Drive me home. I’m in need of a beer and my mother’s bear hugs.”

“She’s wild to see you. Everyone is. Your sister, Tessa, brought two girlfriends with her. One is just your type and frothing at the mouth to meet dark, dangerous Nero.”

Like he ever saw anyone else but Cass.
“Too bad I’m out of commission.”

“That I don’t believe.” She tugged on his good hand and led him to the passenger’s side. His eyes—
traitors
—adored the curve of her firm ass as he followed her to the car door.

She twirled and caught him ogling. “You like?”

He rolled his eyes, keeping his praise just good-old-boy lurid while his very rebellious cock stood at attention.

“Pilates. My devotion is an addiction.”

“I’m showing my admiration.”

She chuckled, looking complimented, not offended. “Get in, sailor.”

“New wheels?” He wiggled his brows at her as she shut the door for him. She’d always known he liked a woman with a tight bod. Any god-fearing Navy man did. He was no puritan. She was no nun. But from that first night when they met at a pub in town and StingRay moved in on her, Tony had never acted on his own attraction. “Love it.”

“Nice price, too. But it’s the new me. Like a Peppermint Pattie with the wind in my short blonde hair. Out with the old.”

How much of her are you throwing out?
“I liked the old.”

“Oh, she’s still there.” She waved a pale manicured hand in the air, dismissive of his fears. “But she had changes to make and I think you’ll still like her. Hope you will.”

That made his guts churn. He didn’t want to like her more.

“But you, Great Nero, are the first to grace the front seat. Aside from Jon, of course.”

Jonathan. Tony’s heartstrings yanked at his conscience that he hadn’t visited Sting’s little boy lately. Tony had promised to visit the five-year-old just before he’d left for his last mission and hadn’t. For months before, Tony had told himself he had to draw away from the child not just because he cared for the little boy’s mother and wanted to honor his father, but also because he wouldn’t do the child any good. Not in any way.

Building a better relationship with the child after StingRay died had filled a hole in Jon’s life and in Tony’s heart. Continuing to build that relationship with Jon a year after StingRay’s death was not a wise idea. Not if one day, Tony, too, came home in a box. So he had halted his weekly visits when they played ball or went to the beach.

And he stopped his agonizing practice of stuffing his feelings whenever he saw Jon’s gorgeous mom. He was killing himself every time he picked up Jon, acting like the family friend while the only thing he could think of when he was near Cass was kissing her blues away, getting her naked and banging her brains out. He loved Jon. Healing the little boy’s grief had been Tony’s mission and he’d done it until he couldn’t give any longer.

But seeing Cass so often made him crazy, horny, and frustrated. He’d stopped visiting because he was driving himself nuts, wanting a woman who had never wanted him. Except as a friend. Hell. He’d tried out for that mission years ago and failed.

After months of watching her sorrow over Sting’s death, he was not about to try again. She hadn’t given him any hints she could be interested in him. In fact, ever since Ray’s death, she acted more and more like a woman who wanted to build her own life with her son. Alone. He pushed away the nagging regret that he had found it necessary to break his regular dates with her sweet little son.

“How is Jon?” Securing his seat belt, he breathed in the fragrance of Cass’s honeysuckle perfume.

“Good.” Cass sounded tentative as she rounded the car and slid into the driver’s seat. “Squirming like an eel to see you. He wanted to come with me, but I told him he had to take a nap if he wanted to stay up and go to the party tonight.”

She punched the ignition button on the dash, then checked her rear mirror to pull out into the street.

“I’m eager to see him.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t even look at him, but seemed absorbed in taking them off the side street to the turnpike feeder. Blending in to traffic, she rearranged herself in her seat. Her hair glimmered in the sun, wild and carefree in the wind, but her jaw was set tight. She stiffened, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Suiting up? For what?

She glanced at him. Once. Twice. Beneath her sunglasses, her forest green eyes burned him like lazers. Her lips thinned as she narrowed her eyes and lost her cheery air of greeting. A chill settled in to the car that had nothing to do with the wind blowing through his brains.

He admired the perfection of her profile as he led her into the argument she clearly was geared for. “I feel the icicles forming on my face.”

“Well, your vision has been obscured for a long time, so I don’t see how ice much matters.”

“When you don’t talk to me, it matters big time.”

“
Does it really
?” She rounded on him like a she-wolf. “Jon needs you. You trained him to need you. And then you walked away from him.”

Blown apart by the first salvo she had ever thrown at him, he recovered quickly. Okay. He deserved some of this. “Let me explain—”

“Oh, please. Like it matters.”

“So you just want to wail on me. Have at it.”

She ground her teeth. “Why not talk to me about it before you leave him bewildered? Crying because he misses you?”

“I told him I go on missions like his dad did.”

“Goody for you. All that did was make him wonder if you’re going to disappear like Ray. The damage is done.”

Shit. Irreparable?
“You’re telling me I was wrong.”

“Oh, do you
think
?”

He grimaced. Hated that he’d hurt the boy. Hated that he’d made Cass angry. “All right. I was short-sighted.”

“Short?” She blustered. “You are nuts.”

“Ah. Look, babe, you’d better slow down.”

“I can’t.”

Course she could. They whizzed past everything that seemed to crawl on this highway. He’d never seen her so riled. “I can explain but you have to ease up on the pedal.”

“Tough shit, Nero.”

He braced his good hand against the dash. “Okay. Fine. But if you don’t slow down you will crawl up that guy’s trunk, honey.”

“Honey?” she scoffed. “Don’t you dare try to charm me out of this.”

He snorted. The last time he used that on her had been the first night he met her—and it hadn’t worked. He’d lost her to Ray. “You are the only woman I have never been able to charm.”

“I’m either complimented or baffled.” She gave him a quick check, then focused back on the road. This time, she got pinned between two sedans who hogged the two lanes forcing her to slow down. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’ll say to him. I need to know so I can deal with him.”

“Here?”

“Now.”

“This is a longer discussion than the ride home. And I won’t talk to you when you’re upset and driving.”

She growled and shook her head. “I’ve got a little boy who lost his father, and half-assed as Ray was at that, Jon loved him.”

“Of course, he did.”
Ray was not a good dad? Since when?

“Jon didn’t understand what losing that man meant when Ray died. He was four. The guy who waltzed in and out of our house in Dam Neck was more ghost than parent, but hell, what does that matter when you hear your daddy is gone? You just know you’ve lost someone that you shouldn’t and that it hurts.”

Ray was a ghost? Even when he was home?
What she painted here was no picture of Ray that Tony had ever seen.

He scrambled for a response to keep her talking.
“I get it. Then I show up. Take him swimming. Playing ball. Fill the void.”

“Better than that, when you’re home on stand-by, you show up
regularly
. You tell him when to expect you and he learns to trust you because you keep your promises. And suddenly Jon is captivated. He has a buddy. A pal. A
man
.” She swallowed hard, flicked on the right turn signal to exit the highway.

He couldn’t conduct a conversation like this. Her angry. Him, guilty and surprised. They needed to calm down. “Pull over, will you?”

She shook her head, blinking.

“Don’t cry.”

“I. Am. Not. Crying.”

Shit.
He reached over, his fingers flat along her toned thighs. She was warm, supple.
Bad move. Right intention.

But she didn’t pull away. Instead, her muscles relaxed beneath his touch. The tears in her eyes dried.

He stroked her leg.
Bad move. Bad intention.
He should have retreated, but she seemed more peaceful with his hand on her.

Okay. Now was the time to share some of his reasoning about not showing up for Jon.
“I apologize for being an ass. I never meant to hurt Jon. I thought if I pulled away before you moved to Washington, he wouldn’t expect me to show. He wouldn’t miss me.”

She checked his eyes, then shrugged. “Yeah, well. You’re wrong about a lot of things, Nero. One is I’m not going to Washington.”

“Why not?”

“No jobs for a woman who hasn’t had one in six years. I’m as marketable as a tick.”

He suppressed his smile at her humor and sought logic to draw her out, keep her rational. “You don’t need the money.”

She frowned as she eased on the brake for a red light. “True. Ray’s death benefit was generous. Jon’s education is paid for with the GI bill.”

“So why move? The house is paid for.”

The light changed and she took the right hand turn down the street toward his parents’ home and her in-laws’.

He squeezed her thigh. “Tell me.”

She clenched her jaw and kept her eyes on the road. “I’m bored. I have a mind. I neglected it for years while I was waiting for Ray to waltz in the door.”

Ouch.
“You always looked like you enjoyed being a military wife.”

“I did. Until I didn’t.”

Lots to explore there. But he’d bet most of it was none of his damn business. “Cass, you worked in that congressman’s office after you graduated Maryland. You have savvy and brains.”
And looks that melt a camera lens.
“Someone will want you.”

She scowled straight ahead as she drove the convertible into his folks’ circular driveway. “Thanks for the compliment. But bottom line is I have to get out of Dam Neck.”

Coming to a stop, she faced him then and the look in her eyes socked him in the gut. Longing radiated from her large sad eyes, igniting a flame in him to take her in his arms and caress her hurt away.

Voices hailed them from the front door. Footsteps on gravel rushed in their direction.

He couldn’t stop examining her extraordinary expression.
What was different here? What did he really see written in her big green eyes?

“We need to talk about this.” He punctuated his words with a squeeze of her thigh.

This time, she jerked her leg away. Shook her head. Her eyes narrowed into shards of hard green glass. “No. We don’t.”

“Tony!” his mother called to him as she approached. “Get out of that car! Hug your mother!”

“Lieutenant!” his father bellowed. “Let us see you, bum hand and all. Now’s the time.”

Hating like hell to let Cass go with their unfinished business, he promised her one thing. “Tonight.”

Then he flipped open his car door and stepped out for the welcome of his boisterous family. Behind him, he heard the engine of her car rev as Cass sped away.

He strolled up the sidewalk, one arm around his mom’s shoulder and caught glimpses of Cass steering into the Phillips’s driveway. She parked, slammed her door and stomped a bee-line for the entrance to the house.

Pissed much, Cass?

You won’t deter me. Tonight we talk.

He’d get her alone and nail her down on some of the things she’d said today.

He huffed. Yeah. Nail her.

Hell.
He’d solve his own problem, if he could really
nail
her.

But that wasn’t gonna happen. Not in this man’s lifetime.

Chapter Two

Cass knelt and opened her arms to her son as he ran to her babbling about his straw hat. “It falls off, Mommy. It’s too big.”

“Here, when we sing, hold it in front of you like this. Both hands.”

She showed him what she meant so that he’d look like the singer in a Twenties’ minstrel show. The two of them were on next to perform in the annual Fourth of July sing-along at her in-laws’ recreation room.

Last year, the Phillips had skipped this event in their weekend celebration, the timing too close to Ray’s death for anyone to feel like belting out Karaoke. But Jon had somehow remembered doing a bit with her and Ray the year before when he was only three. This year, he pleaded with her to participate. She had chosen something soft-shoe and the two of them had worked on their rendition of “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” until they whipped it in perfect counterpoint.

In the huge rec room, Tom Phillips had installed a raised stage, one he had made ages ago just for this event. Constructed of plywood, it was perfect for what Cass had in mind for tonight. She and Jon were going to sing and tap their way through the century-old ditty.