Make Mine a Ranger (Special Ops: Homefront Book 4) (9 page)

Casually, he gave her a wink before she
climbed the stairs.

If she didn’t have her child to bathe,
she’d most definitely crawl into a dark hole until shame wore off.

***

Think about baseball.
Isn’t that what they always said would
kill a raging hard-on? But the only home run he could imagine right now was
with his hot housemate.

Hearing the water running upstairs, he
was grateful for at least the next fifteen or twenty minutes to himself while
Abby got her bath. Grabbing a beer from the fridge, he headed out to the back
porch. It was a pretty cool night for September in Annapolis, he noticed. Or
maybe that was just because any air would feel cold right now against his skin,
after being heated thoroughly by the feel of Bess’s lips on his.

He wanted her. That’s what was killing him.
She was cute, with those big blue eyes and fiery hair. Easy to talk to. She
made him smile. There was a fierce determination in her that he could relate
to. And she was a hell of a mother to Abby.

Simply put, the girl had every
characteristic a woman needed to unleash the alpha wolf in him, ready to
protect her with all he was.

Top that off with the fact that she could
cook, and what guy wouldn’t think she was the jackpot of all women?

He tossed back a healthy gulp of Sam
Adams, hoping the chill of it would head straight south.

She shouldn’t feel bad at all for making
the first move. With his arms wrapped around her as he helped her with her
belt, it took all the control he’d had not to initiate the kiss himself. And he
sure as hell didn’t have the excuse she did. He wasn’t recovering from an
abusive ex and a four-year time-out from the opposite sex.

Four years? That was just plain
unnatural.

Yet at the same time, he felt somehow
aroused by it. How fucked up was that? All he kept thinking about was how much
he’d like to show her just how incredible sex could be. Give him one night with
her and he’d make her never want to go without again.

Down, boy.

He shook his head out to the horizon.

“Not possible,” he heard himself say out
loud.

And a hushed voice seemed to gently wash
over the waves and creep into his head.

And why not?

“Hey, Tyler.”

Headed across the mats toward the door, a
voice behind Tyler stopped him.

Connor, one of the instructors at the MMA
gym, loped toward him. He was a tall guy, like Tyler, with the build of a
fighter.

“Yeah, Connor. What’s up?”

“Bess was in class a lot last week.”

“Yep. She’s liking it.”

Connor grinned. “She’s a helluva
fireplug. A lot of energy packed into a tiny frame. And her kicks are incredible.
I subbed for Lou in kickboxing and she nearly sent me to the ground.”

“Yeah, I know.” And what of it? Tyler couldn’t
help wonder. It was probably just Connor’s appreciation as an instructor that
he was showing. Tyler had taught Troops some of the MMA skills that translated
well in the field. He knew how satisfying it was to have a student excel under
his wing.

“Are you and she dating or something?”
Connor asked. “I know her membership is listed under your credit card number so
I was kind of wondering.”

“No,” Tyler said quickly. “We’re just
friends. Housemates. You know,” he responded carelessly.

“Oh, good.”

Tyler gave a nod, and was about to push
open the door when he stopped and turned around again. “Why good?”

“I was gonna ask her out sometime.”

Tyler stood there, slightly slack-jawed,
and not from the right hook he took in the ring just before he had hit the
showers that night.

“She’s got a kid, you know,” Tyler found
himself saying. Yeah, that was it. Tyler wasn’t jealous. He was just worried
about Bess and Abby. He’d known Connor only a couple months or so, and he
seemed like a pretty good guy. Not the kind to sleep around and then brag about
his conquests in the locker room. Or talk about women like they were something
meant to be used and thrown away. Connor might actually be good for
Bess—another tough guy at the ready to beat the shit out of Dan if he
ever bared his ugly face in this town again.

But Bess had a little girl who was
depending on her. Bess didn’t need to be dicked around.

“I know. Abby. I see her in the child
care room when Bess comes in for class. Great kid.” Connor cocked his head. “So
you don’t mind if I ask her out, right?”

Tyler stood there a moment, trying to get
the answer to form on his lips. Connor would be good for Bess. Good for Abby.

But I’d be better.

Shit.
How the hell had he let this happen? Bess was his housemate.
And even more importantly, his friend. If he dared to go down this road, and it
didn’t work out, he’d be stuck living the remainder of his one-year lease with
someone who might very well detest him after the tailspin of a break-up. And
he’d lose the friend he’d gotten pretty used to having.

Besides that, if things went sour between
them, how would he stay in Abby’s life?

“Tyler?”

Tyler snapped out of the internal debate that
was echoing in his brain. “Yeah?”

“Is there something going on between you
two? You’re a helluva fighter. I don’t want to piss you off.”

Tyler laughed at that. Connor had trained
in Muay Thai kickboxing in Thailand, competed professionally there, and was a BJJ
brown belt. Tyler might be a contender in the ring with him on a good day, but
Connor didn’t exactly have to worry about pissing off Tyler—or anyone
else in this gym.

But it spoke well of Connor that he’d
even say such a thing. A lot of guys would just move in on any woman without
thinking twice about whether or not a friend was interested in her. He was a
good guy.

Giving an internal nod, Tyler finally
said, “No. No, really. Go for it. She’s a great person. You can’t do better
than Bess, believe me.” He could feel his face frowning as he said it, not
exactly reflecting the sentiment he was trying to convey.

Furrowing his sweaty brow, Connor took a
step back. “Okay. You sure?”

Waving a hand dismissively, Tyler forced
a laugh. “Yeah. She’s like my little sister. Of course, that means I’ll beat
the crap out of you if you hurt her, though.”

Connor raised an eyebrow. “Little
sister,” he repeated. “I’ve got a little sister, and I don’t give guys the look
you just gave me when I said I wanted to ask Bess out.”

Crap, was Tyler that obvious?

Cracking a smile, Connor continued, “How
about you think it over a bit and get back to me?” He took a couple steps
toward him and lowered his voice. “Though if you are interested in her, you
better stake your claim fast because there are at least two other guys in this
gym who want to be tapping that.”

Connor walked away, snickering quietly,
probably at the dumbfounded look that Tyler knew he had on his face right now.

Tapping that?
Tyler didn’t like the idea of any guy
saying he wanted to tap Bess Foster. Sweet, maternal, innocent Bess.

As he stalked out of the building, he
pictured a few of the guys that Bess might have met at the gym. They weren’t
all like Connor. More the player-type. Well, hell, if those were the kinds of
men that Bess was attracting in those skin tight yoga pants she wore to class,
maybe it would be better if Tyler told Connor to go for it.

Connor was a good guy. Stable, too. A
part owner in the gym, someone who wouldn’t be up and leaving in a year.

Unlike Tyler.

Slamming his car door shut, he blocked out
the noise from the busy expressway next to the gym. The sudden quiet around him
annoyed him, so he turned on the radio, loud, and let the sounds of Rage
Against the Machine pound his eardrums.

Bess and Connor.

Connor and Bess.

The more Tyler heard it in his brain, the
more he hated it. He had gotten too used to the idea of the three of them. Tyler,
Bess, and Abby. He enjoyed spending time with them. Thinking of another face
showing up in their house—
their
house—to whisk Bess off on a
date or two made Tyler sick to his stomach.

But he had no right to stand in Connor’s
way.

Unless he did something about it right
now.

Opening the front door of the house, he
could see Bess standing in those damn yoga pants again, the ones that hugged
her butt and made him horny as a teenager. Him and all the other guys in the
gym, apparently.

“Whatcha making?” he asked innocently.

“Hi. I didn’t hear you come in,” she
said, shooting that smile that always made him feel warm and homey inside.
“Just boiling some water for pasta. The boxed kind, this time. Time slipped
away from me.”

Tyler glanced over at Abby, sitting atop the
thick pillow she preferred, rather than the booster seat she now claimed was
for babies. “Hi, Tyler. Want pasta? It’s the boring kind.”

Tyler gulped. Hard. Was he really going
to go down this road? “Ugh, no. Not the boring kind. How about I take you out
to Horizons instead?”
Horizons
. He almost grimaced at the sound of it. It
was the trendiest new restaurant in Annapolis that reeked of “first date.”

“Horizons? That place that opened up last
winter?” Bess seemed taken aback.

“Yeah. Thought it might be nice to try
it.”

“Oh, Tyler, that’s sweet of you, but it’s
not really kid-friendly.”

Abby frowned. “It doesn’t have skeeball?”

Bess laughed. “No, honey. No skeeball. Just
a lot of fancy, breakable glasses that aren’t really good for chocolate milk.”

Abby frowned.

His nerves wavering, Tyler blurted, “We
could see if Edith could babysit.”

This was met by a squeal of delight from
Abby, who preferred going to Edith’s house even more than Pirate Pop’s Pizza
Palace.

Bess stood there, mouth wide open. Tyler
approached her, and turned off the stove behind her. “What do you say?”

He would have liked to have seen a hint
of pleasure in her eyes at the moment. But all he could see was confusion.

“’Kay,” was her only response, slightly
breathless, with one side of her face scrunched up in bewilderment.

“Great. I’ll call Edith,” he said
casually.

What am I doing?

***

What is he doing?

Bess stepped into her room to change, her
heart rate skyrocketing, echoing behind the pressure in her ears as her head
seemed to swell with blood flow.

Asking her to have dinner with him at Horizons?
What was up with that? It wasn’t the local pub sort of scene, the kind of place
where they’d end up wound into conversations with six people they didn’t even
know.

No, Horizons was a place for dates, which
might explain why Bess had never been there. Eyeing her purse on her dresser,
she pulled out her phone and texted—quickly—to Lacey and Maeve. One
of them was bound to reply.

“Tyler asked me to dinner at Horizons.”

Lacey wrote back first. “WTF? Abby will
hate it. Too quiet. Go to Pirate Pop’s.”

Shoulders sagging, Bess shook her head as
she tapped in, “He got Edith to babysit.”

Maeve answered next. “Holy !@#$%! That’s
a DATE, girl. He asked you on a date. Get it????”

Yep, she got it. But still wasn’t
believing it. “There has to be a different reason.”

Lacey piped in. “Hope you shaved your
legs this morning,” she wrote, adding a smiley face.

Shit!
She hadn’t! Why would she? No one gets closer than six feet
of her bare legs. That makes two days of stubble on her pretty much undetectable.

Maeve wrote, “Sigh. Your silence tells me
you didn’t.”

Then Lacey: “Don’t pick on her. She
doesn’t want to sleep with him on her first date anyway.”

She didn’t. Did she? Hell, yeah, she did
but— “It’s not a date,” Bess punched in insistently.

“Suuuure,” Maeve wrote. “And so you’re
writing us WHY exactly?” She made a smiley face emoticon—the annoying one
with the tongue that stuck out.

Very mature, Maeve.
Now Bess was remembering why she hadn’t
dared to tell her best friends in the world that she had actually kissed Tyler
a few days ago. They never would have let up.

“Picking Abby up later anyway,” Bess
typed in. “Won’t happen. What do I wear?”

Lacey wrote first. “Dress you wore to Jack’s
award ceremony.”

Maeve interjected, “No. Too dressy. Tank
dress I bought you for your birthday.”

Bess wrote back. “He’s seen that already.
I have a new dress Edith bought me. Kind of form-fitting like the tank dress
with spaghetti straps.”

“Edith bought you clothes? I love that
woman,” Maeve wrote. “Strappy is sexy. Go with spaghetti straps.”

“But it’s kind of tight.” Bess resisted.

“All the more reason to wear it,” Maeve
texted back.

Bess heard a tapping on her door.

“Edith says we can drop Abby off in
fifteen minutes. She’ll have mac and cheese waiting for her,” he finished,
followed by a resounding “Yippee!” from Abigail.

“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”
A
minute?
It would take her longer than that to get presentable enough for a
date.

But this is Tyler, she reminded herself. No
matter what Lacey and Maeve said, there had to be some other reason he was
taking her out. Maybe he got some good news at work and wanted to celebrate. And
she was… available. Like always, come to think of it.

Biting her lip, she pulled the dress over
her head, worried that the clinging cotton-spandex blend would reveal too many
of her fat folds. She looked in the mirror, holding her breath.

No fat folds, she realized, a feeling of
glee washing over her.
How did that happen?

All those hours on Tyler’s treadmill and
at the gym seemed to also be having a hell of an impact on her waistline.

Her eyes widened looking at her
reflection. And she
had
a waistline, she suddenly realized. For the
first time since before she had gotten pregnant, her shape resembled a bit of
an hourglass rather than an eggplant.

She reached for the tube of lipstick on
her dresser. That, and a touch of mascara might make her look less like an
inappropriate companion for a sexy Army Ranger. But she wouldn’t put in too
much effort. She didn’t want Tyler worrying that she had gotten the wrong idea
from the invitation.

This was a probably a pity date, she
decided, giving herself a nod in the mirror. Poor Bess who never gets out. How
many times had he told her she should get out more? And now that she had
confessed she hadn’t kissed a man in four years, she elevated pathetic to a
whole new level.

How like him.
He was just trying to get her out there
again, remind her what it was like to have a date. He had no intentions of
actually letting a romance build out of it.

So why the swarm of butterflies in her
stomach?