Still Her SEAL (ASSIGNMENT: Caribbean Nights Book 10) (5 page)

No sane guy would ever walk around with camouflage tidy-whities cupping his junk and—

“Never seen a flak vest work quite that way,” Finn says thoughtfully. Yeah. His eyes practically pop out of his head as the guys pivot and stalk back up the runway. Hindi’s taken full advantage of the real estate she does have to work with—each guy’s ass reads
on fire
. Maybe I should give Vali a Christmas shopping list for Finn.

The host pops up onto the runway and settles in next to Hindi. The online fan sites claim Hindi won the hearts of America because she’s
real
and
authentic
. No one would ever mistake the host for possessing those particular qualities. He wears a red velvet suit that seems two sizes too small, a striped shirt, a bow tie, and the biggest, shit-eatingest grin ever. When Hindi smiles at the host like they’re besties, however, he practically melts. Or maybe that’s because the guy’s taller than she is and he has a great view down the front of her halter top.

Fucker.

“So, Hindi,” he drawls, sounding pretentious as fuck. “Can you tell us what your inspiration was for tonight’s show?”

She beams, her face bright enough to be seen from Mars—and I’ll bet the little green men orbiting up there in outer space like them some hot lingerie, too.

“Well, Puck,” she starts, and I ask you: what kind of name is
Puck
? It belongs in a hockey game and nowhere else. “Some of the finest men I’ve known have served in our military, and I wanted to honor them.”

Let’s be honest.
Honor
is not the word that comes to mind. The models strut down the runway and pose behind Puck and Hindi. There’s a side of tits and ass to go with all those skinny arms and concave faces, and who am I to judge? God didn’t make us one size fits all.

Finn snort-laughs. “You think I can order that shit for Vali?”

I lean back. Just wait—he hasn’t heard the punch line yet. “I can introduce you to the designer.”

“Just have her send me a care package.” He shapes the air with his hands and I once again try hard not to fill in those swoops and curves with Vali’s figure. Yes, she’s fucking hot. And yes—she’s completely, entirely off-limits. I no more want to think about her boob size than she wants to imagine the dimensions of my dick. This is as much a testament to how much we both care about Finn as it is the complete mismatch that we are for each other.

On screen, Hindi is still fielding questions.

“I envision all different shapes and sizes of women wearing my lingerie. Some guys, too,” she says, gaze glinting with mischief.

“I can imagine it,” Finn mutters beside me.

And then my picture flashes up on the screen.
Hello, spoiler.

Finn promptly toasts me with his beer. “Now I do believe you know her. You’re famous.”

The voiceover on the screen explains that Hindi has one very special SEAL in her life. They zoom in on my picture. I don’t know when it was taken, but I’d tried visiting Hindi once in New York City, to try and talk our shit out. Even then, things had been headed south, and a face-to-face had seemed like the best solution. We’d spent the weekend together, more in bed than out, and this must have been snapped during one of those brief
out
moments. My hair’s a little longer than my usual military buzz cut and I look—happy. Okay, so I’m not smiling and I look like a gruff, mean motherfucker, but
I
know I was happy. Mostly.

As Hindi’s models clear the runway and she disappears, replaced by the next contestant, Finn looks at me. He’s clearly ready to launch his own personal sequel to the Spanish Inquisition. “When did you get to know a fashion designer? And just how well do you know her, Mr. Very Special SEAL?”

I consider telling him nothing. Or making it clear that it’s none of his business. It’s just that Hindi said something yesterday about how I never say anything. There’s nothing wrong with strong and silent. It’s a fucking staple, right? I’m a former SEAL and, yes, I’m a bad ass. While I might benefit from a charm school course, people can take me or leave me.

Hindi left me.

I try the words out. “She’s my wife.”

Finn chokes on his beer. “Not while I’m drinking, man.” Then he pauses. “Wait. For real? As in you’re hitched right this very second?”

I nod.

“You did?”

“I did. I do.”

“Huh.” For once in his life, Finn is at a loss for words. This is the man who happily bullshitted an entire tribe of Afghans in what he later claimed was Klingon, talking nonstop for twenty minutes until our official interpreter could make it up the mountain to join us. He never stopped, never paused.

A commercial comes on. One for a detergent followed by another for a diet something-or-other. We both stare at the screen until I break the silence.

“I bought this island from her and one thing led to another and—” Shit. I don’t tolerate excuses from anyone—not my team, not my commanders, and definitely not myself.

“You had like a week in Florida. Nice work.”

Yeah. That last part does sound like a fucking question.

“We got married.” There are plenty of words I could use to describe our brief marriage. Impulsive comes to mind. Along with unplanned, random, and off-the-cuff. But… it was also magical and kind of freaking awesome. We had the Himalayas of relationships, all sharp peaks and valleys of death. No tame geographical features in
our
emotional landscape, fuck you very much.

“So you met, you married, and then you were tragically parted to never find each other again?” Finn narrows his eyes. “Because I think it’s pretty hard to misplace someone who was appearing on national television.”

“She was in New York. I—wasn’t.”

Finn knows where I was. As he was right there beside me, he’s just giving me shit—or trying to make a point. Duty first, work first. Everything and everyone else takes a number. But sometimes, yeah, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t done that last tour. If I’d come home then, would it still have been too late?

“That’s what frequent flyer miles are for,” he stage-whispers.

At first, we wrote. She sent me quirky, funny poems and weird selfies. And then her career started to take off and I had to go dark because I was covert ops, and the emails got more perfunctory and further apart. If excuses were cards, we each had a full house and neither of us was bluffing when we threw in the hand. Our marriage drifted, and that’s the truth. What was the best fucking week of my life couldn’t live up to the weeks and months that followed. I have a million excuses and none of them are any good. I got so busy chasing dreams that I forgot my first and best dream until there was the Grand fucking Canyon between us and she was serving me with divorce papers.

I tried visiting her in New York City to try and talk our shit out. My picture appeared in Column Six entitled
Hindi’s Sexy SEAL
and my commanders were pissed as fuck. Hard to send a man out to do covert ops when his picture is all over the Internet. Dick pics they could have handled—it was the full facial that caused the problem. She tried one more unsuccessful visit—to my place—and then I quit working on us. I let her go and I walked away, because it couldn’t have worked between us anyhow.

Hindi

B
eing a reality TV star isn’t as liberating as you might imagine. Sure, my agent (or my agent’s people) booked us a bungalow on the ocean for this trip down to the Florida Keys. The place is super swank, the your-wish-is-my-command shit is addictive, and I don’t have to clean up after myself. Someone else also picks up the check at the end of the week, and I’m invited to swan around the beach channeling my inner movie star. But Lilah follows me around with her camera, capturing every public moment and quite a few of the private ones. We discuss what makes for the best film and what the viewers will find interesting. Nothing is entirely unscripted, and we’re always looking for that one golden moment when I do or say something that will go viral and guarantee we get renewed for another season.

Life’s one big stage and sometimes I’m desperate for the curtain to fall.

Think about it. If you’re a cast member, you’re always on display and someone is always watching. And judging. The network bigwigs judge whether or not I’m interesting enough to hold the attention of your average channel-surfing American. My agent judges whether or not I can land that next Big Thing or sell my lingerie into the store of the week. The people planted on the couch? They judge most of all. Would
they
have done what I did? Am I worth thirty minutes of their life?

Producers love reality television because the shows are cheap to produce. One episode costs way less money than a show that requires a cast of professional actors and a script. Not that we’re unscripted. Far from it. There’s not a whole lot of reality in a reality TV show. How many people do you know who live out their entire lives, from taking a shit to sleeping with an ex-boyfriend, in front of a camera? Bet you can’t name a single person.

We’re all about the story. And if a compelling story doesn’t present itself? The segment producers come up with one. An entire roomful of writers “edit” our weekly show. In exchange, they get a paycheck, possibly without medical, dental, or a 401K, but you take the work where you find it. It’s not union scale either, but writers like to pay their bills and have AC when it’s one hundred degrees in Los Angeles. I’d take the deal, too.

My big break came when I drove up to New York City the week after my impulsive wedding to Ro. I’d been invited to audition for a reality TV show that would follow ten unknown designers as they competed for one hundred thousand dollars and a lingerie line launch. From the moment my van died outside the studio in a spectacular cloud of smoke and firemen (and yes, the New York City fire department is truly calendar-worthy), I was in. We filmed for three months, during which I banked four thousand dollars a month and a room in what the producers called the “design house” in New York’s fashion district. Since living in the house meant free rent and toilet paper, I made the best of it.

You think I won because my designs were the best? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s actually not against the rules for the producers to pick the winner. Dear old Dad claimed I’d never amount to much. That I was a one-woman sideshow, a screw up, always going down in flames. He was right about the last three, but it turns out that people will pay good money to watch me implode. My Internet fandom won’t last forever, but I’ll ride the train to the last damned stop.

So I park my butt on the floor of my swank bungalow and design instead of enjoying the beach just outside my door. Lilah spends the better part of the morning taking calls and discussing story scripts with the Los Angeles team. They’re white-boarding potential scenes for the upcoming season, some of which are an automatic hell no on my part. Yes, there are lines I won’t cross—and doing Ro on the beach while Lilah films from a discreet distance is a hard limit for me. Plus, I’m pretty sure you’d need him to sign a release for that one since Angel Cay is private property and he has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

While Lilah works Skype like a dominatrix, I do what I do best. I design. Right now, I’m putting together a mood board for my next collection. I scrawl snippets of possible designs on cards and pin them in place, matching them up with swatches of fabric. For reasons that have nothing to do with my current location, I’m drawn to the bright blues and jewel greens. I want something lush and exotic, soft and yet structured enough to support my tits and ass. I want to look better than I ever have—and I’m sure you feel the same way. Even if no one sees my goodies,
I
need to know I’m stunning, sensual, and… fuck. The blue and green combined with the feathers makes me feel like I’m channeling a peacock and that’s not helping my
I am a bad ass
campaign. I’m launching a new line at Miami Fashion Week in another two months, but then I need to hit the ground running on this new line.

Eventually, Lilah signs off her last call and tosses her headset onto the couch with a wink. “They love you.”

I blow her a kiss. “Tell that to my agent. He’d love to charge them more.”

She flops back on the couch, latching onto her sixth diet soda of the morning—there’s no room for slow in our world and too many of the assistants work off a cocktail of vitamins, caffeine, and drugs. Lilah sticks just to the first two, which is another reason we get along so well. I don’t need more crazy in my life.

She lobs the empty at the recycling bin, looking as drained as the can. “The meet and greet with your not-so-ex went well, but we need more if we want the network bigwigs to green light the next season.”

Color me shocked. While part of me hoped I’d come down here, let Ro know about our unexpected marital status, and then leave, I knew that wasn’t actually on the table. I could have done that by email, after all. The network wants dramatic, colorful, can’t-not-watch footage, and it’s my job to get it for them. They don’t care that spending quality time with Ro seems like a really bad idea. It’s too easy to remember all the ways that we did work (which were in bed, naked, and going at it like sexed-up bunnies) and forget the bad moments.