The SEAL's Second Chance: An Alpha Ops Novella (7 page)

In the kitchen he found eggs, bread, and a container of sliced fruit—pineapple, grapes, cantaloupe, honeydew melon—and whipped up an easy breakfast, pouring the eggs into the pan when he heard the hair dryer. By the time the toast popped up, Charlie emerged from the bedroom dressed in a simple pantsuit, her hair mostly dry. She wore makeup, a bit of blush, rosy lipstick, and a hint of eye shadow.

“What?” she asked, pulling her hair back and snapping the elastic from her wrist to the thick ponytail.

“I’ve never seen you in makeup before,” he said, buttering the toast.

She shot him a narrow-eyed look that didn’t hold as much heat as it could have. “You left massive stubble burn on my chin. I needed to do something to make it look natural.”

“Yeah, not really sorry about that,” he said as he slid eggs onto their plates.

Jamie elbowed aside a stack of junk mail and set both plates on the breakfast bar separating her kitchen from the living/dining room.

“Thanks,” she said, pleased by the simple meal.

“How many men do you think wake up in my bed?” she asked after he’d take a hearty gulp of orange juice.

He choked, but managed to swallow rather than spit all over her eggs. “What?”

“The first thing you said to me this morning was your name. Like I wouldn’t know who I’d gone to bed with the night before.”

“It wasn’t that,” he said, eyes watering, silently cursing himself. He’d give up a limb to take back those words and substitute something romantic, like
I’ve loved you since I was seventeen.

“What was it, then?”

“You looked far away. That’s what I’d want to know,” he said, because he’d been projecting his own emotions onto her face. “First, who’s with me and can I trust them? Second, where am I?”

“Oh,” she said. “Does that happen often?”

“When you’re sixteen days into a mission and running on about eight hours of sleep total, yeah, it happens.”

“Who you’re with matters more than where you are?”

“When I’m with the right people, where I am doesn’t matter. We’ve got whatever’s coming.”

“When the alarm went off, I was dreaming,” she said, using her fork to push scrambled eggs onto a triangle of toast.

“About what?”

“What we did after I woke up, pretty much,” she said.

Heat stained her cheeks, deepening the color there. In the back of his mind he noted the difference between her face flushed from a game and her face flushed after really incredible sex. She was retreating, mentally shifting gears to focus on students and classes. He was the one on leave, not her. A frown crossed her face.

“What’s that look for?”

“I need to buy a dress,” she said, disgruntled.

He laughed. “Sounds like fun.”

“You like shopping?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

“No, but I’d like watching you try on dresses,” he answered.

“Pervert. I don’t think they let men in the dressing rooms.”

“Even better. I’ll sit outside by the mirror and watch you model them.”

“It’s not going to be sexy lingerie fun,” she pointed out, amused. “It’s a work event for me. I’ll get something practical I can wear again on recruiting trips. What are you going to wear?”

“Dress whites.”

“Your
uniform
?”

“I’m an active duty member of the United States Navy,” he said. “I don’t
have
to wear dress whites, but to be totally honest, I don’t own a suit.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” she said. “The kids definitely responded to the uniform yesterday.”

“Who’s the kid you were sitting with?”

“Grace was the short one. Olivia, tall, no coordination at all.”

“That’s a crying shame,” he said, smiling. “No.… Bryce,” he said, snapping his fingers.

“Grace’s boyfriend. Trying to decide if he’s going to make something of himself or not.”

“He’s got the gleam in his eyes. Said he was going to talk to the recruiter today.”

“Good for him.”

“You want to keep him away from Grace?”

“I’ve got nothing against Bryce, personally,” she said carefully, all teacher as she gathered their plates and silverware. “He could pay more attention to his homework, lose some of the attitude. Grace is my concern. She’s smart, works hard, not much of a chance in the WNBA, but basketball will get her a degree, and a shot at a life better than her mom’s. That’s harder to do if she’s got a baby.” She rinsed one plate, set it in the sink, and reached for the other. “Want me to drop you somewhere?”

“Nah,” he said, lacing up his shoes. “I’ll walk back to the park and take the stairs up the Hill.”

Silence greeted this remark. He looked up at her. “Charlie. I’m an adult. You’re an adult. There is no walk of shame in this.”

He’d never seen fear on Charlie’s face before. Check that. He’d seen it all the time, but her also saw her fighting the fear, hurling herself against the barrier until it fell over. “I signed a contract,” she said. “One that includes a moral turpitude clause.”

“You’re not allowed to have a relationship?”

“I’m supposed to be discreet. Set a good example for students and players.”

“In what way is this a bad example?” he asked, suddenly pissed. “We’re adults. We had protected, safe, consensual sex. Pretending adults don’t have sex outside of marriage is so far outside most East Side kids’ experience you might as well tell them fairy tales.”

“I want this. I really, really want this. I don’t want to screw it up.”

“This isn’t screwing it up. This is—” he stopped abruptly, because he didn’t know what “this” was. He knew what he wanted “this” to be, but he’d never asked her.

He hadn’t planned out this conversation, and the way she was glaring at him right now, all but challenging him, she’d just as likely tell him it was over as jump into his arms with joy. And what was he offering her anyway? The chance at a long-distance relationship, which he already knew she thought was doomed to fail? He’d never expected her to be as committed as she was to Lancaster.

A tactical mistake on his part.

“You are the only one,” she said, quiet, confessing. Before he got out of the car. “Just you. Since I moved back,” she added, lifting her chin, proud and honest.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I just … wanted … I wanted to reassure you. You have to know I don’t think you’re—”

“Like my mom? I know you don’t,” she said. “I overreacted. Not your fault. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t kiss her good-bye, not after that conversation. Instead, he patted her muscled thigh, and got out of her car, thinking of Ian’s question earlier in the week. Jamie knew Charlie wasn’t like her mother. But did Charlie?

He waited, the door open, her engine running, one eye on the clock. It felt fragile, what was happening between them. So many ways it could go wrong, and he hadn’t factored in the good old-fashioned open-mouth-insert-foot method of fucking things up. Torn, he hesitated, then went with his gut.

“When are you going shopping?”

“After school. The garden party is tomorrow. The banquet is Saturday night. I’ve left this until the last possible minute. Time to pay the piper.”

“Pick me up? We can get dinner afterward,” he said lightly.

“You’re serious.”

“As a bomb,” he said.
As a fool in love,
he thought.

“Fine. It’s your evening,” she said. “Now get out of my car. You’re making me late.”

He laughed, and shut the door. By the time she was out of the parking lot, he was a third of the way up the stairs leading to the Hill.

Chapter Five

“Looking fine, Coach,” Grace drawled as she walked out of seventh-period Algebra II. “Very fine.”

“Thank you, Grace,” Charlie said noncommittally. It was the end of a very long day, complete with one student in tears in her office over her ongoing struggle with geometry, one player in tears in her office over a pre-prom breakup, a junior player having a borderline panic attack over applying to colleges, and lunchtime in a hastily called conference about a senior in Charlie’s homeroom accused of cyberbullying a freshman. Charlie had facepalmed, both mentally and physically, often enough that surely she was down to bare skin.

She made a quick pit stop on the way back to her office. The bathroom was empty, the students clearing out as fast as they could to enjoy the spring afternoon. Charlie peered in the mirror as she washed her hands. Her lipstick was gone, but some mascara clung to her lashes, and color pinkened her cheeks and chin. But the appearance wasn’t just the surface of makeup. Something shone in her eyes, softened and brightened them, a lingering pleasure and a sense of anticipation. It wasn’t a familiar look, but eventually she placed it.

She looked happy. That’s what happiness looked like—remembered good times and the expectation, even the promise, of more to come.

As she stared at her reflection, the light dimmed in her eyes. Jamie might be hers for the moment, but he wasn’t hers forever. He was on leave, back for a special, one-time event honoring a coach who’d meant the world to him. That was all.

However, not even a clear-eyed, rational assessment of the situation could completely dim the light in her eyes. Because tonight, as ridiculous as it was, Jamie was going shopping and having dinner with her. She was careful not to phrase it as “taking her” anywhere. She’d buy her own dress, pay for her own meal, the memory of her mother taking money from the revolving door of men in her life always in her thoughts. Charlie paid her own way as a point of pride. But Jamie would be with her.

After collecting her papers to grade, the grade book she kept even though the district maintained them online, and her uneaten lunch, she walked down the empty hallways to the side door leading to the staff parking lot and headed west into town to make the climb up the Hill. The houses got bigger, were set further back from the street on vast, tree-studded lots, as she drove up the main road to the cul-de-sac, using her mental map of the basketball court’s location and the narrow sidewalk leading to the steps to guide her.

It didn’t matter how old she was, or that she’d played on the team that won the European championship, or that she had a respectable position in the community. She’d never feel like she belonged on the Hill. Determined to face this particular fear, she parked, turned off the engine, got out of the car, and walked up to the front door to ring the bell.

The door opened almost immediately, Jamie and his brother Ian peering out with identical, inquisitive gazes. Ian looked, and smelled, like he’d been run hard and put away wet then rolled around in the dust bunnies under the bed. Jamie was showered and dressed in a pair of jeans and a hastily pulled on polo with one side of the collar turned up. Water droplets clung to his hair, and the shirt was stuck to his broad shoulders, like he’d showered and dressed in thirty seconds flat.

“Hi,” she said, twisting her fingers together to avoid straightening his collar.

“Hey,” Jamie said, like she came to his house all the time. “Want to come in for a minute?”

“No!” she said, then softened her tone. “No, thanks. I really just want to get this over with.”

Ian’s eyebrow rose. Jamie grabbed keys and wallet from the table in the foyer and scuffed into sneakers.

“We’re going shopping,” she explained to Ian.

“For the banquet?” Ian asked, his gaze shifting from Charlie to Jamie. “You finally going to break down and buy a suit?”

“Hell, no,” Jamie said. “She needs a dress.”

Ian’s gaze shifted back to Jamie, obviously wondering why his brother was going along on a shopping trip for a dress for the girls’ basketball coach, obviously drawing conclusions Charlie didn’t want him drawing.

“Shut up, Ian,” Jamie advised.

“I didn’t say a word.”

“I can hear you thinking,” Jamie said as he finished lacing his sneakers. “Tell Mom not to hold dinner for me.”

“What makes you think I’ll be around for dinner?”

“Like you’re going to bake a frozen pizza rather than eat Mom’s pot roast,” Jamie scoffed. “Not to mention you’ve got all those D&D grids to go through.”

“I can’t believe I kept all those.”

“And the die. And the figures.” Jamie coughed “geek” under his breath, and got a swat to the back of the head for his efforts.

“Have fun,” Ian said.

Charlie had been slowly backing away during this exchange. Jamie walked around to the other side of her car and waited while she clicked open the locks. “Did you have any trouble finding the house?”

“Number one, everyone knows which house was owned by the founder of North Hills Railway. Number two, everyone knows where the mayor lives. Number three, your brother is a lieutenant with the police department and there was an unmarked police car sitting outside the house.”

Jamie huffed out a laugh as he buckled his seat belt, then looked right at her. Suddenly catapulted back to the morning, she remembered that odd moment when her alarm went off. She’d been dreaming all right, dreaming of Jamie under the cottonwood tree, hot and hard inside her, hot and hard against her. It was so real, so vivid, like the park and the basketball court were the only places they existed, her own bedroom looked unfamiliar. It didn’t happen often anymore; a life on the road, waking up in hotel rooms and friends’ apartments all over Europe, taught her brain to remember where she was and supply that information as she woke up. One night with Jamie disoriented her that easily.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

She tried to put the car in reverse, remembered she hadn’t started it, turned the key, then successfully reversed out of the driveway. Jamie had his fingers tucked into the weather stripping at the top of the window. His other hand rested casually on his thigh.

Apparently things weren’t going to be any different because they’d slept together.

“What were you two up to?” she asked.

“Mom wants us to clean out the eaves,” he answered. “She kept everything from our childhood. Every paper, every art project, every toy and game and book we ever owned is shoved into the eaves of that house. She decided, since I’m home for a month, that Ian could take some time off and we’d go through it all.”