Loved by a SEAL (2 page)

Brody cocked up one brow. “Do they?”

“Hell yeah.” Rocky snorted. “You’ll see tonight.”

Tonight they’d be at a strip club where it was the girls’ job to pretend they loved everything about the male patrons, so Brody wasn’t convinced that would be a real good test of Rocky’s theory.

He laughed. “A’ight. If you say so.”

“Eh, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Yeah, I do and you can have it.” Brody knew exactly what he was missing not having a beard and that was mostly needing to clean food out of his facial hair after he ate.

Rocky lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug. “All right. More girls for me then.”

Brody had to chuckle. For tonight he wasn’t worried about Rocky’s threat. Where they were going, all he had to do was stop at the ATM for some cash and his evening’s female companionship would be guaranteed.

Brody had to consider that. Had he become such a jaded son of a bitch he would rather pay for female attention than look for some kind of meaningful relationship?

He supposed he had.

Hell, just that term—
meaningful relationship
—had him wanting to run and hide.
 

Though, it was more likely he was simply being a realist. He’d done the whole love and girlfriend thing once long ago. All that experience had accomplished was prove to him that things were easier this way.

Looking for Ms. Right Now was so much simpler than trying to find Mrs. Right and then discovering later she was oh so wrong.

The number of divorces he saw in the military was proof of that.

He’d thought he found her once—the girl he might be able to spend a lifetime with—but that hadn’t worked out so great.

Ashley Reed. His first love. Hell, his first for everything.

Christ, how could just thinking her name after a decade raise the memory of that teenage heartbreak all over again? That right there was reason enough to not repeat the mistake of getting involved seriously with a woman.

He rubbed at the tightness in his chest and hoped that it was just indigestion.

It had to be from the shit meal he’d eaten on the transport because he refused to admit one woman could still have a hold on him after ten years.

CHAPTER 2

“Ashley?”

“Yes, Miss Eleanor?” Stopping midway down the hall, Ashley popped her head around the doorframe.

“Come and sit with me.”

There were dishes in the sink from lunch and laundry in the dryer that needed to be sorted and folded, but what Eleanor Cassidy, the octogenarian matron of the Cassidy family, asked for she expected to get. And Ashley, nothing more than the hired help, wasn’t about to argue.

“Yes, ma’am.” She moved all the way into the room and sat.

“See if that television program I like is on yet.”

“Sure.” After close to three months of being this woman’s daily companion, she didn’t have to ask what show that was. Ashley reached for the remote control and switched to the station.

Being back here again, ten years after she’d left, was surreal. She certainly had come full circle.

She’d gone to nursing school shortly after high school, where she’d graduated at the top of her class, but yet here she was, working in almost the same job her grandmother had held for half her life.

The only difference was that Nana had changed baby diapers for the Cassidy family while Ashley was changing the adult variety.

But it made sense on so many levels to take this job. When Ashley’s pride stung for taking what felt like a step backward in her life and her career, she tried to remember that.

She had been working the grueling night shift at the emergency room at a hospital in a city two hours away when old Mrs. Cassidy’s health took a turn for the worse.

That had been a few months ago, about the same time her grandmother had taken a spill and broke her wrist.

Ashley needed to be with Nana.

More than that, she wanted to be. Her one regret about her job and her career had been living apart from the woman who’d raised her.

It made sense to quit the job at the hospital, move back in with Nana, and become Miss Eleanor’s private nurse, but the job entailed so much more than nursing.

The woman might be old, but she still liked to eat, so Ashley cooked her meals during the day. And while she was there, she kept the house straight and did laundry, because really she’d be bored to death if she didn’t do something. A person could only watch television so many hours a day.

Still it seemed like a giant leap backward. Her grandmother was the hardest working woman she’d ever known. And being a housekeeper was an honorable profession. It just wasn’t Ashley’s profession.

Before she’d had to retire because of her own health, Nana had been everything to the Cassidys. Nanny to Brody and Chris. Cook and housekeeper to the whole family, all so Brody and Chris’s parents—Miss June and Mr. Howard as she’d grown up calling them—could work in their own careers.

Her grandmother had raised Ashley right alongside the Cassidy boys. Nana would bring Ashley to work with her when she wasn’t in school. Where else could she have gone as a child? The Cassidys didn’t mind. One of the perks of the job, she supposed.

The older lady stared at her through cloudy eyes and smiled. “So pretty. But then again you always were, even as a child. I always told that grandmother of yours she’d better keep an eye out or the boys would be all over you.”

Ashley swallowed hard remembering how only one
boy
had been all over her and little did Miss Eleanor know it had been her then eighteen-year old grandson Brody. He was the boy Ashley had loved from the moment she realized boys were for more than just being annoying and teasing her.

Not that Brody had teased her all that much. Chris sure had though, as if he’d been her older brother, instead of just Brody’s.

Uncomfortable with all the memories and the secrets she’d kept from this woman Ashley fidgeted in her chair.

She’d purposely kept the fact she and Brody had gotten closer, much closer, from Miss Eleanor.

The woman was old school in every sense of the word. No way in hell would she have been happy with Brody dating the help’s granddaughter.

Not that the Cassidys were rich. They weren’t.

They were working middle class living in a lovely but modest three-bedroom home, but the fact remained her family worked for their family.

To a woman born in the 1930s in Alabama, the granddaughter of their housekeeper dating Brody would have been completely unacceptable.

At least, that’s what Ashley believed, then and now.

It had been the reason that made her keep their relationship secret, but it wasn’t the main thing that kept her from running away to be with him on the East Coast after he’d joined the Navy.

Her motivation for that had been different.

If she had followed him when he’d asked, she knew she would never have gone to nursing school as planned. If she had managed to be his wife and go to school at the same time, what were the chances she would have graduated, and with honors?

It might have been too easy to step into the role of wife and mother even if it meant sacrificing her own aspirations. It had been too huge of a decision, and too scary of a move, to make at eighteen years old.

No surprise she’d chosen the familiar over the unknown and stayed in Alabama to attend school.

Letting him go had cut her deep. Him too, she knew, judging by his anger then and the fact they hadn’t spoken since.

It was a regret she’d hold on to until the day she died. Even so, she wasn’t sure she’d make a different choice now.

After being lost deep in her thoughts for a long moment, Ashley realized she was being rude. The older woman had given her a very sweet compliment, if in a bit of a backhanded way, and she needed to accept it graciously.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Ashley ran her hand over her hair and noticed some of it had escaped from the tight bun.

There was no way to avoid the frizz. It overtook her hair in this weather.

It was late September but in Alabama, the heat and humidity still wreaked havoc with her hair.

Impossible hair was a legacy she’d inherited from her grandmother’s side of the family, along with the woman’s tall stature and long limbs.

Ashley supposed that, in a kind of mixed blessing, she’d gotten the Cassidy family from her grandmother too.

For better or worse, she’d accept the gift graciously, just like her grandmother had taught her to. But deep down, every turn of a corner raised memories of a past she wished she could keep buried in the deep recesses of her mind because thinking of Brody, what was, what might have been, never failed to cause the pain of a knife in her heart.

CHAPTER 3

Over his years in the SEALs, Brody had stowed his kit after short missions and also after long deployments.

He’d done it enough times he could secure his shit in his sleep. In fact, he’d come home so exhausted from some missions it’s possible he might have actually done that a time or two.

Today he wasn’t tired. Nope. Quite the opposite. This evening he was revved up and ready to go.

He finished stashing his gear in the caged shelves quick enough and then locked the gate behind him. There his stuff would stay, safe and ready to go until the next training or mission came around.

Brody headed to the showers and in spite of his immense enjoyment of the luxury of scalding hot water and kick ass water pressure, he made short work of showering and shaving.

He had places to go and women to see.

Apparently Rocky was in as much of a hurry to get moving as Brody. The man strode out of the shower room and into the hallway leading toward the locker room just after Brody did.

Now that he was clean, Brody was ready to eat. He waited for Rocky to catch up to him down the hallway and said, “Hey, you in the mood for ribs? There’s that place right next to the club.”

Rocky’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “Oh God. Ribs.”

Brody laughed at Rocky’s groan. “I guess that’s a yes?”

“Yes. Dude, perfect idea.”

“A’ight. Sounds good.” Brody grinned, happy with his plans since Chris had never bothered to call him back.

With the evening plans set, they walked through the door of the locker room, Brody first, and Rocky directly behind him.

When Brody stopped in the doorway, Rocky walked smack into his back.

“What the hell are you—” Rocky stopped his bitching the moment he looked past Brody and saw what had halted him dead in his tracks.

Mack stood in front of Speedy’s locker, obviously in the process of emptying it out.

With a feeling of dread twisting his gut, Brody swallowed away the lump in his throat and stepped farther into the room. “Mack?”

Mack turned, his eyes sunken and dark as his gaze met Brody’s. He answered the unspoken question with the shake of his head.
 

“Christ.” Rocky blew out a breath. “How?”

“Sniper.” That was the only word Mack spoke before going back to filling the brown cardboard box.

“Shit.” Brody watched as the last of the man’s belongings were transferred.