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“I wish you were my mom.”
“I think you’re a little too old even for me to adopt,” she told him. Although Wes was definitely younger than she was, by at least five years. And maybe even more. What was her sister thinking?
“Andy was what? Twelve when you adopted him?” he asked.
“Thirteen.” Irish. Melody was thinking that Wes was Irish, and that Brittany had a definite thing for a man with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile that could light his entire being. Mel was thinking about her own intense happiness with Harlan Jones, and about the fact that one night, years ago, Britt had had a little too much to drink and admitted to her sister that her biggest regret about her failed marriage to That-Jerk-Quentin was that she would have liked to have had a child—a biological child—of her own.
That would teach her to be too heavy-handed when making strawberry daiquiris.
“That definitely qualifies you for sainthood,” Wes said. “Adopting a thirteen-year-old juvie? Man.”
“All he really needed was a stable home environment—”
“You’re either crazy or Mother Teresa’s sister.”
“Oh, I’m not a saint. Believe me. I just…I fell in love with the kid. He’s great.” She tried to explain. “He grew up with no one. I mean, completely abandoned—physically by his father and emotionally by his mother. And then there he was, about to be shipped away again, to another foster home, and there I was, and…I wanted him to stay with me. We’ve had our tough moments, sure, but…”
The look in Wes’s blue eyes—a kind of a thoughtful intensity, as best she could read it—was making her nervous. This man wasn’t the happy-go-lucky second cousin to a leprechaun with ADD that she’d first thought him to be. He wasn’t jittery, as she’d first thought, although standing still was clearly a challenge for him. No, he was more like a lightning bolt—crackling with barely harnessed excess energy. And while it was true he had a good sense of humor and a killer smile, there was a definite darkness to him. An edge. It made her like him even more.
Oh, danger! Danger, Will Robinson!
“You were going to tell me about your type,” she reminded him. “And please don’t tell me you go for the sweet young thing, or I’ll have to hit you. Although, according to some of my patients, I’m both sweet and young. Of course they’re pushing 95.”
That got his smile back. “My type tends to go to a party and ends up dancing on tables. Preferably nearly naked.”
Brittany snorted with laughter. “You win, I’m not your type. And I should have known that. Melody has mentioned in the past that you were into the, uh, higher arts.”
“I think she must’ve meant martial arts,” he countered. The rain continued to pour from the sky, spraying them lightly with a fine mist whenever the wind blew. He didn’t seem to notice or care. “Lt. Jones told me that you came to Los Angeles to go to school. To become a nurse.”
“I am a nurse,” she told him. “I’m taking classes to become a nurse practitioner.”
“That’s great,” he said.
She smiled back at him. “Yes, it is, thank you.”
“You know, maybe they set us up,” he suggested, “because they know how often I need a nurse. Save me the emergency room fees when I need stitches.”
“A fighter, huh?” Brittany shook her head. “I should have guessed. It’s always the little guys who…” She stopped herself. Oh, dear. Men generally didn’t like to hear themselves referred to as the little guy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” he said easily, no evidence of the famous Skelly temper apparent. “Although I prefer short. Little implies…certain other things.”
She had to laugh. “A, I wasn’t thinking—not even for a fraction of a second—about your…certain other things, and B, even if I were, why should it matter when we’ve already established that our friendship isn’t going to have anything to do with sex?”
“I was going with Rule One,” he countered. “No crap, just pure honesty.”
“Yeah, right. Men are idiots. Have you noticed?”
“Absolutely,” he said, obviously as at ease with her as she was with him. It was remarkable, really, the way she felt as if she’d known him for years, as if she were completely in tune with his sense of humor. “And as long as it’s established that we’re well-hung idiots, we’re okay with that.” He peered toward the field. “I think they’re calling the game.”
They were. The rain wasn’t letting up and the players were leaving the field.
“Is it temporary? Because I don’t mind waiting,” Wes added. “If Andy were my kid, I’d try to be at every home game. I mean, even if he wasn’t Babe Ruth reborn, I’d want to, you know? You must be beyond proud of him.”
How incredibly sweet. “I am.”
“You want to wait inside?” he asked.
“I think there’s some other event scheduled for the field for later this afternoon,” Britt told him. “They don’t have time for a rain delay—they’ll have to reschedule the game, or call it or whatever they do in baseball. So, no. It’s over. We don’t have to wait.”
“You hungry?” Wes asked. “We could have an early dinner.”
“I’d like that,” Britt said, and amazingly it was true. On her way over, she’d made a list of about twenty-five different plausible-sounding reasons why they should skip dinner, but now she mentally deleted them. “Do you mind if we go down to the locker room first? I want to give my car keys to Andy.”
“Aha,” Wes said. “I pass the you’ll-get-into-my-car-with-me test. Good for me.”
She led the way toward the building. “Even better, you passed the okay-I-will-go-out-to-dinner-with-you test.”
He actually held the door for her. “Was that in jeopardy?”
“Blind dates and I are mortal enemies from way back,” Britt told him. “You should consider the fact that I even agreed to meet you to be a huge testament to sisterly love.”
“You passed my test, too,” Wes said. “I only go to dinner with women who absolutely do not want to have sex with me. Oh, wait. Damn. Maybe that’s been my problem all these years….”
She laughed, letting herself enjoy the twinkle in his eyes as he opened yet another door—the one to the stairwell—for her. “Sweetie, I knew I passed your test when you asked me to adopt you.”
“And yet you turned me down,” he countered. “What does that tell me?”
“That I’m too young to be your mother.” Brittany led the way down the stairs, enjoying herself immensely. Who knew she’d like Wes Skelly this much? After Melody had called, setting up this date, she and Andy had jokingly referred to him as the load. He was her burden to bear for her sister’s birthday. “You can be the kid brother I always wanted, though.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that.”
The hallway outside the locker rooms wasn’t filled to capacity as it usually was after a game, with girlfriends and dorm-mates of the players crowded together. Today, only a very few bedraggled diehards were there. Brittany looked, but Andy’s girlfriend, Danielle, wasn’t among them. Which was just as well, since Andy had told her Dani hadn’t been feeling well today. If she were coming down with something, standing in the rain would only make her worse.
“My track record with sisters isn’t that good,” Wes continued. “I tend to piss them off, after which they run off and marry my best friend.”
“I heard about that.” Britt stopped outside the home team’s locker room door. It was slightly ajar. “Mel told me that Bobby Taylor just married your sister…Colleen, wasn’t it?”
Wes leaned against the wall. “She tell you about the shouting that went down first?”
She glanced at him.
He swore softly. “Of course she did. I’m surprised the Associated Press didn’t pick up the story.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as she—”
“No,” he said. “It was. I was a jerk. I can’t believe you agreed to meet me.”
“Whatever you did, it wasn’t a capital offense. My sister apparently forgives you.”
Wes snorted. “Yeah, Melody, right. She’s really harsh and unforgiving. She forgave me before Colleen did.”
“It must be nice to know you have such good friends.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you know, it really is.”
He met her gaze, and there it was again. That darkness or sadness or whatever it was, lurking back there in his eyes. And Brittany knew. The outwardly upbeat Irishman would be fun to hang around with and was even adorable in his own loudly funny way. But it was this hidden part of him, this edge, that would, if she let it, make him irresistible.
He was, without a doubt, her type. But she wasn’t his, thank you, God.
Eddie Sunamura, the third baseman, popped his head out of the locker room. His wife—June—was one of the soaking wet diehards. She lit up when she saw him, and he grinned back at her. They were only two years older than Andy, a thought that never failed to give Britt a jolt.
“Give me ten more minutes, Mrs. S.,” he called to June, and Brittany couldn’t keep from groaning.
“Eddie, you’re unbelievably hokey,” she said.
“Hey, Britt.”
“Have you seen Andy?” she asked him.
He pointed down the hall before he vanished back into the locker room.
And there was Andy. At the end of the hallway. In the middle of what looked to be a very intense discussion with the team’s star pitcher, Dustin Melero.
Andy was tall, but Dustin had an inch on him.
“Man, he grew,” Wes said as he looked at Andy. “I met him about four years ago, and he was only…” He held his hand up to about his shoulder.
It was then, as they were gazing down the hallway at the two young men, that Andy dropped his mitt and shoved Dustin with a resounding crash against the wall of lockers.
Brittany had already taken three steps toward them, when Wes caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said. “Let me. If you can, just turn around and don’t look.”
Yeah, like hell…
Still, she managed not to follow as Wes hustled down the hall to where Andy and Dustin were nose to nose, ready to break both the school rules and each others’ faces.
As she watched, Wes put himself directly between them. They were too far away for her to hear his words, but she could imagine them. “What’s up, guys?” The two younger men towered over him, but Wes somehow seemed bigger.
Andy was glowering—the expression on his face a direct flashback to the street-smart thirteen-year-old he’d once been.
He just kept shaking his head as Wes talked. Finally, Dustin—who was laughing—spoke. Wes turned and gave the taller boy his full attention.
And then, all of a sudden, Wes had Dustin up against the lockers, and was talking to him with a great deal of intensity.
The new expression on Andy’s face would have been humorous if Brittany hadn’t been quite so worried at the amount of damage a full-grown Navy SEAL could inflict on a twenty-year-old idiot.
Dustin’s sly smile had vanished, replaced with a drained-of-blood look of near panic.
Finally, unable to stand it another second, Brittany started toward them.
“…so much as look at her funny, I will come and find you, do you understand?” Wes was saying as she approached.
Dustin looked at her. Andy looked at her. But Wes didn’t look away from Dustin. All that intensity aimed in one direction was alarming.
She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. “Everything okay?” she said brightly.
“Do you understand?” Wes said again, to Dustin.
“Yes,” he managed to squeak out.
“Good,” Wes said and stepped back.
And Dustin was out of there.
“So,” Brittany said to Andy. “This is Wes Skelly.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “I think we’re kind of past the introduction stage.”
Chapter 2
Remarkably, Brittany Evans didn’t jump down his throat.
Remarkably, she didn’t immediately demand to know what on earth would possess him to physically threaten a kid more than a dozen years his junior. Forget about the fact that he did it in front of her impressionable teenaged son.
In fact, she didn’t say anything about it at all.
Wes took that as a strong hint that he’d surely hear about it later.
But she’d merely talked about her sister’s current pregnancy and friends they had in common as they drove to a Santa Monica café, not too far from the house Brittany shared with her kid.
The questions didn’t come until they’d sat down to dinner, until they’d ordered and had started to eat.
“You surprised me back at the fieldhouse,” Brittany introduced the topic. The table was lit by candlelight, and it made her seem warmly, lushly exotic in a way that her little sister would never look. Not in a million years.
Wes used to think that Melody was the prettier of the Evans sisters, and maybe according to conventional standards she was. Britt’s face was slightly angular, her chin too pointed, her nose a little sharp. But catch her at the right moment, from the right angle, and she was breathtakingly beautiful.
Sex was not an option, he reminded himself. Yes, this woman was very attractive, but he wasn’t interested. Remember? He definitely had to deal with all the emotional crap rattling around inside of his own head before he went and got naked with someone who would want a real relationship rather than a happy night or two of the horizontal cha-cha.
The odds of her wanting a night of casual sex with him were pretty low to start with. She so didn’t seem to be the type. But even if he was wrong, those odds would slip down to slim-to-none after he told her the truth—that he couldn’t give her more than a night or two because he was in love with someone else. No, not just someone else. Lana Quinn. The wife of one of his best friends—U.S. Navy SEAL and Chief Petty Officer Matthew Quinn, aka Wizard, aka the Mighty Quinn, aka that lying, cheating, unfaithful sack of dog crap.
Brittany Evans was sitting across the table from Wes, gazing at him with the kind of eyes he loved best on women. Warm eyes. Intelligent eyes. Eyes that told him she liked and respected him—and expected the same respect in return.
Lana had looked at him—at all of the SEALs—like that.
“Yeah,” Wes said, since Brittany seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. “I kind of surprised myself back at the fieldhouse.” He laughed, but she didn’t join in.
She just watched him as she took a sip directly from her bottle of beer and he tried not to look at or even think about her mouth. The bottom line was that he liked her too much as a person to mess around with her as a woman, as hot as he found her. But if she were some random babe that he caught a glimpse of in a bar, he’d make a point to get closer, to see if maybe she might want some mutually superficial sex.
So, okay. He was man enough to admit it. If all things were equal, he’d throw Brittany Evans a bang. No doubt about it. Forget about Lana—because, face it, he had to. She was married, off-limits, verboten, taboo. He couldn’t have her, so he took pleasure and comfort wherever he could find it. And he kept his heart well out of it.
