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“How about I let you pick up the tab next time?”
The waiter was back. “I’m sorry, sir. Your credit card’s expired. Would you like to use a different card?”
Wes swore as he looked at the credit card. “I only have this one.” Brittany opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “No, you’re not going to pay. I have cash.” He looked at the waiter. “You do take cash?”
“Yes, sir.”
He opened his wallet and just about emptied it. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you, sir.” The waiter vanished.
“Well, that was embarrassing.” He looked at the credit card again. “I thought they were supposed to send me a new card before the expiration date runs out.”
“What do you do with junk mail?” Britt asked.
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I throw it away. What do you do with it?”
“Do you throw it away without opening it? Mailings from mortgage companies and insurance companies and…” She paused dramatically. “…credit card companies?”
“Ha. You think they sent me a new card but I threw it away without even opening it,” he concluded correctly. “Well, hell, aren’t I just too efficient for my own damn good?” He forced a smile as he put the expired card back into his wallet. “Oh well.”
Brittany suspected his expired card created a bigger snafu than he was letting on. “Where are you staying tonight?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll drive back to San Diego. I was going to stay at a motel, but…” He shook his head and laughed in exasperation. “I’m supposed to meet Amber pretty early in the morning over at the studio, so if I go home, I won’t have time for much more than a short nap before I have to turn around and come back to L.A.”
“If you want, you could sleep on my couch,” Britt offered.
He looked at her, and his blue eyes were somber. “You may want to learn to be a little less generous with men you just met.”
She laughed. “Oh, come on. I’ve been hearing about you for years. I seriously doubt you’re a serial killer. I mean, the word probably would’ve trickled down to me by now. Besides, what are your other options? Are you going to, like, sleep in your car?”
That’s exactly what he’d been planning to do. She could see it in his eyes, in his smile. “Seriously, Brittany. You really don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” she said quietly.
Wes sat there looking at her for many long seconds. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, in his eyes. If she were young and foolish and prone to thinking that life was like a romance novel, she would dare to dream that this was the moment when Wes Skelly fell in love with her.
Except they’d agreed that there wasn’t going to be anything romantic between them, she wasn’t his type, he was definitely connected in some way to the wife of his good friend Wizard, and Brittany didn’t really want anyone to be in love with her. She had too much going on with school and Andy’s college and getting used to living on the west coast and…
Maybe the man just had gas.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Your couch sounds great. Thank you. I appreciate it very much.”
Brittany stood up, briskly collecting her purse and her sweater. “You can’t smoke inside the house,” she told him as he followed her to the door.
“I told you, I quit.”
She gave him a pointed look, and he laughed. “Really,” he said. “This time is going to be different.”
Chapter 3
“Hey, Andy,” Brittany called as she opened the door to her apartment.
“Hey, Britt,” her adopted son called back. “How’d it go with the load?”
Brittany looked at Wes, laughter in her eyes. “Um, sweetie?” she called to Andy. “The, uh, load came home with me.”
Wes had to laugh, especially when she added, “And he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”
Her place was extremely small, but it was decorated with comfortable-looking furniture and bright colors. A living room, an eat-in kitchen, a hallway off the kitchen that led to the back where there were two bedrooms.
Britt had told him on his way over that even though the place was significantly tinier than their house in Appleton, Massachusetts, it had the essential ingredient to shared housing—the bedrooms were large, and she and Andy each had their own bathroom.
Andy emerged from the hallway, dressed down in shorts and a T-shirt, his feet bare, and his dark hair a mess. He was trying to play it cool, but the kid practically throbbed with curiosity.
“Hey,” he said to Wes. He looked at Wes’s overnight bag, and then at Brittany. “Isn’t this outrageously unusual.”
“He’s sleeping on the couch,” Brittany told him in her refreshingly point-blank manner. “Don’t get any ideas, devil child.”
“Did I say anything?” Andy countered. “I didn’t say anything.” He reached out to shake Wes’s hand. “Nice to see you again, sir. Sorry about the load comment.”
“It’s not sir, it’s chief,” Wes corrected him. “But why don’t you just call me Wes?”
Andy nodded, looking from Wes to Brittany with unconcealed mischief in his eyes.
“Don’t say it,” Brittany warned him, as she went to a living room trunk and removed sheets and a blanket for the couch.
“What?” Andy played an angel, giving her big, innocent eyes. But beneath the playacting was an honestly sweet kid, who genuinely cared for his mother.
Jeez, that was who Andy reminded him of. Ethan. Wes’s little brother. Ah, Christ.
“There was a credit card mishap,” Brittany told Andy, putting the linens on the coffee table. “And Wes needed a place to sleep. Since we have a couch, it all seemed to line up quite nicely. I have an extra pillow on my bed that you can use,” she told Wes, before turning back to Andy. “Wes is not a candidate.”
Wes couldn’t keep from asking. “A candidate for what?”
Andy was watching Britt, too, waiting to see what she was going to say.
She laughed as she led the way into the kitchen, turning on the light and taking a kettle from the stove and filling it at the sink.
“This proves it,” she said to Andy. “I’m going to tell him the truth, which I wouldn’t do if he were any kind of real candidate—not that there are any real candidates.” She turned to Wes. “Ever since I adopted Andy, he’s been bugging me to ‘get him a father.’ It’s really just a silly joke. I mean, gosh, who’s on the candidate list right now?” she asked the kid as she put the kettle on the stove and turned on the gas.
“Well, Bill the mailman just came out of the closet, so we’re down to the guy who works the nightshift at the convenience store….”
“Alfonse.” Brittany crossed her arms as she leaned against the kitchen counter. “He’s about twenty-two years old and doesn’t speak more than ten words of English.”
“But you said he was cute,” Andy interjected.
“Yeah. The way Mrs. Feinstein’s new kitten is cute!”
“Well, there’s also Dr. Jurrik from the hospital.”
“Oh, he’s perfect,” Britt countered. “Except for the fact that I would rather stick needles into my eyes than get involved with another doctor.”
“That leaves Mr. Spoons.”
“The neighborhood bagman,” Brittany told Wes. “Be still my heart.”
Wes laughed as he leaned again the counter at the other end of the kitchen.
“The reason the list is so lame,” Andy told Wes, “is because she won’t go out and meet anyone for real. I mean, once every few years someone sets her up with the friend of a friend and she grits her teeth and goes, but other than that…” He shook his head in mock disgust.
“The truth is, most men my age are loads,” Brittany said.
“The truth is,” Andy told Wes, “she was married to a real load. I never met the guy myself, but apparently he was a piece of work. And now she’s gun-shy. So to speak.”
“I’m sure Melody and Jones completely filled in Wes as far as my tragic romantic past goes,” Britt said to Andy as she rolled her eyes at Wes. “Don’t you have studying to do?”
“Actually Dani just called,” Andy said. “She’s coming over.”
“Oh, is she feeling better?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She sounded…I don’t know. Weird. Oh, by the way, the landlord called and said he was replacing the broken glass in your bathroom window with Plexiglas.” He grinned at Wes. “There’s a group of kids down the street really into stickball and they’ve managed to break that same window three times since we’ve moved in—which is pretty impressive.” He looked back at Britt. “The Plexiglas isn’t going to look too good, but the ball should bounce off.”
Brittany snorted. “Ten to one says that my bedroom window breaks next.”
The doorbell rang.
“Excuse me,” Andy said as he went into the living room.
“He’s a good kid,” Wes said quietly. “You should be very proud.”
“I am.” She opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took out a pair of mugs. “Want tea?”
He laughed. “SEALs aren’t allowed to drink tea. It’s written in the BUD/S manual.”
“BUD/S,” she repeated. “That’s the training you go through to become a SEAL, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Jones had a few pretty wild stories about something called Hell Week.”
Hell Week was the diabolically difficult segment of Phase One training, where the SEAL candidates were pushed to extremes, physically, emotionally and psychologically.
“Yeah, you know, I don’t remember much of Hell Week,” he told her. “I think I’ve blocked most of it out. It was hard.”
“Now, there’s an understatement.” Brittany smiled at him, and Wes wished—not for the last time this evening, he was sure—that he wasn’t sleeping on that couch tonight. Her smile was like pure sunshine—God, it was trite, but true.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t remember much of it. Although, Hell Week was where Bobby Taylor and I finally stopped hating each other. The guy’s been my closest friend for years, but when we were first assigned as swim buddies—you know, we had to stick together no matter what during BUD/S—we hated each other’s guts.”
Brittany laughed. “I had no idea. Your friendship with Bobby is legendary. I mean, Bobby and Wes. Wes and Bobby. I keep expecting him to show up.”
“He’s on his honeymoon,” Wes told her.
“With your sister.” Her eyes softened. “That must feel really strange. It must be hard for you—your best friend and your sister. Suddenly it’s not Bobby and Wes, it’s Bobby and Colleen.”
It was amazing. Everyone who’d heard about Bobby’s marriage to Colleen had made noise like, how great was that? Your best friend gets to join your family. Wasn’t that terrific?
And yes, it was terrific. But at the same time it was weirder than hell. And Brittany had hit it right on the head. Wes’s entire friendship with Bobby had been based on the fact that they were two unattached guys. They shared an apartment, they shared a similar lifestyle, they shared a hell of a lot.
And now, while Wes didn’t quite want to call what he was feeling jealousy, everything had changed. Bobby now spent every minute he wasn’t on duty with Colleen instead of hanging out with Wes watching old, badly dubbed Jackie Chan movies.
Bobby and Wes had definitely turned into Bobby and Colleen—with Wes trailing pathetically along, a third wheel.
“Yeah,” he said to Brittany. “It’s a little weird.”
From out in the living room, Andy’s voice got loud enough for them to hear. “You can’t be serious!”
The kid didn’t sound happy, and Wes took a quick glance in his direction.
Andy was standing at the open door. His girlfriend hadn’t even made it into the living room. She was a pretty girl, with short dark hair, but right now her face was pinched and pale, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes.
“Will you please come in so we can talk about this?” Andy asked, but she shook her head. Her reply was spoken too softly for Wes to hear.
“What, so you’re just leaving?” Andy, on the other hand, was getting louder.
Wes stepped farther into the kitchen, attempting to give them privacy. Clearly this was not a happy conversation. It sounded, from his experience, as if Andy was getting the old dumparooney.
He looked at Britt who winced when Andy said, loudly enough for them to hear, “You’re just going home to San Diego—you’re not even going to finish up the term!?”
Again, the girl’s reply was too soft for Wes to hear.
“The biggest problem with having a small apartment,” Brittany said, as she poured hot water over the tea bag in her mug, “is that there’s no such thing as a private conversation.
“We could go for a walk,” Wes suggested. “You up for a walk?”
She put the kettle back on the stove, giving him another of those killer smiles, this one loaded with appreciation. “Absolutely. What I really wanted was iced tea, anyway. Let me get a warmer jacket.”
But as she went down the hall to her bedroom, the conversation from the living room got even louder.
“Why are you doing this?” Andy asked. He was really upset. “What happened? What’d I do? Dani, you’ve got to talk to me, because, God, I don’t want you to leave! I love you!”
Dani burst into noisy tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, finally loud enough for them all to hear. “I don’t love you!”
The door slammed behind her.
Oh, cripes, that had to have hurt. Wes met Britt’s worried eyes as she came back out into the kitchen. She’d obviously heard that news bulletin, too.
Andy was silent in the living room. He’d have to come past them to get to the sanctuary and privacy of his room.
