Taylor's Temptation

“Go away,” Colleen told Bobby. “I don’t want another big brother.”

Bobby shook his head. “Wes asked me to—”

Damn Wes. “He probably asked you to sift through my dresser drawers, too,” she countered, lowering her voice. “Although I’m not sure what you’re going to tell him when you find my collection of black leather bustiers.”

Bobby looked at her, something unrecognizable on his face.

And as Colleen looked back at him, for a moment she lost herself in the darkness of his eyes. He looked away, clearly embarrassed, and she realized suddenly that her brother wasn’t here.

Wes wasn’t here.

Bobby was in town without Wes. And without Wes, if she played it right, the rules of this game they’d been playing for the past decade could change.

Radically.

Taylor’s Temptation

Suzanne Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

SUZANNE BROCKMANN

lives just west of Boston in a house always filled with her friends—actors and musicians and storytellers and artists and teachers. When not writing award-winning romances about U.S. Navy SEALs, she sings in an a cappella group called Serious Fun with her husband, she sings in a band called The Dick Mac Wedding Garage Band with her daughter (shades of the Partridge Family!), manages the professional acting careers of her two teenagers, volunteers at the Appalachian Benefit Coffeehouse and always answers letters from readers. E-mail her at [e-mail] or send an SASE to P.O. Box 5092, Wayland, MA 01778.

In loving memory of Melinda Helfer, Romantic Times reviewer—a friend of mine, and a friend of all romance.

The first time I met Melinda was at an RWA book signing years ago—right after Prince Joe and Forever Blue had come out. She rushed up to me, dropped to the floor in front of my table and proceeded to kowtow! She told me she loved those two books, and couldn’t wait for the next installment in the TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS series to be released. She was funny, enthusiastic and amazingly intelligent—a fierce and passionate fan of all romance, and a good friend.

Melinda, this one’s for you. (But then again, I think you probably knew that all my TDD books were written for you!) You will be missed.

Acknowledgments:

Special thanks to Mary Stella of the New Jersey Romance Writers, friend and fellow writer, for her help in creating a suitable match for Bobby Taylor.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Prologue

“It was amazing.” Rio Rosetti shook his head, still unable to wrap his mind around last night’s explosive events. “It was absolutely amazing.”

Mike and Thomas sat across from him at the mess hall, their ham and eggs forgotten as they waited for him to continue.

Although neither of them let it show, Rio knew they were both envious as hell that he’d been smack in the middle of all the action, pulling his weight alongside the two legendary chiefs of Alpha Squad, Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly.

“Hey, Little E., get your gear and strap on your blue-suede swim fins,” Chief Skelly had said to Rio just six hours ago. Had it really only been six hours? “Me and Uncle Bobby are gonna show you how it’s done.”

Twin sons of different mothers. That’s what Bobby and Wes were often called. Of very different mothers. The two men looked nothing alike. Chief Taylor was huge. In fact, the man was a total animal. Rio wasn’t sure, because the air got kind of hazy way up by the top of Bobby Taylor’s head, but he thought the chief stood at least six and a half feet tall, maybe even more. And he was nearly as wide. He had shoulders like a football player’s protective padding, and, also like a football player, the man was remarkably fast. It was pretty freaky, actually, that a guy that big could achieve the kind of speed he did.

His size wasn’t the only thing that set him apart from Wes Skelly, who was normal-size—about Rio’s height at five-eleven with a similar wiry build.

Bobby was at least part Native American. His heritage showed in his handsome face and in the rich color of his skin. He tanned a real nice shade of brown when he was out in the sun—a far nicer shade than Rio’s own slightly olive-tinged complexion. The chief also had long, black, straight hair that he wore pulled severely from his face in a single braid down his back, giving him a faintly mystical, mysterious air.

Wes, on the other hand, was of Irish-American descent, with a slightly reddish tint to his light brown hair and leprechaun-like mischief gleaming in his blue eyes.

No doubt about it, Wes Skelly came into a room and bounced off the walls. He was always moving—like a human pinball. And if he wasn’t moving, he was talking. He was funny and rude and loud and not entirely tactful in his impatience.

Bobby, however, was the king of laid-back cool. He was the kind of guy who could sit perfectly still, without fidgeting, just watching and listening, sometimes for hours, before he gave voice to any opinions or comments.

But as different as they seemed in looks and demeanor, Bobby and Wes shared a single brain. They knew each other so well they were completely in tune with the other’s thoughts.

Which was probably why Bobby didn’t do too much talking. He didn’t need to. Wes read his mind and spoke—incessantly—for him.

Although when the giant chief actually did speak, men listened. Even the officers listened.

Rio listened, too. He’d learned early on in SEAL training, long before he got tapped to join SEAL Team Ten’s legendary Alpha Squad, to pay particular attention to Chief Bobby Taylor’s opinions and comments.

Bobby had been doing a stint as a BUD/S instructor in Coronado, and he’d taken Rio, along with Mike Lee and Thomas King, under his extremely large wing. Which wasn’t to say he coddled them. No way. In fact, by marking them as the head of a class filled with smart, confident, determined men, he’d demanded more from them. He’d driven them harder than the others, accepted no excuses, asked nothing less than their personal best—each and every time.

They’d done all they could to deliver, and—no doubt due to Bobby’s quiet influence with Captain Joe Catalanotto—won themselves coveted spots in the best SEAL team in the Navy.

Rewind to six hours ago, to last night’s operation. SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad had been called in to assist a FInCOM/DEA task force.

A particularly nasty South American drug lord had parked his luxury yacht a very short, very cocky distance outside of U.S. waters. The Finks and the DEA agents couldn’t or maybe just didn’t want to for some reason—Rio wasn’t sure which and it didn’t really matter to him—snatch the bad dude up until he crossed that invisible line into U.S. territory.

And that was where the SEALs were to come in.

Lieutenant Lucky O’Donlon was in charge of the op—mostly because he’d come up with a particularly devious plan that had tickled Captain Joe Cat’s dark sense of humor. The lieutenant had decided that a small team of SEALs would swim out to the yacht—named Swiss Chocolate, a stupid-ass name for a boat—board it covertly, gain access to the bridge and do a little creative work on their computerized navigational system.

As in making the yacht’s captain think they were heading south when they were really heading northwest.

Bad dude would give the order to head back toward South America, and instead they’d zoom toward Miami—into the open arms of the Federal task force.

It was just too good.

Bobby and Wes had been selected by Lieutenant O’Donlon to gain covert access to the bridge of the yacht. And Rio was going along for the ride.

“I knew damn well they didn’t need me there,” he told Thomas and Mike now. “In fact, I was aware I was slowing them down.” Bobby and Wes didn’t need to talk, didn’t need to make hand signals. They barely even looked at each other—they just read each other’s minds. It was so freaky. Rio had seen them do similar stuff on a training op, but somehow out in the real world it seemed even more weird.

“So what happened, Rosetti?” Thomas King asked. The tall African-American ensign was impatient—not that he’d ever let it show on his face. Thomas was an excellent poker player. Rio knew that firsthand, having left the table with empty pockets on more than one occasion.

Most of the time Thomas’s face was unreadable, his expression completely neutral, eyelids half-closed. The combination of that almost-bland expression and his scars—one bisecting his eyebrow and the other branding one of his high cheekbones—gave him a dangerous edge that Rio wished his own far-too-average face had.

But it was Thomas’s eyes that made most people cross the street when they saw him coming. So dark-brown as to seem black, his eyes glittered with a deep intelligence—the man was Phi Beta Kappa and a member of the Mensa club. His eyes also betrayed the fact that despite his slouched demeanor, Thomas King was permanently at Defcon Five—ready to launch a deadly attack without hesitation if the need arose.

He was Thomas. Not Tommy. Not even Tom. Thomas. Not one member of Team Ten ever called him anything else.

Thomas had won the team’s respect. Unlike Rio, who somehow, despite his hope for a nickname like Panther or Hawk, had been given the handle Elvis. Or even worse, Little Elvis or Little E.

Holy Chrysler. As if Elvis wasn’t embarrassing enough.

“We took a rubber duck out toward the Swiss Chocolate,” Rio told Thomas and Mike. “Swam the rest of the way in.” The swift ride in the little inflatable boat through the darkness of the ocean had made his heart pound. Knowing they were going to board a heavily guarded yacht and gain access to her bridge without anyone seeing them had a lot to do with it. But he was also worried.

What if he blew it?

Bobby apparently could read Rio’s mind almost as easily as he read Wes Skelly’s, because he’d touched Rio’s shoulder—just a brief squeeze of reassurance—before they’d crept out of the water and onto the yacht.

“The damn thing was lit up like a Christmas tree and crawling with guards,” Rio continued. “They all dressed alike and carried these cute little Uzi’s. It was almost like their boss got off on pretending he had his own little army. But they weren’t any kind of army. Not even close. They were really just street kids in expensive uniforms. They didn’t know how to stand watch, didn’t know what to look for. I swear to God, you guys, we moved right past them. They didn’t have a clue we were there—not with all the noise they were making and the lights shining in their eyes. It was so easy it was a joke.”

“If it were a joke,” Mike Lee asked, “then what’s Chief Taylor doing in the hospital?”

Rio shook his head. “No, that part wasn’t a joke.” Someone on board the yacht had decided to move the party up from down below and go for a midnight swim. Spotlights had switched on, shining down into the ocean, and all hell had broken loose. “But up until the time we were heading back into the water, it was a piece of cake. You know that thing Bobby and Wes can do? The telepathic communication thing?”

Thomas smiled. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen them look at each other and—”

“This time they didn’t,” Rio interrupted his friend. “Look at each other, I mean. You guys, I’m telling you, this was beyond cool—watching them in action like this. There was one guard on the bridge, okay? Other than that, it was deserted and pretty dark. The captain and crew are all below deck, right? Probably getting stoned with the party girls and the guests. So anyway, the chiefs see this guard and they don’t break stride. They just take him temporarily out of the picture before he even sees us, before he can even make a sound. Both of them did it—together, like it’s some kind of choreographed move they’ve been practicing for years. I’m telling you, it was a thing of beauty.”

“They’ve been working with each other for a long time,” Mike pointed out.

“They went through BUD/S together,” Thomas reminded them. “They’ve been swim buddies from day one.”

“It was perfection.” Rio shook his head in admiration. “Sheer perfection. I stood in the guard’s place, in case anyone looked up through the window, then there’d be someone standing there, you know? Meanwhile Skelly disabled the conventional compass. And Bobby broke into the navigational computers in about four seconds.”

That was another freaky thing about Bobby Taylor. He had fingers the size of ballpark franks, but he could manipulate a computer keyboard faster than Rio would have thought humanly possible. He could scan the images that scrolled past on the screen at remarkable speeds, too.

“It took him less than three minutes to do whatever it was he had to do,” he continued, “and then we were out of there—off the bridge. Lucky and Spaceman were in the water, giving us the all-clear.” He shook his head, remembering how close they’d been to slipping silently away into the night. “And then all these babes in bikinis came running up on deck, heading straight for us. It was the absolute worst luck—if we’d been anywhere else on the vessel, the diversion would’ve been perfect. We would’ve been completely invisible. I mean, if you’re an inexperienced guard are you going to be watching to see who’s crawling around in the shadows or are you going to pay attention to the beach bunnies in the thong bikinis? But someone decided to go for a swim off the starboard side—right where we were hiding. These heavy-duty searchlights came on, probably just so the guys on board could watch the women in the water, but wham, there we were. Lit up. There was no place to hide—and nowhere to go but over the side.”

“Bobby picked me up and threw me overboard,” Rio admitted. He must not have been moving fast enough—he was still kicking himself for that. “I didn’t see what happened next, but according to Wes, Bobby stepped in front of him and blocked him from the bullets that started flying while they both went into the water. That was when Bobby caught a few—one in his shoulder, another in the top of his thigh. He was the one who was hurt, but he pulled both me and Wes down, under the water—out of sight and out of range.”

Sirens went on. Rio had been able to hear them along with the tearing sound of the guards’ assault weapons and the screams from the women, even as he was pulled underwater.

“That was when the Swiss Chocolate took off,” Rio said. He had to smile. “Right for Miami.”

They’d surfaced to watch, and Bobby had laughed along with Wes Skelly. Rio and Wes hadn’t even realized he’d been hit. Not until he spoke, in his normal, matter-of-fact manner.

“We better get moving, get back to the boat, ASAP,” Bobby had said evenly. “I’m shark bait.”

“The chief was bleeding badly,” Rio told his friends. “He was hurt worse even than he realized.” And the water hadn’t been cold enough to staunch the flow of his blood. “We did the best we could to tie off his leg, right there in the water. Lucky and Spaceman went on ahead—as fast as they could—to connect with the rubber duck and bring it back toward us.”

Bobby Taylor had been in serious pain, but he’d kept moving, slowly and steadily through the darkness. Apparently he’d been afraid if he didn’t keep moving, if he let Wes tow him back to the little rubber boat, he’d black out. And he didn’t want to do that. The sharks in these waters did pose a serious threat, and if he were unconscious, that could have put Rio and Wes into even more significant danger.

“Wes and I swam alongside Bobby. Wes was talking the entire time—I don’t know how he did it without swallowing a gallon of seawater—bitching at Bobby for playing the hero like that, making fun of him for getting shot in the ass—basically, just ragging on him to keep him alert.

“It wasn’t until Bobby finally slowed to a crawl, until he told us he wasn’t going to make it—that he needed help—that Wes stopped talking. He took Bobby in a lifeguard hold and hauled ass, focusing all his energy on getting back to the rubber duck in record time.”

Rio sat back in his seat. “When we finally connected with the boat, Lucky had already radioed for help. It wasn’t much longer before a helo came to evac Bobby to the hospital.

“He’s going to be okay,” he told both Thomas and Mike again. That was the first thing he’d said about their beloved chief’s injuries, before they’d even sat down to breakfast. “The leg wound wasn’t all that bad, and the bullet that went into his shoulder somehow managed to miss the bone. He’ll be off the active-duty list for a few weeks, maybe a month, but after that…” Rio grinned. “Chief Bobby Taylor will be back. You can count on that.”

Chapter 1

Navy SEAL Chief Bobby Taylor was in trouble.

Big trouble.

“You gotta help me, man,” Wes said. “She’s determined to go, she flippin’ hung up on me and wouldn’t pick up the phone when I called back, and I’m going wheels-up in less than twenty minutes. All I could do was send her e-mail—though fat lotta good that’ll do.”

“She” was Colleen Mary Skelly, his best friend’s little sister. No, not little sister. Younger sister. Colleen wasn’t little, not anymore. She hadn’t been little for a long, long time.

A fact that Wes didn’t seem quite able to grasp.

“If I call her,” Bobby pointed out reasonably, “she’ll just hang up on me, too.”

“I don’t want you to call her.” Wes shouldered his seabag and dropped his bomb. “I want you to go there.”

Bobby laughed. Not aloud. He would never laugh in his best friend’s face when he went into overprotective brother mode. But inside of his own head, he was rolling on the floor in hysterics.

Outside of his head, he only lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “To Boston.” It wasn’t really a question.

Wesley Skelly knew that this time he was asking an awful lot, but he squared his shoulders and looked Bobby straight in the eyes. “Yes.”

Problem was, Wes didn’t know just how much he was asking.

“You want me to take leave and go to Boston,” Bobby didn’t really enjoy making Wes squirm, but he needed his best friend to see just how absurd this sounded, “because you and Colleen got into another argument.” He still didn’t turn it into a question. He just let it quietly hang there.

“No, Bobby,” Wes said, the urgency in his voice turned up to high. “You don’t get it. She’s signed on with some kind of bleeding-heart, touchy-feely volunteer organization, and next she and her touchy-feely friends are flying out to flippin’ Tulgeria.” He said it again, louder, as if it were unprintable, then followed it up by a string of words that truly were.

Bobby could see that Wes was beyond upset. This wasn’t just another ridiculous argument. This was serious.

“She’s going to provide earthquake relief,” Wes continued. “That’s lovely. That’s wonderful, I told her. Be Mother Teresa. Be Florence Nightingale. Have your goody two-shoes permanently glued to your feet. But stay way the hell away from Tulgeria! Tulgeria—the flippin’ terrorist capital of the world!”

“Wes—”

“I tried to get leave,” Wes told him. “I was just in the captain’s office, but with you still down and H. out with food poisoning, I’m mission essential.”

“I’m there,” Bobby said. “I’m on the next flight to Boston.”

Wes was willing to give up Alpha Squad’s current assignment—something he was really looking forward to, something involving plenty of C-4 explosives—to go to Boston. That meant that Colleen wasn’t just pushing her brother’s buttons. That meant she was serious about this. That she really was planning to travel to a part of the world where Bobby himself didn’t feel safe. And he wasn’t a freshly pretty, generously endowed, long-legged—very long-legged—redheaded and extremely female second-year law student.

With a big mouth, a fiery temper and a stubborn streak. No, Colleen’s last name wasn’t Skelly for nothing.

Bobby swore softly. If she’d made up her mind to go, talking her out of it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Thank you for doing this,” Wes said, as if Bobby had already succeeded in keeping Colleen off that international flight. “Look, I gotta run. Literally.”

Wes owed Bobby for this one. But he already knew it. Bobby didn’t bother to say the words aloud.

Wes was almost out the door before he turned back. “Hey, as long as you’re going to Boston…”

Ah. Here it came. Colleen was probably dating some new guy and…Bobby was already shaking his head.

“Check out this lawyer I think Colleen’s dating, would you?” Wes asked.

“No,” Bobby said.

But Wes was already gone.

Colleen Skelly was in trouble.

Big trouble.

It wasn’t fair. The sky was far too blue today for this kind of trouble. The June air held a crisp sweetness that only a New England summer could provide.

But the men standing in front of her provided nothing sweet to the day. And nothing unique to New England, either.

Their kind of hatred, unfortunately, was universal.

She didn’t smile at them. She’d tried smiling in the past, and it hadn’t helped at all.

“Look,” she said, trying to sound as reasonable and calm as she possibly could, given that she was facing down six very big men. Ten pairs of young eyes were watching her, so she kept her temper, kept it cool and clean. “I’m well aware that you don’t like—”

“‘Don’t like’ doesn’t have anything to do with it,” the man at the front of the gang—John Morrison—cut her off. “We don’t want your center here, we don’t want you here.” He looked at the kids, who’d stopped washing Mrs. O’Brien’s car and stood watching the exchange, wide-eyed and dripping with water and suds. “You, Sean Sullivan. Does your father know you’re down here with her? With the hippie chick?”

“Keep going, guys,” Colleen told the kids, giving them what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Hippie chick. Sheesh. “Mrs. O’Brien doesn’t have all day. And there’s a line, remember. This car wash team has a rep for doing a good job—swiftly and efficiently. Let’s not lose any customers over a little distraction.”

She turned back to John Morrison and his gang. And they were a gang, despite the fact that they were all in their late thirties and early forties and led by a respectable local businessman. Well, on second thought, calling Morrison respectable was probably a little too generous.

“Yes, Mr. Sullivan does know where his son is,” she told them levelly. “The St. Margaret’s Junior High Youth Group is helping raise money for the Tulgeria Earthquake Relief Fund. All of the money from this car wash is going to help people who’ve lost their homes and nearly all of their possessions. I don’t see how even you could have a problem with that.”

Morrison bristled.

And Colleen silently berated herself. Despite her efforts, her antagonism and anger toward these Neanderthals had leaked out.

“Why don’t you go back to wherever it was you came from?” he told her harshly. “Get the hell out of our neighborhood and take your damn bleeding-heart liberal ideas and stick them up your—”

No one was going to use that language around her kids. Not while she was in charge. “Out,” she said. “Get out. Shame on you! Get off this property before I wash your mouth out with soap. And charge you for it.”

Oh, that was a big mistake. Her threat hinted at violence—something she had to be careful to avoid with this group.