“I might be a little drunk,” Chris admitted. “But a man’s gotta bust out the champagne when the woman he loves agrees to marry him!”
Dylan’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach like a body chained to a cement block. Oh shit. Had he misheard, or had Chris really just said—
“I’m engaged!”
Yep, he’d heard right.
“To…uh, Claire?” he had to ask.
More laughter filled his eardrums. “Of course to Claire! Who the hell else would I propose to?”
Um, anyone other than that bitch?
Dylan kept that nasty little thought to himself. His older brother didn’t have a clue that he despised—absolutely despised—Chris’s latest girlfriend. Fuck. Make that fiancée. Chris was actually marrying the woman. That snooty, judgmental, prissy, materialistic woman.
Lord, he’d hated Claire McKinley from the moment he’d met her. Chris had brought her along on his last business trip to San Diego, and the three of them had gone to Dylan’s favorite diner for lunch. Everything about Claire had rubbed him the wrong way—the self-righteous glint in her brown eyes, how she’d turned her nose up at the menu as if diner food was utterly beneath her, the way she’d tapped those French-manicured nails on the table like she was dying of boredom. By the time lunch was over, he’d felt like strangling her, and the next two visits hadn’t gone any better.
He had no idea what his brother saw in that woman. She was attractive enough, sure, but good looks didn’t make up for the whole being-a-total-bitch part.
Show your future sister-in-law some respect…
He blanched as the thought registered. Oh shit. She would be part of the family now.
“So that’s it? Silence? No congratulations?”
Chris sounded so upset that Dylan gulped down a lump of guilt. “Sorry, I was just in shock.” He injected a note of excitement into his tone. “Congrats, man. I can’t believe my big brother is getting married. When’s the big day?”
“We’re thinking December.”
Relief trickled through him. Eight months away. Hopefully Chris would change his mind long before then.
“So I don’t care if you have to beg or bribe every naval officer on the base—you’re getting leave to attend my wedding,” Chris declared. “Can’t have a wedding without the best man, right?”
“You sure you want me standing up there with you? I don’t want to steal your thunder, you know, what with me being so good-looking and all.”
Chris barked out a laugh. “I’m not worried. My future bride only has eyes for me.”
Another blast of music rippled over the extension. It sounded Latin…salsa music?
“Where exactly are you?” Dylan demanded. “Don’t tell me you proposed at a salsa club.”
“No, I proposed at LeBlanc’s,” Chris answered, naming one of the fanciest restaurants in San Francisco. “But Claire wanted to celebrate, so she dragged me here. We’re at that club you and I went to last time you came home.”
Dylan’s eyebrows shot up, even though Chris couldn’t see him. He remembered that particular nightclub catering to a more rowdy crowd, like Dirty Dancing-style shit—and Claire had chosen to go there? Seemed like the last place a goody-two-shoes snob like her would pick to celebrate an engagement.
“Anyway, I couldn’t keep the news to myself, and I knew you’d be up, night owl that you are. We’re going over to Mom’s tomorrow morning to tell her.”
He suppressed a sigh. And ten minutes after Chris and Claire left Shanna Wade’s house, she’d be on the phone with her younger son, demanding to know when he was getting married. Dylan adored his mother, and the two of them had always been close, but no matter how many times he told her he wasn’t ready to settle down, she never seemed to hear him.
“Well, at least this will give Mom something to do, planning the wedding,” he told his brother. “She’s been kind of bored and cranky ever since she quit her job.”
There was a beat. “She was bored and cranky even when she had a job.”
“True.”
“Okay, well, it’s late and I’m ready to forcibly remove Claire from the dance floor and take her home,” Chris said with a touch of exasperation. “Just wanted to share the good news with my baby bro.”
Dylan rolled his eyes. Only a two-year age difference between him and Chris, yet his brother never failed to act the part of the perpetually wiser older sibling.
“Congratulations again,” he said with fake enthusiasm. “Pass that along to Claire, too.”
“I will. Talk soon.”
After they hung up, Dylan turned his head in time to see Kelly saunter out of the bathroom.
“Everything okay?” The mattress bounced as she hopped back on the bed.
“My older brother’s getting married.”
She smiled, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “An impending marriage is typically good news, sailor. You look like someone just died.”
“Something did die,” he grumbled. “My brother’s manhood. Trust me, this chick he’s about to saddle himself with for the rest of his life? She’s god-awful.”
“Speaking of manhood…” Kelly shot a pointed look at his cock, which had gone soft, the condom sagging off the tip.
Great. Now Claire McKinley was destroying his sex life. The way she would destroy Chris’s future.
All right, that was extreme. Chris’s future wasn’t destroyed. And to be fair, Chris had the tendency to be a goody-two-shoes snob himself. There was a reason Dylan didn’t talk to his brother about his sex life. Some of the shit he was into, Chris would never understand, not in a million years.
“How about you put your womanly charms to use and get me nice and ready again?” Dylan drawled, licking his bottom lip as he met Kelly’s blue eyes.
She licked her own lips, already peeling the unused condom off his shaft as she scrambled into position between his legs. She wrapped her lips around the blunt head of his cock, summoning a groan from deep in his chest. He closed his eyes, but not before he saw her reaching for the discarded Hershey’s bottle.
All thoughts of his brother and Claire McKinley flew out of his head. Let Chris make the mistake of his life. Dylan would simply help the guy pick up the pieces later, when it all fell apart.
For now, the only thing he needed to concentrate on was the hot suction of Kelly’s mouth as she sucked chocolate syrup off his dick.
Chapter Three
“In other news,” the Channel 8 news anchor chirped, “the San Diego Zoo welcomed some new residents this morning. Piggy the Lioness gave birth to four healthy cubs. Mother and babies are resting comfortably, and zoo officials hope to reveal the new additions to the public in the next few weeks…”
Miranda tuned out the news report as she stood by the stove, flipping pancakes. Why on earth would anyone name a lioness Piggy? Shaking her head in bafflement, she slid a pancake onto the empty plate on the granite counter.
“Did you hear that, Mom? Piggy had babies!”
She glanced over her shoulder to smile at her daughter, who was sitting at the kitchen table braiding the hair of her favorite doll. “I did hear it,” Miranda confirmed. “What do you say, should we go meet Piggy’s babies?”
“Yeah! Let’s go today!”
“We can’t. Didn’t you hear what the lady on the TV said? Piggy and her cubs are resting right now. We have to wait until the zoo says we can see them.”
Sophie’s bottom lip dropped out in a pout. “Fine.”
Turning off the burners, Miranda carried two plates to the table and placed one in front of Sophie, the other by the empty chair. She headed back to the counter to grab her own plate, then joined Sophie at the table.
“Jase!” she called. “Breakfast!”
When her son didn’t come skidding through the doorway, Miranda frowned. “What’s he up to?” she asked her daughter.
Sophie’s expression was too angelic to be trusted. “I dunno.”
She narrowed her ey
es. “Spill, missy. You know I don’t like it when you two keep secrets.”
“But, Mommy, I really don’t know.” Sophie had the nerve to bat her eyelashes, all liquid brown eyes and innocence.
Miranda was used to it. Her twins only loved one other person more than they loved their mom: each other. Whatever bond they’d formed in utero had followed them right out of the womb—they always had each other’s backs, no matter what, and Miranda could swear they possessed the ability to read each other’s minds. Maybe even communicate telepathically. As toddlers, they could be in the same room for hours without saying a single word. They conducted entire conversations with their eyes, and if anyone tried to hurt one of them? The other came running to the rescue.
Normally, she loved the idea that her kids were so intrinsically connected, but at times like these, when one of them was up to no good, it was impossible to get them to turn on each other.
“Soph, if you don’t tell me what Jason is doing, I might have to reconsider giving you a solo in the summer recital…”
Sophie tilted her head pensively, looking far too mature for her six years. “You wouldn’t.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “Everyone gets a solo in the summer recital and I know you wanna see me do the solo ’cause I heard you tell Ginny that.” She beamed. “And you told Ginny you loved my enfoozeeazim.”
“Enthusiasm,” Miranda corrected, choking down laughter. It figured that Sophie would see through the empty threat. The girl was way too smart for her own good.
“Here I am! Sorry! I was doin’ stuff!”
Jason flew into the room with the same level of intense enfoozeeazim he threw into everything he did. The kid was a bundle of energy and always had been, unlike Sophie, who was more laid-back. Sophie was also capable of extreme focus, which she displayed during ballet class, while Jason’s head was all over the place, bouncing from subject to subject in a whirlwind pace that made Miranda dizzy. Fortunately, his short attention span wasn’t hurting him in school; the twins’ kindergarten teacher assured her both kids were doing well. In fact, their reading and writing levels could even be considered advanced for their age.
“And what kind of stuff were you doing?” Miranda asked as she popped open the cap of the maple syrup bottle. She drew her trademark syrup happy face on Sophie’s pancakes, which made her daughter grin, then did the same for her son, who seemed to be doing his damndest to avoid her gaze.
“Kid stuff, Mom. You wouldn’t understand.”
She bit back another laugh. “Okay, let’s go through the list. Will this stuff make me mad?”
“No,” both twins said immediately.
“Is it dangerous?”
“No.”
“Illegal?”
“No.”
“Will it require me to clean up a huge mess?”
Hesitation.
Miranda sighed. “Come on, guys, you know how much I hate cleaning.”
Sophie giggled. “Cleaning sucks.”
“Sucks,” Jason agreed, reaching for the glass of orange juice by his plate. He chugged the entire thing, then said, “Juice me.”
A laugh flew out of her mouth. “Yes, sir.”
As she poured him another cup of juice, she watched her daughter from the corner of her eye, making sure Sophie was actually eating her food instead of pushing it around on her plate the way she was sometimes prone to do.
“So this mysterious project of yours will only cost me a couple hours of cleaning?”
“We can try ’n clean first,” Sophie offered, oh so gracious. “But if we do a pooey job, you can help.”
“Sounds fair.” She gave her son a pointed look. “If you pour any more syrup on that, you’ll be eating pancake soup. Not to mention guaranteeing a visit to the dentist.”
He hastily put down the syrup bottle. It was the D-word. Worked every time.
“…making its way northward. Hurricane Nora is not expected to hit the West Coast, but there is a chance it will reach California in the form of a tropical storm.”
Miranda turned her attention to the small TV on the far end of the kitchen counter. The screen revealed a complicated-looking weather map with a bunch of squiggly lines that made no sense to her. But the weatherman standing to the side of the map seemed pretty damn excited, animatedly pointing to it as he continued to dole out information.
“Now, most Eastern Pacific hurricanes lose steam as they travel north and their winds are weakened, but this one is expected to have a larger impact than we’re used to, folks. Starting tomorrow afternoon, we can expect powerful winds, torrential rain and extensive coastal, as well as inland, flooding…”
Sophie’s head swiveled to the screen, her fork poised halfway to her mouth. “Oh no! What if we get washed away?”
“We won’t get washed away,” she assured her daughter.
Jason gasped. “What if there’s a big tide wave—”
“Tidal wave,” she corrected.
“—tidal wave, and it whooshes over here and then everything is underwater? How cool would that be?”
“That would not be cool at all,” Miranda replied.
“But we would live under the sea!”
“Like The Little Mermaid,” Sophie piped up. “So cool.”
She decided not to point out that if a tidal wave hit the coast and wiped out Imperial Beach, they’d all be dead, but it was too early in the morning to get all morbid around six-year-olds. Instead, she quickly finished her pancakes, then tidied up the kitchen while the twins ate.
She wasn’t too worried about this impending storm. Everyone kept making such a big deal about this hurricane, but Ms. Nora had been spinning her wheels for days now without dishing out any of the destruction she was supposed to. Miranda had stocked up on supplies the day after the weather network announced the storm was moving north, but she doubted San Diego or its surrounding areas would be affected. You always had to take what the weatherman said with a hundred grains of salt.
After breakfast, she helped the twins get ready, then left them to their own devices while she darted into her own room to shower and change. She slipped into a pair of leggings, a sports bra and a tank top, tied her long hair in a ponytail and shoved her feet into a pair of pink flip-flops. She hadn’t put any effort into her appearance, but it wasn’t like she needed to impress the wannabe ballerinas she’d be spending the day with.
Five minutes later, she and the kids reconvened in the hall—Jason wearing his blue-and-white Little League uniform, Sophie in a cute yellow sundress with her ballet bag slung over her shoulder.
“You guys ready?” Miranda asked with a smile.
“Yeah,” they said in unison.
She cocked her head. “You both used the bathroom like I asked?”
Hesitation.
She sighed and pointed at Jason. “You. Pee. Now.”
The kids broke out into laughter. Jason darted into the washroom, then Sophie took her turn.
As the trio left their small ground-floor apartment, Miranda fixed Jason’s blue baseball cap, then tweaked one of Sophie’s long brown braids. Outside, she ushered them into the older-model, secondhand sedan that had miraculously gotten them here from Vegas without once overheating.
She started the engine while they buckled up. Jason’s baseball practices coincided perfectly with Miranda’s Saturday schedule, and since he was best friends with the coach’s son, he usually went over to their house after practice while Miranda kept Sophie with her at the dance studio. In the evenings, she picked Jason up from his friend’s, and the three of them went to the twins’ favorite pizza place for dinner.
She loved the routine, loved spending time with her kids. She might not have planned to have a baby at eighteen, certainly hadn’t expected to end up with two, but she didn’t regret her decision to keep her babies and raise them alone. Sophie and Jason were her entire life, and they were such good kids.
Come on, baby, I’ve been such a good boy…
Out of nowhere, Seth Masterson
’s raspy voice floated into her mind, bringing a shiver to her body.
No. No, no, no.
She had to quit thinking about the man. He had no place in her life, for Pete’s sake.
Her gaze strayed to the rearview mirror, and she spent a few seconds watching the twins chatter to each other in the backseat. For a moment, she tried to imagine Seth sitting next to her. His big, muscular body crammed in the passenger seat, his arm hanging out the open window as he held a cigarette between his fingers.
A sigh got stuck in her throat. No, he didn’t belong in her life. As sexy as he was, and as tempted as she was to remove her Mommy hat for a few hours and enjoy what would undoubtedly be some amazing sex, she couldn’t.
Men like Seth were nothing but trouble. They blew into your life like a hurricane. Lured you in with their bad-boy charm and got you out of your panties. And then they disappeared, leaving a big mess in their wake.
Well, she didn’t need the headache, thank you very much. There was already one storm barreling its way into her life, and it went by the name Nora.
Though she got the feeling that Hurricane Nora didn’t have half the destruction potential that Hurricane Seth was capable of.
Seth and Dylan hopped out of Seth’s Jeep at eight thirty on Sunday morning, striding toward the beach a hundred yards away. They were both bare-chested, wearing shorts, sneakers, and sunglasses that were proving to be unnecessary. The sun had already risen, but the sky was overcast, making Seth wonder if that tropical storm the weather reports kept stressing about would actually make an appearance. He hoped not. He’d been looking forward to a long workout, the more strenuous the better.
When he and Dylan had moved in together three years ago, they’d started working out on the beach every morning, usually with fellow SEALs Cash McCoy and Jackson Ramsey, who rounded out Seth’s circle of friends. Not that he wasn’t buddies with the other men on the team—he was. But letting down his guard and sharing his feelings and all that shit? He only did that around Dylan, Cash and Jackson, which was pretty damn shocking because he’d never really done the whole friendship thing before.