Unexpected Christmas with the SEAL, page 7
She swept the back of her hand over her forehead dramatically. “Phew.”
He cracked a small smile.
“So was I right? You’re a well-read foodie?”
Tilting his head slightly, he nodded. “I like books and food.”
Her grin was jaw-dropping.
There was a very good chance Joanna was the most beautiful woman Decker had ever seen.
“How old are you?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
“Forty-five. How old are you?”
“Thirty-four.”
He nodded.
“And are you still off saving the world from drug lords and fanatical dictators? Or have you decided to hang up your cape and tights and leave crime fighting to the young SEALs without silver in their hair?” At that, she lifted her hand from his shoulder and swept it through his hair on the side by his temple, where he was indeed sporting several strands of silver.
Her fingers in his hair felt incredible.
He wanted to grab her hand, kiss her knuckles and encourage to keep playing with his hair. He could have easily just closed his eyes and allowed her to do it for the rest of the night.
“Slowing down,” he said, his eyes going wide when the last syllable came out slightly croaked like he was some prepubescent teenager.
She giggled and removed her fingers from his hair. “What does that mean?”
“Taking fewer missions. Being selective and not doing anything nearly as dangerous as I used to. Leaving that shit to the young pups.” He cracked a half-smile. “The ones without any silver in their hair. I’m easing my way into retirement.”
Her fingers found their way back into his hair. “I think it’s sexy. Distinguished. You’re like a silver fox.” Her gaze pivoted around the room until she found Barnes. “He’s gone full gray, and he’s still hot as hell.”
Decker snorted. “Yeah?”
She shrugged. “Embrace what you’ve got. Play to your strengths.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“How long are you here for?”
He exhaled and frowned, shaking his head. “No clue. As long as I want, really. Nate and Mieka are heading out on their honeymoon in a couple of days, so I might see if Asher needs a hand around here for a bit.”
She blew out a breath in a way that accentuated her bottom lip. His gaze fell to it and the desire to lunge out and bite it was damn near debilitating. “Mieka asked me if I wanted to sub for her while they’re gone. I jumped at the chance to get back into dancing. I’m sure I’ll be rusty for the first few days, but I’m excited. Well, a nervous ninny about teaching, because I’ve never taught before. But I’ll take anything if it means I can dance again.” Her huff of a laugh was humorless. “Anything to keep from going back to Toronto and the job I hate.”
Even though he knew what she did for work, he asked anyway. “What do you do?”
“I sell high-end real estate for my brother’s real estate firm. But I actually can’t stand it. The clients are so bloody pretentious, I want to clobber them all with the hood ornaments of their over-priced cars. It’s also really demanding. Like, I can’t have a life. I need to be at their beck and call, always. I was on a date, and I had to leave midway through because my client called and wanted me to get them into a viewing of a house because they heard it was hitting the market the next day and they wanted to see it before it was officially listed. So I had to call the listing agent and get my client a viewing that night at like ten o’clock.”
A frisson of something resembling jealousy niggled at the nape of his neck when she mentioned being on a date. That was weird. He had no claim on this woman and yet the idea of her seeing someone, of her dating, sat awkwardly in his craw. He worked his jaw back and forth and forcefully shoved that weird sensation away.
But he could still feel the ghostly touch of the green-eyed monster.
Weird.
He rarely felt jealousy over anything.
“Another time, I had to sell the tickets I bought to a concert—last minute—because my client wanted to see a certain house in the evening, from sunset through twilight and until every damn star in the sky was out. We were at the house for ages.”
That sounded goddamn awful to Decker. And he must have been making a face to convey his feelings because Joanna nodded.
“Yeah, I make that face a lot lately.”
“Does you brother know you’re unhappy?” he asked.
“He does. But he says it’ll get better. But honestly, I don’t think it will. I hate hustling. It is not part of my genetic makeup. Cold-calling and having to brown nose people to get them to choose me as their listing agent, or buying agent. It’s very cutthroat and competitive. I hate it. I had to deal with enough cutthroat bullshit and drama with girls on the ship when I was dancing. I’m over that. I’m too old for it.”
He snorted at her mention of being too old. She was thirty-four. She wasn’t too old for squat.
“You laugh, but I was cut from the ships because I was too old to dance. So was Mieka.” Then she glanced behind her at the two women flirting with Ryker. “So were Melissa and Jillian. We were all sacked as soon as we hit our early thirties. We’re geriatric dancers. Might as well just send us to the glue factory. Just a bunch of useless old mares. That’s what we are.”
He snorted again. “Then quit.”
“And do what?”
“Anything else. Whatever will make you happy.”
Her pout was less put on and more real. “Dancing makes me happy. It always has.”
“Then find a way to do that again. Ask Mieka for a job.”
Her sigh was weary, and she seemed to deflate in Decker’s arms. “If only it were that simple. I’ve already started the application process to get Canadian residency. What’s it going to look like if I go, ‘naw, I think I wanna be a yank, instead’? They’ll deport me back to my mum post haste for sure.”
Something told him it didn’t quite work that way, but he’d also never applied for dual citizenship anywhere, or even residency status, so he wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe she was right?
However, what he did understand was that if something made you consistently miserable, you quit it. Life was too fucking short to do things that made you unhappy.
Losing Brendan had drilled that into his head more than anything.
It seemed simple enough to him. Quit being a Realtor and find a way to dance again. Even if that was in Toronto. But then again, he wasn’t a dancer. Maybe it wasn’t like riding a bike.
He’d be happy if he had two left feet. But I his case, as soon as the music came on, his limbs turned into tentacles and any sense of rhythm disappeared like a puff of smoke.
Somehow, the beauty leading him around the dance floor managed to wrangle his tentacles and convert him into a passable dancer. If she let go of him, though, he’d be a spastic squid again in the blink of an eye.
Her smile was smaller, but held a wry tilt to it. “Maybe you weren’t sitting in the corner in judgment. Maybe you’re just really observant. Is that it?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m judging the shit out of everyone.”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t think you give a shit enough to care what people think of you, or to judge people.”
He was stunned silent for a moment on her accurate evaluation of him.
“Did you like, major in psychology or something? Or were your parents shrinks?”
Her chuckle warmed him better than the whiskey. “No. My dad is in finance and my mum teachers piano and is a seamstress. I’m just observant. I’m not wrong, am I?”
He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
She leaned back. “But something tells me as much as you don’t give a shit, you read people really well. So what kind of reading do you get of me?”
That heat in his belly intensified to an almost uncomfortable warmth. He fought the urge to squirm and cleared his throat. “Let’s just dance, hmm?”
Determination flickered behind her eyes. “No. Tell me. I read you and told you. Now it’s your turn.”
Sucking in a deep breath through his nose, he took a tighter hold of her hip and tugged her just a little bit closer. Her eyes flared.
Desire lanced through him as her breasts brushed his chest and a sexy pink raced up from her cleavage into her cheeks. She swallowed, and it was all he could not to lean forward and trace the line of her throat with his tongue.
“You’re hurting,” he said softly. “And you’re masking the hurt with a smile. But with every smile, another crack in your heart forms. It’s payment for the visage you’re showing the world. You’re lost. Much like Mieka was before she found a home and a purpose here with Nate. You’re pretending the world is just one big happy fun-time party, so nobody sees how unhappy you really are. And no, I didn’t learn this from you telling me you hate your job. I could see it in your eyes the first time I saw you. The masked pain. The fake smile. The excessive laughter. It’s all a coping mechanism. A veil. It’s one we’ve all done at some point in our lives. But you’ve been doing it for a while now that it’s almost second nature. Only, it’s also fucking exhausting.”
He swallowed, waiting for the backlash. The slap.
One of his skills had always been reading people quickly. He could scan a crowd, and within ten minutes select his target, profile them and know exactly how to approach them, manipulate them, and get what he needed from them. Usually without any torture or bloodshed.
Usually.
Her eyes bore into him with an intensity he wasn’t prepared for and he squirmed again, then cleared his throat. “I uh …”
But she shook her head to shut him up. Her eyes grew watery with unshed tears and when she blinked, those tears spilled over and down her cheeks. “You’re right. I’m lost. I’m sad. I’m in pain. And I’ve been faking everything.” She glanced in the direction of Mieka who was slow dancing with Nate, an enormous—real—smile on the bride’s face. “Because it’s not my day. And she doesn’t deserve to be saddled with my problems. She found her happiness here, and I’m happy for her. But we can’t all marry sexy ranchers and move in next door to our sister.”
“No, we can’t.”
She huffed a sarcastic laugh. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
His grip tightened on her waist, and it forced her to look up at him. “Hey, it’s okay to be real with me.”
She swallowed, then a hardness caused lines to crease beside her eyes. “Want to get out of here?”
Get it here —> https://books2read.com/found-forever-WCSS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Canadian West Coast baby born and raised, Whitley is married to her high school sweetheart, and together they have two beautiful daughters and a fluffy dog. She spends her days making food that gets thrown on the floor, vacuuming Cheerios out from under the couch and making sure that the dog food doesn’t end up in the air conditioner. But when the kids are in school, and it’s not quite wine o’clock, Whitley sits down, avoids the pile of laundry on the couch, and writes.
A lover of all things decadent; wine, cheese, chocolate and spicy erotic romance, Whitley brings the humorous side of sex, the ridiculous side of relationships and the suspense of everyday life into her stories. With single dads, firefighters, Navy SEALs, mommy wars, body issues, threesomes, bondage and role-playing, Whitley’s books have all the funny and fabulously filthy words you could hope for.
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THE SINGLE DADS OF SEATTLE SERIES
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