Night Watch

“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.

And even if they were going to go for a walk, they’d have to go out right past him. If Wes were in Andy’s shoes, having to face his mother and her friend was the last thing he’d want after getting an I don’t love you response to his declaration of love.

“How about a tour of your bedroom instead?” Wes asked Brittany. If they went into her room and shut the door, that would give Andy an escape route.

“Yes,” she said. “Come on.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall.

Her room was as brightly colored and cheerful as the rest of the place, with a big mirror over an antique dresser and a bed that actually had a canopy. As she closed the door behind them, Wes had to smile.

“Gee, I wish it was always this easy to gain entry to a beautiful woman’s bedroom,” he said.

“How could she break up with him like that?” Brittany asked. “No explanation, just I don’t love you! What a horrible girl! I never really liked her.”

They heard a click as Andy quietly went into his room and locked the door. The kid turned music on, no doubt to hide the noise he was going to make when he started to cry.

Brittany looked as if she was going to cry, too.

“Maybe I should go,” Wes said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She opened her door and marched back into the kitchen and out into the living room where she started putting the sheets on the couch.

“I can do that,” Wes said.

She sat down on the sofa, clearly upset. “From now on, I’m going to screen his girlfriends.”

Wes sat down next to her. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

Brittany laughed, but it was rueful and sad. “He was so damaged when I first met him, when he was twelve. He’d been so badly hurt, so many times—shuffled from one foster family to the next. No one wanted him. And now this…Rejection really sucks, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I do. I mean, not on the scale that Andy’s faced it, but…So now you want to protect him from everything—including girls who might break his heart.” He shook his head. “You can’t do it, Britt. Life doesn’t work that way.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“He’s a terrific kid. For all the bad crap that happened to him in his life, he’s got his relationship with you to balance it all out. He’s going to deal with this. It’s going to hurt for a while, but eventually he’s going to be okay. He’s not going to come unglued.”

She sighed. “I know that, too. I just…I can’t help but want everything to be perfect for him.”

“There’s no such thing as perfect,” Wes said.

Except there was. Brittany’s eyes were a perfect shade of blue. Her smile was pretty damn perfect, too.

If she were any other woman on the planet, he would have given her a friendly, comforting hug. But he didn’t trust himself to get that close.

She exhaled loudly—a supersigh. “Well. I have to get up early in the morning.”

“I do, too,” he told her. “Amber Tierney awaits.”

Her smile was more genuine now. “Poor baby.” She stood up. “Towels are in the closet in the bathroom. Help yourself. I’ll get you that pillow.”

“Thanks again for letting me crash here,” he told her.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

Chapter 4

Wes’s car was in the driveway in the late afternoon, when Brittany got home from her last class.

When she’d gotten up in the very early morning to go in to the hospital, she’d left a key on the kitchen table, along with a note telling Wes to help himself to breakfast and to feel free to come back when his meeting with Amber was over.

As she juggled her keys with the grocery bags she was carrying in from her car, he opened the door and took one of the bags from her.

He had his cell phone tucked under his chin, but he greeted her with a smile and a twinkle of his eyes as he carried the bag into the kitchen.

“Is there more?” he mouthed. He was wearing jeans, and he had a barbed wire tattoo encircling his left biceps, peeking out from the sleeve of his snugly-fitting T-shirt.

Dressed up in a sports jacket and nice pants, he looked like an average guy—with a thick head of pretty-colored hair and those dancing blue eyes working to cancel out his lack of height. But with some of his natural scruffiness showing, in jeans that hugged a world-class set of glutes and a T-shirt that clung to his shoulders and pecs, with his hair not so carefully combed, and that tattoo…He was eye-catching, to say the least.

“I can get it,” she said, but he shook his head and went out the door and down the wooden steps to the driveway. Wasn’t that nice?

She started unloading the groceries, and he returned with the last two bags.

He was still on the phone. “I know,” he said to whomever he was talking to. “I understand.” He paused. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy, although, you’re the shrink—you should know.” Another pause. “Look, I’m on the case. I’m going out to her place tonight—there’s some kind of party and…”

Even though he was talking to someone—and Brittany would’ve bet big money that it was his very nice “friend,” Lana—he helped by putting the milk and yogurt in the refrigerator, the frozen vegetables in the freezer.

“No, I only spoke to her for about fifteen minutes—while she was getting her hair done in her trailer,” Wes reported. “She said this guy’s just a fan who’s gone a little bit overboard. He’s no big deal.” Pause. “No, those were her words, not mine. I haven’t met the guy.” Pause. “Yeah, she mentioned that she came home last week and he was in her garage. She seems to think the only way he could have got in there was if he wandered in while she was leaving in the morning and hung out there all day, which is—yes, you’re absolutely right—it’s pretty freaky. I’m with you totally on that, and yeah, she seemed to talk about him as if he was some kind of stray animal—he wandered in. It’s more likely he snuck in. But she also said that he left immediately, as soon as she asked. And she didn’t get out of her car until he was out of there and the garage door was closed, so at least we know that your sister’s not a total brainless idiot.”

With all the groceries put in the various cabinets, he sat down at the kitchen table.

“Definitely,” he said. “I’m going out there tonight. I’ll look over her security system, and I’ll talk to her again. And I’ll call you soon, okay?” Another pause, then he added, “Yeah, you know, Lana, about Wizard…” Wes rubbed the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. “Yeah. No, I haven’t heard from him. I was, you know, wondering if you had?” He laughed. “Yeah, right. Yeah, okay babe, talk to you soon.”

He closed his cell phone with a snap and very salty curse. “Sorry,” he said as he realized Brittany was still standing there. “God, I would sell my left…shoe for a cigarette.”

This time, Brittany couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “Are you sleeping with her?”

Wes met her gaze and there was something in his eyes that looked an awful lot like guilt. “Who, Amber? Of course not,” he said, but she knew he knew exactly what she was talking about.

Was he sleeping with Lana—who was very nice.

Britt just waited, watching him, and he finally swore and laughed, although there wasn’t any humor in it.

“No,” he said. “No, I’m not. It’s not…It’s never gone that far. It’s not going to, you know? I wouldn’t do that to Wizard.”

But he wanted to. He was in love with the woman. It had dripped from every word he spoke while on the phone with her.

Brittany’s heart broke for him. “Has it occurred to you that she might be taking advantage of you? I mean, asking you to come out to L.A. to do something she should be paying a private investigator to do…?”

“I had to take leave,” Wes told her. “The senior chief insisted. And believe me, coming down here was better than staying in San Diego with all that time on my hands. It’s not easy to be there—especially when Wizard’s away.” He laughed again, rubbing his forehead as if he had a terrible headache. “Yeah, like it’s easy to be there when he’s home. It sucks, okay? Wherever I am, 24/7, it really sucks. But it sucks even more when she’s a five-minute ride from my house.”

Brittany sat down across from him at the table. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” He forced a smile.

“You said…She’s a psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist,” he corrected her.

“Does she know you’re in love with her?” How could Lana not know? How could a trained psychologist not take one look at Wes and know without a shadow of a doubt that he was head over heels in love with her?

But, “No,” Wes said. “I mean, yeah, she knows I run hot for her, sure. I’ve done a few stupid things to give that away, but…She also knows that I’m not going to act on it. You know, my attraction to her. It’s not going to happen. She knows that.”

Brittany kept her mouth closed over the harsh words she wanted to say. Like, how could Lana use Wes as her errand boy like this, knowing that he’d do darn near anything for her? What kind of woman would take advantage of this kind of devotion from a man who wasn’t her husband?

Lana didn’t sound very nice to her. In fact, she sounded an awful lot like a snake.

“You know what the real bitch of it all is?” Wes asked. “I found out something today—from Amber—that’s really making my head spin. It’s…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to hear this.”

Brittany sighed. “Do I look like I’m in a hurry to go someplace?”

He sat there, just looking at her, somber and weary of life’s burdens. This was a Wes Skelly that most people never got a chance to see. Britt realized that he hid this part of himself behind both laughter and anger.

“I’ve been caught in the middle for years,” Wes said quietly. “Between Lana and Wizard, I mean. Wizard—the Mighty Quinn—he doesn’t exactly include fidelity as part of his working vocabulary, you know what I mean?”

Britt did know.

“He’s been stepping out on Lana for years,” he continued, “and when I’ve called him on it, he’s got this ‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her’ kind of ha-ha-ha attitude about it. So there I am. Do I tell her? Do I not tell her? I was Wizard’s friend first, so I’ve kept my mouth shut, but it’s been driving me freaking crazy. Because if I tell her, it’s going to seem as if I’m doing it for selfish reasons, right? But today…”

He started fidgeting, straightening the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers.

“I was talking to Amber, you know, about this guy who’s been following her,” Wes told her, “and how Lana’s worried about him, and Amber, she says that Lana worries about everything.” He stopped fidgeting and looked up at her. “She said, that’s what happens when you have a lying, cheating dog for a husband. You worry about everything.”

He laughed. “I was, like, floored. I was, like, ‘How do you know about Wizard?’ And she looked at me like I was from Mars and said, ‘Lana told me.’” There was still shock and disbelief in his eyes. “All this time, I’m protecting Lana from the truth, protecting Wizard, too, and it turns out she knew.”

“My ex-husband was like Wizard,” Brittany told him. “He couldn’t keep his pants zipped. You learn to recognize the signs.”

“Just now, when I was talking to her on the phone, I wanted to ask her about it. I mean, why is she still with him? But what was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Lana, so when’d you find out you’ve been sharing the Wiz with dozens of other women and why the hell do you put up with that?’”

“Maybe she hopes he’ll change,” Britt suggested. “Of course, if she does hope that, then she’s a fool. Men like that don’t change.”

Britt understood Wes’s confusion. Lana had to know that Wes could be hers with a snap of her fingers and a short trip to a surgical specialist—a divorce attorney who could remove her malingering growth of a husband from her otherwise healthy life.

It was so obvious that Wes would be like a pit bull when it came to a relationship. He would never be unfaithful. Boy, he couldn’t even be unfaithful to Wizard, in terms of their friendship.

Brittany had no doubt that Wes was going to love Lana until the end of time.

She was envious. If Lana got her head on straight and ditched Wizard for Wes, she was going to have that same, rare happily ever after that Melody and Jones had found.

“So now you know way more about me than you wanted to, huh?” Wes said with a rueful laugh. He stood up. “Well, at least I didn’t smoke for three days.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Britt stood up, too, and blocked his way into the living room. “You are not going out to buy cigarettes. You are quitting. Even if I have to go buy a nicotine patch and stick it on you myself.”

That got a smile and a trace of sparkle back into his eyes. “That might be fun.”

“It goes on your arm,” she told him as he kept moving toward her. She kept backing up, too, all the way through the living room, until she bumped into the door. As she hit it, she spread her arms, as if sealing it closed. As if that would keep him from leaving. “I’m a nurse, remember? I know these things.”

“I’m dying for a cigarette,” he admitted.

“So what?” Brittany said. “There’re lots of other things in this world that you can’t have, either.” Including Lana. “Suck it up, Skelly.”

The door opened behind her with no small amount of force, whacking her hard on the derriere and pushing her forward. It was like being hit by a linebacker. She tripped on the throw rug and would have landed on her face if Wes hadn’t moved to catch her.

Brittany was nearly Wes’s height and she would’ve bet big money that his jeans had a smaller waist size than hers. But despite that, despite his being slight of stature and seemingly slender, the man was solid muscle. She didn’t even come close to knocking him over. But as a result of his catching her, she couldn’t have stood any closer to him if she’d tried.

At least not with their clothes on.

While Wes had caught her, she’d caught herself by grabbing him, too, and as Andy stood looking at them now from the front door, she had to unwrap her arms from around Wes’s neck.

“Oops. Sorry.” Andy started to leave, closing the door behind him.

“Wait!” Brittany untangled herself from Wes and pulled the door open. “I was just keeping Wes from buying cigarettes.”

Andy laughed. “Well, that’s one effective way to do it.”

Wes laughed, too. “I wish. But she was actually standing right in front of the door. You almost knocked her over, kid.”

“Sorry.” Andy didn’t sound sorry at all. In fact, he sounded entirely too cheerful. But it was definitely forced.

Brittany searched his face, wondering if he and Dani had patched things up.

“You’re staying here again tonight, right?” he asked Wes. “I mean, I hope you’ll stay again tonight. I was hoping we could maybe, I don’t know. Shoot some baskets or something.”

In guy-speak, or at least in Andy-speak, shoot some baskets meant talk.

And talking—man to man—was something Brittany couldn’t give to Andy. She turned to Wes. “Please stay.”

“Actually,” Wes said, “I spoke to my credit card company. They’re overnighting a new card to me care of a Mailboxes Plus office here in L.A. But I won’t get it until tomorrow. So I was hoping—”

“Terrific,” Brittany told him. “And actually, you can stay for as long as you like. Save the money you’d spend on a hotel, as long as you don’t mind sleeping on the couch. Just chip in a little for groceries.” She looked at Andy, unable to keep herself from asking. “Is everything all right? Did you see Dani?”

“Nah, she’s gone.” He was almost too flip, too unconcerned. Which meant he was terribly hurt. “She packed up her all her stuff and cleared out of her dorm room.” He laughed, but it sounded a little too harsh. “Apparently, after spending the past six months talking me into taking things slowly, she really did sleep with Dustin Melero.”

And what could Brittany possibly say to that?

Wes swore softly.