A SEAL's Surrender

“Who else matters?” Cade laughed.

Hell, it was rare that he ever even had to pull out the SEAL card to impress a woman. He looked good enough that the women tended to fall all over him anyway. They always had. And it wasn’t ego talking. He credited genetics for his sandy blond hair, sharp green eyes and chiseled features and the navy for his ripped body.

He had nothing to prove to anyone else.

“You want to climb higher than Lieutenant Commander?”

Cade shrugged again. Rank and money didn’t mean anything to him. Neither one had the thrill, the excitement, or the rock-solid satisfaction of being a part of Special Ops. At least, up until last fall, when Hawkins had taken a piece of shrapnel to the head while under Cade’s command.

“I’ll bet there are some people who’d like to see you move up the ranks,” Seth said, staring into his cup like it held some fascinating secret. Or, more likely, because he didn’t want his expression to give away his trump card.

“I don’t live my life for other people,” Cade countered with a grin, dropping to a chair and getting ready to play. Mind games were almost as much fun to win as war games.

“What about Robert?”

Cade’s smile fell away.

“I definitely don’t live my life for my old man.”

“Not saying you should. But I’ll bet it’d go a long way toward keeping him off your back for a while.”

“You mean it’ll keep him off your back?”

Robert Sullivan had married Seth’s little sister Laura thirty-five years ago and had probably muttered an average of a few dozen words a year to his brother-in-law since the reception. Less after they’d lost her to cancer five summers ago. But Robert somehow managed to find a few here and there to touch base with Seth for a little secondhand haranguing for his one and only child.

“Robert doesn’t bother me,” Cade’s uncle said, dismissing him with a jerk of one shoulder. As if his ex-in-law was that easy to flick off.

Cade wished that were so. But he knew better. Robert Sullivan, of Sullivan Enterprises, specialized in tenacity, had the personality of a bulldog and the charm of a cactus. He’d been furious when Cade had joined the navy instead of taking his rightful place at the helm of the family’s financial consulting firm.

“If he doesn’t bother you, then why are you using him as bait?” Cade challenged.

“Because you’re a damned good soldier. A fine SEAL and a strong leader. I don’t want to see you derailed. You’re on edge lately. That’s the kind of thing that some people look for, try to take advantage of in order to make things go their way,” he said, referring to Cade’s father. “A break would let you figure it all out, before you’re played.”

His pleasant expression didn’t change, nor did his body shift even an inch as a painful sort of tension spiked through Cade’s system.

“No offense, Captain,” Cade said with a grin as he got to his feet. “But I don’t give a good damn what my father does. And nobody plays me. Not even the old man.”

To Robert Sullivan, Cade was a pawn. A useful tool. He’d expected his only child to follow in his footsteps, to learn the ins and outs of finance and take over the vast Sullivan holdings if and when Robert deemed it time.

Cade had never been interested in any of that. Not even as a kid. So he’d never let the old man in on his plans. He’d enlisted the day he’d turned eighteen, three months before he’d finished high school. Already knowing the value of good strategy, he’d waited to tell his father until the morning after graduation. And he’d left for basic training right after the ensuing big ugly fight.

It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to take some bullshit business major if his father covered tuition that made him decide not to go to college.

He simply hadn’t wanted to wait to get started in the navy.

And then, like now, he hadn’t given a damn about rank.

He just wanted to be a SEAL.

He was born for the military.

He just had to remember that and get through this damned … What did his squadmate and amigo, Blake’s fiancée, Alexia, call it? Journey of grief. Stupid thing to call being pissed off over losing his buddy. And definitely not something he wanted to talk about. Not to Blake, not to Alexia. And definitely not to his uncle.

Before he could make excuses to leave, Cade’s cell-phone rang.

“Speak of the devil,” he muttered, noting the number on the screen.

“The old man?”

“Close enough—it’s my grandmother.”

The only thing that kept Cade from turning his back on his family, and all the drama and crap that went along with it, was his grandmother. He would do anything, even play nice at holidays, to make Catherine Sullivan happy.

With that in mind, he gestured his apology to Borden and took the call. Five minutes later, he wished he hadn’t.

“Robert had a heart attack,” Cade murmured as he slid the phone into his pocket.

“Is he okay?” Seth asked, looking up from the paperwork he’d been pretending to do to give his nephew some semblance of privacy.

“He’s in intensive care. They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

Seth frowned, coming around the desk. “Are you okay?”

Cade shrugged. He didn’t know what he was. Numb. Despite a lousy, contentious relationship, shouldn’t he care that his father might die? That he was hanging by a thread?

Cade’s mind couldn’t quite take it in.

He was a SEAL, specially trained in multiple ways to cause death. He’d served during wartime. He’d watched men die. He’d held one of his best friends as life drained away. It wasn’t that he wasn’t familiar with the concept.

But his father? He’d always figured the old man was too stubborn, too obnoxious, too uncompromising to allow it to happen on anything but his own approved timetable.

“You need anything?”

Cade gave Seth a blank look, then shook his head. “Gotta see my CO, get leave. Grandma wants me home.”

Seth’s wince pretty much summed up Cade’s lifelong feelings about returning to the Sullivan Estate.

Cade grimaced in return. “Looks like I’m getting that break after all.”

2

“DID YOU HEAR? Cade Sullivan is back.”

Eden shook her head as twitters and giggles filled the room, women from the ages of eighteen to sixty-eight offering up a communal sigh. From what she’d seen, the members of the Garden Club rarely agreed on anything. Leave it to Cade Sullivan to bring women together.

But as hot and sexy as Cade was, he wasn’t the kind of stud she wanted to talk about right now.

It wasn’t like she wasn’t a fan of Cade herself. She adored the guy. Heck, she’d love to do the guy. But she was here to talk up her business. To try and garner a few new clients. Instead, the entire conversation had been derailed by the homecoming of the town hero.

Cade was good at that kind of thing. Making women sigh, fantasize, and if rumors were true, have some mighty fine orgasms. At least, that’s what the Cade-ettes, as those lucky few who were in the know liked to call themselves, claimed.

“I heard he’s here for a month. He doesn’t come back often, does he?” Bev mused, her eyes dreamy. No doubt visualizing Cade in some form of undress. “It’s been, what? Ten years since he left?”

“Twelve,” Eden corrected absently, leaning over to scoop up a bite of her friend’s lemon chiffon cake. The fork halfway to her mouth, she noticed all the stares aimed her way and shrugged. “It’s not like I’m marking off the years in my diary. He left for the navy the same week I broke my foot the first time. He’s the one who carried me home from the lake.”

“Did you know him well?” asked a pretty blonde whose name Eden didn’t remember. The girl had married her way into the Ocean Point high society, so she didn’t have firsthand knowledge of the almost mythical wonderfulness that was Cade Sullivan.

“Oh, please,” Janie Truman scoffed, sliding into an empty seat at the table and taking a single grape from the bowl in the center. “You barely knew Cade Sullivan. Sure, he rescued you a few dozen times. But that’s sort of what he does for a living, isn’t it? You were like basic training.”

Her laugh was too bubbly for Eden to take offense. At least, not unless she wanted to look like a bitch. That was the problem with Janie. She always came across as all smiles and charm, even while she slid her pretty jeweled knife between your ribs.

Eden sighed, wondering why belonging to this group was her holy grail. The ugly was always as subtle, but as real, as the expensive perfume. But only to outsiders, she figured. The only way to avoid being the butt of their jokes and pitying looks was to belong.

“I’d say growing up next door to the Sullivans means she probably knows Cade well enough,” Bev defended, her irritation on Eden’s behalf shining bright.

“Sort of,” Eden demurred, not sure she wanted to share just how much about Cade she did know. Instead she settled on the simple facts. “Cade’s five years older than I am, so we weren’t in school together, didn’t run in the same crowds. Cade was busy with football and the swim team and I was playing with animals and volunteering at the shelter.”

How was that for an opening to talk about veterinary care, Eden thought, giving herself a mental back-pat.

“Captain of the football team. Class president, homecoming king,” Janie rhapsodized, her sharp chin on her hand as she gave a dreamy sigh, ignoring any references that included Eden. “Oh, to be a Cade-ette …”

“Cade-ette?” Bev asked with a laugh. She gave Eden an are you kidding look.

Eden grinned. It was a little shameless, as far as titles went. Still, it carried as much cachet as an Oscar did for an actor. “It’s silly. When Cade was in high school—”

“Junior high, even,” Janie interrupted.

“Maybe,” Eden acknowledged, wrinkling her nose. “That’s awfully young, though. Not for Cade, of course, but for the girls? But nobody knows for sure, do they?”

“Knows what?” Bev prompted before Janie could launch into one of her typical attempts to prove that she did, indeed, know everything.

“Knows when it all started, what the rules are or even who’s in the club,” Eden said. “The story goes that Cade, while being quite the ladies’ man even in his teens, knew he wanted out of Mendocino County and wasn’t about to let anything—not even a girlfriend—keep him here. So while he played the field, he kept things simple, uncomplicated.”

“In other words, he was really careful about sleeping around because he didn’t want to be trapped. Not just because he’s super cute, but because the Sullivans are filthy rich,” Janie explained, eyeing the cake with an envious look before nibbling on another grape.

“But after a while, girls started bragging. I think the allure of having done Cade Sullivan was better than a pair of diamond studs, and they just couldn’t keep from showing off.” Eden remembered the almost mythical shot to fame the girls would get, being fawned over, buddied up to, romanced by other guys. “Pretty soon, the Cade-ettes had an even more exclusive membership than the country club.”

“Exclusive, and elusive,” Janie interrupted. “There weren’t many who could make that claim to fame. Maybe a dozen at the most.”

“How do you know they were telling the truth?” Bev wondered. “I mean, if he was determined not to get trapped, would he really sleep around, even with a dozen girls in four years?”

“Sixteen years,” Janie corrected. “That dozen counts the girls he was with before—and after—he left for the navy.”

“You mean the club still has openings?” Bev joked.

I wish, Eden almost said aloud. Horrified, she focused on shoveling cake into her mouth to keep it busy. She had a bad habit of looking before she leapt, and speaking before she thought. Usually, she didn’t worry about the results. But this was Cade they were talking about. And she cared about everything that had to do with Cade Sullivan.

Which was why she’d never shared, not even with her best friend, how often she’d seen Cade at the lake behind their properties. Skinny dipping sometimes, practicing martial arts others. But usually with a girl. Eden had rarely seen the girl’s face, but could see through the bushes clearly enough to know they both usually ended up naked.

He’d been gorgeous, even as a teen, with the body of one of the Greek Gods Eden had been fascinated with. Tan, sculpted and, well, huge, he’d been worth the many bouts of poison oak she’d gotten spying through the trees.

She dropped her fork onto the empty plate and reached for her iced tea, needing to cool off.

“So this rumor, you believe it?” Bev prompted.

“Sure.” Eden shrugged. “I mean, the few who did try to claim they’d done Cade Sullivan were outed as liars pretty fast. Nobody but the Cade-ettes themselves know what the secret is that proves the truth. I guess they think it’s a pretty good secret, too. Like I said, it’s been twelve years since he left and they still aren’t talking.”

And while she’d only watched him a couple of times before embarrassment and a heart-crushing envy had made her avoid the lake altogether just in case he was there, she’d never seen any distinguishing marks or heard him use any special phrases that might stand out as tells.

“Everyone wanted to be a Cade-ette,” Janie said with a sigh, either forgetting her constant diet as she scooped up a fingerful of chocolate from the cake in front of her, or envy making her so morose that she didn’t care.

“Everyone?” Bev asked, her eyes questioning Eden.

Eden just shrugged again. She wasn’t going to lie to her best friend, but neither did she see any point in admitting that she would have given anything to join the well-sexed crowd. But not for the title. Nope, she just wanted Cade.

“Ladies, time to get to work,” Gloria Bell, the Garden Club president called, clapping her hands for attention. “The Spring Fling is just around the corner. Our biggest society ball needs the best flower arrangements, don’t you think? Come on now, chop chop.”

Most of the older women got up and gathered around the three head tables, discussing what kind of flowers screamed fancy party. That left Eden and a dozen women her own age seated next to the dessert buffet. A fact that seemed to pain half of them, since they studiously kept their gazes averted. Eden, who while carrying a plethora of issues and challenges, could happily eat anything and everything without gaining an ounce, just grinned.

This was the only way she stood out, a wren among peacocks. They were grace, she was clumsy. They were as beautiful as money could buy, she was as average as broke could maintain.

“I can’t believe nobody has shared the secret yet. Are you sure there is one?” Bev asked, wrinkling her nose. “I mean, it sounds like more of an urban legend than fact, you know?”

“Oh, it’s real.” Crystal Parker leaned forward, her eyes shifting to the matriarchs to see that her mother was occupied before she shared in a low tone, “My sister, Chloe, was almost one of the Cade-ettes.”

“Almost?” gaped Bev. “How is one almost in the club?”

“She went on a few dates with Cade the winter before he graduated. The two of them were getting really friendly, if you know what I mean, during the high school Winter Bash and Chloe got a little loud. Then the principal, Mrs. Pince, walked in on them. Chloe said Cade charmed his way out of a lecture, but never did ask her out again.”

She gave a good-humored roll of her eyes, as if her sister’s getting busted making out still amused her.

“Of course, that couldn’t have been as embarrassing as what happened to poor Eden here,” Janie said with a giggle before patting Eden’s hand. As if that friendly gesture made the joke any easier to take. “You never have told us the real story about what you and Kenny Phillips were really doing when he broke his foot and ended up covered in a nasty rash.”

Eden pressed her lips together in a grimacey sort of smile, hoping someone, anyone, would change the subject. She didn’t need anyone speculating about what particular sexual position Kenny had been in when he’d fallen.

Cade had rescued her then, too. Turning the tables nicely, he’d shown up at the lake to find her with his best buddy from high school. The poor guy had been rolling around naked in a patch of poison oak while clutching his broken ankle.

“Girls,” Gloria called, gliding over like an elegant steamship. “Chitchat is over. Now it’s time for work.”

“I can help,” Eden offered, gratefully getting to her feet. But in her desire to escape further sexual comparisons, her hip bumped the table, sending the unlit candles toppling, forks bouncing off plates and the grapes rolling over white damask to the floor.

“Oh, well …” Mrs. Bell grimaced, then shook her head. “Thank you, dear. But we need someone with a little better eye for color. Janie, why don’t you and the girls come along now and see what you think of the plans.”

En masse, all of the women except Bev and Eden migrated to the front of the room. To the popular section.

Eden sighed, pushing aside the last plate of dessert, this one a double-chocolate brownie.

“What’s wrong? It’s not like you to stop rubbing your super-fast metabolism in the princesses’ faces before you’ve tried every dessert,” Bev said quietly.

Although Eden noticed a few envious glances at three empty plates in front of her, all she could focus on was the giggling group of women all bundled together around the flower displays. All fitting in, all contributing meaningfully. All perfect, even if they couldn’t eat more than two hundred calories at a time.

“Nothing. I’m just tired,” she excused, not completely lying. She was tired.

Tired of being so easily dismissed.

Tired of feeling like a failure.

Tired of wallowing in mediocrity.

Just once, she wanted to be admired. To stand out—in a good way. To feel like someone special. To be part of the in-crowd.

And maybe she should wish for a time machine, too, and blast back to high school when she should have gotten over these silly issues.

“Oh, Eden,” Lilly-Ann Winters, who sat at the next table, called, offering a charming smile. “I’m so glad you made it to the meeting this month. You so rarely do.”

“I usually work Thursday afternoons,” Eden said with a cautioning look toward Bev. Lilly-Ann had a trio of Parti Yorkies and a pedigree Persian at home.

“Oh, you still have that, um, job?” Lilly-Ann asked, a rapid flutter of her lashes probably supposed to be a distraction from her having no clue what Eden did.

“I opened my veterinary clinic six months ago, and yes, it’s still in business,” Eden said with a nod, amping up her smile and getting ready to pitch her real reason for subjugating herself to this torture. “You should bring Snowball in for a checkup. I have a wonderful new program for cats, an all-natural diet and supplements that are guaranteed to add luster to her coat.”

“Oh, no. Snowball only sees Dr. Turner,” Lilly-Ann said, her eyes wide with horror at the idea of taking her precious Persian anywhere but the most expensive vet in three counties.

“I understand,” Eden said, pulling out the diplomacy she’d been practicing since she’d called in her RSVP. “Dr. Turner has a wonderful reputation. And he’s so popular. Just last week someone was saying she had to wait a month to get her puppies in for a routine exam.”

Lilly-Ann’s smile tightened at the corners. Bingo. Eden knew the only thing the other woman hated more than designer knockoffs was having to wait for anything.

“Don’t you worry about emergencies, though?” Eden continued, leaning forward and speaking in a hushed, let’s-share-a-secret tone. “You can’t take risks with a feline as delicate as Snowball. If you wanted to just bring her by for a checkup, I’d have her information on file in case, God forbid, there was ever a crisis.”

For one brief, gratifying second, Lilly-Ann looked tempted. Then she gave Eden a once-over, as if to remind herself who she was dealing with, and shook her head. “No, no. Thanks, though. Dr. Turner has a pet ambulance. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

With that and a giggling little finger wave, she got to her feet. Bev stood, too, an argument obviously on her lips.

Eden shook her head, gesturing to her friend to sit. What was the point? She needed clients desperately. She’d hoped a few of the women would, if only for faux-friendship’s sake, give her a chance. But to them, and to most of Ocean Point, she’d always be the klutzy girl who’d broken Kenny’s foot while having sex. A joke. An average, broke joke who was about to lose her home. Because she’d tried everything she could think of, even calling her mother—who hadn’t answered—to find a way out of this financial mess. If she didn’t come up with the money—or at least enough to negotiate a deal—within three weeks, her home, her heritage, would be gone.

“Brownie?” Bev offered again with a sympathetic frown.

Eden shook her head.

Some things, even chocolate couldn’t help.

SHE WAS STILL ASKING herself what the point of it all was two hours later as she drove home.

“Well that was a total waste of a Saturday,” Bev declared from the passenger seat, nibbling on the piece of cake she hadn’t let herself eat in front of the other women. “I can’t believe that in a roomful of thirty women, twenty-six of them have pets.”

“And of that twenty-six, I couldn’t get a single client,” Eden mumbled, wishing she hadn’t wasted Bev’s time. “Still, it wasn’t all bad.”

She didn’t have to take her eyes off the road to know Bev had shot her an incredulous look. Probably a sneer, too, if Eden knew her friend.

“Hey, I made contacts. That counts. They might not have signed on board today, but all it takes is one good word, one rich matron with a colicky dog, and I’m set.” She slanted a sideways glance toward the passenger seat. “And, hey, at least dessert was good.”

“Well, I’ll give you the desserts point. But do you really think a matron or two using you as their vet is going to stop the bank from calling in the loan?” Bev didn’t even bother with the skeptical look this time. Her tone, even wrapped around chocolate icing, spoke volumes.

“Until I come up with something better, this is the best shot I’ve got,” Eden said morosely.

Damn her mother. Damn herself for not forcing Eleanor to sign herself off the property when Eden had bought her out. She should have known better. According to her personal bio, Eleanor Gillespie was a free spirit. A wild wind that couldn’t be tamed. Eden sighed, her fingers clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel. A loving flake who specialized in making life difficult for her only child.

From preschool when she’d used all of Eden’s classmates to test her politically incorrect, factually accurate and visually scarring nursery rhymes to high school when she’d volunteered as a parental chaperone at the senior all-nighter, then lectured everyone on birth control, sexual satisfaction and the benefits of a vegan lifestyle, she’d been a challenge. But she was also fun and bubbly, creative and clever, and loved Eden in her own self-absorbed, offbeat way.

Eden rounded the corner of narrow country road, tall trees looming on either side of the asphalt. But just as she passed the pretty stone gates that led to the Sullivan Estate, something white flashed. She lifted her foot off the gas, peering through the window. She saw it again.

White fur and gray spots.

She slammed on the breaks.

Bev’s hand shot forward, bracing against the dash.

“What the hell …?”

Half on and half off the road, Eden killed the car engine and threw her door open.

“It’s Paisley,” she called as she hurried around the car toward the stately bank of large maple trees Laura Sullivan had planted when she was a young bride. “Mrs. Carmichael has been frantic since the cat ran away last week. We need to rescue her.”

“That cat is evil,” Bev muttered, following her. “Besides, do you really think ran away is the right term? That sounds so innocent. I heard it was more like a prison break, complete with injuries and property damage.”