Christmas with a SEAL

Even as he drove, deep and hard, for both of their pleasure, the logical voice in the back of his head was glad she only had two condoms.

Not because he couldn’t physically do this all night long. The way Frankie made him feel? He was pretty sure he could go for a week or two. Or forever.

So two was good.

Two set limit.

Frankie’s body gripped his and her climax echoed in the stall as water pounded around them.

Phillip let go of all thoughts of forever, or of limits.

He let go of everything.

And for the first time in his life, as his orgasm swept over him, he simply felt.

* * *

FRANKIE DIDN’T KNOW how long she’d lain there, her mind in a race against her jumbled emotions.

After he’d proved that he could hold his own with any water god, Phillip had wrapped her in a towel and carried her to the bed. She’d almost come again when he’d gently dried the water from every inch of her body.

He’d followed that up by toasting her with the champagne a few dozen times.

And then he’d blown her mind.

Instead of initiating any form of sex, he’d climbed in beside her, wrapped her in his arms and simply, silently, cuddled her.

She was terrified.

She tried to count her breaths to calm herself, but every time she did, she started hyperventilating.

So she counted Phillip’s breaths instead. In and out, in and out, until they deepened, slowed. Until he was asleep.

She relaxed then, but just a tiny bit.

Now, instead of his breath, she counted all of the stupid things she’d done tonight instead.

One, she’d totally forgotten her goal—to live out her fantasy. Actually, she’d forgotten everything. Fantasy, reason, logic, her own name.

Stupid.

Two, she’d gotten emotionally involved. She knew better. Phillip Banks was an incredible fantasy, but he wasn’t her kind of guy. Or more to the point, she wasn’t his kind of girl. She didn’t do fancy; she wasn’t upscale. The only time she’d been to a country club was when she and her friends had hopped the fence to chase an escaped cat.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Three, instead of focusing on the sensations, letting the sexual nirvana fill her creative well, all she’d been able to do about was think about him. Worry about him. All of her focus had been on trying to heal that hurt in his eyes.

Crazy.

One more round of mind-blowing sex and she’d have handed him her heart, offered to give up her dreams and, worse, begged him to call her sometime.

None of which he wanted.

Nor did she, dammit. No matter what she felt like right now.

Ever so carefully, not even breathing in case it woke him, Frankie slipped out from under Phillip’s arm and rolled off the bed.

Once on her feet, she froze, staring at him to make sure he was still asleep.

Then slowly, an inch at a time to avoid jangling any of the metal disks, she pulled her dress on. Her eyes never left Phillip’s sleeping form as she felt around in the dark for her shoes. She checked the hidden zippered pocket, assuring herself that her key card was still there.

She needed to leave. Now, before he woke up.

But she couldn’t bring herself to.

Knowing she was taking a huge risk, she tiptoed on bare feet to the edge of the bed. Just to look at him one last time. Even in sleep, he didn’t look peaceful.

He looked like a warrior, reliving battles in his dreams.

Her heart ached, curiosity screaming to know what had hurt him so badly.

She told herself it didn’t matter.

He would never tell her.

Besides, she didn’t do rescues.

Especially not ones that would break her heart.

Moisture, salty and warm, slipped into the corner of her mouth as she stared down at him.

She wiped her hand over her cheek, realizing it was covered in tears.

She had to get out of there.

With one last look, she reached out as if to touch his cheek, but didn’t let herself get that close. Instead, she forced herself to leave. Frankie opened the heavy door carefully, wincing as light from the corridor slanted into the room, temporarily blinding her.

Blinking against it and the tears still burning her eyes, she glanced back once, then carefully closed the door behind her.

Her shoes dangling from her fingers, Frankie leaned her back against it and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath through her nose.

Phillip had been right.

This had been crazy.

The only saving grace was the fact that she was sure she’d never see him again.

And maybe, eventually, she’d convince herself that was a good thing.

4

A VICIOUS POUNDING dragged Phillip from the sleep of the dead.

His head throbbed, nausea churned in his gut and his eyes felt as if someone had sandblasted them before adding a coating of gasoline.

Holy crap, was this what a hangover felt like?

Phillip pressed the tips of his fingers against his closed eyes, hoping if he pushed hard enough the burning would fade. Or maybe his eyeballs would just pop on out. Whatever worked.

The pounding didn’t stop.

It wasn’t until he groaned that he realized it wasn’t inside his head.

The door. Someone was knocking.

He peeled his eyelid open, sure he could hear a layer tearing off his eyeball, and squinted.

Hotel room?

Damn.

Las Vegas. Lara’s wedding. Horrible dancing, noise and...

He flew from the bed, dragging the sheet with him.

“Frankie?” he asked, yanking the door open.

“Sir?”

Phillip squinted, his teeth clenched against the pain. Instead of a cute redhead with sexy freckles, a dark cloud stood in his doorway.

“Lane?” he muttered, pressing his fingers against his lids.

Shit.

Why was the petty officer here? They were still off duty, weren’t they? Hadn’t it only been one night? And if he was at the door, where had Frankie gone? Phillip turned back to the room, searching for her.

“We were all meeting for breakfast before heading for the airport,” Lane reminded him. “You missed breakfast so I came to see if you’d changed your plans.”

Breakfast?

Phillip squinted across the room, realizing the heavy drapes were closed tight.

It was morning?

He strode over, shoved the covers aside.

Nobody was there.

Damn.

He didn’t bother looking in the bathroom. He knew she was gone.

“Hell.” He sighed, dropping to the bed.

“Sir? You okay?”

“I think I slept with Frankie,” he muttered.

“Whoa.” The other man grimaced, holding up one hand in protest. “Is this the type of confession you really want to share? I’m not judging, man, but you’ve never been the bare-it-all kind of guy before. I hate to see you say something you’ll regret more than...” Lane coughed uncomfortably. “Well, more than whatever you did here already.”

“What?” His head in his hands, Phillip pressed his fingers against the sledgehammer pounding in his temples. Lane’s words finally filtered through the pain and remnants of the vile cocktail his system had made of scotch and champagne. He groaned. “No.”

“Beg pardon?”

Phillip risked spilling the contents of his stomach and lifted his head. “Frankie is a woman.”

“Yeah? Cool, I guess.” Lane shoved his hands in the front pocket of his jeans, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but there. In perfect accord, Phillip shifted his gaze to the bedside clock.

How long had she been gone? How had he missed her leaving? He was a military specialist, highly trained in covert ops. And he’d slept through his one-night stand’s walk of shame.

“Sir, are you okay?”

Lane’s calling him “sir” wasn’t a form of respect, or in deference to Phillip’s rank. Nope, he frowned. That was his call sign. He’d always been a little amused by it in the past. He didn’t mind being thought of as uptight and by the book. He was ambitious enough to want to—to plan to—climb to the rank of admiral, so just generally thought of it as his due. He’d been raised to command and expect power.

But today, when he felt so far from commanding or powerful, the name grated.

“You are whiter than those sheets,” Lane noted. The guy didn’t sound panicked or worried. He didn’t move from his position by the door. But Phillip knew he was on full alert.

“Headache,” Phillip muttered, dismissing the gut-clenching migraine. He needed meds fast, or this sucker was going to put him down.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten,” he said, dismissing the petty officer without a glance. Partially because the guy was standing directly in a pool of sunshine and Phillip was pretty sure looking directly at the bright light would make his eyeballs explode. But mostly because he needed all of his focus, his entire concentration, to put one foot in front of the other.

He made it to the bathroom, grabbed a bottle of aspirin out of his toiletry bag, and dry-swallowed two pills. A steaming shower, a hundred push-ups and three bottles of water from the minifridge later and he felt like he’d live.

He glanced at the bed and winced.

He didn’t do one-night stands.

He didn’t have sex with strange women.

And he certainly didn’t fall in love after seven hours. Hell, he didn’t even believe in love, so falling was pure impossibility.

Wasn’t it?

Phillip felt as though he was losing control. Everything was spinning out of bounds, even his own thoughts.

He wanted to know what the hell was wrong with him.

But he wasn’t going to figure it out now.

He’d told Lane ten minutes, and he was never late.

Well, almost never. There was the notable exception of when he’d been captured by a sadistic drug kingpin with an unhealthy interest in infiltrating the Navy SEALs through torture and intimidation.

Shoving the memories aside along with the nagging pain still pounding at his head, Phillip grabbed his few belongings, tossed them in his bag and headed for the door.

His hand on the knob, he glanced at the bed again.

The image of Frankie’s body spread beneath him filled his mind. The memory of her touch, of how it had felt to lose himself in her bombarded him.

He shook his head, hoping the pain would dislodge the thoughts. The sooner he put Las Vegas and last night behind him, the better. He wasn’t worried about the memories. He’d just shove them in that same locked part of his mind where he kept all thoughts of his days as Valdero’s guest.

* * *

FRANKIE SAT IN her studio, as she’d dubbed the third bedroom in her grandmother’s cute little house, and tried not to scream. In her fist, she clenched the hideously lumpy mangled silver that had started out as a necklace.

What had happened?

Where were all the colors, the brilliant images and all that amazing creative juju?

She’d been sure she had it when she’d tiptoed out of Phillip’s room. She’d had trouble sitting still on the plane ride home, she was so excited to get her hands on her tools. All it would take were a few pieces, maybe a dozen, to reestablish herself. A month or so to build up an inventory, maybe prep for a show.

By the time she’d unpacked her suitcase, she’d been able to see it all clearly. Her rise from the ashes, a celebrated return to glory. She’d have a stylish new condo by spring, be traveling around the country from gallery showings to high-end buyer meetings. Her pieces would be featured on television, in Vogue, maybe even in a movie or two.

And then she’d walked into her studio, smiling so big her cheeks hurt, and started to create.

Crap.

Frankie opened her fist to glare at the dull, unevenly linked spheres.

Every other thing she made was pure crap.

She knew she should be grateful that it wasn’t every single thing. She was doing fine with simple pieces, reproductions of her earlier works.

But she was an artist. Not an assembly line.

And an artist created new pieces, dammit.

Ready to scream, she threw the failed necklace on the table, the force sending the silver bouncing to the floor. Frankie got to her feet, tossing aside her apron since its weight only slowed down her pacing.

What was she going to do?

She glanced at the ornaments ready for packaging, each exactly the same except for the name and date etched and echoed in gemstones.

Christmas was in a little more than a month.

What was she going to do after that? Make Valentine’s ornaments? Fancy hangings to commemorate weddings and babies?

Frankie shoved her fingers into her hair, tugging to relieve the pressure.

How could any of that be considered creative? It couldn’t. It just couldn’t.

What had gone wrong?

After that night with Phillip, she’d felt the creative energy.

She’d seen so many pieces in her head, uniquely beautiful, each one in her signature quirky style.

After months of seeing nothing, it had been amazing. Like her birthday, five Christmases, graduation and incredible sex all rolled into one.

Incredible sex...

Heat washed over her, images flashing through her mind. Memories of Phillip, gloriously naked and poised over her body. Memories of that night, the orgasms—oh, the orgasms. So mind-blowing, so delicious.

She took a deep breath, her thighs trembling. She closed her eyes as heat coiled inside her, low and tight. Colors, images, designs flashed. So close. So, so close.

Maybe she could draw them. If she could get the images from her imagination onto paper, maybe—

“Frankie, the mail is here.”

Frankie bit back the curses that wanted to tumble off her lips. She’d been so close. It was like being caught reading a naughty magazine just when you got to the good part.

But a girl didn’t snap at her grandma, no matter how delicious that good part might have been. Instead, Frankie plastered on her brightest smile and turned to the door.

“Thanks, Nana,” she said, walking over to take the stack of envelopes. “I thought you were going to be at the seniors’ center this morning.”

Looking a good ten years younger than her sixty-five, Josephine O’Brian stood a foot taller and a half foot wider than the granddaughter she’d raised since Frankie’s fourteenth birthday when a car accident had taken both Josephine’s daughter and son-in-law.

“I was at the seniors’ center for a while. But with Millicent and Olivia both on another cruise, it wasn’t much fun.”

“What about Deidre?” Frankie asked, referring to the fourth woman in her grandmother’s close-knit group of friends.

“Off to her sister’s for a couple of weeks.”

Nana frowned and started to tidy the studio. Frankie had given up asking her not to. Apparently, the housekeeping urge was too deeply ingrained to ignore.

That, or she was bored. Nana was the only one of her friends not yet retired. While the others traveled and visited, she stayed faithful to her post at the Bankses’ house. Since the elder Bankses had died almost three years back, she’d started taking short trips, long weekends. A year ago, Frankie had tried to convince her to actually retire, but Nana refused, saying the estate still needed her.

It was that loyalty, her devotion and her forty-plus years of service that had netted Josephine O’Brian a place in the Bankses’ will. As long as a Banks owned the estate and Mrs. O’Brian was the housekeeper, she could live rent-free in the housekeeper’s quarters at the back of the estate.

Sometimes Frankie wondered if part of the reason Nana wouldn’t retire was because she had to look out for her flaky granddaughter.

Guilt, misery and frustration settled in Frankie’s gut. Despite the failure of her business, Nana insisted that her granddaughter continue designing. Five months ago, Frankie had started looking for a real job, something that would provide a regular income. Her grandmother had pitched a fit to end all fits, giving Frankie a solid understanding of where she’d gotten her temper.

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