Navy Seal's Match

She had no reason to trust him—who he was then, who he was now. What the hell had he ever done for Mavis Bracken? “Your brother’s a SEAL,” he reminded her. “You know what goes through an operative’s mind.”

“What’s your point?”

“Keep your distance from me, Mavis. I’m a house on fire.”

“When a house is on fire, you throw water on it,” she told him. “You don’t stand back and let it burn.”

“You do if it’s too far gone.”

“Not everybody does.”

This wasn’t working. “Would you approach a wounded predator in the wild?”

Mavis took a step back, perhaps out of respect. “That depends. How well do I know this predator?”

“Huh?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“If this were any normal predator in the wild, I’d walk away. But if I knew, for example, that he liked blondes not brunettes, mustard not ketchup, and salty foods in lieu of sweets...more than likely, I’d use that to my advantage.”

He stared through the damaged veil of his eyes. “You remember all that about me.”

“Gavin, you hung out at my house with my brother every day you were in town as a kid. That’s ten years you and I ate at the same table. I can’t tell you how many times I saw the two of you turn out your billfolds for the customary condom count when Mom wasn’t looking.”

Gavin gave a startled laugh.

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re still proud of that, are you?”

He coughed slightly, bringing his fist to his mouth. “Uh, no. Of course not, no. You remember?” He wasn’t able to get over it.

“Don’t you remember anything about me?”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “When you were little, you had these big screech-owl eyes that seemed to know everything. You were spooky. You still are.”

She studied him again. He picked up on the slight sound of her sigh. “You’re still white as a sheet,” she observed. “But your eyes are clear.”

“They are.” The careful non-question rang with surprise.

“The pressure point helps alleviate anxiety,” she explained. “It can also work for nausea and motion sickness.”

He was close enough. He might be able to count the freckles. Because it helped him hug the present closer, he started. One, two, three...four...

Forked pain struck his temples. He closed his eyes to shut out the light. The migraines nearly always followed the hard forays into insanity.

“Stress headache?” she ventured.

He laughed cheerlessly, webbing his fingers over his face. “Did you train to be a medical professional while I was away or are you psychic?”

“I get them, too,” she explained. When he only scrubbed his hand from his face to the top of his head and lowered his chin into his chest, her hands lifted between them and spread. “Look, if I touch you again, are you going to freak out?”

I might. She had a way, too—this new Mavis. “I’d prefer a sledgehammer to knock myself out with.”

“This is healthier.”

He raised his chin and tensed to stop her from edging in closer. “Since when are you the touchy-feely type?”

She paused, fingers curled toward him. “I’m not. But do you know why I’m a vegetarian?”

“No.”

“I can’t stand to see an animal in pain. Teeth or no teeth.” When he wouldn’t relax, she sighed at him again. “Stand still.”

Personal space be damned, she stepped right up into his. He wasn’t overly tall like her six-foot-four brother, but she was small even in combat boots. He remained rigid as her front buffered his, as she touched him, his face. More pressure points, he assumed. A snide remark formed on his lips when her thumbs came to the base of his cheekbones. It fell flat when she began to massage again.

“This is yingxiang,” she said in a low voice he found strangely hypnotic. “It targets the pressure points in the wrinkles of the nose. It works for stress headaches, but it can open up the sinuses and relieve hypertension, too.”

“Mm,” he said, trying not to drag the syllable out like he wanted to.

She massaged his cheeks for a minute or two more before her thumbs lifted. His face felt loose. Most of his tension he held in his neck and jaw. It had lessened to the point that he could feel the soreness around the joints and the relief that sang behind it.

Under his stare, she seemed to hesitate. This close, he could definitely count those freckles. He could also trace the shape of her big screech-owl eyes. Dark and uncharted. Like the far side of the moon.

Her lips parted and her tongue passed briefly between them before she moved her hands slowly to the place where his neck met his shoulders. “Or...if that doesn’t do it for you...”

The tendons beneath her kneading fingertips all but cried out at the attention. He gave up deciding whether it was from pleasure or pain. The muscles moaned under the ministrations. It was the exact spot the stress of the last six months had taken up residence. The stress of the last decade, now that he thought about it. He hoped she didn’t notice his eyes rolling into the back of his head.

No. Yes. Yes, no.

For the love of God, touch me. Touch me tender. Touch me hard. Freckles, just...

...touch me...

Gavin expelled a breath. It gave him away, he feared. It gave him away hard.

“You’re brick.”

“Hmph?” he responded, at a loss for better.

“Your muscles,” she muttered, exerting more pressure. “They’re like mortar.”

No, her hands were mortar. Crashing into his brick walls. Exploding them into dust.

“You’d really benefit from yoga.”

His snort was a half sound. “Who does that new age shit?”

“Friend of mine owns a school. Yoga helps you stretch the right way, loosen joints... It helps you learn to breathe...”

“Breathing’s involuntary,” Gavin said. “You’re either breathin’ or you’re...”

Dead.

Her low voice smoothed through the juncture. “Most people never give themselves over to all the multifaceted ways breathing can act as a tool for everyday life. Or they’re never taught to begin with.”

“Stick with the massage.”

She did, utilizing her fingertips until he’d lost his breath completely. “Only if it’s working for you.”

“Hmm,” he replied, at a loss again.

“These are simple techniques you can practice on yourself,” she murmured, quieter, “anytime you need them.”

He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes so he raised a brow. “Is this what they teach you in ghost-hunting school, Buffy?”

“Buffy hunted vampires,” she told him levelly. “Not ghosts.”

“I think it’s all relative,” he drawled.

“Oh, you do?”

He opened his eyes to search for her. Up close, the familiarity struck him. High, leopard-spotted cheeks. Pert nose. Insouciant mouth. Eyes like the frigging Mariana Trench. There was something silver shining from each of her ears, a very small diamond in the crease of her nose. Her dark makeup was pronounced.

He was shocked when the ghost of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “You are a little spooky still.”

She loosened her grip, falling back. “Well. At least you’re not still tense.”

He wasn’t. Wooow. When her hands lowered from him, he very nearly grabbed hold to bring them back.

Placing a palm to his sternum, she backed herself off so the length of her arm stretched in the marked space between them. “You’ll get better,” she told him. “It’ll get better.”

The certainty caught him. Not only because it went up against his own, but also because she believed it. “How do you know?” he found himself asking.

“You’re a survivor.”

“I used to be,” he replied. He no longer felt like one. More like something tattered and unrecognizable that washed ashore after being picked over by birds and fish.

“It’s not just the SEAL in you. It’s who you were before all that, too. A survivor.” When he said nothing to that, she went on. “Despite all you’ve been through...your heart’s still beating.”

If only she knew. Sometimes, he wondered if this was it—that, after everything, he’d be defeated by the mind-fuck he couldn’t seem to get a handle on. Mavis’s hand was still on his sternum, and he tuned his awareness to it. “It doesn’t beat evenly,” he admitted. He wet his throat. “What about the dog?”

She looked around at the reminder. Her hand moved off so that she could shield her eyes from the glare off the distant bay. “He’s somewhere around.”

“Will he come back on his own?” he asked, falling into step with her as her slow gait brought them back into the sunshine.

“Yes, always,” she said. “Growing boys never miss a meal. Not to mention, not all who wander...”

Are lost, he finished silently. Not all, Gavin agreed.

Maybe just him.

He let her walk ahead and her pace quickened. He wrapped the fingers of one hand around the other fist, coming to a halt. “You wear black, but you like red.”

She stopped. Doubling back, she faced him fully.

He went on. “You have a tattoo...somewhere. I don’t remember. But you got in trouble for it when your mom found out. You rode a horse named Neptune. You liked to ride English because, even though you were weird, you were a cut and a half above the rest of us.”

Still, she was silent. She was too far away for him to read. He was beginning to sweat nonetheless. “And when your family would have their Saturday music round, you wouldn’t play. You’d sing. You could turn an acoustic version of ‘Come Together’ or ‘Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’’ into something classy and unexpected.”

“Oh, God...” she said.

“Don’t laugh, Freckles. You killed the Loretta.”

She did laugh. It was a low noise, like the drone of a hummingbird’s wings. It didn’t last long enough. “I hated when you called me that.”

“I knew it,” he returned. “Anyway, you were...different. I thought it was kind of badass that you didn’t care.”

“Just like you didn’t?”

Gavin lifted a shoulder in answer. Yes—they had more in common than it seemed either of them had anticipated.

Quiet fell. The gulls droned from the shore. Tires moved over gravel in the parking lot beyond Briar’s garden. The world moved, lively and fierce. But there was a measure of quiet in Gavin’s head. He’d forgotten what quiet, in its purest form, was. Damned if he wasn’t grateful—and a little spellbound.

Mavis spoke again in a sober light. “Look. I might’ve overheard what went on upstairs with the vase.”

Gavin’s frown returned. He sought the inn, the place he’d known he shouldn’t come back to. He hadn’t fit in before the RPG. What had made him think he could fade into the wallpaper now with his face a veritable grid of violence?

“Before you think about disappearing again,” Mavis continued, “you don’t have to leave Fairhope entirely.”

He moved his shoulders in a brusque motion, the tension climbing up the back of his neck again. “You know a good bait bucket I can crawl into?”

“You’ll break their hearts if you skip town like all the times before,” she said.

“Yeah, but think of the antiques,” Gavin said, gesturing to the pristine white building and the treasures it held. “At least they’ll live long and happy lives.”

“If you knew your parents at all, you’d know that when it comes to your well-being, they’d burn every single one of their antiques if it meant having you here.”

Judgment had a bite to it, he found. He didn’t much like it. Remembering the tone he’d struck with his father and Briar upstairs, he scowled. Okay, maybe he deserved it. But in spite of the steadier ground he found himself walking on after the detour with Mavis under the bougainvillea, the coals still burned, low and blue.

“I might know a place you can stay,” she continued. “While you take the time you need to decide what the future holds. It’s close enough to town to keep your parents happy, but far enough and quiet enough to give you the freedom to piece your thoughts together.”

“Where is this place?” he wondered.

“On the river,” she told him. “Fish River.”

“You live on Fish River,” he remembered.

“Along with a slew of other folks,” she pointed out. “The place is at the end of my road. There’s a catch, though. You’ll have to put up with a roommate.”

“I think we all know I’m no good at sharing,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but this is just temporary,” she said. “And your potential roomie is very into feng shui. No antiques, few breakables. Plus, she’s likely to stay out of your personal space.”

She rounded out the last words nicely. “Huh.” Gavin considered. “Is she hot?”

Mavis’s laugh was full-throated. When it didn’t end quickly this time, Gavin asked, “What’s funny?”

“You like a good joke, right?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and backtracking to the inn.

“Normally,” he replied. “Don’t leave me hanging on the punch line.”

“Her name is Zelda Townes.”

“And?”

“And you can find the rest out for yourself,” she tossed back, intriguing in all her unsolved mystery.

Gavin frowned at her back. “Is this because I can’t stop calling you Freckles?”

“No,” she said. “It’s because you won’t.”

CHAPTER TWO

PEOPLE NORMALLY PERFORMED hot yoga in a studio. Thanks to the heat and humidity July had to offer the Gulf Coast, Zelda Townes’s Bikram classes were held on the wide veranda of her old river house. The sun fell through the square slats of the pergola, fighting through a canopy of hanging ferns and fuchsia. If the screens didn’t keep the wolfish mosquitoes at bay, the plantings of lavender, mint and thyme would have made the pests turn tail.

Not only did Miss Zelda’s porch offer the perfect environment for hot yoga. It smelled like the inside of an apothecary. With the backdrop of the river and the grand weeping willow in the yard that spilled down to its fishy shores, achieving peace of mind wasn’t difficult here. The happy burble of shallow fountains, the hollow knock of bamboo chimes, and the light refrain of kirtan devotional music brought the morning class to its culmination.

Despite this and the stalwart nature of each of Miss Zelda’s advanced students, nearly all of them shrieked and fell out of their standing bow when a loud bang rent the quiet river air.

“What in the holy name of Babylon...?” Zelda scowled, her svelte spandex-clad form straightening from her mat. “That sounded like a Desert Eagle .50.”

Mavis felt the frisson of alarm go through her fellow classmates and injected a note of sardonic cool into the scene. “Yes, because Desert Eagles are a dime a dozen.” A chorus of barks reached her ears. “Damn it,” she said, already up. “That’s my dog.”

“Water’s still as molasses,” Zelda said, peering down the lawn to the river’s surface. “Go ’round back and see what’s doing. The rest of you, a few sips of water before we pick up on the last vinyāsa.”

Mavis wove her way through the sweaty bodies to the barn doors that led into Zelda’s sparse domain. The house had been built before hurricanes were named and outhouses had died. Zelda had done well to update the place. The water ran fine, just like the electric. Two large bathrooms had been added to the floor plan, with an additional powder room near the patio and sunrooms where Zelda held her classes, depending on the season.

The house had once been crammed wall-to-wall with furniture. Zelda’s parents and grandparents had been notorious hoarders. They’d run a down-home antiques business from there. Long before the business passed to her, Zelda announced she had no intention in furthering the enterprise. She’d cleaned house, burning most possessions before cheerfully planting the willow amid the ashes.

Longtime river residents still spoke about the great bonfire of ’76 and how it had lit up the night sky like the Second Coming. Of course, all this was decades before Mavis joined the river community. She’d grown to know the strange woman living in the old house at the end of the road, so much so that she and Zelda had started their own enterprise—Greater Baldwin Paranormal Research & Investigation. More commonly, they were known to locals by the tongue-in-cheek nickname the Paranormas.

The office to the right of the house’s entry point housed most of the ghost-hunting gear that Zelda and Mavis had carefully invested in. When Zelda wasn’t a yoga guru and Mavis wasn’t filling time cards at any of her parents’ small-town industries, they could both be found screening calls, dissecting claims of activity or out doing fieldwork in Zelda’s vintage red Alfa Romeo.

Mavis peered through the window to the right of the door. The pane of glass was old and waxy, but the distortion of smoke over the cracked drive and the fits of excited barking made her snatch the door wide. She looked right, then heard the cursing to her left and crossed the porch to get a better look.

“No, Prometheus!” someone said. “Back away! Down!”

Mavis broke into a run upon hearing her dog’s yelp. She opened her mouth to yell for him before she rounded the last car.

The smoke wafted from the hood of a familiar orange eighties-model Ford truck. The person shouting was Mavis’s friend and Gavin’s sister, Harmony Savitt. Which made the person on the ground underneath Mavis’s gigantic canine...

“Prometheus!” Mavis shouted, stumbling forward. “Get off of him! Get...” Her steps faltered at the sound of more yelps. They weren’t distressed. They were yipping. Happy. Walking sideways, tilting her head, she reevaluated the scene.

Gavin’s arms were up, the cords of his neck drawn into sharp contrast as he torqued his face away from the dog’s mouth. It was the dog’s tongue that was attacking him without mercy. The strained sound of high-pitched laughter fought through Gavin’s teeth.

Harmony had one leg over Prometheus’s back and was jerking on his silver-studded collar with all her might. “Oh my God! It’s like moving a planet!”

Prometheus got lucky with a tongue-lap across Gavin’s mouth. “Ah!” he grimaced. “Come on!”

“Prometheus,” Mavis said again, finding her feet. She joined the fray, grabbing the dog’s collar, too. She grunted, yanked. “Would you move your butt?”

Together, she and Harmony managed to tug Prometheus off the soldier. “Sit!” Mavis instructed, keeping hold of her dog as Harmony doubled over. Mavis crouched to Prometheus’s level, drawing his attention to her. “What were you thinking? You can’t just go knocking people over.” Shifting to her heels, she reached out to offer Gavin a hand, but he was already on his knees. She frowned at the Oakley sunglasses in his hand. “He broke them.”

“They fell off my head,” Gavin insisted. “I should’ve grabbed hold of ’em when I heard him coming.”

Harmony nodded agreement. “Those paws. They sound like a mammoth stampede.”

“I’m sorry,” Mavis said. “He usually doesn’t jump people like that.”

“You’re right,” Gavin said simply in return. “He definitely is a Prometheus.”

At his name, Prometheus strained forward, sniffing for Gavin’s hand. To Mavis’s surprise, Gavin obliged him, pressing his palm warmly against his flat-topped cranium and feeling his way to the dog’s ear. Prometheus’s lapping jowls closed quickly as he leaned into the caress and groaned, loudly, bending his head low. Mavis’s lips pressed together. She stared at Gavin over the length of Prometheus’s back.

Was that a smile? The scars stamped across his face didn’t interfere with the lines of his mouth, but it was a mouth that had grown far too accustomed to not smiling. Vague and hesitant, his eyes were more than just the epic clash of bottle green and unfinished copper. Tapered at the corners, they held the same sad glint as an abandoned pet.

Her heart misfired. She frowned at him. The wounded Gavin. He held himself together, as always. However, the bruising was on the surface. She could see the stitching. She could see the steel cables and the double coat of duct tape holding him together. Yet still the damage was close.

She hated that she could read him. It was easy for her to read people. Exceptions were rare. With his cool exterior and easy charm, Gavin Savitt had nearly always been the exception. He’d split his time annoying her and—unintentionally perhaps—compelling her. However, for all his past, there weren’t too many people who had ever found Gavin uninteresting.

He’d always been far too good-looking and she knew he’d used it to his advantage. Not with her. Others. His fighting edge had started young. He’d been in enough scrapes in high school to get him kicked out for a time. People vouched that he never started the fights, but he did finish them, and not always with an assist from Kyle.

The fighting edge was still there, but it had turned inward. As a result, his guardedness was down, the coolness had dropped, and Mavis could read him like a book she shouldn’t want to finish. She tried to look away in front of Harmony, at least. Things were strange enough since Harmony and Kyle had happily announced their march into coupledom.

Gavin couldn’t see her clearly. She knew that. So why did it feel so intimate to hold his steady gaze? Maybe because even after they couldn’t see, the eyes were still the door to the soul?

Mavis locked herself down. Whatever it was that she was feeling, she felt it too much in too many places and she had to lock it down because, per her directions, Gavin had come here to live with Miss Zelda at the end of the road.

Prometheus showed his appreciation by pressing his head against Gavin’s thigh. “Hey, hey,” Gavin said, easing back. “Easy there, Cujo.” He was wearing a smile. It might no longer look natural, but it wove into his hard-angled features until Mavis had to look away.

Prometheus nuzzled against Gavin’s shoulder, earning more ear-scratching. Mavis’s spine snapped straight at the touch of envy. “Okay, enough,” she said, wrapping her arms around Prometheus’s middle.

“He’s fine,” Gavin said. “He seems like a good egg. He’s Lab, right?”

Harmony belted a laugh. “Try rottweiler.”

“Nah,” Gavin said doubtfully. He hooked his arm around Prometheus’s neck and glanced at Mavis.

“One hundred percent,” she confirmed. “Dad picked him up at the shelter for me when he was twelve weeks old. He said if I was going to live alone, I had to have a guard dog.”

Harmony shook her head, watching the display between man and dog. “If that’s a guard dog, I’m a canary.”

“Breeds like rottweiler can be seriously misunderstood in terms of behavior.” Mavis gestured to the lovey canine licking the seam of Gavin’s jeans near the knee in a slow savory manner. “Exhibit A.”

“So you’re a righteous beast, eh?” Gavin lowered his crown to Prometheus’s bowed one. “That makes two of us.”

The gesture from man to dog did something. Mavis’s palms dampened. Her lips parted as a rush of warmth flooded her. It started in her belly and curled like a wave before she sucked it back. Feelings, she reminded herself. No.

She studiously rolled her eyes as Prometheus continued to vie for Gavin’s affections. Trying not to follow the path of Gavin’s stroking hands on Prometheus’s ruff, she looked to the smoking truck. “What happened?”

Harmony groaned. “Overheated. Liv’s going to kill me.” She shivered as though contemplating the response of her cousin, Olivia Leighton, to having her beloved Ford maligned in such a way. Squinting from beneath the brim of the baseball cap that advertised the cropdusting and flight instruction business she shared with Mavis’s father, Harmony frowned at the steam. “We’ll have to call James for a tow.”

Gavin gained his feet. “It wouldn’t have blown its top if you didn’t drive like a heretic.”

“I drive just fine,” Harmony said dismissively.

“You drive like somebody trained in low-level aerobatics,” Gavin argued. “Which you are.”

“You like my driving,” she pointed out. “It puts you back in action, which you miss.”

Mavis watched his mouth fold and she quickly changed the subject. “At least you made it to Miss Zelda’s.”