SEALionaire Book 2: A Navy SEAL Romance, Page 3

  Tightening my hands on the wheel, I bit back the apology. He wouldn’t want to hear it. It wouldn’t help.

  Then it came out anyway. “I’m sorry everything’s gotten so messed up for you.”

  He snorted. “I’m the one who’s messed it all up, O.”

  “You had a rough time of it. Seemed like you should have caught a break somewhere along the way.”

  “I had plenty of breaks. I got a slap on the hand for what I did here. I was able to take an honorable discharge. Who knows how many favors my commander had to call in for that? I should have faced a court martial.” He stared out the window instead of looking at me, and I wondered if he had any idea where we were. “I walked away from firefight after firefight, watched friends go down. I had plenty of breaks.”

  Turning the corner, I pulled up to the curb and put the car into park.

  Finally, Reaper seemed to notice where we were. The boarded up windows, the lots overrun with grass and the houses that had seen better days, better years…the whole damn place was so miserable, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if these blocks were razed and everything was just built all over again.

  Maybe the gangs would leave.

  Families could come back.

  People would have a chance.

  “What are we doing here?”

  Instead of answering, I opened the door.

  A couple of boys barely old enough to shave loitered on the curb. They slid my car an assessing look before even glancing at me. The oldest recognized me and gave me a jerk of his head in greeting. I took the fifty I’d pulled from my purse and tucked it under the windshield wiper, staring at him for another minute before I looked at Reaper. “Come on. I want to show you something. It’s just over here.”

  The church, like so many of the buildings, had busted windows that had long since been boarded over. It hadn’t been open for years. “Down there.” I pointed to the narrow alley between the church and the house next to it. It was cluttered, filled with garbage cans, a bike, a mattress, and a dumpster.

  The dumpster made my stomach ache, even though logically, I knew it probably wasn’t the same one.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “I was found here. I was only a day or two old. They don’t know for sure.”

  For a few seconds, he didn’t respond, but then finally, he turned his head and looked at me.

  “The preacher who used to serve at this church…it was his wife who found me. She heard me crying, came outside, and there I was.” I shrugged, still staring at the dumpster. “They called the cops. They wanted to adopt me but were turned down. I ended up in the system, had some health issues the first few years which meant nobody wanted me. Finally, the system tried contacting the preacher and his wife when I was two or three, but the man had died of a heart attack, and she didn’t think she could handle me on her own. So there went my chance…again. Spent the first ten years of my life in foster care. Some weren’t so great. Others were pretty decent. Then…”

  Taking a deep breath, I turned to Reaper.

  “I ended up with one of those foster families. The kind you hear about on the news. I wasn’t even there a week when he tried to touch me. One of the other girls had told me it might happen, told me I’d be better off to just take it. But…I wasn’t very good at that. I screamed. He hit me. I bit him. It got way out of hand, and a neighbor called the police. I ended up at the hospital, and he had this big story about how he came in and saw me attacking one of my foster sisters, but he knew how troubled I was. He’d give me another chance.”

  The rage on Reaper’s face was a cold, quiet one. If he looked anything like that when those idiots in the jail attacked him, it made me wonder how stupid they were.

  Looking back down the alley, I rubbed my hands up and down my arms. “They were going to send me back there. I knew it. So I ran. I ended up on the streets. Wasn’t all that far from here.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Demarre Karnes approaching, moving in a loose-limbed gait, wearing a black tank top and black ball cap with the brim turned backward. It was almost a uniform. His friend looked practically identical, as far as clothing went. Demarre paused by my car, took the fifty just as somebody came out of a house nearby and called out to him.

  The two became three, and when Demarre gave me a sidelong look, I said, “We can’t stay much longer.”

  “And I was having so much fun.”

  Demarre and his two friends had moved back to their street corner, so I started for my car, Reaper keeping pace next to me. “I was almost eleven when I met his older brother. Jaquan was…” I shrugged. “To me, he was like family. The only family I had. Back then, schools didn’t teach you as much as gangs nor do they tell you how much trouble they can be.”

  We were in the car by now, and I started it up, still staring down the street at Demarre.

  When one of his friends glanced our way, I put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb.

  “Even if they did, I was in and out of so many different schools. By the fourth grade, I think I’d attended six different elementary schools. I was smart, but I still struggled to read and keep up. I even liked school, but it’s hard to keep up when you’re always being pulled out and sent somewhere else.”

  On autopilot, I drove, heading to the next spot without thinking. I’d told him one stop. But he needed to understand.

  The playground where it happened had been rehabbed. This whole neighborhood looked different, unlike the sad block where Demarre and his friends still lived.

  It was only a span of a few blocks, but it looked like a different world.

  There were other cars in the parking lot, mothers with their children, joggers out for their morning run.

  I didn’t get out of the car though. Just being here made me hurt.

  “Jaquan didn’t have me doing anything serious at first. He saw a skinny, hungry girl and figured he’d take care of me – and I think he did want to do that. I got to sleep at his place, and nobody could mess with me. If anybody tried…” I shrugged.

  Adam looked like he was about to say something, but instead just shook his head. After another minute or so, I went on.

  “They didn’t last long. He had a lot of girls come, and they stayed because they felt safe with him. That’s why. The girls were treated nice. They weren’t just toys for the men. But once I got old enough, I had to start helping out. He made it clear that’s what I was doing.”

  Adam raked a hand through his hair. “Don’t tell me–”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I didn’t have to whore for anybody, but if I wanted to stay, I had to work. I carried drugs back and forth after I’d been with him a few months. He taught me how to fight, told me that, sooner or later, somebody would try to hurt me, and I’d have to hurt back. I was always thinking that it would be like it had been with that guy.”

  “Your foster father.”

  I looked at Adam. “Yeah.”

  I lapsed into silence, staring out the window.

  The bench was still there.

  “Jaquan brought me here one Friday. Told me it was time I got serious. I told him I was; told him I’d do whatever he needed me to do. He hugged me, said he knew that, which was why he’d picked me to do this one.”

  I closed my eyes and could see that moment clearly in my head.

  “So Jaquan wanted me to go up to this ‘old dude,’ as he called him, thinking he’d help a little kid like me. He said that all I had to do was distract the man, and he and Bianca would take care of the rest.”

  “Take care of the rest?” Adam asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  I shook my head. “I had no idea what he was going to do. I’d never seen them really hurt anybody before – at least nobody who hadn’t tried to hurt them first. So I was out there at the park, walking around like they said. And this old guy was out there, just like they said he’d be.”

  I blew out a breath as the memory played out in front of me. I remembered ho
w hard my heart was beating, how cold my fingers were.

  “I went and asked him for some money, told him my mom had kicked me out and that I was hungry. He looked like he wanted to cry and said he’d get me money. He also said that, if I wanted, he could even find me someplace to live, a family.”

  Even now, I could remember the look in James’s eyes as he said it. The intensity – the sincerity.

  And then I remembered the look of pain after Jaquan shoved a knife into his side. Bianca pushed him down and grabbed his wallet while Jaquan grabbed my hand and told me to run.

  So I ran. But then at the corner, I saw a police car.

  And instead of running away, I ran to it.

  “Your father spent six hours in surgery because of me. Six hours in surgery because he had a habit of going to one of the roughest parts of the city and handing out money, trying to help kids who didn’t want help.”

  Reaper was staring out the window.

  “I ended back up in foster care. I could have run away, but I was afraid. If I ended up back on the streets…”

  “You were afraid of what might happen there because of this Jaquan guy.”

  “Yeah.” I stared at the bench for another moment. Then I put the car into drive.

  “So how did you come to work for him?”

  “Two weeks after I saw him on that bench, he found me in the system and asked if I’d like to have a home – a real one. I told him he was crazy. He said it was possible and would I please answer the question.” I glanced over at Reaper before pulling out of the parking lot. “He filed to become my guardian. I’ve been with him ever since.”

  6

  Reaper

  O was making it harder and harder for me to just dislike the son of a bitch.

  I could handle that though. There were plenty of people I didn’t dislike but still had no desire to have any connection with. They could exist in the world, and I could exist in the world. I didn’t have to know them.

  But she was making it harder for me to ignore this connection.

  The connection to the man who fathered me.

  It was one thing when he’d just been some unknown faceless bastard who’d knocked my mom up and then walked away from her – from us.

  Then I find out that he’d been married to another woman when he met and fell in love with my mom. On top of that, I learned that he was even considering divorce before tragedy kicked everybody in the teeth and his wife was diagnosed with a chronic illness.

  Now…

  Yeah, I wanted to know him.

  I wanted to look this man in the eye and try to understand him.

  Understand how he was able to take a girl off the streets after she helped, even unknowingly, a couple of street toughs almost kill him, then raise that girl as his own, turning her into this elegant, classy lady?

  How could he do all that, be all that, and yet not have anything to do with me? I was his son, if O was to be believed, and yet we had no connection.

  Nothing.

  I needed to understand.

  Brooding at the window of one of the tallest buildings in Cincinnati, I stared down over the city and tried to convince myself otherwise.

  I wasn’t having any success.

  Other things were going on in my head too.

  Like who the man was.

  She’d given me his name, and if I’d heard it at any other time in my life, I might have already put two and two together, but now wasn’t any other time in my life.

  Now was now, and I was just now getting it.

  I was just now putting two and two together after walking through a metal detector, turning over my ID, and getting a guest pass to walk into one of the most secure buildings in the Cincinnati area.

  Clarion Arms and Securities.

  James Clarion.

  Apparently, my father was the primary stockholder of one of the biggest arms and defense contractors in the country. He had contracts with US, Canada, Mexico, not to mention military units in Europe and Asia.

  James Clarion.

  My father.

  “Why now?” I asked quietly when I heard the phone hang up.

  O didn’t pretend not to understand.

  “Because it’s time,” she said simply.

  “Yeah? What made him think now was the time? The fact that my mother is dead and can’t stop him? Or is his wife getting worse?” I turned and met O’s serene, steady gaze and tried not to think about how I’d seen those beautiful blues looking anything but serene and steady.

  “It has nothing to do with Elise. She would have been fine if you had met James years ago.”

  “Yeah, right.” I snorted and turned back to the window. “I’m sure she would have loved to meet me, the product of her husband’s indiscretion. I doubt she even knew I existed until you dragged me to her bedside.”

  “She’s known about you almost since your birth.” O’s voice was cold, almost clipped.

  Turning to her, I met her eyes and realized she was serious – deadly serious. Tucking my hands into my pockets, I rocked back on my heels. O’s arms were crossed over her chest, and she was tapping her nails against her arm.

  “You’re not a dirty secret, not to either of them. Elise was the one who actually told me about you,” O said loftily. “And to be quite honest, she was very envious of your mother. The queen…” O paused and licked her lips, looking away for a brief moment. When she finally looked back at me, she was sad. “She wasn’t able to have any more children other than the son who died. I think she would have…welcomed you.”

  I clenched my jaw against the urge to point out that I had a mom, a damn good one.

  It seemed spiteful and ugly, especially in the face of O’s quiet pain.

  “You love her,” I said.

  She just looked at me, but the answer was there, written clearly in her eyes.

  Aggravated by everything she was forcing me to face, I skimmed my hands back over my hair and turned back to the window.

  “Fine.” I bit the word off like I was chewing nails, and it tasted about the same to me – bitter and sharp. But I didn’t see much choice. I could keep refusing the inevitable and be an asshole, or just give in. It was sounding more and more like the reason I had for not wanting my father in my life wasn’t true, so what other excuses was I going to make for myself?

  “Adam?”

  I didn’t look back at her. “You heard me,” I said sourly. The pounding in my head had faded away to a dull ache, but now it was back in full swing, and I was tempted to slam my head against the window and give myself a real headache. If I hit hard enough, maybe I could knock myself unconscious and wake up after all the poison had left my system.

  Then I could think better and figure out a way around this.

  There wasn’t one though.

  And I knew it.

  “Well, then. How about lunch?”

  I shot her a look. “Lunch…is that code for you and me finding a room?”

  She arched a brow. “No. That’s code for you and me meeting up with James. I think we’ve waited long enough, don’t you?”

  “I like my idea better.” Letting my eyes drift down over her body, I made no attempt to hide what I was thinking. “I keep trying to figure out what you’re wearing under that dress.”

  “Nice attempt at distracting me.” She picked up her phone as she sat.

  “I take it that you’re not going to change your mind.”

  She didn’t answer – not me, anyway. “Hello, boss. Do you have plans for lunch?”

  I turned back to the window and crossed my arms over my chest, settling back into my brood. It wasn’t as easy as I’d like. The one-sided conversation kept distracting me. Once she’d set a time and picked a restaurant, I debated on whether I should just leave. I could kill time walking around the city and not torment myself.

  She hung up just as I managed to convince myself to do just that – walk out and let the very efficient and slightly scary secretary I’d met earlier
know I’d meet them at the restaurant.

  But when I turned, O was on her feet, moving to the door.

  “See to it that we’re not disturbed, Grace. Mr. Dedman and I have some matters yet to discuss,” O said, one hand resting on the door.

  “Of course, Ms. Darling.”

  When O turned back to me, she looked a little uncomfortable.

  I had a good idea why too.

  “Darling?”

  “Yes?”

  I forced myself not to smile. “Is your last name really Darling?”

  “Your last name is Dedman.” She put her hands on her hips. “You got a problem with my last name?”

  “Absolutely not.” I took a look around the room, taking note of the fact that I didn’t see a single name placard. I’d been in enough offices to know that most bigwigs usually had their names hammered out on something. Although…I took a closer, more thorough look. The office actually looked fairly new. Smelled of paint. There were things in a box along one wall. “Is this a new office?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Just wondering why you don’t have some shiny piece of brass on the desk with your name on it, Ms. Darling.” I hooked my fingers in the neckline of her dress and drew her closer.

  “Good eye.” She licked her lips. “New office, Chief Dedman.”

  “Don’t–”

  She laid a finger on my lips. “How about you stop talking and kiss me?”

  I looked down into those gorgeous blue-purple eyes and felt something deep and raw twist inside of me. She licked her lips again, and I was lost. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her mouth was every bit as sweet and soft as I remembered, her body as strong and sexy. She came to me, wrapping her arms around my neck, her tongue curling against mine in a way that made my brain go into a slow meltdown.

  Catching the hem of her snug fitting skirt, I smoothed it upward and found the answer to my question.

  Panties…silk and lace.

  That’s what Olivia Darling wore under that sexy as sin dress.

  Easing back, I nudged her up against the desk, so I could tug her panties down. She bit her lower lip, glancing at the door.