A SEAL's Surrender. Tawny Weber

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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.

СКАЧАТЬ