Night Watch. Suzanne Brockmann

out with Wes Skelly as a favor. It was, she’d said in that baby sister manipulative manner of hers—the one that came with the big blue eyes, the one that had enabled her to twist Britt around her little finger for the past several decades—the only thing she wanted for her upcoming birthday. Pretty please with sugar on top…?

      Britt should have cried foul and gotten her a Dave Matthews CD instead.

      “Let’s set some ground rules,” Brittany told Wes now. “Rule number one—no crap, okay? No hyperbole, no B.S. Only pure honesty. My sister and your so-called friend Harlan Jones manipulated us to this particular level of hell, but now that we’re here we’re going to play by our own rules. Agreed?”

      “Yeah,” he said. “Sure, but—”

      “I have no intention of sleeping with you,” she informed him briskly. “I’m neither lonely nor pathetic. I know exactly what I look like, exactly who I am and I happen to be quite happy with myself, thank you very much. I’m here because I love my little sister, although right now I’m trying to imagine the most painfully horrific way to torture her for doing this to me—and to you.”

      He opened his mouth, but she wasn’t done and she didn’t let him speak.

      “Now. I know my sister, and I know she was hoping we’d gaze into each other’s eyes, fall hopelessly in love and get married before the year’s end.” She paused for a fraction of a second to look searchingly into his eyes. They were very pretty blue eyes, but her friend Julia had a Alaskan husky with pretty blue eyes, too. “Nope,” she said. “Didn’t happen for me. How about you?”

      He laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “But—”

      “No need for excuses,” she cut him off again. “People think alone means lonely. Have you noticed that?”

      He didn’t answer right away. Not until it was good and clear that she was finally finished and it was his turn to talk.

      “Yeah,” he said then. “And people who are together—people who are a couple—they’re always trying to pair up all of their single friends. It’s definitely obnoxious.”

      “Well meant,” Britt agreed, “but completely annoying. I am sorry that you got roped into this.”

      “It’s not that big a deal,” he said. “I mean, I was coming to Los Angeles anyway. And how many times has Lieutenant Jones asked me to do him a favor? Maybe twice. How many times has he bailed out my butt? Too many to count. He’s an excellent officer and a good friend, and if he wants me to have dinner with you, hey, I’m having dinner with you. He was right, by the way.”

      Britt wasn’t sure she liked either the gleam in his eye or that grin. She narrowed her own eyes. “About what?”

      “I was having a little trouble there for a while, getting in a word edgewise.”

      She opened her mouth, and then closed it. Then opened it. “Well, heck, it’s not exactly as if you’re known throughout the SEAL teams as Mr. Taciturn.”

      Wes’s grin widened. “That’s what makes it all the more amazing. So what’s rule number three?”

      She blinked. “Rule three?” She didn’t have three rules. There was just the one.

      “One is no bull—Um. No bull,” he said. “Two is no sex. That’s fine ’cause that’s not why I’m here. I’m not in a place where I’m ready to get involved with anyone on that permanent of a level, and besides, although you’re very pretty—and that’s not crap. I’m being honest here as per rule one—you’re not my type.”

      “Your type.” Oh, this was going to be good. “What or who exactly is your type?”

      He opened his mouth, but she thumped him on the chest as the action on the field caught her eye. It was a very solid chest despite the fact that in her heels she was nearly as tall as he was.

      “Hold that thought,” she ordered. “Andy’s at bat.”

      Wes fell obediently silent. She knew that he didn’t have children, but he apparently understood the unspoken parental agreement about paying complete and total attention when one’s kid was in the batter’s box.

      Of course, her kid was nineteen years old and a college freshman on a full baseball scholarship. Her kid was six feet three inches tall and two hundred and twenty pounds. Her kid had a batting average of .430, and a propensity for knocking the ball clear over the fence, and quite possibly into the next county.

      But it had just started to rain harder.

      Andy let the first ball go past him—a strike.

      “How can he see in this?” Britt muttered. “He can’t possibly see in this. Besides it’s not supposed to rain in Southern California.” That had been one of the perks of moving out here from Massachusetts.

      The pitcher wound up, let go of the ball, and…tock. The sound of Andy’s bat connecting with the ball was sharp and sweet and so much more vibrant than the little anemic click heard when watching baseball on TV. Brittany had never known anything like it until after she’d adopted Andy, until he’d started playing baseball with the same ferocity that he approached everything else in life.

      “Yes!” The ball sailed over the fence and Andy jogged around the bases. Brittany alternately clapped and whistled piercingly, fingers between her teeth.

      “Jones said your kid was pretty good.”

      “Pretty good my eye,” Britt countered. “Andy’s college baseball’s Barry Bonds. That’s his thirty-first homerun this year, I’ll have you know.”

      “He being scouted?” Wes asked.

      “Actually, he is,” she told him. “Mostly because there’s another kid on the team—Dustin Melero—who’s been getting lots of attention. He’s a pitcher—a real hotshot, you know? Scouts come to see him, but he’s still pretty inconsistent. Kind of lacking in the maturity department, too. The scouts end up sticking around to take a look at Andy.”

      “You gonna let him play pro ball before he finishes college?”

      “He’s nineteen,” Brittany replied. “I don’t let him do anything. It’s his life and his choice. He knows I’ll support him whatever he decides to do.”

      “I wish you were my mom.”

      “I think you’re a little too old even for me to adopt,” she told him. Although Wes was definitely younger than she was, by at least five years. And maybe even more. What was her sister thinking?

      “Andy was what? Twelve when you adopted him?” he asked.

      “Thirteen.” Irish. Melody was thinking that Wes was Irish, and that Brittany had a definite thing for a man with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile that could light his entire being. Mel was thinking about her own intense happiness with Harlan Jones, and about the fact that one night, years ago, Britt had had a little too much to drink and admitted to her sister that her biggest regret about her failed marriage to That-Jerk-Quentin was that she would have liked to have had a child—a biological child—of her own.

      That would teach her to be too heavy-handed when making strawberry daiquiris.

      “That definitely qualifies you for sainthood,” Wes said. “Adopting a thirteen-year-old juvie? Man.”

      “All he really needed was a stable home environment—”

      “You’re either crazy or Mother Teresa’s sister.”

      “Oh, I’m not a saint. Believe me. I just…I fell in love with the kid. He’s great.” She tried to explain. “He grew up with no one. I mean, completely abandoned—physically by his father and emotionally by his mother. And then there he was, about to be shipped away again, to another foster home, and there I was, and…I wanted him to stay with me. We’ve had our tough moments, sure, but…”

      The