Night Watch. Suzanne Brockmann

room.

      And there was Andy. At the end of the hallway. In the middle of what looked to be a very intense discussion with the team’s star pitcher, Dustin Melero.

      Andy was tall, but Dustin had an inch on him.

      “Man, he grew,” Wes said as he looked at Andy. “I met him about four years ago, and he was only…” He held his hand up to about his shoulder.

      It was then, as they were gazing down the hallway at the two young men, that Andy dropped his mitt and shoved Dustin with a resounding crash against the wall of lockers.

      Brittany had already taken three steps toward them, when Wes caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said. “Let me. If you can, just turn around and don’t look.”

      Yeah, like hell…

      Still, she managed not to follow as Wes hustled down the hall to where Andy and Dustin were nose to nose, ready to break both the school rules and each others’ faces.

      As she watched, Wes put himself directly between them. They were too far away for her to hear his words, but she could imagine them. “What’s up, guys?” The two younger men towered over him, but Wes somehow seemed bigger.

      Andy was glowering—the expression on his face a direct flashback to the street-smart thirteen-year-old he’d once been.

      He just kept shaking his head as Wes talked. Finally, Dustin—who was laughing—spoke. Wes turned and gave the taller boy his full attention.

      And then, all of a sudden, Wes had Dustin up against the lockers, and was talking to him with a great deal of intensity.

      The new expression on Andy’s face would have been humorous if Brittany hadn’t been quite so worried at the amount of damage a full-grown Navy SEAL could inflict on a twenty-year-old idiot.

      Dustin’s sly smile had vanished, replaced with a drained-of-blood look of near panic.

      Finally, unable to stand it another second, Brittany started toward them.

      “…so much as look at her funny, I will come and find you, do you understand?” Wes was saying as she approached.

      Dustin looked at her. Andy looked at her. But Wes didn’t look away from Dustin. All that intensity aimed in one direction was alarming.

      She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. “Everything okay?” she said brightly.

      “Do you understand?” Wes said again, to Dustin.

      “Yes,” he managed to squeak out.

      “Good,” Wes said and stepped back.

      And Dustin was out of there.

      “So,” Brittany said to Andy. “This is Wes Skelly.”

      “Yeah,” Andy said. “I think we’re kind of past the introduction stage.”

      Chapter 2

      Remarkably, Brittany Evans didn’t jump down his throat.

      Remarkably, she didn’t immediately demand to know what on earth would possess him to physically threaten a kid more than a dozen years his junior. Forget about the fact that he did it in front of her impressionable teenaged son.

      In fact, she didn’t say anything about it at all.

      Wes took that as a strong hint that he’d surely hear about it later.

      But she’d merely talked about her sister’s current pregnancy and friends they had in common as they drove to a Santa Monica café, not too far from the house Brittany shared with her kid.

      The questions didn’t come until they’d sat down to dinner, until they’d ordered and had started to eat.

      “You surprised me back at the fieldhouse,” Brittany introduced the topic. The table was lit by candlelight, and it made her seem warmly, lushly exotic in a way that her little sister would never look. Not in a million years.

      Wes used to think that Melody was the prettier of the Evans sisters, and maybe according to conventional standards she was. Britt’s face was slightly angular, her chin too pointed, her nose a little sharp. But catch her at the right moment, from the right angle, and she was breathtakingly beautiful.

      Sex was not an option, he reminded himself. Yes, this woman was very attractive, but he wasn’t interested. Remember? He definitely had to deal with all the emotional crap rattling around inside of his own head before he went and got naked with someone who would want a real relationship rather than a happy night or two of the horizontal cha-cha.

      The odds of her wanting a night of casual sex with him were pretty low to start with. She so didn’t seem to be the type. But even if he was wrong, those odds would slip down to slim-to-none after he told her the truth—that he couldn’t give her more than a night or two because he was in love with someone else. No, not just someone else. Lana Quinn. The wife of one of his best friends—U.S. Navy SEAL and Chief Petty Officer Matthew Quinn, aka Wizard, aka the Mighty Quinn, aka that lying, cheating, unfaithful sack of dog crap.

      Brittany Evans was sitting across the table from Wes, gazing at him with the kind of eyes he loved best on women. Warm eyes. Intelligent eyes. Eyes that told him she liked and respected him—and expected the same respect in return.

      Lana had looked at him—at all of the SEALs—like that.

      “Yeah,” Wes said, since Brittany seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. “I kind of surprised myself back at the fieldhouse.” He laughed, but she didn’t join in.

      She just watched him as she took a sip directly from her bottle of beer and he tried not to look at or even think about her mouth. The bottom line was that he liked her too much as a person to mess around with her as a woman, as hot as he found her. But if she were some random babe that he caught a glimpse of in a bar, he’d make a point to get closer, to see if maybe she might want some mutually superficial sex.

      So, okay. He was man enough to admit it. If all things were equal, he’d throw Brittany Evans a bang. No doubt about it. Forget about Lana—because, face it, he had to. She was married, off-limits, verboten, taboo. He couldn’t have her, so he took pleasure and comfort wherever he could find it. And he kept his heart well out of it.

      But things here were definitely not equal. Not even close. Brittany was Lt. Jones’s sister-in-law, which was probably even worse than if she were his sister. A sister wouldn’t tell a brother about a night of hot sex with a near stranger. Well, probably not. But a sister just might tell a sister. Provided the two sisters were close. Which Brittany and Melody certainly were.

      And word would definitely get back to Jones, which wouldn’t be good.

      No, this was not going to happen, not tonight, not ever. Which, on that very superficial and completely physical level, was a crying shame. He would have liked, very much, to see Brittany Evans naked.

      “What did he say to you?” she asked, looking at him in that way she had—as if she was trying to see inside of his skull and read his mind. Good thing she couldn’t. “Melero, I mean.”

      “That kid is a total…” Wes chose a more polite word. “Idiot.”

      Brittany smiled at him. “That’s not what you were going to say.”

      “I’m working hard to keep it clean.”

      “I appreciate that.”

      God her smile was a killer. Wes forced himself to stop cataloging everything he wasn’t going to do to her tonight. Enough self-torture already. He brought the conversation back on track. “Melero was just being a jerk. That’s another good word for him—jerk.”

      “I’ve met him plenty of times before,” she countered, narrowing her eyes slightly. “I’m well aware that he’s capable of extreme jerkdom. But Andy knows that, too. What exactly did this guy say to Andy to piss him off like that?”