Night Watch. Suzanne Brockmann

training, where the SEAL candidates were pushed to extremes, physically, emotionally and psychologically.

      “Yeah, you know, I don’t remember much of Hell Week,” he told her. “I think I’ve blocked most of it out. It was hard.”

      “Now, there’s an understatement.” Brittany smiled at him, and Wes wished—not for the last time this evening, he was sure—that he wasn’t sleeping on that couch tonight. Her smile was like pure sunshine—God, it was trite, but true.

      “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t remember much of it. Although, Hell Week was where Bobby Taylor and I finally stopped hating each other. The guy’s been my closest friend for years, but when we were first assigned as swim buddies—you know, we had to stick together no matter what during BUD/S—we hated each other’s guts.”

      Brittany laughed. “I had no idea. Your friendship with Bobby is legendary. I mean, Bobby and Wes. Wes and Bobby. I keep expecting him to show up.”

      “He’s on his honeymoon,” Wes told her.

      “With your sister.” Her eyes softened. “That must feel really strange. It must be hard for you—your best friend and your sister. Suddenly it’s not Bobby and Wes, it’s Bobby and Colleen.”

      It was amazing. Everyone who’d heard about Bobby’s marriage to Colleen had made noise like, how great was that? Your best friend gets to join your family. Wasn’t that terrific?

      And yes, it was terrific. But at the same time it was weirder than hell. And Brittany had hit it right on the head. Wes’s entire friendship with Bobby had been based on the fact that they were two unattached guys. They shared an apartment, they shared a similar lifestyle, they shared a hell of a lot.

      And now, while Wes didn’t quite want to call what he was feeling jealousy, everything had changed. Bobby now spent every minute he wasn’t on duty with Colleen instead of hanging out with Wes watching old, badly dubbed Jackie Chan movies.

      Bobby and Wes had definitely turned into Bobby and Colleen—with Wes trailing pathetically along, a third wheel.

      “Yeah,” he said to Brittany. “It’s a little weird.”

      From out in the living room, Andy’s voice got loud enough for them to hear. “You can’t be serious!”

      The kid didn’t sound happy, and Wes took a quick glance in his direction.

      Andy was standing at the open door. His girlfriend hadn’t even made it into the living room. She was a pretty girl, with short dark hair, but right now her face was pinched and pale, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes.

      “Will you please come in so we can talk about this?” Andy asked, but she shook her head. Her reply was spoken too softly for Wes to hear.

      “What, so you’re just leaving?” Andy, on the other hand, was getting louder.

      Wes stepped farther into the kitchen, attempting to give them privacy. Clearly this was not a happy conversation. It sounded, from his experience, as if Andy was getting the old dumparooney.

      He looked at Britt who winced when Andy said, loudly enough for them to hear, “You’re just going home to San Diego—you’re not even going to finish up the term!?”

      Again, the girl’s reply was too soft for Wes to hear.

      “The biggest problem with having a small apartment,” Brittany said, as she poured hot water over the tea bag in her mug, “is that there’s no such thing as a private conversation.

      “We could go for a walk,” Wes suggested. “You up for a walk?”

      She put the kettle back on the stove, giving him another of those killer smiles, this one loaded with appreciation. “Absolutely. What I really wanted was iced tea, anyway. Let me get a warmer jacket.”

      But as she went down the hall to her bedroom, the conversation from the living room got even louder.

      “Why are you doing this?” Andy asked. He was really upset. “What happened? What’d I do? Dani, you’ve got to talk to me, because, God, I don’t want you to leave! I love you!”

      Dani burst into noisy tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, finally loud enough for them all to hear. “I don’t love you!”

      The door slammed behind her.

      Oh, cripes, that had to have hurt. Wes met Britt’s worried eyes as she came back out into the kitchen. She’d obviously heard that news bulletin, too.

      Andy was silent in the living room. He’d have to come past them to get to the sanctuary and privacy of his room.

      And even if they were going to go for a walk, they’d have to go out right past him. If Wes were in Andy’s shoes, having to face his mother and her friend was the last thing he’d want after getting an I don’t love you response to his declaration of love.

      “How about a tour of your bedroom instead?” Wes asked Brittany. If they went into her room and shut the door, that would give Andy an escape route.

      “Yes,” she said. “Come on.”

      She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall.

      Her room was as brightly colored and cheerful as the rest of the place, with a big mirror over an antique dresser and a bed that actually had a canopy. As she closed the door behind them, Wes had to smile.

      “Gee, I wish it was always this easy to gain entry to a beautiful woman’s bedroom,” he said.

      “How could she break up with him like that?” Brittany asked. “No explanation, just I don’t love you! What a horrible girl! I never really liked her.”

      They heard a click as Andy quietly went into his room and locked the door. The kid turned music on, no doubt to hide the noise he was going to make when he started to cry.

      Brittany looked as if she was going to cry, too.

      “Maybe I should go,” Wes said.

      “Don’t be ridiculous.” She opened her door and marched back into the kitchen and out into the living room where she started putting the sheets on the couch.

      “I can do that,” Wes said.

      She sat down on the sofa, clearly upset. “From now on, I’m going to screen his girlfriends.”

      Wes sat down next to her. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

      Brittany laughed, but it was rueful and sad. “He was so damaged when I first met him, when he was twelve. He’d been so badly hurt, so many times—shuffled from one foster family to the next. No one wanted him. And now this…Rejection really sucks, you know?”

      “Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I do. I mean, not on the scale that Andy’s faced it, but…So now you want to protect him from everything—including girls who might break his heart.” He shook his head. “You can’t do it, Britt. Life doesn’t work that way.”

      She nodded. “I know.”

      “He’s a terrific kid. For all the bad crap that happened to him in his life, he’s got his relationship with you to balance it all out. He’s going to deal with this. It’s going to hurt for a while, but eventually he’s going to be okay. He’s not going to come unglued.”

      She sighed. “I know that, too. I just…I can’t help but want everything to be perfect for him.”

      “There’s no such thing as perfect,” Wes said.

      Except there was. Brittany’s eyes were a perfect shade of blue. Her smile was pretty damn perfect, too.

      If she were any other woman on the planet, he would have given her a friendly, comforting hug. But he didn’t trust himself to get that close.

      She exhaled loudly—a supersigh. “Well. I have to get up early in the morning.”