Arousal and sorrow jostled inside her. It was an odd, uncomfortable combination. One emotion full of heat and urgency, the other depression and emptiness. You wouldn’t think the two feelings could coexist, yet here she was, unraveling beneath them.
Did the two men who’d pounded on the door know what they’d interrupted? Probably. They were SEALs after all. And SEALs noticed everything.
She grimaced and tightened her arms around her legs, only to force herself to relax. Her skin was still too sensitive, too tight, too hot. The heat still boiled off her. She could feel it in her burning cheeks and sweaty spine.
Her gaze flashed to Brett and away again. He’d rolled off her and onto his feet at the first knock. By the time he’d reached the door, his face had frozen into flat lines. His gaze, while vivid blue, looked as cool as the ocean. It had taken her longer to respond to the interruption. At least two more poundings. He’d waited, his hand on the door latch, giving her time to get her legs under her and flee to the armchair.
Currently, the three huge, hard faced men were discussing “the situation” while sucking all the oxygen from the room and shedding reams of testosterone.
It was odd; although Brett and his two friends didn’t necessarily look huge, they felt like it. They felt humongous. Like they dwarfed the space…like they dominated everything surrounding them.
She’d noticed that particular effect before, with Brett, with Lucas, with the other SEALs she’d been introduced to back when she and Brett had been a thing. His teammates shed a particular vibe. They exuded confidence, capability, watchfulness. They were larger than life. She’d never understood what that term meant—larger than life—until she’d met Mitch, and then Brett.
That charismatic aura surrounding Mitch had initially been what attracted her to him…at least until she’d started to sense that there was something unpleasant, maybe even ugly, beneath his glossy veneer.
“The bastard used your name?” Lucas Trammel asked, his voice lifting in surprise. He paused to shove lean fingers through his wavy brown hair. “Now that’s ballsy.”
The comment didn’t sound admiring. More like disgusted or contemptuous.
She’d met Lucas Trammel back when she and Brett had been a couple. Lucas’s hair had been shorter back then, its slight wave clipped ruthlessly short.
The other guy though, the dark-haired, dark-eyed one who’d followed Lucas into the motel room, was new…and intimidating. He inundated the space like a suspicious, icy cloud. Cold. Distant. Monosyllabic.
Brett had introduced him as Devlin Russo, Echo Platoon’s Lieutenant Commander. Which, if she remembered Brett’s long-ago ranking explanations correctly, made this hard-faced stranger Brett’s superior officer. Lucas’s too, obviously, since he and Tag were on the same team and held the same rank.
“Take us through everything,” Devlin said to Brett, for the first time unleashing more than a single, clipped word.
His voice surprised her. She’d expected a icy, arctic blast. Not a deep, husky baritone.
Sarah absently listened as Brett recounted everything from the moment he’d cornered her in his truck and she’d spilled the beans, to what the receptionist had told them at the morgue. He didn’t skip anything this time. Didn’t hold anything back. Not like he had with the cops. He told his superior everything.
“Wait.” Devlin’s voice cracked through the room. “She knew what Mitch was up to for two years. And said nothing?” The look he leveled on her was flat, but something lethal swam beneath his blankness. Something colder than ice. Something darker than distain. “And you didn’t pass that on to the cops?”
The guy sounded pissed. Coldly pissed. And that anger was directed at Brett as much as her.
Sarah stirred when Brett didn’t try to defend himself. This too was her fault. He wouldn’t be in trouble with his superior officer if he hadn’t tried to protect her.
“That’s my fault,” she broke in. Maybe she could mitigate some of the damage here at least. “I begged him not to turn me in. I begged him to let me come forward on my own. I thought if I owned up to what I’d done, they might go easier on me. But then they showed me that picture of Sean…and everything went…blurry.”
She didn’t have to fake the tremor in her voice. Pushing past the wave of grief, she struggled to think. What could she tell this hard-faced, formidable man that would repair the fissures she’d caused between him and Brett? “But he told me he’d go to the cops himself if