Christy Jeffries - The Seal's Secret Daughter

Trina didn’t decline his invitation, but she wasn’t exactly quick to make a decision either. She had to be equally as afraid of him as he was of her. Stranger danger and all that. She must’ve heard her mother announce that he was her father, but that didn’t mean she necessarily believed it. Well, that made two of them.

Being careful not to touch her as he stepped around her shivering form, Ethan held open the door, hoping that the heat coming from his apartment would be more inviting than the ugly used furniture inside. He was about to go into the kitchen and grab his cell phone to call for backup when finally, with an apprehensive look cast in Ethan’s direction, her feet shuffled toward him.

Trina gave him a measured glance before swooping low to grab her purple T-shirt and shoving it back into her grocery bag. She held the recovered belongings close to her chest, as though they were some sort of shield that could protect her from him.

“Are you hungry?” Ethan asked. He left the front door wide-open as he walked toward the kitchen, not wanting her to feel trapped. Would she follow? Or would she run off, just as her mother had?

“Kinda,” Trina replied, her voice again no louder than a whisper. She was on the thin side and he wondered when she’d had her last meal.

Ethan stared at his bare counters, knowing full well the only thing he could offer the girl right now would be a mug of triple-brewed dark roast.

“I...uh...wasn’t exactly expecting company.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I usually eat breakfast at the café across the street.”

Trina tilted her head at him, her blue eyes still empty, her arms still clutched tightly to her in apprehension. If she was truly his daughter, Ethan wanted to do the right thing by her. He just wasn’t convinced that taking care of her all by himself would be the right thing.

He really could use some direction here. This town was bursting with know-it-all busybodies who had opinions on everything from which colors to paint the historical homes to who should play point guard for the high school basketball team. Unfortunately, none of those people were currently inside his apartment.

“I’ve got an idea,” Ethan said, but Trina’s blank expression didn’t waver. “I’m going to grab my coat and, uh, something for you to put on to keep warm, and we’ll go across the street and grab a hot breakfast.”

Surely someone over at the Cowgirl Up Café would have an idea of what he should do with the girl.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, walking down the hallway toward his bedroom. As he looked at the few clothes hanging in his closet, he wondered if Trina would still be standing in his living room when he came out. Or had she already made a run for it the second he turned his back? It was what he would’ve done in her situation.

But she was right where he’d left her when he returned with a fleece-lined hooded sweatshirt branded with the eagle and trident logo. “Here, this is the best I could come up with. But we’re not going very far.”

She had to drop her bag on the scuffed dining room table to take the sweatshirt from him. He sat at one of the cheap pine chairs to pull on his work boots, trying not to notice the way Trina kept having to push the sleeves up her arms to keep her hands from getting drowned by the heavy material of the borrowed sweatshirt.

Locking the front door behind him, Ethan realized that Trina was very careful not to get in front of him. She would only follow after he’d already passed. Whenever his team had infiltrated compounds and taken captives or brought in noncombatants for questioning, they’d been trained to always stay behind the enemy—to never turn their backs on a potential threat.

The thought that his own daughter might view him as a threat made his stomach go sour, however, Ethan didn’t say anything as they walked down the steps to the alley and then through the narrow walkway that put them out on to Snowflake Boulevard. When they got on the main street of town, he glanced down the block toward the new public safety building that housed both the police department and the fire station. It would be so easy to lead Trina over there and drop her off. His mind calculated how long it would take him to leave her at the entrance and then hop into his secondhand truck and drive down the mountain to the Boise airport.

How long would it take to leave this whole mess behind him?

But he’d lived his life being on the move, alternating between taking on the most dangerous assignments to come through his unit and then drowning himself in a bottle to escape the unpleasantness of the world. The whole point of his leaving the Navy and relocating to Sugar Falls was so he could finally slow down, sober up and figure out what his next chapter would be.

He just hadn’t expected fatherhood to be on the first page.

* * *

Monica Alvarez was balancing a tray of refilled salt and pepper shakers in one hand and a pot of decaf in the other when the tingling bell sounded above the saloon-style front doors of the Cowgirl Up Café. As a part-time waitress, early Wednesday mornings were usually her easiest shifts—most of the weekend tourists were long gone, replaced with only a handful of regulars lounging in their favorite booths, ordering their usuals, which she now had memorized. However, it wasn’t the blast of frigid air coming in from outside that made the welcoming smile fade from Monica’s lips.

It wasn’t even the arrival of the hunky contractor who ordered the same exact breakfast—four scrambled egg whites, turkey sausage patties, sliced tomatoes and black coffee with a side of flirtatious banter—that made her pause. It was the unexpected appearance of a young girl cowering behind him that had stopped Monica in her tracks and caused the ceramic cowboy boot–shaped spice shakers on her tray to wobble.

The first time she’d waited on Ethan Renault several months ago, she’d written him off as a harmless bad boy who would eventually give up once he figured out that she wasn’t interested in his type. Initially, it had been easy to brush off the sexy smirk and ignore the lazy way his thick-lashed eyes followed her as she messed up orders and proved herself to be an incompetent waitress.

But the man had been patient and stealthy and, occasionally, he’d even made her laugh. Last week, when she’d been at her real job, Ethan had come into the library and asked for a recommendation. Anyone who knew her understood that the best way to get Monica involved in a conversation was to talk about books. That’s how she related best to people, by understanding them as readers firsts. Knowing a person’s reading habits revealed so much, it was like a secret superpower that only librarians and booksellers possessed.

She’d given him a copy of Rejection for Dummies and he’d happily taken it without batting his handsome blue eyes. Then, the first thing he’d told her Monday morning was that the book was okay, but that he was waiting for the movie. While Monica hadn’t had the time—or the desire—to date much since college, she’d had a feeling that his line was a lead-in and that Ethan would’ve asked her out to the movies if a very confused and agitated Gran hadn’t called the restaurant right then and needed Monica to come home to help find the cat that they didn’t own.

Today, she’d been expecting him to pick up the flirtatious banter right where he’d left off and she’d even toyed around with the idea of accepting his offer—if he asked her out, anyway—because she could barely remember the last time she’d gotten out and had a little fun for herself.

However, there was nothing jovial or flirty about the man right this second. In fact, the deep grooves along his brow and the hardened line of his jaw made him look like a completely different person—like he’d been hiding his true personality all along.