Amber Williams - Navy Seal's Match

This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental. By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher. ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries. www.millsandboon.co.uk

Introduction “I’ve never wanted to be less sensible...” Mavis gulped air into her lungs. “That’s my point. This...all this... It’s nice for now. But what happens in the end?” The words shot Gavin’s smile dead. “When I leave?” Mavis lifted a shoulder. “Isn’t that what you’ll do eventually? You’ve been very clear. I’ve told you, I know you don’t know your place in the world anymore and I’m aware of who you are—who you’ve always been. You’ll go looking for it if you can’t find it here. You—” “I run,” he concluded, gaze dull and far off. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching for his hand and gripping it tight. “I want you.” The truth snatched his head around, back to hers, brows hitched. He looked surprised. Then impressed. Mavis nodded. “And that isn’t something I’m capable of ignoring anymore.” “Anymore,” he murmured. His jaw softened. “How long have you been ignoring it, exactly?”

Dear Reader Dear Reader Contents Cover Back Cover Text About the Author Booklist Title Page Copyright Introduction Dear Reader Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN Extract About the Publisher , Readers were introduced to Gavin as a boy in the first book in my Fairhope, Alabama series, A Place with Briar. Even then, he seemed caught between two worlds. Now in his thirties, Gavin has finally come home, though the wounds of war have sunk deep enough that any semblance of peace he hopes to find there seems to have dried up. He’s caught between the need to flee and the desire to cling to the only home he’s ever known. It takes an outsider to know and understand one. This draws Mavis to Gavin and his journey back to himself. All too quickly, they forge an irrevocable bond that is tested time and again throughout the story. The hardest part about writing Navy SEAL’s Match was addressing how Gavin struggles and comes to grips with post-traumatic stress disorder. Alternately, the greatest discovery along the road with these characters was that although love goes a long way toward healing him, Gavin and Mavis embark on their journey knowing that it won’t take the disorder away. Yet they still choose to pursue it. In a lot of ways, this book is for service members and those who love them, through the good times and the bad times. It is a great joy to give you my sixth Superromance novel and Gavin and Mavis’s story. Always, Amber Leigh PS: If you know a veteran in crisis, please contact the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 or visit veteranscrisisline.net .

Dedication To those who serve. And to Karen Reid—editor and friend. May the Force be with you always.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

MAN DOWN! ZACCOE’S DOWN!

The flashbacks had to stop. They came at him in the middle of the night when he was ready for them. They came at him in the middle of the day when he wasn’t.

Fall back! Get him to the Bradley!

Gavin Savitt jerked from the clutches of sleep. Colors bled through his eyelids. He could hear civilian life. Better, he could hear the soft wash of waves against the shore and the chatter of wind chimes, the kind that hung from the eaves of his father and stepmother’s bayside bed-and-breakfast. There was laughter, far off. Gulls crying overhead. He tasted sunshine on his lips.

The soothing sounds of the half of his childhood that had been good and whole and stable should’ve brought the unrest to a standstill. Should’ve obliterated it. It was fear that made the flashbacks hang around. The fear was all too real these days and had been his since his final deployment as a navy SEAL six months ago.

It was fear that he would open his eyes and the civilian world would be less clear to him than the assault of vivid memories from another world.

Funny that he hadn’t contemplated how stark and colorful those dreams were before his last mission, the one that had robbed him of half the visibility in his right eye and all of his left.

Gavin took a moment to quell the anxiety, to manage the fear, even if he couldn’t kill it any more than the flashbacks.

He braced himself, stomach tightening. Then he opened his eyes and confronted the odd blur of light and shade, the merging of shapes. He picked a fixed point out of his right eye to study...

The white house was like a beacon on a hill. Hanna’s Inn spread prettily, overlooking Mobile Bay. Even Gavin could see the proud and regal way it held itself up—columns, balconies, long narrow panes that glistened as the sun shrank from its high post. The winding paths through the gardens...he knew them by heart. Just as he knew the sand skirting the kempt lawn curved in a crescent shape to follow the slope of the Eastern Shore. Beneath its peaks and tumble-down kudzu-lined valleys, the beach formed the watery border of Fairhope, Alabama, the small town that had called to Gavin for most of his life.

He’d ignored that call, returning to Fairhope only out of necessity. However, nothing could compete with the inn that his father saw to alongside his stepmother, whose family it had belonged to for generations.

A smudge detracted from Gavin’s focal point. It was black and willow-slim. As he fixed on it instead of the inn, he frowned. It was getting closer, if not bigger, and he was definitely in its line of fire.

He knew only one person in the world who wore neck-to-toe black in July in the south.

Gavin sat up in the hammock and placed his bare feet in the thick grass his father tended well. There was a catch in his neck and his muscles were taut as wires. He had learned how to snatch his mind out of the dreams, but his muscles rarely followed suit.

He’d sought the hammock and the company of waves for relaxation to break the vicious cycle of PTSD, even if only for a short while.

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