Tina Leonard - The SEAL's Holiday Babies

The Dumb-ass Brake had saved him many a time, but today, it seemed to have gotten stuck.

“What?” Jade said. Her mesmerizing green eyes stared at him, stunned.

He was half drowning, might as well go for full immersion. “You’re beautiful,” he repeated.

She looked at him for a long moment, then scoffed. “Ty Spurlock, don’t you dare try to sweet-talk me. If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that sugar flows out of your mouth like a river of honey when you’re making a mess. The bigger the jam, the sweeter and deeper the talk.” She got up, putting several feet of safety between them, and Ty cursed the disappearance of the brake that had deserted him just when he’d needed it most.

“Okay, so if sweet talk won’t save me,” he said, reverting to cavalier, since that’s what she seemed to be expecting, “all I can say is that Daisy asked me to take her to the grand opening, and you didn’t.”

“I didn’t want to ask you!”

“Then why are we having this conversation? Good old-fashioned green-eyed monster, maybe?” He got up, took her in his arms. “I’ll talk sweet to you if you want me to, beautiful.”

She stomped on his toe and moved out of his arms. He bent over, his toe impressed by the sudden squelching it had cruelly received.

“What I want you to do is tell Daisy Donovan you wouldn’t be caught dead escorting her to the haunted house. No smart remarks about puns.” Jade glared at him. “And from now on, I suggest you remember who your real friends are.”

He fell onto the sofa, wondering if she’d broken his toe. Definitely he was going to donate a toenail to the cause. Not a good thing to have happen right before he left for BUD/S. “I know who my friends are. They’re the ones who don’t try to damage me right before I leave for SEAL training.”

“I don’t care about that,” Jade said sweetly. “I care that you don’t fall into one of Daisy’s many traps, and leave drama back here in BC for me to clean up. You’re just lucky I got to you before Suz did.”

“She’s already been here. Only she didn’t wound me.” Ty glanced at his secret sweetie’s boots with respect. Square-toed and sturdy, they could have been registered weapons.

“She didn’t? Maybe she’s going soft. But I’m not. I know who my friends are.” Jade walked over, tugged his boot off. “I also know how commerce works in this town, and I understand Daisy’s tricky little mind. Oh, you big baby,” she said, staring at the toe she’d rescued from his boot and sock. “It’s just going to be a little black-and-blue. You’d better toughen up if you’re going to make it through training.”

He smelled that sweet perfume again, was riveted by the soft red sweater covering her delicate breasts. Wondered if playing the pitiful card would get him attached to her lips—and decided he probably didn’t want to do anything to upset the grudging sympathy he finally saw in her eyes. “My toe is fine. My life is fine. Everything is fine.”

“It’s not fine yet.” She smiled, leaned over and gave him a long, sweet, not-sisterly-at-all smooch on the lips. Shocked, he sat as still as a concrete gargoyle, frozen and immobilized, too scared to move and frighten her off.

She pulled away far too soon. “ Now it’s fine.”

Indeed it was. He couldn’t stop staring at her mouth, which had worked such magic on him, stolen his breath, stolen his heart. He gazed into her eyes, completely lost in the script.

“What was that for?”

Jade got up, went to the door, opening it. Cold air rushed in and a supersized sheet of snow fell from the overhang, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Because I felt like it,” Jade said, then left.

Damn. His toe still throbbed, but his lips were practically sizzling from her kiss, far outweighing the complaining from his phalange bone. Ty had no idea what the hell had just happened here—but it dawned on him through his shell-shocked, sex-driven, Jade-desiring brain that if he were a smart man, he’d better decline Daisy’s invitation on the double, let her know he was sending a stand-in.

If he ever wanted to be kissed like that again.

Chapter Four

The night of the grand opening of the refurbished, reborn Haunted H was glorious, by anyone’s standards. Ty felt a real sense of satisfaction as he looked at the new lights his buddies had put up in an elegant arch over the long drive-up to the ranch. Lights were everywhere, twinkling and beautiful, highlighting the butt-freezing weather and somehow making it romantic.

Maybe his three bachelor candidates weren’t totally useless, after all. They could at least decorate, apparently, if not appropriately seduce the women he’d brought them here to romance.

Ty hurried after Jade when he saw her moving with long strides toward the jump house, which was teeming with kiddies. Parents with strollers watched, smiling, as their kids bounced inside the huge, inflatable pink-and-purple castle.

“Hi, Raggedy Ann,” he said, and Jade turned to look at him. He thought she was amazing with her red curls springing out everywhere, completely negating the need for a Raggedy Ann wig. The red-and-white stockings were killer, clinging to dynamite legs Raggedy Ann never dreamed of having in her cloth-stuffed world. He nearly had a coronary over the cute painted freckles speckled across Jade’s nose and cheeks, never mind the white apron over the blue dress, which for some reason made him very horny. He supposed the truth was that everything about Jade caught him between a coronary and an erection, a delicious in-between hell of longing and teeth-grinding lust.

She gave him a once-over. “What are you dressed up as?”

He was pretty proud of his efforts, and drew himself up to showcase the black cape, boots and swashbuckling ebony hat he thought he wore so stylishly. “Zorro. You couldn’t tell?”

“You look silly.” She offered him the tray she held. “Cupcake?”

“What do you mean, I look silly?” Ty demanded. “Ladies love Zorro. They think he’s a dashing hero. And sexy.”

“Guy Williams was sexy. Antonio Banderas was a sexy Zorro.” She gave Ty another once-over. “Please take a cupcake so I’ll feel better about deflating your monstrous ego.”

Ty ignored the cupcake, wishing he could have a kiss instead. “Where did I go wrong?”

“I don’t have time to tell you all the ways that costume is wrong.” She laughed and started to move away. “Where’s your date?”

Ah. The little lady was prickly because she was expecting Daisy to land on his arm any moment. He felt better now that he knew her lack of charmed respect for his costume was thanks to jealousy. “Squint’s escorting her.”

Jade moved away. “By now you have to wonder where you’re going wrong, Ty. When Daisy Donovan throws you over, and you only put on half your mustache, something’s not working for you.”

She disappeared into the crowd. He felt his upper lip. Frog and Sam banged him on the back. Ty coughed, thinking he could easily survive BUD/S, since he could survive the camaraderie of his so-called friends in BC. “Easy on the lungs and rib cage, fellows.”

“Where’s your ’stache?” Frog demanded.

Ty looked at Frog, dressed as a fairly convincing Robin Hood, and Sam, who was masquerading as a pirate. Both of them had their mustaches firmly in place. Ty felt around in his pocket for the left side of his. “Thought I had it on.”

They smirked. “Smart-asses,” he said, realizing his friends had let him walk out of the bunkhouse missing half his facial prop. “Friends don’t let friends go out missing the most important part of their costume. The mustache is the sex-magnet angle for Zorro.”

They seemed to think that was hilarious. “Look,” Frog said, “Sam snapped a photo when you weren’t looking. It’s pretty much gone viral on the internet.”