CHAPTER ONE
San Diego, California, 1994
PETTY OFFICER KURT Travers had faced some scary shit during his time in the Navy SEALs. He’d been shot at more times than he could count, had vehicles blown out from under him, charged a machine-gun nest on the back of a horse, and had a bull shark take a hunk out of his scuba tank during a nighttime dive. He’d never once been as nervous and tense as he was right now. Given the option, he’d much rather be staring down the barrel of a gun than facing the menacing group eyeballing him.
The Navy might have taught him how to defend himself when in enemy territory, but they’d never gotten around to teaching him how to deal with a classroom full of first graders. Maybe he should talk to someone at Special Operations Command about that.
He’d once been told that kids could smell fear. If that was true, then the boys and girls in front of him must be getting a good whiff right now because he absolutely reeked of it.
“Do you eat raw fish and balance a ball on your nose?” a boy with blond hair and blue eyes seated in the front row asked.
“Do you work in the circus?” a dark-haired girl with glasses wanted to know, completely unconcerned that Kurt hadn’t even answered the first question.
“Why are you wearing a uniform instead of a scuba suit?” an African American boy by the window quipped.
Kurt cursed silently. He was this close to losing control of the group. They knew they had him on the ropes and they were pressing in on all sides. Even the crayon drawings the kids had made sometime during the school year that were now papering the walls seemed to mock him.
He glanced over his shoulder at Joe, the mountain of a man dressed in the dark green uniform of a city sanitation worker, hoping for a little backup, but the big guy simply shook his head as if to say, I just got myself out of that meat grinder. No way in hell I’m going back in there of my own free will. You’re on your own, dude.
In hindsight, maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea. But when his neighbor asked if he could fill in at her son’s school’s career day for her Navy husband who was currently on a ship somewhere in the Persian Gulf, he hadn’t had the heart to say no.
Kurt threw a desperate look at the dark-haired, sexy teacher leaning casually with one hip against her neatly organized desk. She might be slender and petite, but she seemed more than capable of handling this daunting crew with ease.
She merely arched a brow at him with a look on her face that said I told you so.
The worst part was that she had told him so, nearly ten minutes before the crowd of terrifying kids had come bounding and swarming into the room like a pack of killer bee kangaroos.
“You can’t stand in front of a classroom of six-year-olds and tell them what a Navy SEAL really does for a living. They’re not going to be able to understand it.”
And she was right. The moment he’d started talking about what the Navy’s premier shadow warriors did for a living, he’d lost them. When he’d told them he was a SEAL, they’d assumed he meant the thing with the cute face, wet fur, and flippers.
It had only gone downhill from there. The more he dug, the deeper the hole got. It was obvious the teacher—Melissa Drake—didn’t think much of him and wasn’t thrilled to have him in her classroom mucking up her carefully orchestrated career day activities. It wasn’t his fault that only two adults had shown up when there were supposed to be a half dozen.
When Kurt had first gotten there, the kids had been at lunch and the city sanitation worker hadn’t arrived yet, which had left him alone with the pretty Ms. Drake. He had to admit he wouldn’t mind spending time with her in a setting that didn’t include twenty-five three-foot-tall germ factories with feet. Unfortunately, Melissa seemed impervious to his charm—and his biceps. Kurt wasn’t a vain guy, but he usually did okay with the ladies. Melissa had shut him down the moment he’d suggested getting together, though. Her complete and total rejection had stung like a son of a bitch, that was for sure. To make matters worse, he had to hang around with a big smile on his face and look like he was having fun.
He was only glad none of his teammates from SEAL Team 5 were around to witness this. They’d probably immortalize the moment on a big plaque and mount it in the Team’s workout facilities for all to see.
In front of him, the kids impatiently fidgeted in their seats, swinging their legs back and forth under their small desks as they pelted him with questions about why the aquarium had let him out on his own and whether he slept in a bathtub full of water.
“You’re not really a seal, are you?” one precocious little girl with pigtails accused in a trembling voice. “If you were a seal, you’d balance a ball on your nose for us.”
Tears formed in the little girl’s enormous blue eyes, threatening to spill out over cheeks already starting to quiver.
Kurt groaned inwardly. Oh God, not tears. Bamboo slivers under the fingernails, but not a little girl’s tears. He couldn’t handle that.
He threw another beseeching glance in the teacher’s direction. Melissa had straightened up, concern in her dark eyes, but she didn’t look like she was ready to bail him out yet. He was on his own here.
Crap. If he didn’t do something in the next ten seconds, little pigtail girl was going to start crying and that would get the rest of the kids rolling. In thirty seconds, he’d be looking at a complete meltdown of Three Mile Island proportions. Even his next door neighbor’s little boy looked on the verge of tears.
Kurt took a deep breath. He was a Navy SEAL, dammit. He needed to do something. Now.
So he turned to the little girl with the pigtails and did the only thing he could think of—he lied.
“I promise you that I really am a seal. And I balance a ball on my nose all the time.” He smiled. “What kind of seal would I be if I couldn’t do something as simple as that, right?”
The girl’s eyes grew huge. “Really?”
He heard a sharp intake of breath behind him. Melissa must have just figured out that he was about to throw himself on a hand grenade to save everyone.
“Really,” he assured her.
“Show us!”
“We wanna see!”
“Yeah!”
Kurt chuckled. “I would, but I didn’t bring a ball with me.”
“We have lots of them!” a kid in the back of the room practically shouted.
Before Kurt could say anything, the little rug rat jumped out of his seat and ran over to a brightly painted toy chest near the wall. Lifting the lid, he scooped out a red rubber ball and raced up to the front of the room.
He held out the ball to Kurt, an expectant look on his face. Behind the little boy, his classmates seemed just as eager.
Over by the desk, Melissa was regarding him curiously.
Kurt sighed. Ah, hell. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Keenly aware of Melissa’s dark gaze on him, Kurt took the ball from the kid, then got down on his knees and proved that he could indeed balance a ball on his nose—something even he wasn’t sure he could do until that moment. Behind their little desks, the boys and girls gasped, oohed and aahed.
From the corner of his eye, Kurt saw that even Melissa looked captivated. He didn’t know why—maybe it was his inner jock showing off —but when he’d mastered balancing the ball on his nose that way, he lay back on the floor and did it again, this time while doing crunches. Unfortunately, in this position he couldn’t see if Melissa was impressed, but the kids giggled like crazy.
Moments later, they were out of their seats and converging on him, shouting that they wanted to be seals, too.
Kurt sat up, his gaze going to Melissa to see what she’d think about that, and found her smiling. Damn, she had a beautiful smile. He was so mesmerized, he almost forgot he was sitting on the floor surrounded by a whole class of screaming first-graders until one of the kids tugged at his sleeve with a small hand.
With Melissa and Joe’s assistance, Kurt spent the next hour teaching each child how to steady a ball on the top of their heads until they were good enough to balance it on the tip of their noses. It turned out to be way more fun that he’d thought. Even Melissa was laughing and having a good time. In fact, if he didn’t mistake his guess, she was looking at him completely differently than she had an hour ago.
A little while later, Melissa announced that seal training was over for now, but that all the kids could practice to their heart’s content outside during recess. Joe bailed then but Kurt hung around, standing by Melissa at the back door of the school and watching the first-graders run wild on the school playground. When kids were like this, he could imagine himself having a few of his own someday. They were pretty cool.
“Thanks for stepping up and making this career day thing work,” Melissa said quietly. “It wasn’t the way I’d planned it, but the kids loved it.”
Kurt glanced at her. The breeze coming off the ocean had pulled some of her long hair free from its bun and he had to resist the urge to tuck it behind her ear.
“You’re welcome. I had a good time,” he said.
On the playground, cheers went up as a little boy balanced a ball on his nose while running in circles.
Kurt turned to Melissa. “Since I was so helpful in there, I don’t suppose you’d reconsider my invitation to have dinner, would you?” When she hesitated, he added, “I promise to bring a beach ball to balance on my nose, if that will help.”
Melissa laughed. Damn, she even had a great laugh.
“You don’t give up, do you?” She sighed, then nodded. “Okay, I’ll go out to dinner with you. But just so you know, I have no intention of getting involved with a Navy guy. Even one who can balance a ball on his nose.”
Kurt smiled as she focused her attention on the playground again. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Melissa Drake had just issued him a challenge. And if there was one thing a SEAL took seriously, it was a challenge.