CHAPTER FIVE
KURT PULLED INTO a parking space outside Melissa’s apartment building and killed the engine. He didn’t get out right away, but instead sat there wondering if he’d fallen asleep in front of the TV and this was a dream.
He’d never really known what that old saying about knocking someone over with a feather meant until Melissa asked if he wanted to come over for dinner Sunday afternoon. If he hadn’t been vegging out watching a football game and contemplating whether he should stop being a lazy slug and go for a run when she called, he probably would have rolled off the damn couch.
He’d immediately thought something must be wrong, that she was experiencing post-traumatic stress from the run-in with those guys in the parking lot the other night and needed his help. Why the hell else would she be calling him when he was pretty damn sure she had no interest in going out again?
But when he’d asked if she was okay, she’d quickly assured him that she was.
“I was just wondering if maybe you’d like to come over to my place for dinner.” Her voice had been soft, hesitant. Like she was afraid he’d turn her down. “I figured I owed you at least that much, considering you saved my life the other night.”
“You don’t owe me for that, Melissa,” he told her. “Just knowing you’re safe is enough.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her again, because he did. But he didn’t want her doing anything she didn’t want to do because she thought she had to repay him for the other night.
“But I want to.” She paused. “I’d like to see you again.”
He’d wanted to see her again, too. In fact, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since he’d dropped her off after what he was sure was going to be their one and only date the other night.
That was why he was half afraid he might be dreaming right now.
He was tempted to smack himself to wake up, but then quickly changed his mind. If he was dreaming, he didn’t want to wake up yet.
Grabbing the brown bag from the seat beside him, he got out of his truck and walked into the building. His heart was beating fast by the time he got to her apartment, and it had nothing to do with the jog up the stairs. Damn, he wasn’t this nervous in the middle of a firefight.
Telling himself to man the hell up, Kurt knocked on the door. If it was like the other night, he’d have a minute or two to get his crap together before she answered.
But Melissa opened the door right away. And all Kurt could do was stare.
Damn, he’d thought she looked beautiful the other night, but between her long, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders and the loose flowing sundress she was wearing, she looked like some kind of sexy goddess. It was all he could do not to sweep her into his arms and carry her off to the bedroom. Hell, from the way his cock was hardening, he wasn’t sure they’d even make it that far.
Down, boy.
She smiled and stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come in.”
Kurt forced himself not to groan as he walked past her into the apartment. But damn, she smelled good. Like she’d bathed in strawberries—which were his favorite fruit, by the way. The thought of Melissa naked and wet made his already stiff shaft even harder.
Suddenly remembering the bag in his hand, he held it out to her. “Here. I didn’t know what we were having, so I hope white wine is okay?”
“Perfect.” She took the bag, her fingers brushing his. “Come into the kitchen and you can open it for us while I finish getting dinner ready.”
Kurt followed her into the kitchen, loving the way the flower-print dress shifted and swirled around her body as she walked. As the hemline fluttered and danced, it gave him a tantalizing glimpse of her thighs and he couldn’t help but stare.
She set the bag on the counter, then took out a corkscrew from the drawer by the stove and set it down beside it. While he concentrated on opening the bottle, she took out two wine glasses.
“Do you need me to help you with anything?” he asked as he poured the wine.
She shook her head as she drizzled some oil into a big pan, then followed it up with a pat of butter. “I was able to get most of the stuff ready before you got here. I just have to put on the scallops and everything will be set.”
Kurt felt bad letting her do all the work while he leaned back against the counter sipping wine, but he had to admit he enjoyed watching her. She certainly knew her way around the kitchen more than he did, that was for sure. He was lucky if he could microwave a TV dinner without burning it. Melissa not only seared the scallops like a chef, but she drained the pasta, coated it in a white sauce, then added a few spices that she didn’t even bother to measure. It smelled so delicious his mouth was watering.
“It’s hard to believe you ever burned anything in the kitchen,” he remarked. “You look like you could give Emeril Lagasse a run for his money.”
Melissa laughed. “I don’t know about that. I think Emeril’s job is safe from me.” She expertly turned the scallops over to sear the other side. “As long as I don’t have to flambé anything, I’m good.” She glanced over her shoulder at him as she walked over to the fridge. “I can’t believe you remember I even told you that.”
He chuckled. “I remember everything about that night.”
She paused in the middle of tossing the salad, the oversized tongs in her hand hovering over the bowl of leafy greens. Crap. Had he freaked her out? Reminded her about the lowlifes that jumped them?
Kurt opened his mouth to say something—even though he wasn’t quite sure what—but Melissa had already gone back to tossing the salad. A moment later, she turned and handed him the bowl, that dazzling smile back on her face.
“Can you put this on the table while I get the scallops?”
He did as she asked, then brought over the glasses of wine. By the time he turned around, Melissa had already transferred the pasta and the scallops to a serving dish and was carrying them over to the table.
As Kurt sat down across from her a moment later, it occurred to him that he’d never had a woman cook for him before. Well, other than his mother of course, but that wasn’t what he meant. He was surprised at how special it felt. Corny, he knew. Melissa probably made dinner for the guys she dated all the time, but it was still nice to think she’d done it especially for him.
He held up his wine glass, meeting her gaze as she gently clinked her own with it. He considered saying something Hallmark-card worthy, like ‘to new beginnings’ or some other sappy sentiment, but instead he decided to keep it real.
“Thanks for asking me to dinner.”
Melissa sipped her wine, then set down the glass. “I hadn’t planned to ask you, or even go out with you again.” She looked at him from under her lashes as she picked up the bowl of salad and handed it to him. “I figured the other night was God’s way of reminding me that we simply weren’t meant to be together.”
Okay, he hadn’t expected that. Her honesty was kind of nice, though. She definitely wouldn’t be one of those women who played those silly-ass games with his head if they ever got into a relationship.
Kurt used the gigantic tongs to put some of the leafy greens in the bowl beside his plate. “What changed your mind… at least about calling me?”
Melissa shrugged and focused on transferring the scallop and pasta mixture from the serving dish to her plate. “I woke up this morning and realized that letting you walk away after just one date was something I’d regret, regardless of my reservations about you being in the Navy—or being a SEAL.” She gave him a small smile as she handed him the serving dish in exchange for the bowl of salad. “Besides, I figured saving my life had earned you at least a second date… if nothing else.”
He didn’t say anything as he twirled pasta on his fork. He supposed that was her way of saying she was taking a leap of faith that she was doing the right thing. It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of their future potential, but it was better than nothing. Certainly better than never seeing her again, that was for sure. So, he’d follow her lead and see where this evening led.
With that thought in mind, he picked up his wine glass and tipped it in her direction. “To second dates then, if nothing else.”
Melissa smiled and lifted her own glass. “To second dates.”
“This is really excellent, by the way,” Kurt said, gesturing with his fork to the perfectly cooked scallops on his plate. “Where’d you learn to cook like this?”
As they ate, she told him about the night classes she’d taken at a local culinary school after nearly torching her whole apartment building, while he regaled her with stories of him burning water and leaving an oven on for the entire weekend because he’d forgotten to shut it off.
Even though neither of them mentioned the Navy even once, this date felt different than the first. It took him a little while to put his finger on exactly what it was, but then it hit him. The wall that Melissa had been keeping up between them Friday night didn’t seem to be there now.
He wondered what had changed. He seriously doubted it was because she’d suddenly decided that dating a guy in the Navy was cool. Then again, unlike the other night, she seemed to actually want to talk about his job this time.
“Are you gone a lot?” she asked. “On deployments and training, I mean?”
Kurt sipped his wine as he considered how to answer that. It wasn’t exactly something he could lie about, especially if they were dating. “These days? A lot. In the past year, I’ve probably been gone on something—training, deployment, or short-notice contingency operation—about seven or eight months. During Desert Storm, it was more than that. The other guys on the Team and I were gone almost eleven months out of the year.”
Melissa was silent for a moment. “Do you see that changing anytime soon?”
The Special Operations Command had really come into its own during and right after Desert Storm, when it became obvious that the events in the Middle East weren’t going to be handled solely through the use of large, conventional forces. Special Operations teams, including SEALs, had been sent in to hunt down and take out SCUD missile launchers, antiaircraft batteries, and command and control centers. They’d rescued downed pilots from the coalition forces, helped resistance fighters take on the much larger Iraqi military, and had taken part in huge recon efforts along the borders with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey.
None of those missions had ended when victory had been declared. Most people familiar with the situation over there realized the entire region was a powder keg just waiting to blow. There was a good chance that the US—and its Special Forces teams—would be over there for a long time to come.
So he shook his head. “No, I don’t see anything changing for a while. Getting sent downrange or going through training of one type or another is going to be my life for a while.”
Melissa twirled pasta on her fork, a thoughtful look on her face. “I never asked you the other night. What does your family think of you being a SEAL? They can’t be thrilled you do such a dangerous job.”
“They’re not. My mom especially,” he admitted. “But they knew what I was getting into when I signed up, and they knew I was planning to do it for the long haul. They worry, but it helps that my parents have met my Teammates. They know how much we care about each other, and that we’ll always have each other’s backs.”
Melissa lifted her head, her gaze meeting his. “Do you tell your parents about the kind of work you do?”
“As much as I can, which isn’t much. I can tell them I’m going somewhere, but I can’t usually tell them where, or what I’ll be doing. Most of what SEALs do is classified, so all my family knows is that I’m over in some bad part of the world, doing dangerous stuff. They don’t like it, but they deal.”
She sighed. “That would be hard for me. Not knowing where you are and what you were doing.”
Kurt couldn’t help smiling a little as he realized she wasn’t only picturing them together, but thinking of worrying about him and staying up late for him to come home. He’d never thought about it before, but he liked the idea of having a woman to come home to.
“I thought my mom had it bad with my dad being gone on some ship or other all the time,” Melissa said after they’d cleaned up and moved into the living room to sit on the couch a little while later. “At least she knew where my father was. A SEAL’s wife doesn’t have a clue where her man even is.”
Her man. Something else he liked hearing.
“I agree it’s a tough life, and not something every woman can handle,” Kurt said.
“But a SEAL’s wife isn’t exactly on her own. Each Team has a well-established family support group of spouses and family members who take care of each other. Heck, some of the wives know more about what’s happening in the world than their husbands do. Most of them know where we’re going before we do. SEAL Teams couldn’t function without women like that back home holding everything together.”
Melissa kicked off her sandals and tucked her legs up underneath her, giving him a flash of her thighs before the silky material of her dress floated down to cover them. “Are they happy? The married couples on the Team, I mean.”
Ah. Now he finally understood what this dinner was really all about. At some level, Melissa felt this almost magical thing between them as much as he did. She wanted to keep seeing him, but she was scared she couldn’t handle the burden of being married to a man who could be called away on a mission at a moment’s notice without her having a clue where he might be going or when he’d come back.
“Yeah,” he said. “But I also know some couples that didn’t make it. The stresses they faced were too big for them and it tore them apart.”
She winced, looking down at her hands where they were clasped in her lap. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
Kurt leaned in close and gently lifted her chin with his finger so he could look her in the eyes. “Something tells me you woke up this morning thinking about a lot more than whether you’d regret letting me walk away after just a single date. Am I right?”
She nodded. “I know it’s insane. I mean we’ve gone out on a grand total of one date, and it ended with us getting jumped by carjackers and talking to the police for hours. But there’s something inside me saying that I shouldn’t let you walk away, even though I’m terrified of what it would mean to be with you. My head is telling me to run as fast as I can, but my heart is saying I should stay or I’ll end up missing out on something amazing.”
Her honesty took his breath away. To be truthful, he was as afraid as she was. He didn’t understand how he could feel something so strongly for a woman he’d just met. It wasn’t supposed to be like this… not for guys, anyway. Was it?
Kurt took a breath and plunged into the deep end of the pool.
“If it helps, I don’t want you to walk away. I think we could have something really special between us,” he said softly. “But in the end, it comes down to whether you’re willing to take a chance to reach for something on the highest branch, knowing that if you miss, it’s a long way down and that its going to hurt like hell when you hit the ground.”
She covered his hand with hers and closed her eyes, holding his palm more tightly to her cheek. After a moment, she opened them again and took his hand away from her face.
Kurt’s heart plummeted. She’d decided that walking away was the best choice.
He swallowed hard and opened his mouth to tell her that it was okay, that he understood, but then she wrapped her hand around the back of his head and pulled him in for a kiss. There was no hesitation, no indecision. They were two people coming together, both of them with their defenses down and hearts exposed.
Her mouth tasted so good that all he could do was groan. He threaded his fingers in her long hair and kissed her back just as hard as she was kissing him. He had no idea where this was going, but they were both going to find out.