CHAPTER FOUR

Petty Officer First Class Izzy Zanella looked around the tidy little living room of the bungalow that he’d helped his buddy Grunge—AKA Lieutenant Peter Greene—move into just a few short months ago.

It was surreal. Not just the fact that Grunge finally lived off-base in a real house with a yard and everything, but that he lived there with his teenaged daughter.

That had been the shocker—the fact that the SEAL officer had a fifteen-year-old daughter that he’d never so much as mentioned to Izzy. Or to anyone else, apparently.

At least not until that day, two months ago, when Grunge had asked Izzy out for lunch, which was as eyebrow-raisingly unusual as if Grunge had told Izzy he’d pick him up in a limo and give him a wrist corsage, too.

Still, Izzy’d gone and they’d sat outside at everyone’s favorite little Greek restaurant in downtown Coronado where Grunge had exploded his informational mortar round. “Lisa, my ex—well, we were never married, but…Anyway, she was killed in a car accident and now I’m getting custody of our daughter, Maddie.”

Whaaaa…?!

The first Izzy had heard of Grunge’s ex, Lisa, had been a few months earlier, in a passing conversation. The SEAL officer had referred to her only as a former girlfriend who’d been into musical theater. He’d definitely skipped the whole got-busy-and-had-a-baby-with-her part.

But Izzy managed to push away his indignant hurt—how do you not tell a close friend about something as enormous as the fact that you’ve got a daughter? You don’t, ergo he and Grunge were not close, and probably far less friends than Izzy had thought, as well. But boo-hoo, he’d been mistaken. His poor widdle hurt feelings were nothing compared to Grunge’s—someone the lieutenant had once cared about, deeply enough to make a baby with, had been killed in a car accident.

So Izzy’d said, “Oh, man, Pete, I’m so sorry. How can I help?”

Turns out Grunge had wanted to borrow Ben, Izzy’s wife Eden’s teenaged brother—who was living with them full-time these days. Grunge wanted help in picking out a teenager-appropriate rental house.

He’d also hoped that Ben could become Maddie’s insta-friend, but as Ben had pointed out over the past months of trying, these things just couldn’t be forced. Apparently Maddie hadn’t warmed to Ben—or vice versa. And although Ben had gone above and beyond with his attempts to befriend the girl, she continued to shut him out.

Which brought them to here-and-now, with Maddie AWOL, and Grunge getting more silent and tight-lipped as each hour passed, until he’d announced that he was hiking over to the high school because he couldn’t just sit still any longer.

Izzy had volunteered to go with, but Grunge had asked him to stay and try to break the password on the shiny new laptop computer he’d bought for Maddie—to see if she’d left any clues behind. Clues like what, Izzy didn’t know, but he was pretty certain she hadn’t left behind a Word doc called Itinerary of Where I’ll Stay When I Run Away. Still, he’d done as Grunge asked by calling all of the various gearheads and hackers that he knew, both in the SEAL Teams and out.

No one was picking up, and he was about to go hands-on himself when his wife, Eden, showed up with two of her besties, Adam Wyndham and Lindsey Jenkins, in tow.

Izzy was pretty sure Eden’s intention had been to make a hostage trade—Adam and Lindsey for him—since she was on the verge of leaving town on a long-planned family trip and this was their last night together for a full week. She’d wanted him to come home with her. But once here, she got caught up in helping.

“Eden figured out the laptop’s password,” Adam now announced with his usual dramatic flamboyance—dude was an actor—as he danced into the living room from the little hallway that led to the bedrooms in the back of the house. “It’s FuckYou123, in something she calls camel-case. I don’t know how she knew that.” He spun to look at Eden. “How did you know to even guess that?”

She was right behind him, moving more staidly as she carried Maddie’s still-new laptop. Grunge had taken his daughter shopping because the desktop computer she’d shared with her mom back in Palm Springs had been packed up and put into storage with the rest of Lisa’s things, and they still hadn’t found the right box.

“Because she’s brilliant,” Izzy said, grinning at his wife.

“It wasn’t that hard.” Eden shrugged it off even as she smiled back at him. “It’s one of the most used passwords, right behind Password123. But the best part is that Maddie left Facebook open, so now we’ve got access to her account.”

“Way to go, Eed!” Lindsey Jenkins spoke up from her place on the sofa, which she’d reclined so she could sit with her feet up. She looked like a beach ball with a head.

An adorable beach ball. She’d recently gotten her thick dark hair cut in a shorter style that she called “baby ready,” which added to the whole cute-little-pregnant-girl illusion.

Married to Izzy’s SEAL buddy Jenk, Lindsey was, in fact, a strong, kickass woman. She was a former police detective and a current top operative at Troubleshooters Incorporated, Southern California’s most elite personal security firm.

Eden worked there, too, but since she didn’t come from a law enforcement or military background, her role was less about ass-kicking and more about administrative support. She assisted the office manager and ran the group’s in-house daycare.

“This is great. Now we can use Facebook to make a list of Maddie’s local friends, and start calling their parents,” Lindsey said. “If we strike out there, we’ll make a list of her friends’ friends, and start calling their—”

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Eden interrupted her. “Maddie doesn’t have any local friends, at least not on Facebook. There’re only fortysomething people on her friends list, and most are from her school back in Palm Springs. There’re a few other Nakamuras—probably family members, but only one’s here in San Diego. Hiroko. She’s in her late eighties and seems pretty Zen.”

“Literally Zen,” Adam interjected. “Her profile’s all about meditation and painting and her garden. I seriously doubt she’s helping Maddie hide from her father.”

“Maybe not knowingly,” Lindsey pointed out as she made gimme-hands at the computer. “But someone should call her tomorrow.”

Izzy already had his phone out. “Why not now?” he asked as, instead of handing Lindsey the laptop, Eden sat down next to her. Which made sense, because Eden had a lap and Lindsey currently didn’t.

“It’s after eight and elderly people sometimes go to bed super-early,” Lindsey said, scrolling down Maddie’s Facebook profile as Eden held the computer for her.

“Oh, man, is it really after eight? I have to be on set and coherent at five. I should go.” But despite that announcement, Adam plopped himself down on Eden’s other side, so he could look at the laptop’s screen, too. But then he looked at the sofa they were sitting on. “Is all of this furniture brand-new?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Eden said. “Everything in the house is pristine—even the stuff in Grunge’s bedroom.”

“I noticed that, too,” Adam said. “That, plus he sleeps in a twin bed. And yeah, it’s one of those extra long ones, but…Is it just me, or is that weird?”

“It’s weird,” Lindsey said, her attention on Maddie’s photo albums.

“What were you doing in Grunge’s bedroom?” Izzy asked, and all three of them looked up at him in surprise.

Eden answered. “You said he asked you to look for clues.”

“Yeah. In Maddie’s room,” Izzy said.

“Well, we had to figure out which room was hers,” Eden told him, then turned to Adam. “And it’s not that weird. There’s no way he could fit anything bigger than a twin in there. The room’s tiny.”

“But the bed in Maddie’s room is new, too,” Adam said.

“The bed in Maddie’s giant room,” Lindsey pointed out. “Which I now covet…”

“Yeah, I know, right? You’ve got to love a man who gives the master bedroom to his daughter,” Eden said. “That attached bath is amazing.”

Adam leaned across Eden to ask Lindsey. “Did you see that shower?”

“Mmm-hmm. And tonight I’m gonna dream about that bathtub.”

“I feel you, sister,” Adam said, “but the burning question remains. Did Grunge really just throw away all of his old furniture when he moved in here?”

Again, they all looked up at Izzy, as if he knew the answer. And, actually, this time, he did.

“He didn’t have any furniture,” Izzy said. “He lived on base. In the officers’ barracks.”

“But…he didn’t even have anything in storage?” Lindsey asked.

“Apparently not,” Izzy said. “I mean, he asked me and Danny to help him move in, and we went with him to rent a truck, but then we drove over to that furniture store—that big one, you know, off the Five? When we got there, everything was ready for us to pick up.”

“And you didn’t think that was odd?” Eden asked.

“Sweetheart,” Izzy told his wife. “Think about the furniture I had back before we got married.”

Relentlessly frugal, Eden had repurposed some of it, but most of it had been Dumpster-bound. “Good point,” she said.

Izzy said, “So, no, it’s not that weird that he didn’t have anything in storage. Not for a guy who’s career Navy.”

“But what did Grunge do before this, when his daughter came to visit him?” Adam was puzzled. “If he was living in the officers’ barracks on base, did they…stay in a hotel?”

Eden turned to ask Lindsey, “You didn’t tell him?”

“Tell me what?” Adam looked from Lindsey to Eden and back.

The baby must’ve been kicking again, because Lindsey rubbed her belly as she said, “Nobody knows what he did, or even if she visited, because no one knew Grunge even had a daughter.”

“Really?” Adam asked. “Not even Izzy?”

And yup, they again all looked up at him, expectantly.

“I thought you knew Grunge from way back,” Adam continued. “Like, before you were SEALs.”

Izzy nodded. “Grunge and I did our first WestPac together as E-3s. In fact, we hot-bunked on a tiny, low-tech, about-to-be-decommissioned destroyer—this was back before he followed the shining light over to Officers’ Territory and before either of us did BUD/S.”

“I think I got some of that,” Lindsey said, still rubbing her giant baby bump. “E-3’s the rank—or is it rating—of someone who’s still pretty newly enlisted?”

“If you’re talking enlisted, it’s called rating,” Eden said.

“Yeah, I got very little of it,” Adam said. “BUD/S. I know BUD/S—but everyone knows BUD/S is where Navy SEAL wannabes audition to get into the Teams.”

“It’s a wee bit tougher than an audition,” Izzy said.

“You’ve never tried out for a Broadway show,” Adam shot back. “That shit is cutthroat. Anyway, I’m massively discouraged, because Tony’s been teaching me to speak Navy, and I thought I was doing at least moderately well.” Like Lindsey, Adam’s life partner was also a SEAL in Izzy’s Team. “Argh, matey, lower the mains’l. Fuck, I just realized—he’s been teaching me to talk like a pirate!” As they all laughed, he added, “But seriously, someone please translate what Izzy just said.”

“Back when they first enlisted in the Navy,” Eden told him, “they shipped out on something called a WestPac—you float around in the Western Pacific for six solid months. In Izzy and Grunge’s case, they were on a really old destroyer that was so crowded they had to share the same bed. They had different shifts, so they slept at different times.”

“It’s called hot-bunking,” Izzy said, “because he’d roll out and I’d roll in, and the mattress would still be warm from his body heat.”

“So you’re, like, one of his oldest Navy friends,” Adam surmised. “And he never mentioned that he had a daughter, not even while you were hot-bunking—and oh, the things I’m not saying about that.”

“So…not even any baby pictures taped to the bunk?” Lindsey asked.

“Nope.” Izzy shrugged. “But we weren’t exactly friends back then. More like partners in mutual misery.”

“But you’re friends now,” Eden pointed out. “I think of him as a friend. I mean, he’s quiet, sure, but…”

“Yeah, I dunno,” Izzy said. In the foggy and fun-filled years since the USS Bergeron, he and Grunge had both become SEALs. And in the past year or so in particular, despite the officer/enlisted divide, they’d gone from respectful teammates to real friends.

Or so Izzy had thought.

“Did he even know he had a daughter back then?” Lindsey asked. “There’s a trope in romance novels called secret baby, and—”

Izzy laughed. “I’m sorry. Secret what?”

“Baby,” Eden said. “The hero gets someone pregnant, but she doesn’t tell him about it, and then anywhere from one to twenty years later, surprise! The secret baby needs a kidney, and the hero and heroine reconnect to save her life and they fall in love and everyone lives happily ever after.”

“Well, that’s intense,” Izzy said.

“But the female character’s not surprised, right?” Adam interjected. “Because that’s the story I’d want to read.”

“Whoa, me, too,” Izzy said. “Hey, what’s that stuck between the cushions of the sofa? Holy crap, I must’ve had a secret baby last night when I fell asleep watching Netflix!”

Adam laughed.

“Don’t mock it, boys,” Lindsey told them sternly. “It’s a popular theme in a very popular genre.”

“I can see how it would be,” Izzy said. Eden was a huge romance fan—blazing through several books a week. “With lots of complications and entanglements and angst. But I’m pretty sure Grunge knew he had a daughter from the start. He just didn’t tell me about her.” He gasped. “Which suddenly makes sense if I’m the hero of this secret-baby story, and it’s not a romance, but instead a tale of deep friendship. Are there secret-baby buddy movies?”

Lindsey had already returned her focus to Maddie’s laptop. Eden, however, was smiling broadly at him, except then she frowned, put the laptop on the coffee table, took her phone from her pocket, and then gasped. But unlike his, her drama was not feigned.

“Maddie just texted me!” she said, her own thumbs flying over the tiny keyboard. “She must’ve unblocked me, but—No! She’s already blocked me again!”

“What’d she say?” Lindsey asked as Adam chimed in with, “Read it! Read it!”

“Tell my stupid father that I’m OK,” Eden read Maddie’s text aloud. “I’m safe, I’m with a friend. I need some space to figure some ship out. Thank you, autocorrect. Respect my needs—ooh, this girl’s learned the power of therapy-speak—and I’ll come back when I’m ready. Don’t, and I’m gone for good.”

“Dahn dahn dahhhhhn!” Izzy sang an appropriately dire soundtrack, but then said, “Except, if I know Grunge, he’s not gonna be moved by a threat from a fifteen-year-old.”

“Except, you don’t know Grunge,” Lindsey pointed out. “Apparently no one knows Grunge, so we really can’t predict what he’s going to do.”

“I’m texting him with a screenshot of Maddie’s message,” Eden said, even as headlights shone in through the front window because a car had pulled into the bungalow’s narrow driveway.

“Is that him?” Adam asked.

Eden stood up. “Maybe Maddie’s friend had a moment of clarity and brought her home. Please, God.”

Izzy looked out the window. “Nah, it’s Grunge. And…a woman.” Yes, that was definitely a female human who’d driven the lieutenant home. She got out, and stretched as if they’d been in her little car for a while. She was decidedly not unattractive, if a lot less fancy-clothes-big-hair-and-mondo-makeup than the women G usually hooked up with when he went to the LadyBug. She was older than his typical “date” type, too.

Her body language was friendly and comfortable—maybe a tad overattentive, but Grunge had that effect on just about everyone. His charisma was through the roof—and most people couldn’t look away.

He was standing as if he wanted something, though. And maybe that urgency came from his burning need to find his daughter, but it seemed like there was something more to it from the way he was leaning—just a little—toward the woman.

Eden came to look, too, as the woman and Grunge continued whatever conversation they were having over the top of the car. The window was closed, so they couldn’t hear more than the murmur of their two voices. But whatever Eden saw made her ask, “Does Grunge have a grown-up lady-friend that we don’t know about?”

Izzy looked at his wife. “Babydoll, your guess is as good as mine.”

“I’ve always thought he must have,” Eden said. “You know, at least a friends-with-bennies booty-call recipient.”

“I’ve heard the opposite,” Adam said. “That he’s into the transient, you know, one-and-done?”

“Yep. He’s a SEAL groupie-doer,” Lindsey put it bluntly.

“Ew, really?” Eden said.

“Don’t judge,” Adam chided.

“Heads up!” Eden pulled Izzy back, away from the window. “She’s coming inside with him, whoever she is. Act normally, everyone.”

Act normally? Izzy started to laugh, because this was normal. Ergo, the upcoming was going to be interesting.

When Shayla walked into the Navy SEAL’s house to find his living room filled with beautiful people, she knew with a certainty that she was merely the witty neighbor in this story.

Wait, what? Harry, in her head, had been psyched that she was actually going inside Lieutenant Greene’s house, even if only “to see if Maddie had left her Facebook account up and open on her new laptop computer, chicka-chick-bow-bow,” but now he was confused. The witty what…?

The witty neighbor was always the sidekick; the friend. As in not the romance-novel-type heroine.

In truth, Shay hadn’t really thought that she’d take on that type of leading role in the SEAL’s ongoing drama, but part of her—a small part, egged on by Harry’s rampant optimism—had foolishly started to hope. After all, the man was lovely to look at with his pretty eyes and all those muscles—and he really seemed genuinely nice. And yes, okay, nice was the kiss of death when it came to romance novel heroes, so really what she meant was that he was smart, he was funny, he was thoughtful and kind, and he was clearly responsible and reliable, along with intensely, highly skilled. Although, here in the harsh reality of the non-romance-novel world, his incredibly dangerous job was more of a liability than an asset, but still…He really was quite perfect for something short-term, like a fling.

You’re seriously considering having just a fling. Harry was flatly disbelieving. Since when do you do short-term flings?

Well, she had been considering it, but not anymore—not as she looked at the two beautiful young women in the room.

So, what? You’re just going to quit? Now Harry was disgusted.

There was nothing here to quit. Look, you’ve won, she thought back at him. Meeting Peter Greene had made Shayla realize that Harry’d been right for quite some time. She absolutely needed to get out more, and at the very least she was now convinced that she could, in particular, use a good happy ending—in the crassest, most sexual-innuendo-ish way—to finally and fully exorcise both Carter and all of the other angst and emotional pain from her life.

But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon—not with this SEAL. He wasn’t Shay’s Mr. Right or even her Mr. Right Now, because she was his friendly, slightly older neighbor—a variation of the “big sister slash mentor” role. Her job was to dispense wit and wisdom to the man—hold the steamy kisses—and collect his mail while he went galloping off on some crazy, romantic adventure with someone else.

What? Why? Harry still didn’t get it.

Look around the room, Shay silently told him. Because, yeah, she’d written this type of book enough times to recognize that one of the two gorgeous and far more age-appropriate women gathered in Lieutenant Peter Greene’s remarkably neat living room had to be the heroine to his Navy SEAL hero. And whoops, make that three gorgeous and far more age-appropriate people, Shay mentally corrected herself before Harry could yowl, because there was also a very adorable and probably gay young man sitting on the sofa.

Harry actually gasped. Holy shit, that’s not just some random adorable gay man, that’s Hollywood film actor Adam Wyndham!

Holy shit, it was. And the actor was clearly a regular in this house, because Peter greeted him with a casual, “Hey, Adam. Lindsey.” The second name was aimed with a nod at a delicately pretty dark-haired woman sitting on the other end of the sofa.

But then all three of the beautiful people spoke at once.

“Any luck?” asked Lindsey, who was Asian American and—whoa!

Yeah, I didn’t see that coming, Harry agreed. But she’s not leaping to her feet to greet him, so she’s probably just a friend.

Lindsey wasn’t leaping to her feet because she was hugely pregnant.

Or that. But the SEAL did greet her like he didn’t expect to see her in his house, Harry observed.

“Did you find her?” asked the literal movie star as the second woman—slim and ridiculously young, like barely-out-of-college young—chimed in with, “Any sign of her?”

“No,” Peter answered them all at once. “I thought I saw Maddie getting into a car, but…” He shook his head.

“Did you get my text?” demanded the college student. She was as strikingly beautiful as the pregnant woman, with long, shiny, straight brown hair and dark brown eyes in a face that was quite possibly perfect. “I just sent you a screenshot. Maddie texted me.”

“What?” Peter dug for his phone. “She did? When?”

“Just a minute ago.”

“That’s great news,” Shayla exclaimed.

“She says she’s okay, she’s with a friend and basically, you know, Leave me alone. She blocked me again, right after she sent it, so I couldn’t respond.” The young woman turned to Shayla. “I’m Eden Zanella. My husband, Izzy, is one of Grunge’s teammates.”

“Grunge?” Shayla repeated, even as she looked over Peter’s shoulder to read the text that Maddie had sent. And okay, so the gorgeous young woman was the Eden of Zanella-and-Eden that Peter had mentioned earlier, and obviously not his present-or-future soulmate. Not that Shay, as the witty neighbor, should care.

I don’t know why you concluded you’re only the neighbor, Harry complained. And by the way…Yowl? Really?

“Shh,” Shay whispered, but then smiled weakly when Peter glanced over at her. Yup, he’d definitely noticed that she regularly hushed her invisible friend. Although, in her defense, big sisters and witty neighbors were allowed to have a larger amount of quirkiness in their personalities, so he was just going to have to deal with it.

Meanwhile, Maddie’s text to Eden had been brief and to the point. “She was definitely in that car tonight,” Peter concluded after he read it. “She knows I’m looking for her.”

“Either that, or Dingo and Dumber called her,” Shay said. “Grunge?”

The SEAL glanced up again and twinkled his eyes at her as he smiled tightly. Well, he didn’t twinkle them intentionally. It just happened automatically whenever he smiled—and she was just going to have to deal with that. “Nickname. Don’t ask. Everyone, this is Shayla. She lives across the street, and oddly enough, knows me as Peter.”

“Nice to meet you, Shayla. I’m Izzy.” There was another man in the room, lurking over near the front window, but Shay hadn’t noticed him until he spoke—and then she couldn’t believe that she’d missed him. He was even broader and taller than Peter, and darkly, interestingly handsome, with midnight-colored eyes that gleamed with intelligence and amusement as he added, “And yeah, it’s a nickname, too. Izzy for I Z—my initials—Irving Zanella. Nicknames are rampant in the Teams.”

“I’m Adam,” the actor said as if she didn’t recognize him, then gestured to the pregnant woman, “and this is Lindsey Jenkins, with her soon-to-emerge plus one. So you live across the street, hmm?”

Lindsey’s got a different last name and a wedding band, and FYI, your SEAL isn’t gay, Harry noted.

Okay, but maybe Lindsey’d kept her own name upon marriage. Shayla had.

Maybe. Harry wasn’t convinced. But think about that question, with its hmm that’s loaded with subtext. Adam’s really asking “How long have you been shagging our friend Grunge?”

“Ohmigod, no!” Shay blurted. “I mean, yes, I live across the street. I do. But I just happened to see Lieutenant Greene when I was dropping my son off at the high school, and, um…”

Oh, good. Now you sound weirdly defensive, so Adam’s gotta think you’ve been sleeping with the SEAL nonstop for the past two months. And look at Grunge and Lindsey. Do they look even remotely married to each other?

They didn’t.

“Can you get your friend at the SDPD to run a license plate for me?” Peter was asking Lindsey. He hadn’t sat down on the couch next to her—instead he’d merely moved closer and stood there as he rattled off the combination of letters and numbers from Dingo’s maroon POS.

“Back in the day, Lindsey was a police detective up in LA,” Adam murmured to Shayla as Peter explained how he’d thought he’d seen Maddie getting into that car, and how Shay’d helped him follow it to the mall, where they’d met Dingo and his bearded friend.

“The timing of Maddie’s text to Eden could be a coincidence,” the SEAL named Izzy pointed out. He’d sat down in one of two easy chairs positioned on either side of a gorgeous old river rock fireplace, and pulled his beautiful wife onto his lap.

“But we don’t really think that, do we?” Shayla argued. “Peter got way up in Dingo and Dumber’s faces—” he’d left that little detail out “—and an hour later, Maddie sends that text to Eden?”

“Yeah, I’m with Shayla,” Lindsey agreed with a smile in Shay’s direction. “Finding Maddie might be as simple as running Dingo’s plates and getting his home address.”

“Assuming he keeps his registration current,” Peter said. “Which I seriously doubt. I got a heavy whiff of couch-surfer off of him.”

“Still, it’s a good place to start,” Shay said. “We should also see if we can access Maddie’s Facebook page—”

“We can.” Eden pointed to a laptop that was open and running a screen saver on a gorgeous oak coffee table. “That’s Maddie’s. But we already looked through her Facebook friends and hardly anyone’s local. Her most recent messages are to someone named Fiona, from Sacramento.”

“Oh, good!” Shay sat on the sofa between Lindsey and Adam, pulling the laptop closer so she could look at the screen.

Ahem, Harry said, and she looked up to find everyone looking at her, as Eden said, “That didn’t seem like all that much to inspire an Oh, good.”

“No no, Sacramento’s definitely not good,” Shayla explained, “but access to Maddie’s page is…I’m going to scan through her photos, see if I can find Dingo or his long-haired friend.”

If it’s okay with you, Harry prompted.

Shay cleared her throat and aimed the words at Peter. “If that’s okay with you…?”

“Hell, yeah,” he said. “It’s brilliant. Move over, Adam, I wanna look, too.”