SEAL Firsts Read online

  Gretchen nodded. “Does this stuff, like on the news, bother you at all?”

  “I’m not going to lie, things are heating up everywhere. But it’s our job. It’s what we train for.”

  “Bad guys coming here?” she asked.

  “I’m on a need to know basis.” He smiled. “They’ll tell us what to do when the time comes. Until then, we just live our lives and get ready for the next deployment.”

  His eyes landed on her pretty face, and he could see how a guy could fall for her. She had a quiet manner, but a wicked sense of humor he’d enjoyed earlier when she was trying to tell a story at dinner over her three daughters who interrupted her constantly. Surviving the public spectacle of her professional basketball player husband running off with a floozy, and surviving it with grace, added one more jewel to her crown. She was a solid woman.

  “How you holding up?”

  She stiffened. “Funny you should ask me that question. No one ever does.”

  He didn’t get to hear her answer, because Tyler chose that moment to come barging back into the room.

  “Okay, so guess what, pilgrims?” Tyler said. “Tomorrow night we’re going line dancing.”

  “Nah, I don’t dance,” T.J. Said.

  “Makes two of us,” said Gretchen. “Besides, I’d have to get a sitter, and I don’t know anyone down here.”

  “No problemo. I know a couple of Team guy daughters who would love to babysit. You aren’t going to get out of this that easy.”

  She looked over at T.J. He hoped he didn’t look too displeased, but he was mortified and hoped they’d drop the whole thing. He wasn’t that lucky, and arrangements were made for him to meet Gretchen, Kate and Tyler at the Norwegian Hall the next night.

  T.J. helped clear the table, bringing in the dishes to the very pregnant Kate, kissing her on the cheek. He wouldn’t have done that, but the proximity to Shannon had driven off some of the fear he had about hanging around pregnant women. “Thanks, Kate. That was real nice.”

  “Well, it was Tyler’s show. Loves to barbeque. As I recall, you love it too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So how’s Shannon taking things? I heard you were kind of sweet on her for a time.”

  T.J. was uncomfortable speaking about it with Kate. Women had a way of getting him to say things he didn’t want to reveal.

  “We’re friends. I think she’s trying to figure out what she wants.”

  “I can understand that.” Kate dried her hands on a towel, threw it on the counter in front of her and asked him point blank, “And what do you want, T.J?”

  It was a good question. He didn’t have a clue. Then he thought of something. “I wanna get home from the next deployment with all 20 fingers and toes. And I wanna keep my promise to Frankie.”

  “You’re a good man, T.J. Talbot.”

  He wished he could agree.

  He ran into Joe at the store the next afternoon. “Hey Joe,” he said with a warm, friendly smile. His compassion and respect for the older man had increased since their project with the playhouse.

  But he was almost afraid to mention anything about he and Shannon drifting apart until Joe shared news he found very disturbing.

  “Heard from Shannon’s mom. Shannon’s up visiting her in the Bay Area. I sure hope she doesn’t relocate there, but I guess the Moores wouldn’t mind. Said we should come up and visit any time.”

  What? How could this be?

  He’d promised he’d look after Shannon, but now it was more than a promise. He wouldn’t be the same without her in his life. He worried Shannon hadn’t told him she was leaving town, taking it as further evidence she was planning on moving on, and perhaps without him. His heart sank to the bottom of the ocean.

  “Joe, I’m sorry to hear that. We barely had time to get acquainted,” he said to Frankie’s dad.

  Joe smiled. “You looked like you were getting along quite well, to my keen old eyes.” T.J. couldn’t look at him, so stared at his canvas slip-ons.

  “Son—” Joe put one hand on T.J.’s shoulder, waiting until he returned his look. “I was going to tell you this a couple of days ago, but now … well, I guess my timing kinda sucks.”

  Did T.J. want to know what Joe was about to say to him?

  “It was hard losing Frankie. I won’t lie. Probably harder on Gloria. Boy, was he the apple of her eye. She lived for that boy growing up. He never wanted for anything. Anything. I used to lie awake at nights, knowing she was dreaming about our son, planning his life, and worrying about all his needs. My job was to wait. Wait until she came back to me. And now she has.”

  Joe’s eyes watered. T.J. nodded, reached over and gave Joe a bear hug. Why had the God of SEALs not given him a father like Joe? Why hadn’t he gotten a father at all? And why did Joe and Gloria have to endure the loss of their boy? It should have been him. T.J. should have been the one to not come home. Frankie’d had so much to live for. Especially now.

  After the men patted each other’s backs, Joe wiped the tear away from one eye with a knuckle. He took a deep breath and continued. “I didn’t know I would have to lose my son to get my wife back.”

  T.J. felt like a dumbass for being so wrapped up in himself he had missed the obvious pain the Bensons were still feeling. He became more aware than ever before how the cycle of life changed everything with each new addition or deletion. Little Courtney was changing Shannon’s trajectory. Frankie’s exit changed the trajectory of the Bensons’ relationship.

  And me? What right do I have to expect anything from these people? Frankie had been on loan to him courtesy of the U.S. Navy. Shannon on loan to him through Frankie. No one owed him an explanation. And no one cared, either.

  There he was, thinking of himself again, while Mr. Benson stood before him, tears streaming down his face. Maybe he couldn’t have Shannon and the child. But there were things he could do.

  “Joe, I honestly hope she doesn’t move. I’d miss her too. Let’s hope she’ll come home, to both of us.”

  The old man’s lower lip quivered. He wasn’t able to speak, so T.J. grabbed him again and allowed the man to sob in his arms. Several people passed by them in the cereal section of the grocery store, but T.J. didn’t care what they thought. Giving Joe the loving arms he’d earned was way more important. They could think they were a gay couple, a couple of reconnected family members, or old friends. It made no difference to him. Letting Joe know he wasn’t alone was the most important thing in his life.

  The rest would simply have to take care of itself.

  That afternoon, T.J. left several messages for Shannon, all unreturned. He met Kate, Gretchen and Tyler at the dance hall. He told himself it was good to move, to feel the rhythm of the music, to concentrate on following the caller’s directions. Gretchen was a good partner, and, while he didn’t feel a sexual spark, he did feel something for her. He was ashamed to figure out he felt sorry for her. He could tell she liked him, and he wasn’t going to be able to give her back anything at all.

  The awkwardness intensified during the slow dances. It was so wrong for him to be here. He wanted to be anywhere but trying to play nice, when something was boiling inside him.

  Gretchen licked her lips, perhaps expecting he’d kiss her. “Gretchen,” he said as he squinted, moving away to a safe distance, “how long are you down here for?”

  “I go back in three days.” She was smiling, examining his eyes for signs she’d never see. He knew she didn’t find it easy to trust men, and who could blame her? He wished she didn’t trust him.

  Images of that day at Shannon’s, fixing the playhouse for the baby, the lovemaking, all of it came back to him. Along with a double dose of self-loathing. Why had he pushed things so fast? Why couldn’t he have just kept his fucking hands off her?

  “Hey, T.J. You didn’t ask me to marry you, did you?”

  Her statement stunned him out of the rut his mind had replayed over and over again. He frowned. “Last I checked, no.”


  “So why the long face? It’s only dancing. I’m a good cheap date. I don’t require much. I change partners gracefully, and I won’t expect you to call the next day. But I get lonely, and I think right now you are, too.”

  She spoke the truth. He was lonely. Just like Shannon had been lonely and let him have his way with her.

  His face was close to Gretchen’s and he could have kissed her, saw her even prepare for it, but he began to pull back. Gretchen grabbed his ears and wouldn’t let go until she laid a long, wet kiss on him.

  But there was only one girl he wanted to kiss, and it wasn’t sweet Gretchen. How he wished it was different.

  Chapter 12

  Although her mother had extended the invitation, Shannon was going home to see her dad. She’d never been able to get enough of his love growing up. He’d worked long hours while she was being shuttled back and forth between piano lessons, ice skating, swimming and the Children’s Theater, which was her real passion. Her well-run life was her mother’s design, and there hardly was time to think about anything else.

  Her dad was devoted to her mother. That same attentiveness was what originally attracted her to Frankie, who would be the same kind of husband her dad was. Now without her husband, it made the visit with her dad all that more important.

  The neighborhood looked just as she remembered it, except the trees were bigger and the houses seemed smaller. She’d ridden her bike up and down the level streets, where the curbs were all rounded to make that part of town “kid friendly,” or so her mother had touted to all her friends.

  Her mother had been a social icon, PTA President and deeply involved in all of Shannon’s school activities. Mr. Moore’s devotion to her mother only widened the gap she felt growing up. Her mother’s events and parties made the local society columns, and Shannon was known as “Mrs. Moore’s daughter.” She felt more like Mrs. Robinson’s daughter from The Graduate, even though she didn’t suspect her mother of infidelity. But, she thought, her mother could have played that role well.

  When she went off to college and then met Frankie, his easy-going manner and devotion made her the center of his universe, and for the first time in her life she didn’t have to share the stage with another Diva. Frankie was her ticket out. She’d never laughed so hard or loved being alive so much.

  On this trip, she was hoping to extract some of her mother’s iron will and bask in her father’s love. She knew it would help her heal.

  Not yet ready to face them, Shannon drove past her parents’ house. One by one, her childhood landmarks came into view. The town was known for having one of the first children’s libraries in California. It also had a children’s theater around the corner from where Shannon had taken her swimming lessons. On an impulse, Shannon parked and got out.

  She remembered the lifeguard instructor with shocking white-blonde hair and brown eyes, the one who always had a thick layer of white zinc oxide on his nose. He wore dark-rimmed sunglasses and had the physique of Michelangelo’s David or Adonis. The worst memory was from when she was eight and would always belly flop if he tried to help her do a front dive into the pool. His habit of putting his hand on her tummy right before she launched her dive had flustered her and always landed her in disaster. Did he ever catch on?

  She wandered over to the Children’s Theater, finding the doors open. Several children and one adult were on stage, with a director sitting three rows up from the stage, barking instructions.

  She turned left, sure that the room was still there, and it was. The wardrobe closet was her favorite childhood memory. It had been guarded by Peg, who had worked there for thirty years. Peg, was enormous, but somehow made it up and down the narrow rows of sequins, feathers and silks, remembering every jacket, every pair of pants, every cummerbund, petticoat or pair of wings, and what size child they would fit. Her loving hands and generous hugs turned plain children, petrified to get up on stage, into magical creatures. In their finery, they would parade back and forth, becoming kings and queens, knights and dragons, butterflies and birds and pumpkins, and a host of other things they’d never thought they could be. The imagination and silliness of childhood were allowed to run free in the theater.

  Shannon imagined Courtney taking an acting class. She hoped she might get her first kiss from a boy covered in greasepaint, her little heart going pitter-pat, just like she had.

  At the end of the first row of costumes Shannon got to her knees. Carefully, on all fours, she crawled under the red petticoats of the can-can dancers and lifted the glittery finery. She was looking for her inscription written in pencil on the wall.

  Shannon Loves Richard.

  She recognized her handwriting. Sitting under the mass of red petticoats, with her back leaning against the wall, the baby kicking in her belly, she touched the letters she had scrawled. With one hand on her abdomen and the other pressing against her letter to her future self, she felt the distance between where she had been and where she was now.

  This place could be good for Courtney. She couldn’t wait to tell Courtney all the stories and adventures of her youth, the piano lessons with the teacher who had performed at Carnegie Hall when she was young, but who lovingly placed her gnarled and crippled fingers over Shannon’s small ones, asking her gently to stretch wide to reach all the notes her young hands struggled with.

  “Grow into your piano hands, Shannon. You must stretch and grow into them.” And gnarled and crippled or not, her fingers had felt smooth and soft, her handwriting perfectly formed as she jotted down the lessons with a soft pencil.

  Back in those days, it had been pure pleasure to ride her bike with the breeze running through her hair. She’d watch the big houses with the beautiful yards go by one by one. Imagining the stories, the families inside, and wondering what they were doing, she rode almost invisibly down the heavily tree-lined streets of a community of people who cared about their children. Her stories were her future, riding her bike up and down the rounded curves from the sidewalk to the streets and back again, trying to envision a life like the one she was leading now.

  But she’d also felt confined here as a child, with her parents’ high expectations she could never completely live up to. Doing it her own way became more important the older she got.

  Now, she appreciated the beauty of her childhood. She saw how it enveloped and protected her. She realized that this was the childhood she wanted for her daughter. The two of them together would find that safe, comfortable place.

  She was alive and happy now, although a widow, with a child not yet born, living in a place that reminded her of a past she could not have any longer, wondering if it might be wise to move to a place where she could create a future all by herself.

  She’d written down the address of a little house three doors down from the home she grew up in. Smallest house on the block, in need of the most repairs. But it would do. Shannon’s past would shield her daughter’s future.

  She needed to do this. She needed to move away from San Diego. She was determined to be self-sufficient, but it made sense to have her parents close by, just in case. When she told herself that moving here would be no big deal, she knew there was a lie hidden in there, but quickly tamped down the feeling. She’d needed the space away from San Diego to make a clear-headed decision, away from the temptations of her body. Now that she’d decided, she was ready to face her parents.

  And then she’d tell T.J. what she’d decided.

  Her parents were thrilled with the possibility she’d move up north, and wanted her to move in with them, which she declined.

  “Oh, honey, it would be so nice to have little Courtney in this house,” her mother had said.

  Her dad’s face was all the encouragement she needed.

  “No, not here, but perhaps close by. There’s a little house near the theater that’s for sale.”

  They’d discussed it until late in the evening. She walked outside after her parents went to bed and looked up at the star-filled sky. The move would
n’t be like the last time, when she had just graduated from college, an eager young woman off for her first job, a great adventure in a town full of hunky Navy guys. A safe place to be, her friends had said. Lots of sunshine and mild climate. Nights full of stars.

  It had been one of those starry nights when she’d met Frankie. He’d graduated BUD/S and was getting ready to deploy for the first time. She didn’t even know what a SEAL was until she’d met him. He was forever with his sidekick, T.J., and her distrust and dislike of him was instantaneous.

  Now she knew why. T.J. had wanted to insert himself between her and Frankie. He was protective. Never having anyone to protect him in a system that had failed him miserably, he wanted to take care of Frankie, even if Frankie didn’t even know he needed taking care of. He’d fixed him up with girls T.J. liked, but who scared Frankie to death.

  Shannon smiled at this. T.J.’d been so tender with her. She owed a lot to Frankie’s best friend. Without her intimate afternoons with him, when she explored the depths of her heart and soul, she would never have been able to find the strength to contemplate moving back home. She hoped he would understand. And that one fine day he would have a woman and a home of his own.

  His quiet confidence had instilled in her something special, like Frankie had. T.J. had shown her the way to go on, to deal with life on life’s terms, that every day was a gift.

  He would forever be special to her. And she’d make sure Courtney knew him as her daddy’s best friend, but probably not as her mother’s lover. Wrap up a few more details, and then she’d go home, sell the house, and get on with her life.

  Telling T.J. he would be welcome to come visit, but not share her bed any longer, would be the hardest part. She hoped this gentle warrior would in time forgive her for parting them, even though she didn’t have a clear-cut future.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t have definite plans. Her plan was simply to live. To raise her daughter. To work hard to be the kind of mother Frankie would have wanted, give back to her parents the kind of love, through Courtney, she wasn’t able to show them growing up.