Code Name: Nanny (SEAL and Code Name #5)(102)

As Izzy took charge of the cumbersome chair, Gabe glared down at his legs, immobile in horizontal hip-to-ankle casts. “You’re wrong, Izzy. For once in my life, I’m being smart. And for the record, I can manage just fine.”

“Sure you can. I hear they’re holding a spot for you in the Boston Marathon, too.”

Gabe’s face was dotted with sweat. His hands fisted in his lap as he fought through a wall of dizziness and pain. “Damned straight they are. I just might win.”

At the end of the hall, a Navy orderly was waiting. He saluted Gabe smartly. “The helicopter is ready, sir.”

Gabe looked back at Summer. For a moment the silence hung heavy, and then he cleared his throat. “Take care of her,” he said hoarsely. “If she asks, tell her you don’t know where I am. Tell her I dropped out and started a new religion down in South America somewhere.”

Izzy shook his head. “You’re a real hard-ass, Morgan. I’ll tell her, but don’t ask me to like it.” Izzy hit a button on the wall, and the automatic door opened with a hiss. “And just for the record, my face may be busted up, but it still looks better than your ugly-as-sin mug.”

A hint of a smile brushed Gabe’s mouth.

He turned back for a last look at Summer, motionless in a white bed, a monitor beeping beside her, and his smile faded. “She’ll forget about me in a week, anyway. Couple of clean-cut young suits will whisk her back to Philadelphia, give her flowers, take her out to a fancy restaurant, and I’m history.”

Guys with whole bodies, Gabe thought grimly. Guys who can still walk. Young guys with some kind of future to offer a woman who didn’t need more pain and uncertainty in her life.

“In fact, I’m probably history already,” he muttered. His jaw locked hard as he gripped Izzy’s hand for a moment. Then the orderly pushed him over the threshold, out to the waiting military transport.





[page]chapter 40

Coronado Island

San Diego

Four months later

It was hard to breathe, harder still to stay. Every nerve was screaming for her to put a thousand miles between herself and this silent room.

But Summer Mulcahey had never been a coward or a quitter. Losing her father too young had made her tough; living with a mother who generally ignored her and often resented her had done the rest. So instead of bolting, Summer locked her hands in her lap and waited.

Mariachi music drifted through the open window of the second-floor apartment. She closed her eyes, breathing in the sea air scented with jasmine and lavender, thinking about Mexico. Thinking about a room where Gabe had made her feel cherished and unscarred, powerful in her choices and honest in her passion.

But a truck hurtling down a winding road had changed them both. She still awoke at night shuddering with terror from the memory—and from the knowledge that Gabe had bought her protection by covering her with his own body.

When she had resurfaced after surgery in Tucson, groggy and disoriented, Izzy had answered every question except those that involved Gabe. As the drugs wore off and her mind cleared, she had pelted him with demands for any piece of news about the SEAL, but Izzy had stood firm. Eventually Summer had returned to Philadelphia to continue her treatment nearer to home.

After weeks of rehab, her arm was weaker than normal, but she had recovered most of her range of motion in the elbow and her scars were no longer obvious. The good news was that she would be fit to return to work in a few short days.

The bad news?

Trying to decide if she wanted her old job back. Knowing Gabe had changed her, making her softer in some ways and harder in others. For the first time in years, Summer had examined her life objectively, and she hadn’t been thrilled by the sight. It was painful to realize that she had no friends, zero hobbies, and an apartment with all the warmth of a budget residential hotel.

Just as she’d told Gabe, she was the job. 24/7.

Her sister Jess had tried to hammer the same point home for years, but Summer hadn’t listened. Now, after a brief, intimate relationship with Gabe, she was suddenly hungry for more, not because she felt incomplete without him, but because a door had opened for her, revealing a side of herself she hadn’t glimpsed before. Summer was ready for the unexpected, and even if the prospect left her painfully vulnerable, she had to know if she and Gabe had any future together.

Which was how she came to be sitting on a beat-up leather sofa in a silent apartment on Coronado Island, watching the sun set in bloodred splendor over a beach she didn’t know the name of. She had dug and delved, berated Izzy and questioned Cara until she finally had Gabe’s address. Thanks to Izzy, she even had a copy of his key.

If only she could ignore an instinct to creep out the door and keep running, right back to Philadelphia and her old, familiar world.

But she wasn’t running. She wasn’t a quitter. She had to know, and for once in her life she was going to take a chance on her heart.

She heard a door open.

Slow footsteps crossed the hall, and Summer’s breath backed up like cotton in her throat as she watched the doorknob turn slowly.

He was as rugged and tall as she remembered, but his face wore new lines and his eyes looked tired. She couldn’t speak, afraid of the questions she had to ask. She should have called first, but what could you say in a phone call?

Gabe dropped a set of keys on a painted pine table and walked to the window without turning on the light. Against the drifting curtains Summer saw his dark silhouette as he stared out at the fading sunset and the red Victorian roof of the Hotel del Coronado.