Code Name: Nanny (SEAL and Code Name #5)(3)

Which is part of the reason I’m so good at my job, Summer thought. She opened her door and hefted her suitcase, which was full of navy suits and dark shoes just like the ones she was wearing. In her particular line of work, plain and inconspicuous were definite job assets.

She decided a little gossip wouldn’t hurt her assignment. Bending close to the window, she nodded at the driver. “Sharp eyes.”

“So what are you?”

Summer tucked her briefcase under her arm and smiled. “I’m the new nanny.”



As she rolled her suitcase along the perfectly cut lawn, Summer scanned her base of operations for the next month. Her host, Cara O’Connor, wasn’t on hand to greet her, but that had been expected since Cara was currently hard at work in San Francisco, where she was the city’s youngest female assistant DA.

Summer quickly learned from a chatty housekeeper named Imelda that her two charges were upstairs finishing their homework over lemon bars and fruit drinks, awaiting her arrival. Praying she wouldn’t be called to explain verb tenses or non-Euclidean geometry, Summer followed the housekeeper out to a Spanish-style guesthouse nearly hidden by towering oleander bushes. Imelda left so Summer could unpack and change before going to meet Cara O’Connor’s two daughters.

Wiggling her feet, she kicked off her shoes and dropped her suitcase on the sofa, which was covered with fluffy pillows. Fresh roses filled the air with lush perfume. Summer trailed one finger along the wall of solid fieldstone that led to a six-foot fireplace.

Some digs. Not that she was going to get tied up in knots about it. No, she was going to treat the O’Connors like any other assignment.

Summer was about to start undressing when she heard a sound down the hall. Crossing the room quietly, she peered around a corner.

There was a naked man in her shower.

Six foot four inches of naked man, judging by the view she had from her location near the living room.

Summer took a sharp breath and forced herself to be calm. Granted, she had just staggered off two back-to-back flights and her eyes were burning with exhaustion, but that was definitely the outline of a male body behind the tall glass shower enclosure. She was pretty sure that ringing sound was water running, while that other sound, low and rumbling, was a dark male groan of satisfaction.

Her stomach clenched. Either there was a big mistake or this was another trick. She had suffered constant hazing on the job over the last months, from little things like papers taken off her desk to coffee spilled inside her locker. As the junior field officer, Summer had been prepared for a certain amount of hazing.

But this crossed the line.

She glared at the broad shoulders moving back and forth beneath a stream of hot water. No doubt this little surprise came courtesy of her fellow agents back in Philadelphia. With a few well-chosen questions, any one of them could have pinpointed her newest assignment.

Not all of them hated her, but most of them did, and words weren’t going to change that. As Summer stood listening to the sound of the shower, something stabbed hard at the center of her chest. They wouldn’t forget. They wanted payback, any way that would hurt her most.

Well, to hell with her pals back in Philadelphia and to hell with their crude tricks. Summer was staying right where she was. They weren’t going to spook her.

Silently she checked the small desk near the sofa. A tan envelope lay on its side next to a painted Chinese vase. Across the middle of the envelope she saw her name written in small, elegant letters.

Her name. Her rooms. No mistakes there.

Exhausted and grimy from hours of travel, she stared at the cozy fruit basket on the lacquer dresser. The lush roses in crystal vases. No way was she leaving.

Summer set her briefcase down carefully on the thick rug. Her raincoat landed on a sleek leather ottoman nearby. Fighting her anger, she scanned the room again. There were no signs of someone living here—no dirty socks on the floor, no clean shirts hanging in the closet. The bed in the adjoining room was perfectly neat, with no dents in the pillows.

Beyond the living area, water continued to strike the glass walls of the shower. As Summer glared at her intruder, the towel hanging over the door slid free. Suddenly she had an unobstructed view of a narrow waist, sculpted thighs, and a world-class naked body.

A little voice whispered a warning.

Punchy with fury, she ignored it. Squaring her shoulders, she sat down in a velvet chair at the entrance to the bathroom, where she had a full view of the sunny shower enclosure.

He was singing an old Beatles song—low and very off-key—when the water hissed off.

The shower door slid open.

Definitely a world-class body. The man had the sculpted shoulders of an athlete in superb condition and abs to bounce a dime off. As he ran his hands over his face, drops of warm water clung to the dark hair on his chest, then slowly traveled lower.

An odd tingle shot through Summer’s stomach. She hadn’t planned to look, but she found herself looking anyway. There was no avoiding the fact that the man had excellent muscles.

Especially when he turned and saw her, his body locking hard.

“Don’t tell me you’re the maid.” He had the hint of an accent, something smoky and rough that Summer couldn’t trace.

“Guest,” she countered flatly. “And unless you talk fast, you’re spending the night as a guest of the local police, pal.”

A smile played across his mouth. “Now you’re terrifying me.” The roughness was there again, but there wasn’t a hint of anxiety in his cool smile or the slow way he scooped up his towel and tossed it over his shoulder, where it concealed nothing.