SEALed With a Twist Read online

  That it, sailor? You ready to ring that bell?

  Grant hissed. Fuck that shit. He was a SEAL. He didn’t ring no fucking bell, not in BUD/S training and not fucking now.

  “All right, freaky people! Let’s get all the beautiful single ladies out on the dance floor!”

  The DJ’s voice boomed through the speakers, calling him back to his surroundings. Grant winced. Jesus, if they were throwing the bridal bouquet, he was seriously going to question Quinn’s cred. She might be all woman, but he’d never pegged her for this girlie shit.

  Time for him to get back out there. “Enter Twist, stage right,” he muttered under his breath. He slapped a cocky smirk on his face and strolled out from the shadows, devil-may-care at the ready. He smiled at women and nodded at men, stopping to hold a meaningless conversation with an admiral’s aide, all while dark memories ran their slideshow through his mind.

  After Maverick, he’d spent an uncomfortable month data mining the mental states of his team. Being relegated to running a desk for a month as a result of the internal inquiry had given him the time and the memory of Maverick’s blood splatter on his face the impetus to make sure none of the rest of his guys were headed to the same tragic end.

  He’d managed to keep himself off the proverbial couch along the way.

  As a trained therapist, he knew this depression—yes, he used the D word; no need to freak out—was, for the moment, high-functioning. But if something didn’t shift, and soon, he was gonna have to get someone else to shrink his head as a last resort.

  But the Navy wouldn’t let a depressed SEAL stay active duty.

  And no one was taking Grant away from his guys.

  He was…okay. So okay, he felt empty, as though years of hearing other people’s problems had made him immune to feeling empathy and emotion.

  He’d been coasting on a lot of “Okays” for a while, long enough for him to stop expecting to return to anything else, certainly not the kind of joy Jasper was displaying. He didn’t need to be happy to do his job, and do it damn well too. If okay was as good as he got, an okay SEAL was still ten times the warrior than most other men in his business.

  An operator in this business had to be careful not to care too much. The other side of that coin was making sure you didn’t care too little. Both would kill a man faster than spit.

  Problem was, Grant knew he was starting to slide onto the wrong side of that coin.

  The admiral’s aide left him to dance with a pretty blonde. Grant grabbed a chair on the edge of the crowd. A lift of his hand had a waiter scurrying over. “Tequila,” he ordered. “Bring the bottle.” Minutes later, he had an empty shot glass in hand and the sharp burn of tequila in his throat. “Not taking this walk down memory lane sober, that’s for sure.”

  He couldn’t lay any of this shit on the guys in his unit. To them, he had to be “Twisted” Sisti, there with a twisted joke or jibe to ease tensions and get them through the training or the op or whatever their day brought them. Men like Jasper led with strength and sacrifice, instilling in his men the devotion and loyalty that had them jumping out of perfectly good planes, sometimes under fire, to willingly follow their leader deeper into the hot zones.

  Men like him kept those warriors sane through the aftermath. He’d left his lucrative therapist practice to join the Navy for that reason. It wasn’t good enough to pick up the pieces of broken soldiers and try to knit them back into whole men. Men who didn’t lunge for cover when a car backfired or dive into a bottle or a hypodermic when fireworks went off. It was all so fucking useless. What good could he do when they’d sunk so far as to have already cracked, sometimes violently? Much better to be in the muck and mire with them, to use his training and experience to reach those men before they hit the breaking point and, even worse, took others with them.

  He’d joined up, against extreme opposition from colleagues and family alike, and pushed it ever farther by applying for Special Forces training. Dragging himself side by side through BUD/S with some of the men still in his unit, including Jasper, who’d been his swim buddy. Then on through SEAL Qualification Training and then another 18 months of training before being assigned to an active duty SEAL team. The Navy made you work for the privilege of being a SEAL. Three years altogether before he’d seen any action, years that honed him into a physical weapon that, for the first time in his life, surpassed the considerable abilities of his brain.

  He liked it. He was damn good at it. After so many years doing what he should, he’d finally done what he wanted and in it, had found his calling. His place to make a difference.

  Until Maverick.

  He called up a sly grin as he approached the wedding planner (had to be Willow, right?). It was a sliver of his usual devil-may-care demeanor, but going by the dazed look in her eyes, it worked.

  It was a point of that tattered pride that no one had yet guessed how much he’d had to force that humor these days, fake his usual demeanor like a classic farce. Helped Jasper had been in Florida wooing Quinn and not in Coronado reaming Grant’s ass.

  And now he’d watched them take vows again, pulling forth the man Jasper needed to see to keep living this new life his brother had carved from their shared tragedy. Quinn might not have healed all the wounds Maverick’s death left in Jasper, but she sure as hell gave him something to keep fighting for. Sometimes, that’s all they needed, a reason to keep on fighting. A purpose. Hope that it made a difference to someone, somewhere.

  Hope.

  Grant was more and more worried he’d lost his for good.

  Chapter Two

  “Darn it,” Skye Thornquist swore when the cleaning caddy whacked her calf for a third time. Glaring at the unwieldy menace, Skye dragged it behind her as she scurried around the corner and up to the villa’s front door.

  He hadn’t recognized her. He’d looked right at her, that piercing green gaze digging deep into her chest as he scanned her with suspicion, like some threat he’d failed to account for, with not one speck of recognition in his soul-searing eyes.

  She shouldn’t be surprised. For him, one-night stands were likely as common as his morning coffee. Men who looked and moved and screwed like Grant Sisti did not find it hard to get himself a woman wherever he might land.

  It just happened she was who he’d landed on that one time.

  She dug the pass key out of the back pocket of her uniform shorts. “Housekeeping,” she called, then waited to be sure the villa was empty before letting herself in.

  To any other woman, the lush luxury of the private villas would have elicited at least a moment’s pause. Even someone like Skye who’d been working for Mimosa Maids for six months now and should be used to the countless beauty that peppered the island community. She did appreciate it, probably more than she should, given her background, but coming nearly face to face with the man who, in one night, turned her life inside out, tended to take her focus off the elegance of her surroundings.

  Until she glanced up from scrubbing the toilet and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror she’d shined to a bright finish.

  No wonder he hadn’t recognized her.

  Skye turned back to her task with a wry grimace. Her reflection continued to surprise her, no matter how much she liked her new look. Especially the blonde streaks she’d added herself to the dark-brown, unruly pelt that was too confounding to simply label “hair”. Skye hadn’t put her head in the hands of a high-priced stylist in months. Instead, she’d let the local girl give her a long, choppy cut that somehow made the oval shape of her face less boring.

  At least to her. She hadn’t asked anyone else because then she’d have to explain why she changed her look. And she didn’t date, because then there’d be questions she couldn’t—wouldn’t—answer.

  Every morning, she went to town on her face with pots and packets of high-end makeup designed to hide years of dermatologist appointments and mute the sparkling blue eyes that were one of a number of Thornquist legacies she wished had skipped
her by. She picked bold, dark-tinged colors designed to make people look and look again in shock, hiding her pedigreed, publicized image in plain sight. Every day, she slicked up her bow-shaped mouth with liner and dark, no-smear lip stain that would’ve made her grandmother’s eyes narrow in sharp disapproval.

  A disapproval that would’ve quickly shifted to outright horror the moment that grand dame caught a glimpse of Skye’s tattoos.

  “Might be worth it,” she muttered, turning back to the porcelain bowl. What a trip to see that octogenarian deal with this new version of Skye. Grandmother would’ve seen it as a direct insult to all the comportment lessons she’d driven into Skye practically from birth. And Margaret Worthington Thornquist did not like to be thwarted—Skye couldn’t, for the life of her, remember anyone who’d tried and succeeded.

  A jab of raw pain hit her solar plexus. She gasped and clutched the edge of the claw-foot tub until her breath evened out, but shied away from looking too closely at its source. No. Not yet. I’m not ready.

  Those first days of her transformation, every glimpse of the stranger looking back at her was startling. It’d felt so…liberating to strip away the carefully crafted image her father’s high-priced consultant had chosen for Skye soon as she’d shed the last adolescent year. Like flipping her finger from afar, never mind they’d never see it, she knew she’d done it, and wasn’t that the point? Knowing she was doing what she wanted, looking how she wanted, with no one to tell her how wrong she was, or how inappropriate she looked, or how much better it would be if she just did what she was told.

  Women did this every day, chose who they wanted to be, how they wanted to look, and even what man would be in their bed. Though that last one could have unforeseen complications, as she’d learned the hard way.

  The last man in her bed couldn’t even be bothered to remember her.

  Skye had never seen her breaking point coming, which, she guessed, was the point of a breaking point. The surprise, the utter unpreparedness of that watershed moment. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Her catalyst had been one Grant Sisti, a cut, smokin’ hot, security guard who’d fished her drunk butt out of the pool on the worst night of her life and given her the best sex she’d ever had.

  Not that she had a lot to compare it to, but even if she was the Whore of Babylon, Skye was willing to bet Grant would’ve been a professional highlight.

  He’d been gone when she woke the next morning, and she’d blown out of his room before he returned. That’s how these things were done, right? No harm, no foul. No looking for him all day and night without looking like she was looking for him. But he must have been reassigned or wasn’t hired for the next day, because she never saw him again.

  She’d been hungover for the first time in her life and mortified that her drunken dunk had been witnessed by basically her entire extended family. Being hungover hadn’t gotten her out of bridesmaid duties for her sister’s wedding either, and Lord, had she caught the sharp end of her father’s tongue for that.

  Only later did she realize how changed Grant had left her, how completely alien she’d felt in his wake, as though she no longer fit in her own skin. He wasn’t her first—even with her considerable familial restrictions, she’d managed to shed the last of her sexual innocence her sophomore year of college—but he’d certainly been the first to leave her feeling as though she’d survived a cataclysm.

  That whole weekend had been one life-shattering experience after another until at the end, Skye had felt like a shattered ghost of her former self. Two weeks later, she’d returned to Barefoot Bay out of sorts, plagued with a dissatisfaction that wouldn’t be quelled or allow her to settle back into the life she had before. If this was the place her life went off the rails, maybe realignment could be found here too. Stymied and shaken, she’d applied for a job with Mimosa Maids and left what life she’d had far behind.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Seeing Grant again brought it all back with a force so strong, it nearly landed her flat on her butt. That old agony of betrayal. The dull ache she continued to have for what family she did miss, like her cranky old bat of a grandmother. The feeling that the foundation of everything she thought she knew had been destroyed.

  Satisfied the toilet bowl was clean enough to bathe in (not that she’d want to), Skye pulled the seat down and sat on the edge of the tub for a breather.

  This was her fourth villa of the afternoon and she still had a floor of rooms in the resort proper to sort out before her day was finished.

  Her elbows hit her knees. Weariness was a tangible burden. With effort, she stripped off the plastic gloves, idly examining the split nails that had once been regularly tended into tasteful talons.

  Strangely enough, she didn’t regret one single tear or broken piece of self-applied nail garnish. Hard work was responsible for each and every one, work that made her proud. “Thornquists are not afraid of hard work,” her grandmother was wont to say. “No one properly appreciates money they didn’t have to earn.” Margaret Thornquist might go into apoplectic shock at her granddaughter’s appearance, but she’d get that look in her eye that spoke of pride to see how Skye had earned it.

  If Skye were ever again to see the grand dame.

  An inconvenient sob caught in her chest the same moment she heard her boss call out from the bedroom.

  “Skye? Are you in here?”

  Caught in the act. Super.

  Mandy Nicholas might be the owner and manager of Mimosa Maids, but she was also the woman who’d taken Skye on faith with zero experience and then spent that first month exuding kindness and patience to teach Skye the basics without one word of censure for her obvious ignorance. For that, Skye owed her and she paid that back by never slacking off her assignments and never taking time off, determined Mandy would never regret taking her on for one second.

  Which was why she was ticking off her properties one by one on the day of her grandmother’s funeral. She’d gotten a late start today after hearing the news due to an unscheduled and very un-Thornquist-like crying jag. Now she was determined to see her duties through, no matter how long it took or how late it got.

  “In here,” she answered, the words strangling in her throat. She bit down on her inside cheek, breathing audibly through her nose, praying she got herself under control before Mandy reached the bathroom.

  Unfortunately, despite the size of the villa’s bedroom, this was not to be.

  “Oh Skye,” Mandy murmured when she caught sight of her. Her honey-gold hair swung as she strode over to lay a hand on Skye’s shoulder. “Sweetie.”

  “I’m okay,” Skye managed.

  “Don’t lie to me,” her boss ordered, not unkindly. “A blind man could see you are very not okay.”

  “Okay, well, I will be. In a minute.”

  “You should’ve taken the day off. We could’ve managed.”

  That was an understatement. Mandy ran a tight ship. She’d married a math genius billionaire (and wasn’t that a story in itself) but to Mandy, Mimosa Maids was her bread and butter, the business that pulled her back after divorce had left her nearly destitute and desperate for a new beginning.

  Skye knew exactly how that felt (not divorced or destitute, but desperate for sure). She liked the woman more for not resting on her husband’s billions, which was saying something, since she’d liked Mandy’s sweet and genuine demeanor a lot from their first meeting.

  “Can’t lose the money,” was her bald excuse now.

  Mandy scoffed at that one, but let it slide. She slipped her hand off Skye’s shoulder and held it out to her. “Let’s get you up then,” she decided. Her matter-of-fact manner helped Skye pull herself together. On her feet, she checked her image, pleased the cake of waterproof makeup held up under her brief pity party.

  “What’s left on your list?”

  “After this? Four rooms on third floor west.” Skye tucked an untamable hank of hair behind her ear and squared her shoulders. Grandmother would be appalled
by such unchecked emotion on public display. She might not be able to lay her to rest, but Skye could at least refrain from embarrassing her in death.

  “Finish up in here and then you’re done. In fact, you are officially off for the rest of the weekend. Paid leave.”

  Skye reared back. “Absolutely not.”

  “I insist,” Mandy countered, resolute, that backbone she rarely revealed rearing up strong. “It’s nearly dark as it is and people will be returning to their rooms soon, expecting them to be tidied.” She held up a hand when Skye opened her mouth to explain. “You already told me why you had a late start and I understand, truly. This is not blame; this is damage control and an assist from a friend on a really bad day.”

  Skye bit back the ingrained protest—a Thornquist finished what she started, no matter what—and stuck to the practical. “Who’ll do third west tonight and cover my rooms tomorrow?”

  “I will, if it comes to that. But Cassie’s been after me for more hours and would likely leap at the chance to cover third west.” She pulled out her cell to make the call, obviously not waiting on Skye to agree.

  “I finish what I start,” Skye insisted anyway.

  “I know you do, sweetie. You’re my most reliable employee. Don’t think I don’t know and value it.” She squeezed Skye’s upper arm. “Let someone help you for a change. Look on it as another new experience to check off your list.”

  Skye shot her a look. A few weeks ago, she’d let Mandy talk her into a Girl’s Night Out at the Twisted Pelican in downtown Mimosa Key. Recently renovated by a somewhat reformed bad-boy chef with a budding rep of culinary brilliance, the local watering hole had been transformed to a trendy gastropub. Inspired by some admittedly excellent sangria—not that Skye would know the difference having never partaken of sangria before that night—Skye had let Mandy in or her secret quest: A bucket list for her new life.

  She hadn’t meant for the woman to use it as ammunition. “I knew I’d regret that night. Stupid sangria”.