Night Watch

Andy was already drifting off in the direction of the actress from Buffy.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Britt asked.

Yes, he most definitely did, in a completely Beavis and Butthead kind of way. Heh-heh.

“Nah,” he said. “Go talk to your nurse. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“This is fun,” she told him, her eyes sparkling and her smile warm. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”

“My pleasure,” he said. He let himself watch her walk away, then headed for Amber’s castle.

Wes’s big mistake was wearing the uniform.

Without it on, in street clothes, he would be easy to overlook in a crowd, especially a crowd like this one, filled with the brightest stars in the firmament. But with all those colorful ribbons adorning his chest, in that white jacket that had been tailored to fit his trim body, his eyes seemed an even darker shade of blue, and his jaw seemed more square.

Or maybe it had always been that square and Brittany just hadn’t noticed.

Everyone wanted to talk to him—and not just the twenty-something young women, either. He was surrounded pretty constantly by men, too. And not necessarily gay men.

Brittany had overheard two of Amber’s friends talking. “He’s a Navy SEAL,” one reported to the other.

“A real one?” the other asked. “You mean, that’s not just a costume?”

They hurried over to join the crowd around Wes.

Amber wasn’t among them, however.

She was holding court herself, on the other side of the swimming pool, and the few times she’d glanced in Wes’s direction, she’d seemed a little peeved. Or maybe Brittany was just imagining that, expecting her to act like the spoiled starlet that she was.

Britt leaned back against the cabana and sipped a glass of wine. She couldn’t hear what Wes was saying, or what any of crowd were saying to him, but he was starting to eye a strikingly pretty young woman in a midriff-baring dress who was standing close to him.

No, strike that. He was eyeing her cigarette.

Just at that moment, Wes looked up and caught Britt’s eye.

She put two fingers to her lips as if she were smoking, and shook her head, making a stern face at him. Don’t do it.

He made a face back at her. And then he said something to his groupies—a fairly long story filled with gestures and big facial expressions. When he was done, he pointed directly at Brittany. And they all turned to look at her, almost as one.

And wasn’t that disconcerting. Weakly, she raised her wineglass in a salute.

Wes was grinning at her. What had he told them about her?

He gestured to her and although she couldn’t hear him, she could read his lips. Come here, baby.

Baby?

Those Irish eyes were positively dancing with mischief. Come on, honey. Don’t be shy.

Honey, huh?

What was it Han Solo always said to Chewbacca? I have a bad feeling about this.

But shy wasn’t a word she’d ever used to describe herself. Curious, however, was.

Britt pushed herself up off the wall. As she approached, the crowd parted for her, as if she were some kind of queen.

“Hey, babe,” Wes said when she got closer. “I was just telling everyone—everyone this is Brittany, Britt this is everyone.”

“Hello, everyone,” she said, trying not to be overwhelmed by the famous faces she spotted among them. Was that George Clooney standing at the edge of the crowd? If it wasn’t, it was his even better-looking clone. He nodded to her, his dark eyes nearly as warm as his smile.

“I was telling the old story of how you nursed me back to health after I was injured, you know, when my squad was ambushed by al Qaeda forces.” Wes managed to capture her complete attention.

“Oh, you were, were you? And when was this?”

“Not the first time,” he said. He looked at the crowd and closed his eyes briefly, shaking his head in mock exasperation. “There were actually two times and she always gets them confused—”

“Where will you be honeymooning?” the woman with the belly button and the cigarette interrupted to ask.

What an…interesting question. Brittany looked at Wes, eyebrows raised. Apparently there were parts of that “old” story that she needed to be filled in on with just a little more detail.

“I told them about the second time we were ambushed,” he told her. “You know, when the doctors were so sure I was going to die, only I opened my eyes and I saw you, and since the choice was between going to you or going to the light, I of course picked you.”

“Of course,” she echoed. She had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing aloud. And Wes knew it, the devil. “Where will we be honeymooning, Lambikins? Last time we discussed it, it was a toss-up between Algeria and Bosnia.” As Wes choked back a laugh, she turned to the crowd. “I’m afraid poor Wesley needs that little extra rush of adrenaline that comes from vacationing in countries with a high incidence of terrorism—to keep him revved up. You know how some men are. And so unwilling to ask the doctor for a simple Viagra prescription. I’d be happy with Hawaii, but, no.”

Wes put his arm around her, pulling her so that she was pressed up against him. He kissed her, right next to her ear. “Thanks so much,” he murmured.

She gave him a big smile. “Any time. Sweetie honey pumpkin pie.”

“How do you handle it when he goes off to fight?” a woman with dark glasses asked. Brittany wasn’t positive, but she thought she’d seen her a time or two on daytime TV, while on break at the hospital.

“Faith,” Britt said. She’d asked the same question of her sister, and Melody had given that exact answer.

“Aren’t you afraid he’s going to, like, attack you in the night?”

What? “Since I’m not a terrorist,” Brittany said, “no.”

Wes apparently liked her answer. He gave her a squeeze.

He still had his arm around her, and her entire left side was pressed against him. She could feel the muscles in his thigh, the solidness of his chest. That-Jerk-Quentin, her ex-husband, had been both taller and wider, but nowhere near as well endowed. Muscularly, that was, of course.

“Is it true that in order to marry a SEAL—which stands for Sea, Air and Land, right?—you have to get it on in all of those places?”

Good God. Brittany doubted it, but she honestly didn’t know. Was there some secret club she didn’t know about? Her sister had managed to get pregnant at thirty thousand feet, but at the time Melody had had no intention of getting married. As for sea and land, well, land was easy enough, and most SEALs had access to a boat. Unless…

“By sea do you mean underwater or on top of the water?” she asked. It was such a ridiculous question, she started to laugh. She turned to Wes. “Because, honey, we’ve done underwater a few times, haven’t we? Once when we were scuba diving off the coast of Thailand, and once in the Bering Strait?”

Wes was making that odd, choking sound again.