New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann has thrilled audiences with her Tall, Dark and Dangerous series. Experience it here with a hero who must face the most daring adventure of all—falling in love.

His body may heal, but his heart is another story…

Being a Navy SEAL is more than a career to Alan “Frisco” Francisco—it’s his whole identity. But when a severe injury threatens Frisco’s ability to function in combat, he’s determined to achieve a full recovery.

But the unexpected appearance of his abandoned niece leaves Frisco with little time for anything but dealing with the five-year-old girl. He knows even less about parenting than he does about how to mend his broken body. And there’s no way he’s going to accept offers of help from his interfering neighbor, Mia Summerton. He doesn’t need anyone’s help. Not to care for his niece, not to accept his limitations and certainly not to fall in love.

Frisco’s Kid
Suzanne Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my cousin, Elise Kramer,

who played with and loved my mother,

then me, and now my children, too,

as if we were her own kids.

With all my love, Elise, this one’s for you.

CONTENTS

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER 1

Frisco’s knee was on fire.

He had to lean heavily on his cane to get from the shower to the room he shared with three other vets, and still his leg hurt like hell with every step he took.

But pain was no big deal. Pain had been part of Navy Lt. Alan “Frisco” Francisco’s everyday life since his leg had damn near been blown off more than five years ago during a covert rescue operation. The pain he could handle.

It was this cane that he couldn’t stand.

It was the fact that his knee wouldn’t—couldn’t—support his full weight or fully extend that made him crazy.

It was a warm California day, so he pulled on a pair of shorts, well aware that they wouldn’t hide the raw, ugly scars on his knee.

His latest surgery had been attempted only a few months ago. They’d cut him open all over again, trying, like Humpty Dumpty, to put all the pieces back together. After the required hospital stay, he’d been sent here, to this physical therapy center, to build up strength in his leg, and to see if the operation had worked—to see if he had more flexibility in his injured joint.

But his doctor had been no more successful than the legendary King’s horses and King’s men. The operation hadn’t improved Frisco’s knee. His doctor couldn’t put Frisco together again.

There was a knock on the door, and it opened a crack.

“Yo, Frisco, you in here?”

It was Lt. Joe Catalanotto, the commander of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad—the squad to which, an aeon of pain and frustration and crushed hopes ago, Frisco had once belonged.

“Where else would I be?” Frisco said.

He saw Joe react to his bitter words, saw the bigger man’s jaw tighten as he came into the room, closing the door behind him. He could see the look in Joe’s dark eyes—a look of wary reserve. Frisco had always been the optimist of Alpha Squad. His attitude had always been upbeat and friendly. Wherever they went, Frisco had been out in the street, making friends with the locals. He’d been the first one smiling, the man who’d make jokes before a high-altitude parachute jump, relieving the tension, making everyone laugh.

But Frisco wasn’t laughing now. He’d stopped laughing five years ago, when the doctors had walked into his hospital room and told him his leg would never be the same. He’d never walk again.

At first he’d approached it with the same upbeat, optimistic attitude he’d always had. He’d never walk again? Wanna make a bet? He was going to do more than walk again. He was going to bring himself back to active duty as a SEAL. He was going to run and jump and dive. No question.

It had taken years of intense focus, operations and physical therapy. He’d been bounced back and forth from hospitals to physical therapy centers to hospitals and back again. He’d fought long and hard, and he could walk again.

But he couldn’t run. He could do little more than limp along with his cane—and his doctors warned him against doing too much of that. His knee couldn’t support his weight, they told him. The pain that he stoically ignored was a warning signal. If he wasn’t careful, he’d lose what little use he did have of his leg.

And that wasn’t good enough.

Because until he could run, he couldn’t be a SEAL again.

Five years of disappointment and frustration and failure had worn at Frisco’s optimism and upbeat attitude. Five years of itching to return to the excitement of his life as a Navy SEAL; of being placed into temporary retirement with no real, honest hope of being put back into active duty; of watching as Alpha Squad replaced him—replaced him; of shuffling along when he burned to run. All those years had worn him down. He wasn’t upbeat anymore. He was depressed. And frustrated. And angry as hell.

Joe Catalanotto didn’t bother to answer Frisco’s question. His hawklike gaze took in Frisco’s well-muscled body, lingering for a moment on the scars on his leg. “You look good,” Joe said. “You’re keeping in shape. That’s good. That’s real good.”

“Is this a social call?” Frisco asked bluntly.

“Partly,” Joe said. His rugged face relaxed into a smile. “I’ve got some good news I wanted to share with you.”

Good news. Damn, when was the last time Frisco had gotten good news?

One of Frisco’s roommates, stretched out on his bed, glanced up from the book he was reading.

Joe didn’t seem to mind. His smile just got broader. “Ronnie’s pregnant,” he said. “We’re going to have a kid.”

“No way.” Frisco couldn’t help smiling. It felt odd, unnatural. It had been too long since he’d used those muscles in his face. Five years ago, he’d have been pounding Joe on the back, cracking ribald jokes about masculinity and procreation and laughing like a damn fool. But now the best he could muster up was a smile. He held out his hand and clasped Joe’s in a handshake of congratulations. “I’ll be damned. Who would’ve ever thought you’d become a family man? Are you terrified?”

Joe grinned. “I’m actually okay about it. Ronnie’s the one who’s scared to death. She’s reading every book she can get her hands on about pregnancy and babies. I think the books are scaring her even more.”

“God, a kid,” Frisco said again. “You going to call him Joe Cat, Junior?”

“I want a girl,” Joe admitted. His smile softened. “A redhead, like her mother.”

“So what’s the other part?” Frisco asked. At Joe’s blank look, he added, “You said this was partly a social call. That means it’s also partly something else. Why else are you here?”

“Oh. Yeah. Steve Horowitz called me and asked me to come sit in while he talked to you.”

Frisco slipped on a T-shirt, instantly wary. Steve Horowitz was his doctor. Why would his doctor want Joe around when he talked to Frisco? “What about?”

Joe wouldn’t say, but his smile faded. “There’s an officer’s lounge at the end of the hall,” he said. “Steve said he’d meet us there.”

A talk in the officer’s lounge. This was even more serious than Frisco had guessed. “All right,” he said evenly. It was pointless to pressure Joe. Frisco knew his former commander wouldn’t tell him a thing until Steve showed up.

“How’s the knee?” Joe asked as they headed down the corridor. He purposely kept his pace slow and easy so that Frisco could keep up.

Frisco felt a familiar surge of frustration. He hated the fact that he couldn’t move quickly. Damn, he used to break the sprint records during physical training.

“It’s feeling better today,” he lied. Every step he took hurt like hell. The really stupid thing was that Joe knew damn well how much pain he was in.

He pushed open the door to the officer’s lounge. It was a pleasant enough room, with big, overstuffed furniture and a huge picture window overlooking the gardens. The carpet was a slightly lighter shade of blue than the sky, and the green of the furniture upholstery matched the abundant life growing outside the window. The colors surprised him. Most of the time Frisco had spent in here was late at night, when he couldn’t sleep. In the shadowy darkness, the walls and furniture had looked gray.

Steven Horowitz came into the room, a step behind them. “Good,” he said in his brisk, efficient manner. “Good, you’re here.” He nodded to Joe. “Thank you, Lieutenant, for coming by. I know your schedule’s heavy, too.”

“Not too heavy for this, Captain,” Joe said evenly.

“What exactly is ‘this’?” Frisco asked. He hadn’t felt this uneasy since he’d last gone out on a sneak-and-peek—an information-gathering expedition behind enemy lines.

The doctor gestured to the couch. “Why don’t we sit down?”

“I’ll stand, thanks.” Frisco had sat long enough during those first few years after he’d been injured. He’d spent far too much time in a wheelchair. If he had his choice, he’d never sit again.

Joe made himself comfortable on the couch, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. The doctor perched on the edge of an armchair, his body language announcing that he wasn’t intending to stay long.

“You’re not going to be happy about this,” Horowitz said bluntly to Frisco, “but yesterday I signed papers releasing you from this facility.”

Frisco couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You did what?”

“You’re out of here,” the doctor said, not unkindly. “As of fourteen hundred hours today.”

Frisco looked from the doctor to Joe and back. Joe’s eyes were dark with unhappiness, but he didn’t contradict the doctor’s words. “But my physical therapy sessions—”

“Have ended,” Horowitz said. “You’ve regained sufficient use of your knee and—”

“Sufficient for what?” Frisco asked, outraged. “For hobbling around? That’s not good enough, dammit! I need to be able to run. I need to be able to—”

Joe sat up. “Steve told me he’s been watching your chart for weeks,” the commander of Alpha Squad told Frisco quietly. “Apparently, there’s been no improvement—”

“So I’m in a temporary slump. It happens in this kind of—”

“Your therapist has expressed concern that you’re over-doing it.” Horowitz interrupted him. “You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

“Cut the crap.” Frisco’s knuckles were white as he gripped his cane. “My time is up. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?” He looked back at Joe. “Someone upstairs decided that I’ve had my share of the benefits. Someone upstairs wants my bed emptied, so that it can be filled by some other poor son of a bitch who has no real hope of a full recovery, right?”

“Yeah, they want your bed,” Joe said, nodding. “That’s certainly part of it. There’s limited bed space in every VA facility. You know that.”

“Your progress has begun to decline,” the doctor added. “I’ve told you this before, but you haven’t seemed to catch on. Pain is a signal from your body to your brain telling you that something is wrong. When your knee hurts, that does not mean push harder. It means back off. Sit down. Give yourself a break. If you keep abusing yourself this way, Lieutenant, you’ll be back in a wheelchair by August.”

“I’ll never be back in a wheelchair. Sir.” Frisco said the word sir, but his tone and attitude said an entirely different, far-less-flattering word.

“If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life sitting down, then you better stop punishing a severely injured joint,” Dr. Horowitz snapped. He sighed, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice again. “Look, Alan, I don’t want to fight with you. Why can’t you just be grateful for the fact that you can stand. You can walk. Sure, it’s with a cane, but—”

“I’m going to run,” Frisco said. “I’m not going to give up until I can run.”

“You can’t run,” Steven Horowitz said bluntly. “Your knee won’t support your weight—it won’t even properly extend. The best you’ll manage is an awkward hop.”

“Then I need another operation.”

“What you need is to get on with your life.”

“My life requires an ability to run,” Frisco said hotly. “I don’t know too many active-duty SEALs hobbling around with a cane. Do you?”

Dr. Horowitz shook his head, looking to Joe for help.

But Joe didn’t say a word.

“You’ve been in and out of hospitals and PT centers for five years,” the doctor told Frisco. “You’re not a kid in your twenties anymore, Alan. The truth is, the SEALs don’t need you. They’ve got kids coming up from BUD/S training who could run circles around you even if you could run. Do you really think the top brass are going to want some old guy with a bum knee to come back?”

Frisco carefully kept his face expressionless. “Thanks a lot, man,” he said tightly as he gazed sightlessly out of the window. “I appreciate your vote of confidence.”

Joe shifted in his seat. “What Steve’s saying is harsh—and not entirely true,” he said. “Us ‘old guys’ in our thirties have experience that the new kids lack, and that usually makes us better SEALs. But he’s right about something—you have been out of the picture for half a decade. You’ve got more to overcome than the physical challenge—as if that weren’t enough. You’ve got to catch up with the technology, relearn changed policies….”

“Give yourself a break,” Dr. Horowitz urged again.

Frisco turned his head and looked directly at the doctor. “No,” he said. He looked at Joe, too. “No breaks. Not until I can walk without this cane. Not until I can run a six-minute mile again.”

The doctor rolled his eyes in exasperation, standing up and starting for the door. “A six-minute mile? Forget it. It’s not going to happen.”

Frisco looked out the window again. “Captain, you also said I’d never walk again.”

Horowitz turned back. “This is different, Lieutenant. The truth—whether you believe it or not—is that the kind of physical exertion you’ve been up to is now doing your knee more damage than good.”

Frisco didn’t turn around. He stood silently, watching bright pink flowers move gently in the breeze.

“There are other things you can do as a SEAL,” the doctor said more gently. “There are office jobs—”

Frisco spun around, his temper exploding. “I’m an expert in ten different fields of warfare, and you want me to be some kind of damn pencil pusher?”

“Alan—”

Joe stood up. “You’ve at least got to take some time and think about your options,” he said. “Don’t say no until you think it through.”

Frisco gazed at Joe in barely disguised horror. Five years ago they’d joked about getting injured and being sucked into the administrative staff. It was a fate worse than death, or so they’d agreed. “You want me to think about jockeying a desk?” he said.

“You could teach.”

Frisco shook his head in disbelief. “That’s just perfect, man. Can’t you just see me writing on a blackboard…?” He shook his head in disgust. “I would’ve expected you of all people to understand why I could never do that.”

“You’d still be a SEAL,” Joe persisted. “It’s that or accept your retirement as permanent. Someone’s got to teach these new kids how to survive. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because I’ve been in the middle of action,” Frisco nearly shouted. “I know what it’s like. I want to go back there, I want to be there. I want to be doing, not…teaching. Damn!”

“The Navy doesn’t want to lose you,” Joe said, his voice low and intense. “It’s been five years, and there’s still been nobody in the units who can touch you when it comes to strategic warfare. Sure, you can quit. You can spend the rest of your life trying to get back what you once had. You can lock yourself away and feel sorry for yourself. Or you can help pass your knowledge on to the next generation of SEALs.”

“Quit?” Frisco said. He laughed, but there was no humor in it at all. “I can’t quit—because I’ve already been kicked out. Right, Captain Horowitz? As of fourteen hundred hours, I’m outta here.”

There was silence then—silence that settled around them all, heavy and still and thick.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor finally said. “I’ve got to do what is best for you and for this facility. We need to use your bed for someone who really could use it. You need to give your knee a rest before you damage it further. The obvious solution was to send you home. Someday you’ll thank me for this.” The door clicked as it closed behind him.

Frisco looked at Joe. “You can tell the Navy that I’m not going to accept anything short of active duty,” he said bluntly. “I’m not going to teach.”

There was compassion and regret in the bigger man’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry,” Joe said quietly.

Frisco glared up at the clock that was set into the wall. It was nearly noon. Two more hours, and he’d have to pack up his things and leave. Two more hours, and he wouldn’t be a Navy SEAL, temporarily off the active duty list, recovering from a serious injury. In two hours he’d be former Navy SEAL Lt. Alan Francisco. In two hours, he’d be a civilian, with nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Anger hit him hard in the gut. Five years ago, it was a sensation he’d rarely felt. He’d been calm, he’d been cool. But nowadays, he rarely felt anything besides anger.

But wait. He did have somewhere to go. The anger eased up a bit. Frisco had kept up the payments on his little condo in San Felipe, the low-rent town outside of the naval base. But…once he arrived in San Felipe, then what? He would, indeed, have nothing to do.

Nothing to do was worse than nowhere to go. What was he going to do? Sit around all day, watching TV and collecting disability checks? The anger was back, this time lodging in his throat, choking him.

“I can’t afford to continue the kind of physical therapy I’ve been doing here at the hospital,” Frisco said, trying to keep his desperation from sounding in his voice.

“Maybe you should listen to Steve,” Joe said, “and give your leg a rest.”

Easy for Joe to say. Joe was going to stand up and walk out of this hospital without a cane, without a limp, without his entire life shattered. Joe was going to go back to the home he shared with his beautiful wife—who was pregnant with their first child. He was going to have dinner with Veronica, and later he’d probably make love to her and fall asleep with her in his arms. And in the morning, Joe was going to get up, go for a run, shower, shave and get dressed, and go into work as the commanding officer of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad.

Joe had everything.

Frisco had an empty condo in a bad part of town.

“Congratulations about the baby, man,” Frisco said, trying as hard as he could to actually mean it. Then he limped out of the room.

CHAPTER 2

There was a light on in condo 2C.

Mia Summerton stopped in the parking lot, her arms straining from the weight of her grocery bags, and looked up at the window of the second-floor condo that was next to her own. Apartment 2C had remained empty and dark for so many years, Mia had started to believe that its owner would never come home.

But that owner—whoever he was—was home tonight.

Mia knew that the owner of 2C was, indeed, a “he.” She got a better grip on the handles of her cloth bags and started for the outside cement stairs that led up to the second story and her own condo. His name was Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret. She’d seen his name in the condo association owner’s directory, and on the scattered pieces of junk mail that made it past the post office’s forwarding system.

As far as Mia could figure out, her closest neighbor was a retired naval officer. With no more than his name and rank to go on, she had left the rest to her imagination. He was probably an older man, maybe even elderly. He had possibly served during the Second World War. Or perhaps he’d seen action in Korea or Vietnam.

Whatever the case, Mia was eager to meet him. Next September, her tenth graders were going to be studying American history, from the stock market crash through to the end of the Vietnam conflict. With any luck, Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret., would be willing to come in and talk to her class, tell his story, bring the war he’d served in down to a personal level.

And that was the problem with studying war. Until it could be understood on a personal level, it couldn’t be understood at all.

Mia unlocked her own condo and carried her groceries inside, closing the door behind her with her foot. She quickly put the food away and stored her cloth grocery bags in the tiny broom closet. She glanced at herself in the mirror and adjusted and straightened the high ponytail that held her long, dark hair off her neck.

Then she went back outside, onto the open-air corridor that connected all of the second-floor units in the complex.

The figures on the door, 2C, were slightly rusted, but they still managed to reflect the floodlights from the courtyard, even through the screen. Not allowing herself time to feel nervous or shy, Mia pressed the doorbell.

She heard the buzzer inside of the apartment. The living room curtains were open and the light was on inside, so she peeked in.

Architecturally, it was the mirror image of her own unit. A small living room connected to a tiny dining area, which turned a corner and connected to a galley kitchen. Another short hallway led back from the living room to two small bedrooms and a bath. It was exactly the same as her place, except the layout of the rooms faced the opposite direction.

His furniture was an exact opposite of Mia’s, too. Mia had decorated her living room with bamboo and airy, light colors. Lieutenant Francisco’s was filled with faintly shabby-looking mismatched pieces of dark furniture. His couch was a dark green plaid, and the slipcovers were fraying badly. His carpeting was the same forest green that Mia’s had been when she’d first moved in, three years ago. She’d replaced hers immediately.

Mia rang the bell again. Still no answer. She opened the screen and knocked loudly on the door, thinking if Lieutenant Francisco was an elderly man, he might be hard of hearing….

“Looking for someone in particular?”

Mia spun around, startled, and the screen door banged shut, but there was no one behind her.

“I’m down here.”

The voice carried up from the courtyard, and sure enough, there was a man standing in the shadows. Mia moved to the railing.

“I’m looking for Lieutenant Francisco,” she said.

He stepped forward, into the light. “Well, aren’t you lucky? You found him.”

Mia was staring. She knew she was staring, but she couldn’t help herself.

Lt. Alan Francisco, U.S.N., Ret., was no elderly, little man. He was only slightly older than she was—in his early thirties at the most. He was young and tall and built like a tank. The sleeveless shirt he was wearing revealed muscular shoulders and arms, and did very little to cover his powerful-looking chest.

His hair was dark blond and cut short, in an almost boxlike military style. His jaw was square, too, his features rugged and harshly, commandingly handsome. Mia couldn’t see what color his eyes were—only that they were intense, and that he examined her as carefully as she studied him.

He took another step forward, and Mia realized he limped and leaned heavily on a cane.

“Did you want something besides a look at me?’ he asked.

His legs were still in the shadows, but his arms were in the light. And he had tattoos. One on each arm. An anchor on one arm, and something that looked like it might be a mermaid on the other. Mia pulled her gaze back to his face.

“I, um…’ she said. “I just…wanted to say…hi. I’m Mia Summerton. We’re next-door neighbors,” she added lamely. Wow, she sounded like one of her teenage students, tongue-tied and shy.

It was more than his rugged good looks that was making her sound like a space cadet. It was because Lt. Alan Francisco was a career military man. Despite his lack of uniform, he was standing there in front of her, shoulders back, head held high—the Navy version of G.I. Joe. He was a warrior not by draft but by choice. He’d chosen to enlist. He’d chosen to perpetuate everything Mia’s antiwar parents had taught her to believe was wrong.

He was still watching her as closely as she’d looked at him. “You were curious,” he said. His voice was deep and accentless. He didn’t speak particularly loudly, but his words carried up to her quite clearly.

Mia forced a smile. “Of course.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. He didn’t smile back. In fact, he hadn’t smiled once since she’d turned to look over the railing at him. “I’m not loud. I don’t throw wild parties. I won’t disturb you. I’ll stay out of your way and I hope you’ll have the courtesy to do the same.”

He nodded at her, just once, and Mia realized that she’d been dismissed. With a single nod, he’d just dismissed her as if she were one of his enlisted troops.

As Mia watched, the former Navy lieutenant headed toward the stairs. He used his cane, supporting much of his weight with it. And every step he took looked to be filled with pain. Was he honestly going to climb those stairs…?

But of course he was. This condo complex wasn’t equipped with elevators or escalators or anything that would provide second-floor accessibility to the physically challenged. And this man was clearly challenged.

But Lieutenant Francisco pulled himself up, one painful step at a time. He used the cast-iron railing and his upper-body strength to support his bad leg, virtually hopping up the stairs. Still, Mia could tell that each jarring movement caused him no little amount of pain. When he got to the top, he was breathing hard, and there was a sheen of sweat on his face.

Mia spoke from her heart as usual, not stopping to think first. “There’s a condo for sale on the ground floor,” she said. “Maybe the association office can arrange for you to exchange your unit for the…one on the…”

The look he gave her was withering. “You still here?” His voice was rough and his words rude. But as he looked up again, as for one brief moment he glanced into her eyes, Mia could see myriad emotions in his gaze. Anger. Despair. Shame. An incredible amount of shame.

Mia’s heart was in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, her gaze dropping almost involuntarily to his injured leg. “I didn’t mean to—”

He moved directly underneath one of the corridor lights, and held up his right leg slightly. “Pretty, huh?” he said.

His knee was a virtual railroad switching track of scars. The joint itself looked swollen and sore. Mia swallowed. “What—” she said, then cleared her throat. “What…happened…?”

His eyes were an odd shade of blue, she realized, gazing up into the swirl of color. They were dark blue, almost black. And they were surrounded by the longest, thickest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man.

Up close, even despite the shine of perspiration on his face, Mia had to believe that Lt. Alan Francisco was the single most attractive man she had ever seen in her entire twenty-seven years.

His hair was dark blond. Not average, dirty blond, but rather a shiny mixture of light brown with streaks and flashes of gold and even hints of red that gleamed in the light. His nose was big, but not too big for his face, and slightly crooked. His mouth was wide. Mia longed to see him smile. What a smile this man would have, with a generous mouth like that. There were laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and his eyes, but they were taut now with pain and anger.

“I was wounded,” he said brusquely. “During a military op.”

He had been drinking. He was close enough for Mia to smell whiskey on his breath. She moved back a step. “Military…op?”

“Operation,” he said.

“That must have been…awful,” she said. “But…I wasn’t aware that the United States has been involved in any naval battles recently. I mean, someone like, oh, say…the President would let us all know if we were at war, wouldn’t he?”

“I was wounded during a search-and-rescue counterterrorist operation in downtown Baghdad,” Francisco said.

“Isn’t Baghdad a little bit inland for a sailor?”

“I’m a Navy SEAL,” he said. Then his lips twisted into a grim version of a smile. “Was a Navy SEAL,” he corrected himself.

Frisco realized that she didn’t know what he meant. She was looking up at him with puzzlement in her odd-colored eyes. They were a light shade of brown and green—hazel, he thought it was called—with a dark brown ring encircling the edges of her irises. Her eyes had a slightly exotic tilt to them, as if somewhere, perhaps back in her grandparents’ generation, there was Asian or Polynesian blood. Hawaiian. That was it. She looked faintly Hawaiian. Her cheekbones were wide and high, adding to the exotic effect. Her nose was small and delicate, as were her graceful-looking lips. Her skin was smooth and clear and a delicious shade of tan. Her long, straight black hair was up in a ponytail, a light fringe of bangs softening her face. Her hair was so long, that if she wore it down, it would hang all the way to her hips.

His next-door neighbor was strikingly beautiful.

She was nearly an entire twelve inches shorter than he was, with a slender build. She was wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. Her shapely legs were that same light shade of brown and her feet were bare. Her figure was slight, almost boyish. Almost. Her breasts may have been small, but they swelled slightly beneath the cotton of her shirt in a way that was decidedly feminine.

At first glance, from the way she dressed and from her clean, fresh beauty, Frisco had thought she was a kid, a teenager. But up close, he could see faint lines of life on her face, along with a confidence and wisdom that no mere teenager could possibly exude. Despite her youthful appearance, this Mia Summerton was probably closer to his own age.

“Navy SEALs,” he explained, still gazing into her remarkable hazel eyes, “are the U.S. military’s most elite special operations group. We operate on sea, in the air and on land. SEa, Air, Land. SEAL.”

“I get it,” she said, with a smile. “Very cute.”

Her smile was crooked and made her look just a little bit goofy. Surely she knew that her smile marred her perfect beauty, but that didn’t keep her from smiling. In fact, Frisco was willing to bet that, goofy or not, a smile was this woman’s default expression. Still, her smile was uncertain, as if she wasn’t quite sure he deserved to be smiled at. She was ill at ease—whether that was caused by his injury or his imposing height, he didn’t know. She was wary of him, however.

“‘Cute’ isn’t a word used often to describe a special operations unit.”

“Special operations,” Mia repeated. “Is that kind of like the Green Berets or the Commandos?”

“Kind of,” Frisco told her, watching her eyes as he spoke. “Only, smarter and stronger and tougher. SEALs are qualified experts in a number of fields. We’re all sharpshooters, we’re all demolitions experts—both underwater and on land—we can fly or drive or sail any jet or plane or tank or boat. We all have expert status in using the latest military technology.”

“It sounds to me as if you’re an expert at making war.” Mia’s goofy smile had faded, taking with it much of the warmth in her eyes. “A professional soldier.”

Frisco nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.” She didn’t like soldiers. That was her deal. It was funny. Some women went for military men in a very major way. At the same time, others went out of their way to keep their distance. This Mia Summerton clearly fell into the second category.

“What do you do when there’s no war to fight? Start one of your own?”

Her words were purposely antagonistic, and Frisco felt himself bristle. He didn’t have to defend himself or his former profession to this girl, no matter how pretty she was. He’d run into plenty of her type before. It was politically correct these days to be a pacifist, to support demilitarization, to support limiting funds for defense—without knowing the least little thing about the current world situation.

Not that Frisco had anything against pacifists. He truly believed in the power of negotiation and peace talks. But he followed the old adage: walk softly and carry a big stick. And the Navy SEALs were the biggest, toughest stick America could hope to carry.

And as for war, they were currently fighting a great big one—an ongoing war against terrorism.

“I don’t need your crap.” Frisco turned away as he used his cane to limp toward the door of his condo.

“Oh, my opinion is crap?” She moved in front of him, blocking his way. Her eyes flashed with green fire.

“What I do need is another drink,” Frisco announced. “Badly. So if you don’t mind moving out of my way…?”

Mia crossed her arms and didn’t budge. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I confess that my question may have sounded a bit hostile, but I don’t believe that it was crap.”

Frisco gazed at her steadily. “I’m not in the mood for an argument,” he said. “You want to come in and have a drink—please. Be my guest. I’ll even find an extra glass. You want to spend the night—even better. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared my bed. But I have no intention of standing here arguing with you.”

Mia flushed, but her gaze didn’t drop. She didn’t look away. “Intimidation is a powerful weapon, isn’t it?” she said. “But I know what you’re doing, so it won’t work. I’m not intimidated, Lieutenant.”

He stepped forward, moving well into her personal space, backing her up against the closed door. “How about now?” he asked. “Now are you intimidated?”

She wasn’t. He could see it in her eyes. She was angrier, though.

“How typical,” she said. “When psychological attack doesn’t work, resort to the threat of physical violence.” She smiled at him sweetly. “I’m calling your bluff, G.I. Joe. What are you going to do now?”

Frisco gazed down into Mia’s oval-shaped face, out of ideas, although he’d never admit that to her. She was supposed to have turned and run away by now. But she hadn’t. Instead, she was still here, glaring up at him, her nose mere inches from his own.

She smelled amazingly good. She was wearing perfume—something light and delicate, with the faintest hint of exotic spices.

Something had stirred within him when she’d first given him one of her funny smiles. It stirred again and he recognized the sensation. Desire. Man, it had been a long time….

“What if I’m not bluffing?” Frisco said, his voice no more than a whisper. He was standing close enough for his breath to move several wisps of her hair. “What if I really do want you to come inside? Spend the night?”

He saw a flash of uncertainty in her eyes. And then she stepped out of his way, moving deftly around his cane. “Sorry, I’m not in the mood for casual sex with a jerk,” she retorted.

Frisco unlocked his door. He should have kissed her. She’d damn near dared him to. But it had seemed wrong. Kissing her would have been going too far. But, Lord, he’d wanted to….

He turned to look back at her before he went inside. “If you change your mind, just let me know.”

Mia laughed and disappeared into her own apartment.

CHAPTER 3

“Yeah?” Frisco rasped into the telephone. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding as if he’d been hit by a sledgehammer. His alarm clock read 9:36, and there was sunlight streaming in underneath the bedroom curtains. It was bright, cutting like a laser beam into his brain. He closed his eyes.

“Alan, is that you?”

Sharon. It was his sister, Sharon.

Frisco rolled over, searching for something, anything with which to wet his impossibly dry mouth. There was a whiskey bottle on the bedside table with about a half an inch of amber liquid still inside. He reached for it, but stopped. No way was he going to take a slug of that. Hell, that was what his old man used to do. He’d start the day off with a shot—and end it sprawled, drunk, on the living room couch.

“I need your help,” Sharon said. “I need a favor. The VA hospital said you were released and I just couldn’t believe how lucky my timing was.”

“How big a favor?” Frisco mumbled. She was asking for money. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. His older sister Sharon was as big a drunk as their father had been. She couldn’t hold a job, couldn’t pay her rent, couldn’t support her five-year-old daughter, Natasha.

Frisco shook his head. He’d been there when Tasha was born, brought into the world, the offspring of an unknown father and an irresponsible mother. As much as Frisco loved his sister, he knew damn well that Sharon was irresponsible. She floated through life, drifting from job to job, from town to town, from man to man. Having a baby daughter hadn’t rooted Sharon in any one place.

Five years ago, back when Natasha was born, back before his leg had damn near been blown off, Frisco had been an optimist. But even he hadn’t been able to imagine much happiness in the baby’s future. Unless Sharon owned up to the fact that she had a drinking problem, unless she got help, sought counseling and finally settled down, he’d known that little Natasha’s life would be filled with chaos and disruption and endless change.

He’d been right about that.

For the past five years, Frisco had sent his sister money every month, hoping to hell that she used it to pay her rent, hoping Natasha had a roof over her head and food to fill her stomach.

Sharon had visited him only occasionally while he was in the VA hospital. She only came when she needed money, and she never brought Natasha with her—the one person in the world Frisco would truly have wanted to see.

“This one’s a major favor,” Sharon said. Her voice broke. “Look, I’m a couple of blocks away. I’m gonna come over, okay? Meet me in the courtyard in about three minutes. I broke my foot, and I’m on crutches. I can’t handle the stairs.”

She hung up before giving Frisco a chance to answer. Sharon broke her foot. Perfect. Why was it that people with hard luck just kept getting more and more of the same? Frisco rolled over, dropped the receiver back onto the phone, grabbed his cane and staggered into the bathroom.

Three minutes. It wasn’t enough time to shower, but man, he needed a shower badly. Frisco turned on the cold water in the bathroom sink and then put his head under the faucet, both drinking and letting the water flow over his face.

Damn, he hadn’t meant to kill that entire bottle of whiskey last night. During the more than five years he’d been in and out of the hospital and housed in rehabilitation centers, he’d never had more than an occasional drink or two. Even before his injury, he was careful not to drink too much. Some of the guys went out at night and slammed home quantities of beer and whiskey—enough to float a ship. But Frisco rarely did. He didn’t want to be like his father and his sister, and he knew enough about it to know that alcoholism could be hereditary.

And last night? He’d meant to have one more drink. That was all. Just one more to round down the edges. One more to soften the harsh slap of his release from the therapy center. But one drink had turned into two.

Then he’d started thinking about Mia Summerton, separated from him by only one very thin wall, and two had become three. He could hear the sound of her stereo. She was listening to Bonnie Raitt. Every so often, Mia would sing along, her voice a clear soprano over Bonnie’s smoky alto. And after three drinks, Frisco had lost count.

He kept hearing Mia’s laughter, echoing in his head, the way she’d laughed at him right before she’d gone into her own condo. It had been laughter loaded with meaning. It had been “a cold day in hell” kind of laughter, as in, it would be a cold day in hell before she’d even deign to so much as think about him again.

That was good. That was exactly what he wanted. Wasn’t it?

Yes. Frisco splashed more water on his face, trying to convince himself that that was true. He didn’t want some neighbor lady hanging around, giving him those goddamned pitying looks as he hobbled up and down the stairs. He didn’t need suggestions about moving to a lousy ground-floor condo as if he were some kind of cripple. He didn’t need self-righteous soapbox speeches about how war is not healthy for children and other living things. If anyone should know that, he sure as hell should.

He’d been in places where bombs were falling. And, yes, the bombs had military targets. But that didn’t mean if a bomb accidentally went off track, it would fail to explode. Even if it hit a house or a church or a school, it was gonna go off. Bombs had no conscience, no remorse. They fell. They exploded. They destroyed and killed. And no matter how hard the people who aimed those bombs tried, civilians ended up dead.

But if a team of SEALs was sent in before air strikes became necessary, those SEALs could conceivably achieve more with fewer casualties. A seven-man team of SEALs such as the Alpha Squad could go in and totally foul up the enemy’s communication system. Or they could kidnap the enemy’s military leader, ensuring chaos and possibly reopening negotiations and peace talks.

But more often than not, because the top brass failed to realize the SEALs’ full potential, they weren’t utilized until it was too late.

And then people died. Children died.

Frisco brushed his teeth, then drank more water. He dried his face and limped back into his bedroom. He searched for his sunglasses to no avail, uncovered his checkbook, pulled on a clean T-shirt and, wincing at the bright sunlight, he headed outside.

* * *

The woman in the courtyard burst into tears.

Startled, Mia looked up from her garden. She’d seen this woman walk in—a battered, worn-out-looking blonde on crutches, awkwardly carrying a suitcase, followed by a very little, very frightened red-haired girl.

Mia followed the weeping woman’s gaze and saw Lieutenant Francisco painfully making his way down the stairs. Wow, he looked awful. His skin had a grayish cast, and he was squinting as if the brilliant blue California sky and bright sunshine were the devil’s evil doing. He hadn’t shaved, and the stubble on his face made him look as if he’d just been rolled from a park bench. His T-shirt looked clean, but his shorts were the same ones he’d had on last night. Clearly he’d slept in them.

He’d obviously had “another” drink last night, and quite probably more than that afterward.

Fabulous. Mia forced her attention back to the flowers she was weeding. She had been convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lt. Alan Francisco was not the kind of man she even wanted to have for a friend. He was rude and unhappy and quite possibly dangerous. And now she knew that he drank way too much, too.

No, she was going to ignore condo 2C from now on. She would pretend that the owner was still out of town.

The blond woman dropped her crutches and wrapped her arms around Francisco’s neck. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying, “I’m sorry.”

The SEAL led the blonde to the bench directly across from Mia’s garden plot. His voice carried clearly across the courtyard—she couldn’t help but overhear, even though she tried desperately to mind her own business.

“Start at the beginning,” he said, holding the woman’s hands. “Sharon, tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

“I totaled my car,” the blonde—Sharon—said, and began to cry again.

“When?” Francisco asked patiently.

“Day before yesterday.”

“That was when you broke your foot?”

She nodded. Yes.

“Was anyone else hurt?”

Her voice shook. “The other driver is still in the hospital. If he dies, I’ll be up on charges of vehicular manslaughter.”

Francisco swore. “Shar, if he dies, he’ll be dead. That’s a little bit worse than where you’ll be, don’t you think?”

Blond head bowed, Sharon nodded.

“You were DUI.” It wasn’t a question, but she nodded again. DUI—driving under the influence. Driving drunk.

A shadow fell across her flowers, and Mia looked up to see the little red-haired girl standing beside her.

“Hi,” Mia said.

The girl was around five. Kindergarten age. She had amazing strawberry blond hair that curled in a wild mass around her round face. Her face was covered with freckles, and her eyes were the same pure shade of dark blue as Alan Francisco’s.

This had to be his daughter. Mia’s gaze traveled back to the blonde. That meant Sharon was his…wife? Ex-wife? Girlfriend?

It didn’t matter. What did she care if Alan Francisco had a dozen wives?

The red-haired girl spoke. “I have a garden at home. Back in the old country.”

“Which old country is that?” Mia asked with a smile. Kindergarten-age children were so wonderful.

“Russia,” the little girl said, all seriousness. “My real father is a Russian prince.”

Her real father, hmm? Mia couldn’t blame the little girl for making up a fictional family. With a mother up on DUI charges, and a father who was only a step or two behind…Mia could see the benefits of having a pretend world to escape to, filled with palaces and princes and beautiful gardens.

“Do you want to help me weed?” Mia asked.

The little girl glanced over at her mother.

“The bottom line is that I have no more options,” Sharon was tearfully telling Alan Francisco. “If I voluntarily enter the detox program, I’ll win points with the judge who tries my case. But I need to find someplace for Natasha to stay.”

“No way,” the Navy lieutenant said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. There’s no way in hell I can take her.”

“Alan, please, you’ve got to help me out here!”

His voice got louder. “What do I know about taking care of a kid?”

“She’s quiet,” Sharon pleaded. “She won’t get in the way.”

“I don’t want her.” Francisco had lowered his voice, but it still carried clearly over to Mia. And to the little girl—to Natasha.

Mia’s heart broke for the child. What an awful thing to overhear: Her own father didn’t want her.

“I’m a teacher,” Mia said to the girl, hoping she wouldn’t hear the rest of her parents’ tense conversation. “I teach older children—high school kids.”

Natasha nodded, her face a picture of concentration as she imitated Mia and gently pulled weeds from the soft earth of the garden.

“I’m supposed to go into detox in an hour,” Sharon said. “If you don’t take her, she’ll be a ward of the state—she’ll be put into foster care, Alan.”

“There’s a man who works for my father the prince,” Natasha told Mia, as if she, too, were trying desperately not to listen to the other conversation, “who only plants flowers. That’s all he does all day. Red flowers like these. And yellow flowers.”

On the other side of the courtyard, Mia could hear Alan Francisco cursing. His voice was low, and she couldn’t quite make out the words, but it was clear he was calling upon his full sailor’s salty vocabulary. He wasn’t angry at Sharon—his words weren’t directed at her, but rather at the cloudless California sky above them.

“My very favorites are the blue flowers,” Mia told Natasha. “They’re called morning glories. You have to wake up very early in the morning to see them. They close up tightly during the day.”

Natasha nodded, still so seriously. “Because the bright sun gives them a headache.”

“Natasha!”

The little girl looked up at the sound of her mother’s voice. Mia looked up, too—directly into Alan Francisco’s dark blue eyes. She quickly lowered her gaze, afraid he’d correctly read the accusations she knew were there. How could he ignore his own child? What kind of man could admit that he didn’t want his daughter around?

“You’re going to be staying here, with Alan, for a while,” Sharon said, smiling tremulously at her daughter.

He’d given in. The former special operations lieutenant had given in. Mia didn’t know whether to be glad for the little girl, or concerned. This child needed more than this man could give her. Mia risked another look up, and found his disturbingly blue eyes still watching her.

“Won’t that be fun?” Sharon hopefully asked Natasha.

The little girl considered the question thoughtfully. “No,” she finally said.

Alan Francisco laughed. Mia hadn’t thought him capable, but he actually smiled and snorted with laughter, covering it quickly with a cough. When he looked up again, he wasn’t smiling, but she could swear she saw amusement in his eyes.

“I want to go with you,” Natasha told her mother, a trace of panic in her voice. “Why can’t I go with you?”

Sharon’s lip trembled, as if she were the child. “Because you can’t,” she said ineffectively. “Not this time.”

The little girl’s gaze shifted to Alan and then quickly back to Sharon. “Do we know him?” she asked.

“Yes,” Sharon told her. “Of course we know him. He’s your uncle Alan. You remember Alan. He’s in the Navy…?”

But the little girl shook her head.

“I’m your mom’s brother,” Alan said to the little girl.

Her brother. Alan was Sharon’s brother. Not her husband. Mia didn’t want to feel anything at that news. She refused to feel relieved. She refused to feel, period. She weeded her garden, pretending she couldn’t hear any of the words being spoken.

Natasha gazed at her mother. “Will you come back?” she asked in a very small voice.

Mia closed her eyes. But she did feel. She felt for this little girl; she felt her fear and pain. Her heart ached for the mother, too, God help her. And she felt for blue-eyed Alan Francisco. But what she felt for him, she couldn’t begin to define.

“I always do,” Sharon said, dissolving once more into tears as she enveloped the little girl in a hug. “Don’t I?” But then she quickly set Natasha aside. “I’ve got to go. Be good. I love you.” She turned to Alan. “The address of the detox center is in the suitcase.”

Alan nodded, and with a creak of her crutches, Sharon hurried away.

Natasha stared expressionlessly after her mother, watching until the woman disappeared from view. Then, with only a very slight tightening of her lips, she turned to look at Alan.

Mia looked at him, too, but this time his gaze never left the little girl. All of the amusement was gone from his eyes, leaving only sadness and compassion.

All of his anger had vanished. All of the rage that seemed to burn endlessly within him was temporarily doused. His blue eyes were no longer icy—instead they seemed almost warm. His chiseled features looked softer, too, as he tried to smile at Natasha. He may not have wanted her—he’d said as much—but now that she was here, it seemed as if he were going to do his best to make things easier for her.

Mia looked up to see that the little girl’s eyes had filled with tears. She was trying awfully hard not to cry, but one tear finally escaped, rolling down her face. She wiped at it fiercely, fighting the flood.

“I know you don’t remember me,” Alan said to Natasha, his voice impossibly gentle. “But we met five years ago. On January 4.”

Natasha all but stopped breathing. “That’s my birthday,” she said, gazing across the courtyard at him.

Alan’s forced smile became genuine. “I know,” he said. “I was driving your mom to the hospital and…” He broke off, looking closely at her. “You want a hug?” he asked. “Because I could really use a hug right now, and I’d sure appreciate it if you could give me one.”

Natasha considered his words, then nodded. She slowly crossed to him.

“You better hold your breath, though,” Alan told her ruefully. “I think I smell bad.”

She nodded again, then carefully climbed onto his lap. Mia tried not to watch, but it was nearly impossible not to look at the big man, with his arms wrapped so tentatively around the little girl, as if he were afraid she might break. But when Natasha’s arms went up and locked securely around his neck, Alan closed his eyes, holding the little girl more tightly.

Mia had thought his request for a hug had been purely for Natasha’s sake, but now she had to wonder. With all of his anger and his bitterness over his injured leg, it was possible Alan Francisco hadn’t let anyone close enough to give him the warmth and comfort of a hug in quite some time. And everyone needed warmth and comfort—even big, tough professional soldiers.

Mia looked away, trying to concentrate on weeding her last row of flowers. But she couldn’t help but overhear Natasha say, “You don’t smell bad. You smell like Mommy—when she wakes up.”

Alan didn’t look happy with that comparison. “Terrific,” he murmured.

“She’s grouchy in the morning,” Natasha said. “Are you grouchy in the morning, too?”

“These days I’m afraid I’m grouchy all the time,” he admitted.

Natasha was quiet for a moment, considering that. “Then I’ll keep the TV turned down really quiet so it doesn’t bother you.”

Alan laughed again, just a brief exhale of air. Still, it drew Mia’s eyes to his face. When he smiled, he transformed. When he smiled, despite the pallor of his skin and his heavy stubble and his uncombed hair, he became breathtakingly handsome.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said.

Natasha didn’t get off his lap. “I don’t remember meeting you before,” she said.

“You wouldn’t,” Alan said. He shifted painfully. Even Natasha’s slight weight was too much for his injured knee, and he moved her so that she was sitting on his good leg. “When we first met, you were still inside your mom’s belly. You decided that you wanted to be born, and you didn’t want to wait. You decided you wanted to come into the world in the front seat of my truck.”

“Really?” Natasha was fascinated.

Alan nodded. “Really. You came out before the ambulance could get there. You were in such a hurry, I had to catch you and hold on to you to keep you from running a lap around the block.”

“Babies can’t run,” the little girl scoffed.

“Maybe not regular babies,” Alan said. “But you came out doing the tango, smoking a cigar and hollering at everybody. Oh, baby, were you loud.”

Natasha giggled. “Really?”

“Really,” Alan said. “Not the tango and the cigar, but the loud. Come on,” he added, lifting her off his lap. “Grab your suitcase and I’ll give you the nickel tour of my condo. You can do…something…while I take a shower. Man, do I need a shower.”

Natasha tried to pick up her suitcase, but it was too heavy for her. She tried dragging it after her uncle, but she was never going to get it up the stairs. When Alan turned back to see her struggle, he stopped.

“I better get that,” he said. But even as he spoke, a change came over his face. The anger was back. Anger and frustration.

Mia was only one thought behind him, and she realized almost instantly that Alan Francisco was not going to be able to carry Natasha’s suitcase up the stairs. With one hand on his cane, and the other pulling himself up on the cast-iron railing, it wasn’t going to happen.

* * *

She stood up, brushing the dirt from her hands. However she did this, it was going to be humiliating for him. And, as with all painful things, it was probably best to do it quickly—to get it over with.

“I’ll get that,” she said cheerfully, taking the suitcase out of Natasha’s hand. Mia didn’t wait for Alan to speak or react. She swept up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and set the suitcase down outside the door to 2C.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” she called out as she went into her own apartment and grabbed her watering can.

She was outside again in an instant, and as she started down the stairs, she saw that Alan hadn’t moved. Only the expression on his face had changed. His eyes were even darker and angrier and his face was positively stormy. His mouth was tight. All signs of his earlier smile were gone.

“I didn’t ask for your help,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

“I know,” Mia said honestly, stopping several steps from the bottom so she could look at him, eye to eye. “I figured you wouldn’t ask. And if I asked, I knew you would get all mad and you wouldn’t let me help. This way, you can get as mad as you want, but the suitcase is already upstairs.” She smiled at him. “So go on. Get mad. Knock yourself out.”

As Mia turned and headed back to her garden, she could feel Alan’s eyes boring into her back. His expression hadn’t changed—he was mad. Mad at her, mad at the world.

She knew she shouldn’t have helped him. She should have simply let him deal with his problems, let him work things out. She knew she shouldn’t get entangled with someone who was obviously in need.

But Mia couldn’t forget the smile that had transformed Alan into a real human being instead of this rocky pillar of anger that he seemed to be most of the time. She couldn’t forget the gentle way he’d talked to the little girl, trying his best to set her at ease. And she couldn’t forget the look on his face when little Natasha had given him a hug.

Mia couldn’t forget—even though she knew that she’d be better off if she could.

CHAPTER 4

Frisco started to open the bathroom door, but on second thought stopped and wrapped his towel around his waist first.

He could hear the sound of the television in the living room as he leaned heavily on his cane and went into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

A kid. What the hell was he going to do with a kid for the next six weeks?

He tossed his cane on the unmade bed and rubbed his wet hair with his towel. Of course, it wasn’t as if his work schedule were overcrowded. He’d surely be able to squeeze Natasha in somewhere between “Good Morning, America” and the “Late Show with David Letterman.”

Still, little kids required certain specific attention—like food at regular intervals, baths every now and then, a good night’s sleep that didn’t start at four in the morning and stretch all the way out past noon. Frisco could barely even provide those things for himself, let alone someone else.

Hopping on his good leg, he dug through his still-packed duffel bag, searching for clean underwear. Nothing.

It had been years since he’d had to cook for himself. His kitchen skills were more geared toward knowing which cleaning solutions made the best flammable substances when combined with other household products.

He moved to his dresser, and found only a pair of silk boxers that a lady friend had bought him a lifetime ago. He pulled on his bathing suit instead.

There was nothing to eat in his refrigerator besides a lemon and a six-pack of Mexican beer. His kitchen cabinets contained only shakers of moisture-solidified salt and pepper and an ancient bottle of tabasco sauce.

The second bedroom in his condo was nearly as bare as his cabinets. It had no furniture, only several rows of boxes neatly stacked along one wall. Tasha was going to have to crash on the couch until Frisco could get her a bed and whatever other kind of furniture a five-year-old girl needed.

Frisco pulled on a fresh T-shirt, throwing the clothes he’d been wearing onto the enormous and ever-expanding pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room…some of it dating from the last time he’d been here, over five years ago. Even the cleaning lady who’d come in yesterday afternoon hadn’t dared to touch it.

They’d kicked him out of the physical therapy center before laundry day. He’d arrived here yesterday with two bags of gear and an enormous duffel bag filled with dirty laundry. Somehow he was going to have to figure out a way to get his dirty clothes down to the laundry room on the first floor—and his clean clothes back up again.

But the first thing he had to do was make sure his collection of weapons were all safely locked up. Frisco didn’t know much about five-year-olds, but he was certain of one thing—they didn’t mix well with firearms.

He quickly combed his hair and, reaching for the smooth wood of his cane, he headed toward the sound of the TV. After he secured his private arsenal, he and Tasha would hobble on down to the grocery store on the corner and pick up some chow for lunch and…

On the television screen, a row of topless dancers gyrated. Frisco lunged for the off switch. Hell! His cable must’ve come with some kind of men’s channel—the Playboy Channel or something similar. He honestly hadn’t known.

“Whoa, Tash. I’ve got to program that off the remote control,” he said, turning to the couch to face her.

Except she wasn’t sitting on the couch.

His living room was small, and one quick look assured him that she wasn’t even in the room. Hell, that was a relief. He limped toward the kitchen. She wasn’t there, either, and his relief turned to apprehension.

“Natasha…?” Frisco moved as quickly as he could down the tiny hallway toward the bedrooms and bathroom. He looked, and then he looked again, even glancing underneath his bed and in both closets.

The kid was gone.

His knee twinged as he used a skittering sort of hop and skip to propel himself back into the living room and out the screen door.

She wasn’t on the second-floor landing, or anywhere in immediate view in the condo courtyard. Frisco could see Mia Summerton still working, crouched down among the explosion of flowers that were her garden, a rather silly-looking floppy straw hat covering the top of her head.

“Hey!”

She looked up, startled and uncertain as to where his voice had come from.

“Up here.”

She was too far away for him to see exactly which shade of green or brown her eyes were right now. They were wide though. Her surprise quickly changed to wariness.

He could see a dark V of perspiration along the collar and down the front of her T-shirt. Her face glistened in the morning heat, and she reached up and wiped her forehead with the back of one arm. It left a smudge of dirt behind.

“Have you seen Natasha—you know, the little girl with red hair? Did she come down this way?”

Mia rinsed her hands in a bucket of water and stood up. “No—and I’ve been out here since you went upstairs.”

Frisco swore and started down past his condo door, toward the stairs at the other side of the complex.

“What happened?” Mia came up the stairs and caught up with him easily.

“I got out of the shower and she was gone,” he told her curtly, trying to move as quickly as he could. Damn, he didn’t want to deal with this. The morning sun had moved high into the sky and the brightness still made his head throb—as did every jarring step he took. It was true that living with him wasn’t going to be any kind of party, but the kid didn’t have to run away, for God’s sake.

But then he saw it.

Sparkling and deceptively pure looking, the alluring blue Pacific Ocean glimmered and danced, beckoning in the distance. The beach was several blocks away. Maybe the kid was like him and had salt water running through her veins. Maybe she caught one look at the water and headed for the beach. Maybe she wasn’t running away. Maybe she was just exploring. Or maybe she was pushing the edge of the obedience envelope, testing him to see just what she could get away with.

“Do you think she went far? Do you want me to get my car?” Mia asked.

Frisco turned to look at her and realized she was keeping pace with him. He didn’t want her help, but dammit, he needed it. If he was going to find Tasha quickly, four eyes were definitely better than two. And a car was far better than a bum knee and a cane when it came to getting someplace fast.

“Yeah, get your car,” he said gruffly. “I want to check down at the beach.”

Mia nodded once then ran ahead. She’d pulled her car up at the stairs that led to the parking lot before he’d even arrived at the bottom of them. She reached across the seat, unlocking the passenger’s side door of her little subcompact.

Frisco knew he wasn’t going to fit inside. He got in anyway, forcing his right knee to bend more than it comfortably could. Pain and its accompanying nausea washed over him, and he swore sharply—a repetitive, staccato chant, a profane mantra designed to bring him back from the edge.

He looked up to find Mia watching him, her face carefully expressionless.

“Drive,” he told her, his voice sounding harsh to his own ears. “Come on—I don’t even know if this kid can swim.”

She put the car into first gear and it lurched forward. She took the route the child might well have taken if she was, indeed, heading for the beach. Frisco scanned the crowded sidewalks. What exactly had the kid been wearing? Some kind of white shirt with a pattern on it…balloons? Or maybe flowers? And a bright-colored pair of shorts. Or was she wearing a skirt? Was it green or blue? He couldn’t remember, so he watched for her flaming red hair instead.

“Any sign of her?” Mia asked. “Do you want me to slow down?”

“No,” Frisco said. “Let’s get down to the water and make sure she’s not there first. We can work our way back more slowly.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Mia stepped on the gas, risking a glance at Alan Francisco. He didn’t seem to notice her military-style affirmative. He was gripping the handle up above the passenger window so tightly that his knuckles were white. The muscles in his jaw were just as tight, and he kept watching out the window, searching for any sign of his tiny niece in the summertime crowd.

He’d shaved, she noticed, glancing at him again. He looked slightly less dangerous without the stubble—but only slightly.

He’d hurt his knee getting into her car, and Mia knew from the paleness of his face underneath his tan that it hurt him still. But he didn’t complain. Other than his initial explosion of profanity, he hadn’t said a word about it. Finding his niece took priority over his pain. Obviously it took priority, since finding Natasha was important enough for him to call a temporary truce with Mia and accept her offer of help.

She was signaling to make the left into the beach parking lot when the man finally spoke.

“There she is! With some kid. At two o’clock—”

“Where?” Mia slowed, uncertain.

“Just stop the car!”

Francisco opened the door, and Mia slammed on the brakes, afraid he would jump out while the car was still moving. And then she saw Natasha. The little girl was at the edge of the parking lot, sitting on the top of a picnic table, paying solemn attention to a tall African-American teenage boy who was standing in front of her. Something about the way he wore his low-riding, baggy jeans was familiar. The kid turned, and Mia saw his face.

“That’s Thomas King,” she said. “That boy who’s with Natasha—I know him.”

But Francisco was already out of the car, moving as fast as he could with his limp and his cane toward the little girl.

There was nowhere to park. Mia watched through the windshield as the former Navy lieutenant descended upon his niece, pulling her none-too-gently from the table and setting her down on the ground behind him. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could tell that it wasn’t a friendly greeting. She saw Thomas bristle and turn belligerently toward Francisco, and she threw on her hazard lights and left the car right where it was in the middle of the lot as she jumped out and ran toward them.

She arrived just in time to hear Thomas say, “You raise one hand to that girl and I’ll clean the street with your face.”

Alan Francisco’s blue eyes had looked deadly and cold when Mia first ran up, but now they changed. Something shifted. “What are you talking about? I’m not going to hit her.” He sounded incredulous, as if such a thing would never have occurred to him.

“Then why are you shouting at her as if you are?” Thomas King was nearly Francisco’s height, but the former SEAL had at least fifty pounds of muscle over him. Still, the teenager stood his ground, his dark eyes flashing and narrowed, his lips tight.

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are,” Thomas persisted. He mimicked the older man. “‘What the hell are you doing here? Who the hell gave you permission to leave…’ I thought you were going to slam her—and she did, too.”

Frisco turned to look at Natasha. She had scurried underneath the picnic table, and she looked back at him, her eyes wide. “Tash, you didn’t think…”

But she had thought that. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she was cowering. Man, he felt sick.

He crouched down next to the table as best he could. “Natasha, did your mom hit you when she was angry?” He couldn’t believe softhearted Sharon would hurt a defenseless child, but liquor did funny things to even the gentlest of souls.

The little girl shook her head no. “Mommy didn’t,” she told him softly, “but Dwayne did once and I got a bloody lip. Mommy cried, and then we moved out.”

Thank God Sharon had had that much sense. Damn Dwayne to hell, whoever he was. What kind of monster would strike a five-year-old child?

What kind of monster would scare her to death by shouting at her the way he just had?

Frisco sat down heavily on the picnic table bench, glancing up at Mia. Her eyes were soft, as if she could somehow read his mind.

“Tash, I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his aching, bleary eyes. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“This some kind of friend of yours?” the black kid said to Mia, his tone implying she might want to be more selective in her choice of friends in the future.

“He’s in 2C,” Mia told the boy. “The mystery neighbor—Lt. Alan Francisco.” She directed her next words to Frisco. “This is Thomas King. He’s a former student of mine. He lives in 1N with his sister and her kids.”

A former…student? That meant that Mia Summerton was a teacher. Damn, if he had had teachers who looked like her, he might’ve actually gone to high school.

She was watching him now with wariness in her eyes, as if he were a bomb on a trick timer, ready to blow at any given moment.

“Lieutenant,” Thomas repeated. “Are you the badge?”

“No, I’m not a cop,” Frisco said, tearing his eyes away from Mia to glance at the kid. “I’m in the Navy….” He caught himself, and shook his head, closing his eyes briefly. “I was in the Navy.”

Thomas had purposely crossed his arms and tucked both hands underneath them to make sure Frisco knew he had no intention of shaking hands.

“The lieutenant was a SEAL,” Mia told Thomas. “That’s a branch of special operations—”

“I know what a SEAL is,” the kid interrupted. He turned to run a bored, cynical eye over Frisco. “One of those crazy freaks that ride the surf and crash their little rubber boats into the rocks down by the hotel in Coronado. Did you ever do that?”

Mia was watching him again, too. Damn but she was pretty. And every time she looked at him, every time their eyes met, Frisco felt a very solid slap of mutual sexual awareness. It was almost funny. With the possible exception of her exotic fashion-model face and trim, athletic body, everything about the woman irritated him. He didn’t want a nosy neighbor poking around in his life. He didn’t need a helpful do-gooder getting in his face and reminding him hourly of his limitations. He had no use for a disgustingly cheerful, flower-planting, antimilitary, unintimidatable, fresh-faced girl-next-door type.

But every single time he looked into her hazel eyes, he felt an undeniable surge of physical attraction. Intellectually, he may have wanted little more than to hide from her, but physically…Well, his body apparently had quite a different agenda. One that included moonlight gleaming on smooth, golden tanned skin, long dark hair trailing across his face, across his chest and lower.

Frisco managed a half smile, wondering if she could read his mind now. He couldn’t look away from her, even to answer Thomas’s question. “It’s called rock portage,” he said, “and, yeah. I did that during training.”

She didn’t blush. She didn’t look away from him. She just steadily returned his gaze, slightly lifting one exotic eyebrow. Frisco had the sense that she did, indeed, know exactly what he was thinking. Cold day in hell. She hadn’t said those exact words last night, but they echoed in his mind as clearly as if she had.

It was just as well. He was having a pure, raw-sex reaction to her, but she wasn’t the pure, raw type. He couldn’t picture her climbing into his bed and then slipping away before dawn, no words spoken, only intense pleasure shared. No, once she got into his bed, she would never get out. She had “girlfriend” written all over her, and that was the last thing he needed. She would fill his apartment with flowers from her garden and endless conversation and little notes with smiley faces on them. She’d demand tender kisses and a clean bathroom and heart-to-heart revelations and a genuine interest in her life.

How could he begin to be interested in her life, when he couldn’t even muster up the slightest enthusiasm for his own?

But he was getting way ahead of himself here. He was assuming that he’d have no trouble getting her into his bed in the first place. That might’ve been true five years ago, but he wasn’t exactly any kind of prize anymore. There was no way a girl like Mia would want to be saddled with a man who could barely even walk.

Cold day in hell. Frisco looked out at the blinding blueness of the ocean, feeling his eyes burn from the glare.

“What’s a SEAL doing with a kid who can’t swim?” Thomas asked. Most of the anger had left the teenager’s eyes, leaving behind a cynical disdain and a seemingly ancient weariness that made him look far older than his years. He had scars on his face, one bisecting one of his eyebrows, the other marking one of his high, pronounced cheekbones. That, combined with the fact that his nose had been broken more than once, gave him a battle-worn look that erased even more of his youth. But except for a few minor slang expressions, Thomas didn’t speak the language of the street. He had no discernible accent of any kind, and Frisco wondered if the kid had worked as hard to delete that particular tie with his past and his parents as he himself had.

“Natasha is the lieutenant’s niece,” Mia explained. “She’s going to stay with him for a few weeks. She just arrived today.”

“From Mars, right?” Thomas looked under the table and made a face at Natasha.

She giggled. “Thomas thinks I’m from Mars ’cause I didn’t know what that water was.” Natasha slithered on her belly out from underneath the table. The sand stuck to her clothes, and Frisco realized that she was wet.

“A little Martian girl is the only kind of girl I can think of who hasn’t seen the ocean before,” Thomas said. “She didn’t even seem to know kids shouldn’t go into the water alone.”

Mia watched a myriad of emotions cross Alan Francisco’s face. The lifeguard’s flag was out today, signaling a strong undertow and dangerous currents. She saw him look at Thomas and register the fact that the teenager’s jeans were wet up to his knees.

“You went in after her,” he said, his low voice deceptively even.

Thomas was as nonchalant. “I’ve got a five-year-old niece, too.”

Francisco pulled himself painfully up with his cane. He held out his hand to Thomas. “Thanks, man. I’m sorry about before. I’m…new at this kid thing.”

Mia held her breath. She knew Thomas well, and if he’d decided that Alan Francisco was the enemy, he’d never shake his hand.

But Thomas hesitated only briefly before he clasped the older man’s hand.

Again, a flurry of emotions flickered in Francisco’s eyes, and again he tried to hide it all. Relief. Gratitude. Sorrow. Always sorrow and always shame. But it was all gone almost before it was even there. When Alan Francisco tried to hide his emotions, he succeeded, tucking them neatly behind the ever-present anger that simmered inside of him.

He managed to use that anger to hide everything quite nicely—everything except the seven-thousand-degree nuclear-powered sexual attraction he felt for her. That he put on display, complete with neon signs and million-dollar-a-minute advertising.

Good grief, last night when he’d made that crack about wanting her to share his bed, she’d thought he’d been simply trying to scare her off.

She had been dead wrong. The way he’d looked at her just minutes ago had nearly singed her eyebrows off.

And the truly stupid thing was that the thought of having a physical relationship with this man didn’t send her running for her apartment and the heavy-duty dead bolt that she’d had installed on her door. She couldn’t figure out why. Lt. Alan Francisco was a real-life version of G.I. Joe, he was probably a male chauvinist, he drank so much that he still looked like hell at noon on a weekday and he carried a seemingly permanent chip on his shoulder. Yet for some bizarre reason, Mia had no trouble imagining herself pulling him by the hand into her bedroom and melting together with him on her bed.

It had nothing to do with his craggy-featured, handsome face and enticingly hard-muscled body. Well, yes, okay, so she wasn’t being completely honest with herself. It had at least a little bit to do with that. It was true—the fact that the man looked as if he should have his own three-month segment in a hunk-of-the-month calendar was not something she’d failed to notice. And notice, and notice and notice.

But try as she might, it was the softness in his eyes when he spoke to Natasha and his crooked, painful attempts to smile at the little girl that she found hard to resist. She was a sucker for kindness, and she suspected that beneath this man’s outer crust of anger and bitterness, and despite his sometimes crude language and rough behavior, there lurked the kindest of souls.

“Here’s the deal about the beach,” Alan Francisco was saying to his niece. “You never come down here without a grown-up, and you never, ever go into the water alone.”

“That’s what Thomas said,” Tasha told him. “He said I might’ve drownded.”

“Thomas is right,” Francisco told her.

“What’s drownded?”

“Drowned,” he corrected her. “You ever try to breathe underwater?”

Tash shook her head no, and her red curls bounced.

“Well, don’t try it. People can’t breathe underwater. Only fish can. And you don’t look like a fish to me.”

The little girl giggled, but persisted. “What’s drownded?”

Mia crossed her arms, wondering if Francisco would try to sidestep the issue again, or if he would take the plunge and discuss the topic of death with Natasha.

“Well,” he said slowly, “if someone goes into the water, and they can’t swim, or they hurt themselves, or the waves are too high, then the water might go over their head. Then they can’t breathe. Normally, when the water goes over your head it’s no big deal. You hold your breath. And then you just swim to the surface and stick your nose and mouth out and take a breath of air. But like I said, maybe this person doesn’t know how to swim, or maybe their leg got a cramp, or the water’s too rough, so they can’t get up to the air. And if there’s no air for them to breathe…well, they’ll die. They’ll drown. People need to breathe air to live.”

Natasha gazed unblinkingly at her uncle, her head tilted slightly to one side. “I don’t know how to swim,” she finally said.

“Then I’ll teach you,” Francisco said unhesitatingly. “Everyone should know how to swim. But even when you do know how to swim, you still don’t swim alone. That way, if you do get hurt, you got a friend who can save you from drowning. Even in the SEALs we didn’t swim alone. We had something called swim buddies—a friend who looked out for you, and you’d look out for him, too. You and me, Tash, for the next few weeks, we’re going to be swim buddies, okay?”

“I’m outta here, Ms. S. I don’t want to be late for work.”

Mia turned to Thomas, glad he’d broken into her reverie. She’d been standing there like an idiot, gazing at Alan Francisco, enthralled by his conversation with his niece. “Be careful,” she told him.

“Always am.”

Natasha crouched down in the sand and began pushing an old Popsicle stick around as if it were a car. Thomas bent over and ruffled her hair. “See you later, Martian girl.” He nodded to Francisco. “Lieutenant.”

The SEAL pulled himself up and off the bench. “Call me Frisco. And thanks again, man.”

Thomas nodded once more and then was gone.

“He works part-time as a security guard at the university,” Mia told Francisco. “That way he can audit college courses in his spare time—spare time that doesn’t exist because he also works a full day as a landscaper’s assistant over in Coronado.”

He was looking at her again, his steel blue eyes shuttered and unreadable this time. He hadn’t told her she could call him Frisco. Maybe it was a guy thing. Maybe SEALs weren’t allowed to let women call them by their nicknames. Or maybe it was more personal than that. Maybe Alan Francisco didn’t want her as a friend. He’d certainly implied as much last night.

Mia looked back at her car, still sitting in the middle of the parking lot. “Well,” she said, feeling strangely awkward. She had no problem holding her own with this man when he came on too strong or acted rudely. But when he simply stared at her like this, with no expression besides the faintest glimmer of his ever-present anger on his face, she felt off balance and ill at ease, like a schoolgirl with an unrequited crush. “I’m glad we found—you found Natasha…” She glanced back at her car again, more to escape his scrutiny than to reassure herself it was still there. “Can I give you a lift back to the condo?”

Frisco shook his head. “No, thanks.”

“I could adjust the seat, see if I could make it more comfortable for you to—”

“No, we’ve got some shopping to do.”

“But Natasha’s all wet.”

“She’ll dry. Besides, I could use the exercise.”

Exercise? Was he kidding? “What you could use is a week or two off your feet, in bed.”

Just like that, he seemed to come alive, his mouth twisting into a sardonic half smile. His eyes sparked with heat and he lowered his voice, leaning forward to speak directly into her ear. “Are you volunteering to keep me there? I knew sooner or later you’d change your mind.”

He knew nothing of the sort. He’d only said that to rattle and irritate her. Mia refused to let him see just how irritated his comment had made her. Instead, she stepped even closer, looking up at him, letting her gaze linger on his mouth before meeting his eyes, meaning to make him wonder, and to make him squirm before she launched her attack.

But she launched nothing as she looked into his eyes. His knowing smile had faded, leaving behind only heat. It magnified, doubling again and again, increasing logarithmically as their gazes locked, burning her down to her very soul. She knew that he could see more than just a mere reflection of his desire in her eyes, and she knew without a doubt that she’d given too much away. This fire that burned between them was not his alone.

The sun was beating down on them and her mouth felt parched. She tried to swallow, tried to moisten her dry lips, tried to walk away. But she couldn’t move.

He reached out slowly. She could see it coming—he was going to touch her, pull her close against the hard muscles of his chest and cover her mouth with his own in a heated, heart-stopping, nuclear meltdown of a kiss.

But he touched her only lightly, tracing the path of a bead of sweat that had trailed down past her ear, down her neck and across her collarbone before it disappeared beneath the collar of her T-shirt. He touched her gently, only with one finger, but in many ways it was far more sensual, far more intimate than even a kiss.

The world seemed to spin and Mia almost reached for him. But sanity kicked in, thank God, and instead she backed away.

“When I change my mind,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper, “it’ll be a cold day in July.”

She turned on legs that were actually trembling—trembling—and headed toward her car. He made no move to follow, but as she got inside and drove away, she could see him in the rearview mirror, still watching her.

Had she convinced him? She doubted it. She wasn’t sure she’d even managed to convince herself.

CHAPTER 5

“Okay, Tash,” Frisco called down from the second-floor landing where he’d finally finished lashing the framework to the railing. “Ready for a test run?”

She nodded, and he let out the crank and lowered the rope down to her.

The realization had come to him while they were grocery shopping. He wasn’t going to be able to carry the bags of food he bought up the stairs to his second-floor condominium. And Tasha, as helpful as she tried to be when she wasn’t wandering off, couldn’t possibly haul all the food they needed up a steep flight of stairs. She could maybe handle one or two lightweight bags, but certainly no more than that.

But Frisco had been an expert in unconventional warfare for the past ten years. He could come up with alternative, creative solutions to damn near any situation—including this one. Of course, this wasn’t war, which made it that much easier. Whatever he came up with, he wasn’t going to have to pull it off while underneath a rain of enemy bullets.

It hadn’t taken him long to come up with a solution. He and Tasha had stopped at the local home building supply store and bought themselves the fixings for a rope-and-pulley system. Frisco could’ve easily handled just a rope to pull things up to the second-floor landing, but with a crank and some pulleys, Natasha would be able to use it, too.

The plastic bags filled with the groceries they’d bought were on the ground, directly underneath the rope to which he’d attached a hook.

“Hook the rope to one of the bags,” Frisco commanded his niece, leaning over the railing. “Right through the handles—that’s right.”

Mia Summerton was watching him.

He’d been hyperaware of her from the moment he and Tash had climbed out of the taxi with all of their groceries. She’d been back in her garden again, doing God knows what and watching him out of the corner of her eye.

She’d watched as he’d transferred the frozen food and perishables into a backpack he’d bought and carried them inside. She’d watched as he’d done the same with the building supplies and set them out on the second-floor landing. She’d watched as he awkwardly lowered himself down to sit on the stairs with his tool kit and began to work.

She’d watched, but she’d been careful never to let him catch her watching.

Just the same, he felt her eyes following him. And he could damn near smell her awareness.

Man, whatever it was that they’d experienced back on the beach…He shook his head in disbelief. Whatever it was, he wanted some more. A whole lot of more. She’d looked at him, and he’d been caught in an amazing vortex of animal magnetism. He hadn’t been able to resist touching her, hadn’t been able to stop thinking about exactly where that droplet of perspiration had gone after it had disappeared from view beneath her shirt. It hadn’t taken much imagination to picture it traveling slowly between her breasts, all the way down to her softly indented belly button.

He’d wanted to dive in after it.

It had been damn near enough to make him wonder if he’d seriously underrated smiley-face-endowed notes.

But he’d seen the shock in Mia’s eyes. She hadn’t expected the attraction that had surged between them. She didn’t want it, didn’t want him. Certainly not for a single, mind-blowing sexual encounter, and definitely not for anything longer term. That was no big surprise.

“I can’t get it,” Natasha called up to him, her face scrunched with worry.

Mia had kept to herself ever since they’d arrived home. Her offers to help had been noticeably absent. But now she stood up, apparently unable to ignore the note of anxiety in Tasha’s voice.

“May I help you with that, Natasha?” She spoke directly to the little girl. She didn’t even bother to look up at Frisco.

Frisco wiped the sweat from his face as he watched Tasha step back and Mia attach the hook to the plastic handles of the grocery bags. It had to be close to ninety degrees in the shade, but when Mia finally did glance up at him there was a definite wintry chill in the air.

She was trying her damnedest to act as if she had not even the slightest interest in him. Yet she’d spent the past hour and a half watching him. Why?

Maybe whatever this was that constantly drew his eyes in her direction, whatever this was that had made him hit his thumb with his hammer more times than he could count, whatever this was that made every muscle in his body tighten in anticipation when he so much as thought about her, whatever this uncontrollable sensation was—maybe she felt it, too.

It was lust and desire, amplified a thousandfold, mutated into something far more powerful.

He didn’t want her. He didn’t want the trouble, didn’t want the hassle, didn’t want the grief. And yet, at the same time, he wanted her desperately. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman before.

If he’d been the type to get frightened, he would’ve been terrified.

“We better stand back,” Mia warned Tasha as Frisco began turning the crank.

It went up easily enough, the bag bulging and straining underneath the weight. But then, as if in slow motion, the bottom of the plastic bag gave out, and its contents went plummeting to the ground.

Frisco swore loudly as a six-pack shattered into pieces of brown glass, the beer mixing unappetizingly with cranberry juice from a broken half-gallon container, four flattened tomatoes and an avocado that never again would see the light of day. The loaf of Italian bread that had also been in the bag had, thankfully, bounced free and clear of the disaster.

Mia looked down at the wreckage, and then up at Alan Francisco. He’d cut short his litany of curses and stood silently, his mouth tight and his eyes filled with far more despair than the situation warranted.

But she knew he was seeing more than a mess on the courtyard sidewalk as he looked over the railing. She knew he was seeing his life, shattered as absolutely as those beer bottles.

Still he took a deep breath, and forced himself to smile down into Natasha’s wide eyes.

“We’re on the right track here,” he said, lowering the rope again. “We’re definitely very close to outrageous success.” Using his cane, he started down the stairs. “How about we try double bagging? Or a paper bag inside of the plastic one?”

“How about cloth bags?” Mia suggested.

“Back away, Tash—that’s broken glass,” Alan called warningly. “Yeah, cloth bags would work, but I don’t have any.”

Alan, Mia thought. When had he become Alan instead of Francisco? Was it when he looked down at his niece and made himself smile despite his pain, or was it earlier, at the beach parking lot, when he’d nearly lit Mia on fire with a single look?

Mia ran up the stairs past him, suddenly extremely aware that he’d taken off his shirt nearly an hour ago. His smooth tanned skin and hard muscles had been hard to ignore even from a distance. Up close it was impossible for Mia not to stare.

He wore only a loose-fitting, bright-colored bathing suit, and it rode low on his lean hips. His stomach was a washboard of muscles, and his skin gleamed with sweat. And that other tattoo on his bicep was a sea serpent, not a mermaid, as she’d first thought.

“I’ve got some bags,” Mia called out, escaping into the coolness of her apartment, stopping for a moment to take a long, shaky breath. What was it about this man that made her heart beat double time? He was intriguing; she couldn’t deny that. And he exuded a wildness, a barely tamed sexuality that constantly managed to captivate her. But so what? He was sexy. He was gorgeous. He was working hard to overcome a raftload of serious problems, making him seem tragic and fascinating. But these were not the criteria she usually used to decide whether or not to enter into a sexual relationship with a man.

The fact was that she wasn’t going to sleep with him, she told herself firmly. Definitely probably not. She rolled her eyes in self-disgust. Definitely probably…?

It had to be the full moon making her feel this way. Or—as her mother might say—maybe her astrological planets were lined up in some strange configuration, making her feel restless and reckless. Or maybe as she neared thirty, her body was changing, releasing hormones in quantities that she could no longer simply ignore.

Whatever the reason—mystical or scientific—the fact remained that she would not have sex with a stranger. Whatever happened between them, it wasn’t going to happen until she’d had a chance to get to know this man. And once she got to know him and his vast collection of both physical and psychological problems, she had a feeling that staying away from him wasn’t going to be so very difficult.

She took her cloth grocery bags from the closet and went back outside. Alan was crouched awkwardly down on the sidewalk, attempting to clean up the mess.

“Alan, wait. Don’t try to pick up the broken glass,” she called down to him. “I’ve got work gloves and a shovel you can use to clean it up.” She didn’t dare offer to do the work for him. She knew he would refuse. “I’ll get ’em. Here—catch.”

She threw the bags over the railing, and he caught them with little effort as she turned to go back inside.

Frisco looked at the printed message on the outside of the bags Mia had tossed him and rolled his eyes. Of course it had to be something political. Shaking his head, he sat down on the grass and began transferring the undemolished remainder of the groceries into the cloth bags.

“‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we fully funded education, and the government had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?”’ he quoted from the bags when Mia came back down the stairs.

She was holding a plastic trash bag, a pair of work gloves and what looked rather suspiciously like a pooper-scooper. She gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I thought you would like that.”

“I’d be glad to get into a knock-down, drag-out argument about the average civilian’s ignorance regarding military spending some other time,” he told her. “But right now I’m not really in the mood.”

“How about if I pretend you didn’t just call me ignorant, and you pretend I don’t think you’re some kind of rigid, militaristic, dumb-as-a-stone professional soldier?” she said much too sweetly.

Frisco had to laugh. It was a deep laugh, a belly laugh, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. He was still smiling when he looked up at her. “That sounds fair,” he said. “And who knows—maybe we’re both wrong.”

Mia smiled back at him, but it was tentative and wary.

“I didn’t get to thank you for helping me this morning,” he said. “I’m sorry if I was…”

Mia gazed at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence. Unfriendly? Worried? Upset? Angry? Inappropriate? Too sexy for words? She wondered exactly what he was apologizing for.

* * *

“Rude,” he finally finished. He glanced over at Natasha. She was lying on her back in the shade of a palm tree, staring up at the sky through both her spread fingers and the fronds, singing some unintelligible and probably improvised song. “I’m in way over my head here,” he admitted with another crooked smile. “I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a kid, and…” He shrugged. “Even if I did, these days I’m not exactly in the right place psychologically, you know?”

“You’re doing great.”

The look he shot her was loaded with amusement and disbelief. “She was under my care for not even thirty minutes and I managed to lose her.” He shifted his weight, trying to get more comfortable, wincing slightly at the pain in his leg. “While we were walking home, I talked to her about setting up some rules and regs—basic stuff, like she has to tell me if she’s going outside the condo, and she’s got to play inside the courtyard. She looked at me like I was speaking French.” He paused, glancing back at the little girl again. “As far as I can tell, Sharon had absolutely no rules. She let the kid go where she pleased, when she pleased. I’m not sure anything I said sunk in.”

He pulled himself up with his cane, and carried one of the filled cloth bags toward the hook and rope, sidestepping the puddle of broken glass, sodden cardboard and cranberry juiced-beer.

“You’ve got to give her time, Alan,” Mia said. “You’ve got to remember that living here without her mom around has to be as new and as strange to her as it is to you.”

He turned to look back at her as he attached the hook to the cloth handles. “You know,” he said, “generally people don’t call me Alan. I’m Frisco. I’ve been Frisco for years.” He started up the stairs. “I mean, Sharon—my sister—she calls me Alan, but everyone else calls me Frisco, from my swim buddy to my CO….”

Frisco looked down at Mia. She was standing in the courtyard, watching him and not trying to hide it this time. Her gardening clothes were almost as filthy as his, and several strands of her long, dark hair had escaped from her ponytail. How come he felt like a sweat-sodden reject from hell, while she managed to look impossibly beautiful?

“CO?” she repeated.

“Commanding Officer,” he explained, turning the crank. The bag went up, and this time it made it all the way to the second floor.

Mia applauded and Natasha came over to do several clumsy forward rolls in the grass in celebration.

Frisco reached over the railing and pulled the bag up and onto the landing next to him.

“Lower the rope. I’ll hook up the next one,” Mia said.

It went up just as easily.

“Come on, Tash. Come upstairs and help me put away these supplies,” Frisco called, and the little girl came barreling up the stairs. He turned back to look down at Mia. “I’ll be down in a minute to clean up that mess.”

“Alan, you know, I don’t have anything better to do and I can—”

“Frisco,” he interrupted her. “Not Alan. And I’m cleaning it up, not you.”

“Do you mind if I call you Alan? I mean, after all, it is your name—”

“Yeah, I mind. It’s not my name. Frisco’s my name. Frisco is who I became when I joined the SEALs.” His voice got softer. “Alan is nobody.”

* * *

Frisco woke to the sound of a blood-chilling scream.

He was rolling out of bed, onto the floor, reaching, searching for his weapon, even before he was fully awake. But he had no firearm hidden underneath his pillow or down alongside his bed—he’d locked them all up in a trunk in his closet. He wasn’t in the jungle on some dangerous mission, catching a combat nap. He was in his bedroom, in San Felipe, California, and the noise that had kicked him out of bed came from the powerful vocal cords of his five-year-old niece, who was supposed to be sound asleep on the couch in the living room.

Frisco stumbled to the wall and flipped on the light. Reaching this time for his cane, he opened his bedroom door and staggered down the hallway toward the living room.

He could see Natasha in the dim light that streamed down the hallway from his bedroom. She was crying, sitting up in a tangle of sheets on the couch, sweat matting her hair.

“Hey,” Frisco said. “What the h…uh…What’s going on, Tash?”

The kid didn’t answer. She just kept on crying.

Frisco sat down next to her, but all she did was cry.

“You want a hug or something?” he asked, and she shook her head no and kept on crying.

“Um,” Frisco said, uncertain of what to do, or what to say.

There was a tap on the door.

“You want to get that?” Frisco asked Natasha.

She didn’t respond.

“I guess I’ll get it then,” he said, unlocking the bolt and opening the heavy wooden door.

Mia stood on the other side of the screen. She was wearing a white bathrobe and her hair was down loose around her shoulders. “Is everything all right?”

“No, I’m not murdering or torturing my niece,” Frisco said flatly and closed the door. But he opened it again right away and pushed open the screen. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Tash’s On/Off switch is, would you?”

“It’s dark in here,” Mia said, stepping inside. “Maybe you should turn on all the lights so that she can see where she is.”

Frisco turned on the bright overhead light—and realized he was standing in front of his neighbor and his niece in nothing but the new, tight-fitting, utilitarian white briefs he’d bought during yesterday’s second trip to the grocery store. Good thing he’d bought them, or he quite possibly would have been standing there buck naked.

Whether it was the sudden light or the sight of him in his underwear, Frisco didn’t know, but Natasha stopped crying, just like that. She still sniffled, and tears still flooded her eyes, but her sirenlike wail was silenced.

Mia was clearly thrown by the sight of him—and determined to act as if visiting with a neighbor who was in his underwear was the most normal thing in the world. She sat down on the couch next to Tasha and gave her a hug. Frisco excused himself and headed down the hall toward his bedroom and a pair of shorts.

It wasn’t really that big a deal—Lucky O’Donlon, Frisco’s swim buddy and best friend in the SEAL unit, had bought Frisco a tan-through French bathing suit from the Riviera that covered far less of him than these briefs. Of course, the minuscule suit wasn’t something he’d ever be caught dead in….

He threw on his shorts and came back out into the living room.

“It must’ve been a pretty bad nightmare,” he heard Mia saying to Tasha.

“I fell into a big, dark hole,” Tash said in a tiny voice in between a very major case of hiccups. “And I was screaming and screaming and screaming, and I could see Mommy way, way up at the top, but she didn’t hear me. She had on her mad face, and she just walked away. And then water went up and over my head, and I knew I was gonna drownd.”

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