Hero (Navy SEALs Romance Book 2) Read online

  Now she laughed out loud. "You did say 'I won't hurt you'."

  He squeeze his eyes closed, giving her an instant to take in the whole lovely package again. Mmm.

  "I didn't mean to," he said, and she laughed again.

  "Just a general training run." Actually it was kind of just a general run. When she had time to hit the trails for longer runs, she did. Without question. But admitting that was tantamount to bragging.

  "Care for some company?"

  She frowned. "We're going back to different locations. I'll take you out of your way." But she'd been still long enough now she could feel the doneness of the run. Not exhaustion, just a finished feel. Then again, she was miles from where she'd started. If she'd been alone she'd have run back. There really wasn't any other choice.

  He must have seen it on her face. "Kind of a long way back?"

  "No offense, but stopping sometimes stops me." She wanted to add the conversation had been nice, but that sounded flakey. And fake. The conversation had been full of misconceptions and holes. The nice thing was how attractive he was and that he didn't act like he knew it.

  "Look," he said into her thoughts. "I run too, though from the sound of it, not like you do. My ride's at the trail head and I'm only about four miles from here. We could run back together and I could drive you to your car."

  There were no alarm bells going off with the offer, just the feeling that if she was wrong it would be worse than just winding up a cautionary tale. Possibly a dead cautionary tale. That would suck more than the ordinary dead from misadventure would suck because she wanted him to be the guy he seemed to be.

  "Girls are warned since before they're born not to get into vehicles with strangers." Helpless shrug. "Probably in every other instance there's a reason for that."

  He didn't look offended. He grinned. "My ride's an old Indian classic I fixed up. I've got a spare helmet. Ever heard of anyone being abducted on a motorcycle?"

  He sounded so reasonable she laughed. "I'd appreciate the ride, in that case." She eyed him up and down, a nice excuse for a great exercise. "Think you can keep up?"

  He growled in response, and passed her in a flash, heading down the trail, kicking up dirt. Hannah whooped and followed him, passing him on the first corner.

  Neither of them took the lead for long. They traded back and forth the entire run. They were nicely matched and no matter how much Hannah liked winning, she had to admit there were benefits to being behind in this race.

  What a great view.

  Chapter 2

  Knox followed Hannah down a stretch of trail. She had a long, loping style that looked like she managed to conserve energy and probably could even when running flat out uphill. Certainly she hadn't been overly winded when she'd careened into him.

  They were well matched as runners. He thought he was probably faster than she was, and he took more chances on the downhill sections, but she definitely had him at endurance. He'd run seventeen miles before, of course – he'd entered a couple marathons and found them grueling more because of the enforced pack style of the run than from the run itself – but he didn't go out with the intention of running something like thirty-five miles for the hell of it. Though he'd heard of people who did.

  They were called crazy.

  He had to get to know her better.

  The Indian was where he'd left it, deceptively calm in the sunlight. He could open the bike up easily over 100 on a straightaway and had on occasion. He unlocked the helmets while Hannah paced in a circle, not breathing particularly hard but calming down and cooling off. When she circled back his way, he tossed her the helmet.

  "Been on a bike before?"

  "My brothers taught me to ride back home," she said, catching the helmet easily.

  "Where's home?"

  "Here," she said. "Nowadays. San Diego anyway. Used to be Arizona. What about you?"

  "Sacramento. Just moved down the coast a bit." He finished his own helmet, threw a leg over the bike and waited for her to climb on behind him. "Where am I going?"

  She pointed, one arm around his waist, the other directing as they moved onto the highway and up enough miles he realized her run, weaving though paths that doubled and trebled back on themselves, had probably been somewhat longer than the seventeen miles she claimed. Everything about her was not understated but amazing and yet hidden.

  He liked that.

  He could use a running buddy.

  So when they stopped beside her battered Jeep Renegade he said, "So if you're not training for anything specific, how about a nice easy total of twenty mile run some time?" He liked the fiery challenge in her eyes when she said, "Only twenty?" Liked it better when she added, "You look like you can run farther than that."

  "I can, but there needs to be beer and pizza at the end of it."

  That got him a grin. "Want to run next weekend? Or shorter during the week? What do you do?"

  "SEArch & Rescue. That's the name of the company and the description all in one."

  She leaned against the side of the Jeep and an errant breeze blew some of her long honey colored hair into her face. He resisted the impulse to brush it back out of her way.

  "So your SEAL days are behind you? No, wait, you said reserve. Does that get in the way of searching and rescuing?"

  "Not so far."

  "Well, thanks for rescuing me. Sometimes the energy drops without warning. I can always call a friend or a cab, but I so don't want to."

  "Ever had to?" He was prolonging the conversation.

  "Twice before I started carrying Gu with me. Or carbs of some kind." She rummaged in a fanny pack he hadn't seen under her t-shirt. "Can I interest you in half a squashed peanut butter sandwich?" The thing in the baggie didn't look like food.

  "Um, no. Thanks. I think. So I'll text you about a run?"

  She took a bite of sandwich, happier than she'd been in a while. Running buddies were hard to find. This guy looked like he could keep up with her and he was definitely easy on the eyes. "Great!"

  He didn't leave, though. She was going to start spouting nonsense any minute now, put her foot in her mouth, say something stupid, so why didn't he go before that happened?

  "Um, can I get your number?"

  Oh. Maybe that was why.

  He waited, like a gentleman, until she pulled away first, presumably making sure he wasn't stranding her in a Jeep that didn't work. She could conceivably have run out of the area and back to the closest town if she didn't feel like calling somebody.

  But there was something warm and nice about having him wait to make certain she was all right.

  She drove back to her apartment and called her girls.

  "So wait, he comes out of nowhere and you run into him on a deserted path in the middle of nowhere and no one knows you're there or even that you've gone for a run and you don't panic? You don't, I don't know, run the hell out of there?" Jenna's smooth, tan forearms were wrapped around her legs, her chin on her knees. She was shivering on the tiny apartment's tiny deck as the sun went down over the Pacific. Not that they could see it from there, but the night was creeping up on them and the deck getting cold.

  Hannah stood and switched on the outdoor heater, picked up a beach towel that had been drying on the railing and draped it over Jenna.

  Who refused to be distracted. "You have some kind of death wish."

  From her place holding down the only actual chaise lounge chair Alexa said, "It's not that bad, Jen. Just because our Hannah routinely puts herself into the path of psychos and rattlesnakes – "

  "Let's not forget psycho rattlesnakes," Molly put in, tucking her long dark hair behind her ears and arriving on the deck with beers for everyone. "Are we still talking about this? Because, for sure you are all missing the point."

  "Which is?" Alexa asked. Blond, round, cherubic, acidic, sarcastic, smart. She was the one who challenged everything.

  "Hot guy," Molly said, and turned expectantly to Hannah.

  Who sighed. "Yes. H
ot guy. Really hot. Smoking. And he asked me to go running. Not on a date. Not to dinner. Not to a movie. Not to a club. Not sailing. He asked me to go running." She waited and saw no change in expression in her girls. "Come on. This is buddy territory."

  "I thought you said he worked search and rescue with his old teammates," Molly said suspiciously.

  "I did. He does. So?"

  "So, girlfriend, he's got all the buddies he needs."

  Maybe he did. But when he texted her on Monday about running on Wednesday it was definitely a challenge and definitely a date to go running. Not dinner, movies, clubbing. Running.

  Not a problem, she told herself. She wasn't looking for a relationship. The last one had ended amicably when her boyfriend Steve and she had discovered simultaneously they were bored. Nothing terrible, they just weren't matched right. Hannah didn't like to keep house, wasn't looking to get married, didn't want children, liked her job, loved to run. Steve had kept a nearly sterile living space (calling it a house or a home was going too far, she'd thought), did want to marry, did want children, hated his job and wasn't even looking at alternatives, apparently fixed for life as a CPA who was bored by numbers.

  He didn't like to run.

  He didn't even like to go outside.

  Amicable end of relationship. And she wasn't looking for another. And she'd told Alexa, Molly and Jenna she was going running with a buddy.

  So she went running with a buddy.

  Wearing only a little more sweat proof mascara than she usually did.

  "So is your whole family still in Sacramento?"

  They'd been moving for two hours already, having covered what Knox estimated might be sixteen or seventeen miles, and she was conversing like they were sitting in a restaurant chatting.

  Of course Knox wasn't panting either. Nice to be in shape. But subjectively this run was still long. He was feeling it.

  "My parents are moving to the opposite coast," he said. His arms swung easily at his sides, his feet pounded rhythmically. He hadn't run much since he left the SEALs. Now it seemed automatic and welcoming somehow to go back to it. "Florida," he said in answer to the confused look she threw him. "My little sister's in college in Las Vegas. One of my brothers is in Vegas if she needs anything. My other brother is in Sac still."

  "Spread out," Hannah said. There was just a touch of edge to her voice.

  "Am I pushing you?" He left the challenge out of his voice. They were running through a beach neighborhood, easy on sandy asphalt, beautiful September day in the mid seventies. If he challenged her he'd either make her mad or make her react. He wasn't looking for either outcome.

  What are you looking for? he asked himself and had no satisfactory answer. A friend, maybe. Somebody outside his current circle of friends, all of whom had been with him on the Syrian coast when their helicopter was shot down and they'd lost so many good men. Now he worked with Tanner, Angel, Jake and Mike, SEArch & Rescue was doing well, amazing how much trouble people could get into and need rescuing out of on a daily basis. But Knox didn't see his old friends. They didn't know what to make of him. He was only twenty-seven but his friends were all settling into engagements and marriages and some had kids already and they looked at Knox as they might look like a wild animal come amongst them – beautiful, graceful, natural, but terrifying.

  Not looking for a relationship.

  "You're faster than I am," Hannah said, answering his question about pushing. There was only a little edge in her voice.

  "That's fair." Even if she couldn't hear it, he could hear the hitch in his own voice. He could definitely feel the strain in his lungs. "You're all over me in exertion."

  The street around them had changed. They were in a kind of backwater of shops, mom and pop places, restaurants and non-chain convenience stores, paperback beach-read shops, places that rented surfboards. Hannah caught up so she was a shoulder's width past him and said, "So I propose a compromise."

  "Between speed and endurance?" He gave that a second, turning it over for logic and finding none. "What would that be?"

  "Stopping," Hannah laughed, and fell out of the run, starting to walk off the build up of lactic acid, shaking her legs and pulling her hair out of its ponytail before putting it back up. He watched the play of muscle in her arms, the way her legs flexed as she shook them. Nice. She was definitely better looking than his other buddies.

  "Right here?" He stared around them.

  "Well, you did say you didn't want to run so far without there being beer and pizza at the end of the run." She bowed and gestured to him, showing off a ramshackle restaurant with faded red and white curtains and a sign over the door reading Mario's. "Best pizza, beer on tap. My treat."

  He'd actually made the quip about beer and pizza being at the end of thirty-five miles, but that was OK. His legs, now that he'd stopped, were sending up alarm signals letting him know they'd noticed the hiatus in running and even more so the return to it. "You're on," he said. "But didn't you want to run twenty?"

  She gave him a big grin, her face turning gamine. "Yeah. But the twenty-two we just did will do."

  He stared at her, open mouthed, then, "Nah. Nah, no way, we're only around seventeen or eighteen best. No way we just ran twenty-two."

  "OK," she said. "You want to run it back and be sure?"

  "So you say this place has great pizza?" he said, making her laugh.

  Over the red and white checked oilcloth on the table he listened to her talk about her parents in Arizona and her friends in Southern California, about her job with the animals at the no-kill shelter and her college years training to do something totally different, maybe law school. She talked about starting running, and about school in Arizona, and about friends still there and missed, and parents still there and not missed so much.

  "You talk now," she finally said, laughing. "I've been going on and on."

  "Gave me time to eat the pizza," he said. "I'll get the second one."

  She didn't argue.

  Buddies didn't argue about chowing down. So obviously she was a buddy like he'd told himself.

  So why was he so aware of her smile, her eyes, her long fingered hands, the muscles in her shoulders?

  The way she watched him.

  John Knox was every bit as hot as Molly had been laughingly calling him, all from her description. His body was an undeniable turn on. There couldn't be a woman alive who wouldn't want to peel off whatever horrible ratty t-shirt he was wearing and run her hands over the taut muscles of belly, chest, those arms. He had strong hands, obviously worked with them. The nails were cared for but broken in places. The knuckles were calloused. His dark eyes kept catching her attention and then it would wander again, back to those abs and the idea that the V of his torso would lead down, down into those shorts, flimsy tiny nylon running shorts that –

  "For BUD/S training, but not really much since then," he was saying about running when she emerged from her carb and hot guy coma. "What races do you run?"

  "There's a bunch up and down the coast, all seasons and lengths, but I am fixated on doing Badwater," she said, hearing the longing in her own voice.

  He gave her a long look. "The only Badwater I know is in Death Valley."

  "That's the one. Every July there's an ultramarathon there that starts at the lowest point in the continental US and goes to the portal of Mt. Whitney, which I think is the highest point in the U.S."

  "Death Valley in July. Sure, why not?" And then, watching her like she'd just grown a second head, "How far is that?"

  "One hundred thirty-five miles. There's a sixty hour cutoff unless they've lowered it when I wasn't looking. I figure I should be ready for it in about three years. There's a lottery to get in."

  That made him just laugh as the owner came back to their table with the second pizza. "There are that many people who want to run through Death Valley in July?"

  "Lots of crazies out there," she said lightly, grabbing a slice of pepperoni.

  "Lots of crazies in
here," he said.

  She threw a napkin at him.

  "So, OK, this is none of my business, because obviously you've been doing this before I came along and you're still alive."

  "What gave me away?"

  "Zombies don't eat pizza."

  She just smirked.

  "But. Do you always train like you were Saturday?"

  She considered the question. "By running?"

  "No, smart aleck. By running alone."

  "Oh. Oh, hell, you're Jenna in a different body, aren't you?"

  "I have no idea what you're talking about. Who's Jenna? Is she cute? Is she sane?"

  "Yes. No. And my guilty conscience. Hers is the voice I hear telling me I'm going to wind up a dead cautionary tale to stop other women from going out and ending up dead after running into Navy SEALs on lonely trails."

  His phone buzzed and he shrugged apology, dug it out and studied it, frowned, answered and had one of those inexplicable conversations outsiders can't fathom. She took the opportunity to study him a little more. His coloring was more sandy than truly blond, but otherwise he was kind of the flip side of the traitor in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The big, brown eyes mixed with the light coloring made him striking. Despite the chiseled look of his face, his lips were beautifully shaped and full, the lower lip a bit more full than the upper, which made Hannah want to bite it.

  Gently, of course.

  Unless he liked it.

  She was still studying his face when she realized he was no longer on the phone and that his attention had returned to her. Hannah colored to the roots of her hair. Knox, still watching her, looked honestly confused, then apparently chose to ignore the blush.

  "So tell me the truth. If you were here alone – "

  "I'd be talking to myself?" she interjected.

  He waved a hand at the interruption. "You'd run home, wouldn't you? Or would have run here to start."

  She took a breath. "Depends on what's here. If I were running here to meet friends who were coming from a sports performance or something else where my being sweaty wouldn't be socially unacceptable, I'd run here and get a ride home." She saw the light dancing in his eyes and said, "What?"