Wrong Number Right Grumpy Navy SEAL (Wrong Number, Right Grump #13)

Chapter 1

COLE

It’s a Friday night and I’m staring at the ceiling. It has a crack shaped like the Tigris River.

I know this because I’ve been staring at it for forty-five minutes, and I’ve stared at the Tigris River on a map enough times that I could draw its path from memory.

Before that, I did two hundred push-ups that my shoulder is already making me pay for.

I’ve run out of ways to kill time in an apartment that isn’t mine.

My buddy Jared is letting me crash at his place while I figure out what I’m doing now that I’m no longer a SEAL.

Six weeks. Six weeks since the Navy signed me out, handed me a folder of VA resources, and thanked me for my service. I’d rather they’d punched me in the mouth. At least I’d have known how to react to that.

My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I ignore it because no one but Jared has this number, and there’s no way it’s him. He went to Vegas for a week with some buddies. He invited me, but the crowds and noise would be a deadly combination for me right now.

Then the phone buzzes again. And again. What the fuck.

Unknown number

I can’t be alone right now. Please.

I can’t be here when he shows up. Answer me!

Then another.

Where are you?! Come get me. Please!

I should tell them they’ve got the wrong guy. Let them reach who they’re trying to reach. But there’s something here that tells me this isn’t a prank. Someone needs help and that kicks my ass into gear.

Because this is the kind of man I am. Running into bad situations is what I do, and I’ve done it with less information than whatever is going on right now.

Send me your location.

The typing dots appear and vanish. Then a pin drops.

I grab my jacket off the back of the chair, shove my feet into my boots, and I’m out the door before I’ve put the address into GPS.

I don’t know who this person is. Don’t know what I’m walking into.

Could be anything—a breakup, a stalker, a domestic situation that puts me in the middle of someone else’s war.

Doesn’t matter.

Somebody’s scared. Somebody texted for help. And for the first time in six weeks, I’ve got somewhere to be.

In my truck, my hands feel right on the wheel. The highway opens up and I push it to seventy-five, eighty, checking the GPS. Sixteen minutes.

This is the thing nobody tells you about leaving the Teams. It’s not just the adrenaline you miss.

It’s the knowing. Knowing your objective, knowing your role, knowing that every second you’re awake means something.

Knowing you’re a part of a team that makes the world a safer place.

Take that away and you’re just a guy on a couch, staring at drywall, with a skill set that doesn’t translate to a single goddamn thing in the civilian world.

But a pin on a map, a person in trouble, a clear directive? This is my wheelhouse.

Whatever is happening, I will fix it.

I end up at a place I’d never set foot in on my own.

I pull into a lot full of BMWs and Teslas, my truck sticking out like a fist at a cocktail party.

The building is floor-to-ceiling windows, warm light spilling onto the sidewalk, the kind of bougie place where the hostess judges you before you open your mouth.

Inside, the hostess looks at my boots like I’m tracking in dog shit from the parking lot. There’s a private event sign on an easel near the back.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asks, adding a long pause before the word sir. “There’s a private party tonight,” she adds, in a not-subtle suggestion that I don’t belong here.

“I’m here to pick up someone,” I say, craning my neck so I can scan the place.

“Then you can wait outside,” she snips at me.

I turn to face her and stand to my full height, and she instantly stops talking. Intimidating women isn’t something I enjoy doing, but snobs don’t cut it for me. And there’s no way in hell I’m turning around without the person who texted me at my side.

“I’m not fucking Uber. I’m going to go in and find who I’m looking for, alright? I don’t want any problems.”

“Of course.”

I walk in and rely on habits that are now part of my DNA.

Scan for exits first. The main entrance is behind me, kitchen corridor at two o’clock, emergency exit past the restrooms at nine.

No visible threats, but I’m not ruling it out.

Then the crowd. Couples, clusters, a DJ setting up in the corner.

Nobody looks panicked. Nobody looks like they sent a string of desperate texts twenty-five minutes ago.

I stand with my back against a wall, with the best sightline I can find, then pull out my phone.

I’m here.

I send it and wait, watching the room to see who reacts.

A woman instantly looks at her phone and I’m moving, crossing the room. Dark hair, pale pink dress, phone gripped in her hand. Her shoulders drop an inch and she looks up, scanning the door, and her eyes land on me.

Up close, the first thing I notice is that despite looking stressed and tense, this woman is a fucking bombshell. She also looks vaguely familiar.

Then I realize why.

Holy shit.

Dahlia Easton.

Jared’s kid sister. Last time I saw her she was seventeen, trying to steal beer from the cooler at Jared’s promotion party.

She is not seventeen anymore. She’s filled out in ways that make the pink dress more dangerous than an IED.

She has hips, a waist, tits that I absolutely should not be noticing because this is Jared’s sister and she texted me in a panic and I am not the guy who preys on vulnerable women.

My cock twitches against my jeans and I hate myself a little.

“Cole?” She blinks. Confused. “I…that wasn’t… I texted Jared.”

“I’m out of the SEALs and staying with him while I work out what’s next. You got me.” I keep my voice even. “Wrong number. What’s going on?”

Her face cycles rapidly through a bunch of emotions, a blush flooding her cheeks. Then I watch as she clenches her jaw and takes a deep breath. She glances over her shoulder toward the party.

“My boyfriend. Ex. I just found out he’s been cheating on me. For months.” Her voice is flat, controlled, but her hands are shaking. “This is his friend’s engagement party and he’s about to walk in and I cannot be here when he does. I need to leave. I was trying to get Jared to come get me.”

“Where’s your stuff?”

She stares at me for half a second, like she expected more questions. I don’t have questions. I have a mission to take her to safety.

“Just this,” she says, picking up her coat from the booth.

I take it from her and hold it open. She turns, sliding her arms in. My knuckles brush the back of her neck, and I pretend I don’t feel it light up every nerve in my hand. This is the wrong fucking situation and the wrong fucking woman to lust over right now.

Outside, the air is cool enough that she pulls the coat tighter as we walk to my truck in silence.

“Where do you want to go?” I ask once we’re both in, engine running.

“I live with him. Lived.” She corrects herself, her jaw tightening. “I can’t go back there tonight. I can probably stay with my friend Marisa.”

She calls her friend and explains fast, talking in shortened sentences the way good friends do. That tells me this is a safe person for her to be with.

“Can I stay with you? At least for tonight? I can’t go home, and Cole is at Jared’s place.”

Marisa’s response is immediate and loud enough for me to hear it. ”Girl, that’s not even a question. Get your butt here, and we’ll figure it out.”

Dahlia gives me the address, and I pull out of the lot.

The drive is quiet. Fifteen minutes of dark highway and the low hum of the engine.

She’s pressed against the passenger door, arms crossed, staring out the window.

I keep my eyes on the road because if I look at the way that dress drapes over her thighs, at the bare skin above her collarbone, at her mouth, I’m going to think things that have no business being in my head right now.

She just found out the guy she lives with is a cheating piece of shit.

She’s scared and angry and probably running on fumes.

The last thing she needs is her brother’s buddy eye-fucking her in a pickup truck.

But a selfish part of me wants to find this Jason guy and punch him into oblivion.

Any man who’d willingly hurt Dahlia is a motherfucking moron.

It’s not just that she’s my best friend’s sister; she’s fucking gorgeous.

And this moron had her. He had Dahlia. And he threw it away on someone else, and there ain’t no excuse that could justify betrayal.

And an uglier part of me wants to drive past Marisa’s, take her somewhere private, peel that coat off her shoulders, and show her exactly what a man does when he’s lucky enough to have a woman like her in his passenger seat.

I don’t do either, because I am still not the kind of man, and I never will be. So I keep my mouth shut and my hands on the wheel, and I drive.

At Marisa’s, Dahlia turns to me. Her eyes are dry, but the pain in them makes me reconsider my choice not to go after her ex.

“Thank you,” she says. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Yes, I did. I would never leave someone stranded after getting a message like that. It’s not who I am.”

“But you didn’t,” she says, though her protest is weaker now.

“You deserve better than a man who’d do this to you. No one deserves this, especially you.” I look her in the eye, hoping she’ll believe me. “You need anything else, call. Day or night, I don’t care. There’s nothing you can’t ask.”

She holds my gaze for a long moment, nods, then walks to the door where her friend is already waiting.

What she doesn’t know—what she can’t know, not tonight, not while she’s still shaking from what that piece of shit did to her—is that I’d do it again. Every time. Any hour, any distance, any goddamn thing she needed.

I watch until the door closes behind her, and my hands squeeze the steering wheel so tightly that if I don’t let up, I’m going to crack it.

And the thought that’s burning through my mind and my veins, it’s this: I would burn the world down for Dahlia.