SEAL The Deal Read Free

half the parking lot. She knew right away it belonged to Sophie’s full-of-himself SEAL brother, Nick. He’d driven up five years ago, right after he made it through the BUD/S program. He’d been so puffed up with hubris he pushed all the air out of the room when he entered.
    The worst thing about the guy, as Devon remembered, was that he automatically thought any girl would fall down on her knees and beg him to do the nasty with her. Devon had been so bold as to ask him one time about suicides increasing in the military . She was going to do an English paper on the subject. His answer was, “Not the SEALs. Hell, why would we deprive the ladies of some fun? We’re God’s gift to the female population.”
    He’d given her that big, goofy smile, overly confident and irritating as heck. In Sonoma County she never ran across such bravado and in-your-face braggadocio.
    It had turned her stomach. She’d rolled her eyes then, and when she’d looked back at him he had the nerve to wink!
    But later, she’d had a hard time forgetting the sight of his hard body and muscular arms, easily twice the size of anyone else’s she knew. And yes, she did dream about him that night. That really pissed her off.
    All that had happened when she was twenty and completely inexperienced.  Hell, she was still a virgin at twenty-five, a secret she guarded with her life. The one time she’d extended her heart to someone she thought perhaps she could love, she was hurt so badly, she never let anyone get close again. She poured herself into her work as a means to forget the whole experience.
    No, sexual confidence wasn’t something she’d had a chance to develop, but she’d make damned sure, if Sophie forced her to talk to him about his sister’s estate, Mr. Nicholas Dunn would never learn that little factoid.
    She’d become a successful realtor and made enough to support herself with a decent lifestyle. She’d mentored under Sophie originally, until Sophie gave up her career in real estate to go into the nursery business. Devon became the professional realtor, while Sophie got her hands dirty tending to a failing business. They remained best friends.
    Devon parked her Lexus a safe distance away from the rock-spraying beast of a vehicle Nick was probably driving, and secretly hoped he’d not be there.
    Her luck wasn’t that good.
    He still sucked all the air out of the room. He was standing at Sophie’s little sink washing dishes. And he was singing, rocking his hips from side to side. Was that the song from Flashdance ?
    “ I’m a maniac—“
    She couldn’t resist breaking in.
    “Well, look at you…so domestic.” She crossed her arms, tilted her head and enjoyed surprising the heck out of this normally self-composed brute. He to slammed the water faucet shut with his fist and dried his hands. Then he slowly perused the length of her body, leaving no part unexplored. His emerald green eyes were blazing.
    Still the same cocky son of a bitch. Devon knew he didn’t care if he got caught ogling her, so confident was he that a rejection wasn’t anywhere in his future. He was all the kinds of maleness she’d been running from.
    He leaned his butt against the tiled countertop. Then he threw down the towel and mirrored Devon’s stance with crossed arms. “Been awhile, Dev.”
    “Devon.”
    “Right. Still don’t like me, do you?”
    “You’re a good judge of character,” she answered. “I’ll give you that.”
    “You’re just as scrappy as Sophie told me you’d be.” He smiled as if his approval mattered to her.
    “I’ll just leave you to your work, then.”
    “Oh, the dishes are done. I was going to sweep the floor and then wash all the windows. But you go ahead and do all that computer stuff you realtors do. Way beyond me.”
    Devon found that comment funny, despite an internal backdrop of curiosity and fear. Attempting to focus on her work, she sat down at the plank tabletop, stacked the listing folders to the side