Page 13 of Hot SEAL, Under Pressure

She looked flustered. That made him wonder why.

“Problem?” he asked, hating that he actually cared.

“You could say that.” She let out a huff. “One of the teams just dropped out.”

“Teams?” He shook his head, confused.

After a few seconds of hesitation, she drew in a breath and said, “We’re shooting a new show. A competition between eight teams.”

“A show,” he repeated. “So this isn’t some sort of ad for the Navy?”

She frowned. “An ad for the Navy? No. We produce reality shows.”

That was a relief. “All right. So look, it sounds like you’re going to be here all day with your competition. My teammates and I only need the course for like forty-five minutes, so can we jump ahead of you?”

“Sure. Go ahead.” She threw her hands up. “You might as well. There might not be a shoot anymore anyway.”

“Why?” he asked, again kicking himself mentally for not just signaling the guys and getting their runs in now before she changed her mind.

“Because now we only have seven teams instead of eight.”

“And that’s a problem because?”

She leveled a wide-eyed glare on him. “Because besides the fact the executive producer really wanted Clay and Tasha and they just dropped out, I set up the competition and elimination schedule for the whole season for eight teams.”

“So change it to seven,” he suggested.

“I can’t just change it. It’ll alter the whole schedule for the rest of the episodes. What if one of the Sweet Sixteen teams dropped out? Or worse, one of the Final Four. That would totally mess up the brackets.”

A woman who looked like a model and spoke like a bookie during March Madness? “You know college basketball?” he asked, intrigued.

“Of course, I know college basketball. I graduated from UCLA.” She scowled at him. “I need to go deal with this, so I guess the course is yours. For now,” she added the warning. “Please be done within the hour. The crew is costing us a lot of money to just have them standing around.”

He blew out a breath. “I don’t need an hour.I’llbe done in six minutes. The other five guys might take a little bit longer but yeah, we’ll be out of your way in an hour.”

“Thank you,” she said, without much warmth of actual gratitude in her tone, before she spun away.

As he watched her leave in a huff, trying and failing to stomp away in the soft sand, he had to smile.

She was a spitfire. Annoying. Superior. But a firecracker, none-the-less.

“You’re welcome,” he said at her back, knowing she probably wouldn’t hear.

Then it was time to focus on the competition at hand.

She might have whatever odd eight-team bracket she’d set up to deal with, but he had his reputation on the line. And he’d be damned if his SEAL legacy, which would follow him past retirement and until the day he died, would be tied to his mother’s pierogi and not his many and varied qualifications as a skilled operator.

Pivoting in the sand, he waved them over as he yelled, “We’re up. Who wants to be first?”

He had every intention of going last and beating every one of their times.

ChapterSix

“What’s up?” Jerry, the cameraman, met Shelly, stopping her in her path as she walked toward the group where she saw Clay huddled with Nick, Dani, Zach and Gabby.”

Shelly dragged her gaze back to Jerry. “Clay told me they just found out Tasha is pregnant. Like this morning when she took a test. So she’s pulling them out of the show.”

“How pregnant can she be?” Jerry asked. “A month? She wasn’t even showing at the shower. It won’t matter for this. It’s just a sizzle reel.”

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