Page 2 of SEAL Summer Escape

Didn’t mean the younger guys weren’t happy to take them home for the night though.

“Three points!”his team member Noah “Viper” Miller shouted, clapping him on the back.“You boys owe us a round of beers.”

Mason chuckled, glancing over at the two other members of their Navy SEAL team across the blacktop.“Anytime you guys wanna pay up works for me,” he said with a grin.“I could go for a couple of beers.”

“Hell, you just want to see Taylor again,” Jacob “Joker” Olson said, bending down to grab the basketball that had rolled to the edge of the court.He easily palmed it with one large hand, glancing up as the roar of twin jet engines temporarily drowned them out, two F-15s from the nearby naval air station flying across the sky.

“Affirmative,” Mason said.“Not that I’ve convinced her to go out with me yet.”

“She got any friends?”Jacob asked.

“The hell if I know,” Mason replied, sauntering toward one of the buildings on base as the rest of the men followed behind him.“She barely said a word the last time we were at Anchors.Usually she’ll hang out for a bit even if she’s working.Take her time passing out drinks and grub so we can flirt a little.”

Anchors, a popular bar on the Virginia Beach oceanfront, wasn’t far from their Navy base at Little Creek.It was always filled with single military men and local women, both looking for a good time, but Mason had taken interest in one of the waitresses there in particular.

And his teammates had clearly noticed.

He imagined the flush that always spread across Taylor’s face as he teased her when he was there with his buddies, that dark brown ponytail swinging back and forth as she moved around the bar, and those chocolate brown eyes warming up every time she looked at him.

Ryker “Bulls Eye” Fletcher raised his eyebrows, his gray eyes flashing.“Think everything’s okay?”

“Dunno,” Mason grunted, stalking toward the door.“She gave me her number a few weeks ago but has been busy every time I’ve asked her out.”

“Crash and burn,” Jacob said with a howl of laughter.“Guess she wasn’t interested after all.”

“Hell, it feels like it,” Mason said, pulling open the door and flashing his ID.“I haven’t seen much of her since we got back from Bogota.Maybe she thought I was blowing her off by not showing up at the bar like usual.”

“She knows you’re a SEAL,” Ryker said.“Taylor knows the drill.We disappear for a while and then come back.Same with half of the other guys in Anchors.No harm, no foul.”

Mason shrugged as they moved toward the locker room.“Something still feels off.She was always flirty in her texts before—flirty yet unavailable, I might add.”

“Shit, you’ve been texting her?Was she sending you fucking heart emojis or something?”Ryker asked with a chuckle.

“Very funny, jackass,” Mason said as he opened his locker.He pulled his sweaty tee shirt up over his head, ready to hit the showers.

“Man,” Jacob muttered beside him.“First Hunter and Colton find women of their own, and now you, too?Maybe the Delta team can have a triple wedding or something.”

Their SEAL team leader Hunter “Hook” Murdock had met his girlfriend Emma in London while on the run from terrorists.Colton “C-4” Ferguson had met Camila as part of their op to take down her father, a notorious drug lord in Bogota.Neither of the SEALs had expected to fall for the women they’d rescued, but both Emma and Camila had moved to Virginia Beach and seemed happy as hell to be with their men.

And Colton and Hunter were now very much absent from their evening games of basketball and nights out at Anchors.

“I’m not with Taylor,” Mason said.“I like her—so shoot me.She’s gorgeous, and it’s cute as hell the way she always blushes around me.That doesn’t mean I’m going to marry the woman or something.Hell, I haven’t even taken her out yet.”

Ryker snickered, stripping off his own shirt.He balled it up and tossed it aside.“Bang her first, bro.No need to rush into marriage.”

Mason muttered to himself, slamming his locker shut.The rest of his SEAL team was single and more than happy to play the field.To take home a different woman every week.What the hell did he expect?If a woman they were interested in wasn’t readily available, they moved on to the next good-looking chick to come by.

No harm, no foul.

Why was he so hung up on Taylor anyway?

If she’d thrown herself at him and begged him to take her home for the night, would the thrill of the chase be gone?

It wasn’t that though, he rationalized.She was different than the type of women he usually went after.More reserved.Quieter.Shy.

But something about the way she always looked at him thrilled him to no end.

If she blushed that much just from being near him, he’d love to see how she reacted if he bent over and stole a kiss.Pulled her down on the sofa at his place and made out with her.

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