Page 74 of Honk if You Love Real Men (Tempting SEALs 1)

“Your mind seems to be somewhere else, Win. Should I let you work?”

His question shocked her. He was naked and aroused and kissing her and asking if she wanted to work? She blinked. The truth was, she did want to work. Her mind was on Max and Eva. There was something just at the surface of her awareness that she had to get into words.

“If you wouldn’t mind. Maybe just for a little while?”

Vincent nodded, then gently pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Sure, baby. I guess this is the part they don’t tell you about in the muse recruiting office.”

She laughed. She liked Vincent. He had a sly sense of humor. He was extremely sexual. He was observant. He walked out the doors to the deck and returned fully dressed in his jeans and moss green corduroy shirt and headed into the kitchen, flipping on the occasional light as he went.

He opened the fridge and looked around. Then opened the cabinets. Vincent turned to look at her. “Since there doesn’t appear to be a can of beans in the whole house, how does beef stroganoff sound to you?”

Win wondered if this was a trick question. “It sounds delicious. Are you teasing me?”

Vincent laughed. “I make a mean beef stroganoff, and it looks like we got what I need. You work and I’ll cook. Then we can muse some more after dinner.” His mouth hitched up into a crooked smile. “And look, since I’ve never done this before, I have to ask—do muses spend the night? Do they get overtime? Vacation pay? Are they allowed to watch Monday Night Football during the season? I really should have asked more questions before I signed on for this cruise.”

Win remained standing by the table in her jammy pants and cardigan. She hadn’t moved. She stared at this fine, funny, sweet man who was going to make her beef stroganoff while she wrote, and realized her heart was melting and her chin was trembling and she was near tears at the improbable wonder of it all. She hoped Vincent couldn’t tell what was going on inside her head.

“Football is cool,” she said cheerfully. “Spending the night is completely up to the muse himself. Benefits are negotiable.”

Vincent crooked his head and crossed his arms over his chest. He studied her a long, serious moment, and then grinned. “Write, Win. I’ll be here if you need anything.”

So it was that Win came to write twenty-five pages in an hour, her head and heart full of the joyful mystery of the first throes of love. Max and Eva walked in big circles around each other like cautious animals of prey, and

when they came together it was fiery and all-consuming and caused such a disturbance in their worlds that they retreated to their secure positions, where’d they circle again and start the cycle anew.

As Win wrote, she’d occasionally glance toward the kitchen to admire the way Vincent moved, to watch him frown in concentration at his task, to wonder if he’d ever really loved a woman and been loved by her in return. She wondered if he’d even had the time. She decided she’d do a little digging during dinner.

He described his work as “damage control,” and Win inferred it had something to do with the country’s antiterrorism efforts, but Vincent was short on details and long on the use of vague terms like cleanup and facilitate. The dead-serious look on his face told her that whatever he did for a living, it was grueling, dangerous and messy.

In the candlelight, he looked smoother, softer. His voice was mellow and deep, and she felt mesmerized by him, the way his lips formed words, the way his eyes looked so far away at times, the tiny crease of a frown on his brow. There were many contrasts within this one man—he was playful but somber, giving yet cautious. He’d served her a delicious dinner, and it had served to convince her that she wanted to know more about him—she wanted to know it all.

She told him about her life, which seemed small and inconsequential in comparison. But he listened with rapt fascination about how Artie had discovered her when she was a junior at NYU and working as a bartender, what her southern childhood had been like, her best friend, Carly, and her condo in SoHo. As an afterthought, she mentioned her recent list of not-quite-right men in her life.

“Well, it’s not like you’re an old maid, Win,” Vincent reassured her over coffee. “There is no reason you have to be on a manhunt, is there? Take your time. See what’s out there.”

Win fiddled with her cup and pondered his word choice: manhunt. That term had an air of desperation to it, one she really didn’t feel. It was simply that a man came in handy—someone talk to, take along to cocktail parties, spend Saturday nights with, someone to keep her enthusiasm up, to inspire her.

Win laughed out loud and looked up at Vincent, smiling amiably at her from across the table.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It’s just that I think I’ve been going about this all wrong,” she said, the amazement obvious in her voice.

“Wrong? You mean you’ve been dating wrong?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly. See, I’ve convinced myself that I will have trouble writing if there isn’t a man in my life, someone I consider my ‘boyfriend du jour.’ I bet that sounds pathetic, but it’s true.” She gauged Vincent’s expression but his face remained open and attentive. “It just dawned on me that maybe I’d be better off with no man at all instead of the kind who doesn’t inspire much passion in me, and therefore my writing. I think I’ve been barking up the wrong tree, so to speak.”

That last comment got a faint smile out of him, and Vincent chuckled into his coffee cup. “So you go through muses at a rapid rate, is that what you’re telling me?”

“I go through men at a rapid rate. You’re the first man I pegged as an official muse. You’re a first for me, Vincent.”

“I like that,” he said. “Is it working?”

“Hell yes it is!” Win laughed with gusto. “I’ve written more stuff—good stuff—in the last two days than in the last two months!” She got up to clear the table. “Hey—where are you going to be at the beginning of next month, when I’m in revision hell? Do you think you’ll be free to marry me?”

She’d meant it as a joke, but the energy in the room had changed. Vincent adjusted his position on the chair and looked down at his hands. She hadn’t meant to say that. She hadn’t meant to imply that there was anything real happening here, or that there was any future for them. But the damage had been done. “Look—that was just a joke, Vincent,” she said, knowing it sounded lame.

He raised his eyes and gave her a sheepish grin. “At the beginning of next month, I’ll probably be at the edge of the earth somewhere, attracting stray bullets. I’m not exactly marriage material, Win.”

---