We’re next-door neighbors,” she added lamely. Wow, she sounded like one of her teenage students, tongue-tied and shy.
It was more than his rugged good looks that was making her sound like a space cadet. It was because Lt. Alan Francisco was a career military man. Despite his lack of uniform, he was standing there in front of her, shoulders back, head held high—the Navy version of G.I. Joe. He was a warrior not by draft but by choice. He’d chosen to enlist. He’d chosen to perpetuate everything Mia’s antiwar parents had taught her to believe was wrong.
He was still watching her as closely as she’d looked at him. “You were curious,” he said. His voice was deep and accentless. He didn’t speak particularly loudly, but his words carried up to her quite clearly.
Mia forced a smile. “Of course.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. He didn’t smile back. In fact, he hadn’t smiled once since she’d turned to look over the railing at him. “I’m not loud. I don’t throw wild parties. I won’t disturb you. I’ll stay out of your way and I hope you’ll have the courtesy to do the same.”
He nodded at her, just once, and Mia realized that she’d been dismissed. With a single nod, he’d just dismissed her as if she were one of his enlisted troops.
As Mia watched, the former Navy lieutenant headed toward the stairs. He used his cane, supporting much of his weight with it. And every step he took looked to be filled with pain. Was he honestly going to climb those stairs…?
But of course he was. This condo complex wasn’t equipped with elevators or escalators or anything that would provide second-floor accessibility to the physically challenged. And this man was clearly challenged.
But Lieutenant Francisco pulled himself up, one painful step at a time. He used the cast-iron railing and his upper-body strength to support his bad leg, virtually hopping up the stairs. Still, Mia could tell that each jarring movement caused him no little amount of pain. When he got to the top, he was breathing hard, and there was a sheen of sweat on his face.
Mia spoke from her heart as usual, not stopping to think first. “There’s a condo for sale on the ground floor,” she said. “Maybe the association office can arrange for you to exchange your unit for the…one on the…”
The look he gave her was withering. “You still here?” His voice was rough and his words rude. But as he looked up again, as for one brief moment he glanced into her eyes, Mia could see myriad emotions in his gaze. Anger. Despair. Shame. An incredible amount of shame.
Mia’s heart was in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, her gaze dropping almost involuntarily to his injured leg. “I didn’t mean to—”
He moved directly underneath one of the corridor lights, and held up his right leg slightly. “Pretty, huh?” he said.
His knee was a virtual railroad switching track of scars. The joint itself looked swollen and sore. Mia swallowed. “What—” she said, then cleared her throat. “What…happened…?”
His eyes were an odd shade of blue, she realized, gazing up into the swirl of color. They were dark blue, almost black. And they were surrounded by the longest, thickest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man.
Up close, even despite the shine of perspiration on his face, Mia had to believe that Lt. Alan Francisco was the single most attractive man she had ever seen in her entire twenty-seven years.
His hair was dark blond. Not average, dirty blond, but rather a shiny mixture of light brown with streaks and flashes of gold and even hints of red that gleamed in the light. His nose was big, but not too big for his face, and slightly crooked. His mouth was wide. Mia longed to see him smile. What a smile this man would have, with a generous mouth like that. There were laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and his eyes, but they were taut now with pain and anger.
“I was wounded,” he said brusquely. “During a military op.”
He had been drinking. He was close enough for Mia to smell whiskey on his breath. She moved back a step. “Military…op?”
“Operation,” he said.
“That must have been…awful,” she said. “But…I wasn’t aware that the United States has been involved in any naval battles recently. I mean, someone like, oh, say…the President would let us all know if we were at war, wouldn’t he?”
“I was wounded during a search-and-rescue counterterrorist operation in downtown Baghdad,” Francisco said.
“Isn’t Baghdad a little bit inland for a sailor?”
“I’m a Navy SEAL,” he said. Then his lips twisted into a grim version of a smile. “Was a Navy SEAL,” he corrected himself.
Frisco realized that she didn’t know what he meant. She was looking up at him with puzzlement in her odd-colored eyes. They were a light shade of brown and green—hazel, he thought it was called—with a dark brown ring encircling the edges of her irises. Her eyes had a slightly exotic tilt to them, as if somewhere, perhaps back in her grandparents’ generation, there was Asian or Polynesian blood. Hawaiian. That was it. She looked faintly Hawaiian. Her cheekbones were wide and high, adding to the exotic effect. Her nose was small and delicate, as were her graceful-looking lips. Her skin was smooth and clear and a delicious shade of tan. Her long, straight black hair was up in a ponytail, a light fringe of bangs softening her face. Her hair was so long, that if she wore it down, it would hang all the way to her hips.
His next-door neighbor was strikingly beautiful.
She was nearly an entire twelve inches shorter than he was, with a slender build. She was wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts. Her shapely legs were that same light shade of brown and her feet were bare. Her figure was slight, almost boyish. Almost. Her breasts may have been small, but they swelled slightly beneath the cotton of her shirt in a way that was decidedly feminine.
At first glance, from the way she dressed and from her clean, fresh beauty, Frisco had thought she was a kid, a teenager. But up close, he could see faint lines of life on her face, along with a confidence and wisdom that no mere teenager could possibly exude. Despite her youthful appearance, this Mia Summerton was probably closer to his own age.
“Navy SEALs,” he explained, still gazing into her remarkable hazel eyes, “are the U.S. military’s most elite special operations group. We operate on sea, in the air and on land. SEa, Air, Land. SEAL.”
“I get it,” she said, with a smile. “Very cute.”
Her smile was crooked and made her look just a little bit goofy. Surely she knew that her smile marred her perfect beauty, but that didn’t keep her from smiling. In fact, Frisco was willing to bet that, goofy or not, a smile was this woman’s default expression. Still, her smile was uncertain, as if she wasn’t quite sure he deserved to be smiled at. She was ill at ease—whether that was caused by his injury or his imposing height, he didn’t know. She was wary of him, however.
“‘Cute’ isn’t a word used often to describe a special operations unit.”
“Special operations,” Mia repeated. “Is that kind of like the Green Berets or the Commandos?”
“Kind of,” Frisco told her, watching her eyes as he spoke. “Only, smarter and stronger and tougher. SEALs are qualified experts in a number of fields.
