Whenever she’d thought about finding the love of her life, she’d imagined some nice, suitable man, whose tastes were similar to hers. They’d date for a month or two, going to recently reviewed restaurants and first-run movies. They’d go to bed together, discreetly, tastefully, and find they liked the same brand of coffee and plain croissants for breakfast. They’d read the same books and vote the same party.
Nothing could be further from that scenario than John. He wasn’t a nice, suitable man. He was a warrior, a hard, tough man. They probably didn’t read the same books and didn’t have the same taste in music. And they very definitely didn’t vote for the same party.
Instead of dating for a few months, they’d had wild sex the day they’d met. In bed, he was overwhelming, a force of nature, not the gentle and tame lover of her imagination. Nothing about him was easy or comfortable or familiar.
And yet she loved him. She felt more for him, a man she’d known for a few days, than she’d ever felt for any other man. She’d follow him to the ends of the earth if he crooked his finger.
Was it sex? Maybe. God knows the sex was powerful enough to bind her to him on that basis alone. But there was more. They might not have the same tastes but she admired him more than any other man she knew. He was brave in a way she’d never seen before, never even knew existed. Astute about the ways of the world. Observant. Intelligent.
She watched his broad back as he set the Christmas tree up in its tub and shook her head. Never in a million years would she have imagined loving a man like him. But here she was, heart thumping at the mere sight of him doing such a mundane task.
“Okay.” John straightened, brushing his hands. The Christmas tree stood straight and tall. He’d chosen well. The branches were evenly spaced, a glossy forest-green pyramid. He’d centered it in the tub and it rose, tall and straight and perfect, nearly to the ceiling. “Now what?”
She walked up to him and stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss that was pure affection. What a man. He’d never set up a Christmas tree before, yet the first time he’d done it, it was perfect. “Now…we decorate,” she smiled, and placed red ribbons in his hands, hiding a smile at the look of stupefaction in his face.
She hadn’t had much to choose from in the supermarket in the way of decorations, so she’d opted for simple, natural objects in a color scheme of red and white. Red ribbons, apples, popcorn.
While the turkey popped and hissed in the oven and an a cappella choir sang “The Little Drummer Boy” and “Do you See What I See?” on the radio, they looped the red ribbons on the boughs, threaded the popcorn and hung clove-studded apples from a red ribbon bow. John was a fast learner and it didn’t take him long to get up to speed, though he’d been clueless at first about trimming a Christmas tree.
“It’s about balance and color.” Suzanne pointed to the branch where an apple should be tied. “The decorations should be evenly spaced and you shouldn’t have too many objects of the same color too closely together. Didn’t you have Christmas trees when you were a kid?”
“Hmm?” John was reaching up to place a ribbon near the apex of the tree. “Nah. My mom died when I was two and my dad wouldn’t have known how to decorate a tree if you’d put a gun to his head. We usually had Christmas lunch on base then went target shooting. That okay?”
He stepped back and admired his handiwork. He stood as if on a mission—broad shoulders straight, wide-legged for balance. A frown of concentration pulled his black eyebrows together. He looked exactly like a man who, against all odds, has just finished a demanding and daunting task. Attacking a well-defended enemy stronghold, maybe, or rescuing hostages held by ruthless terrorists. The warrior’s stance was a little ruined by the fact that he was festooned with red ribbons. Two clove-studded apples dangled from one big hand.
She stepped back, too, and he pulled her against his side, a heavy arm around her shoulders. “I smell like a goat,” he said. “Took me an hour to dig around the roots of that damned tree.”
She turned her head and sniffed delicately. “A pine-scented goat,” she said politely.
He snorted. “Tree turned out okay, though, didn’t it? Not bad for a first effort.”
The tree was pretty, she thought with satisfaction. It reached almost to the ceiling and the branches, thick and glossy, contrasted cheerily with the ribbons and apples and strands of fluffy white popcorn. The tree glowed with color. There were no store-bought ornaments on the tree, but that only made it charming, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
“Pity we don’t have an angel,” she sighed. Her mother had a wonderful hand-made papier-machè white-and-gold angel picked up in Naples, which would have looked perfect on top of the tree.
John squeezed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. His deep voice was quiet as he said, “You wouldn’t fit on top.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Is it okay?”
Suzanne was watching him anxiously, so John had to stop simply forking food into his mouth like there was no tomorrow and pretend to savor it. The food was great, considering what Suzanne had had to work with. Certainly better than his usual lukewarm can of soup and crackers up in his hideaway. But the sober truth was, he was starved. There hadn’t been much time to eat these past two days and he’d worked up an appetite, what with the sex and digging up a tree. He’d have happily sucked up MREs or burnt toast, if he had to, let alone the perfectly decent meal she’d laid on. The fact that the food was good was a plus.
“It’s wonderful.” Reluctantly, he put his fork down and pasted an expression of sincerity on his face, when the only thing he wanted to do with his face was stuff it. “Never eaten better.”
Suzanne laughed. “You are so full of it, John Huntington. Are you trying to convince me that a man who keeps an account at Comme Chez Soi can become ecstatic over frozen turkey leg pumped full of God knows what preserving agents? Give me a break.”
“No, no,” he protested, eyeing his forkful of turkey and baked potato with longing. “It’s great, just great. Trust me.” She was going to protest further, he could see it on her face. He put the fork in his mouth so he could at least be chewing while she answered.
But she only shook her head. “I guess if you compare it to raw goat, it’s okay,” Suzanne conceded.
She was leaning forward, beautiful face lit with amusement. Candlelight loved her face, bringing out the soft glow of her skin, highlighting the elegant curve of her cheekbones, finding hidden licks of fire in her hair. This was a woman made for candlelit dinners and romancing.
Shit. He hadn’t done much of that with her. He didn’t really know how. He’d always considered whatever went on between ‘Hello’ and ‘Let’s get it on’ to be perfectly useless. An empty wasteland of time getting to what both parties wanted.
For the first time in his life, he could see how intriguing the journey from hello to sex could be, how pleasant it could be to smell the roses—or, rather, rose-scented skin—along the way.
His swim buddy during SEALS training, Martin Harding, had fallen in love with a philosophy student waitressing in Coronado. Marty had sent flowers and notes when they couldn’t meet, which was often. SEALS training didn’t allow for hearts and flowers. Marty had given up precious sleep time to see her when she got off work at eleven and to walk her home to her apartment in a rough neighborhood. And for three months he hadn’t gotten laid, not once. You’d have thought that Hell Week was the last week of seminary training, for all the good it had done Marty.
At the time, John had found that amazingly stupid. All that effort and not one fuck. What was the point? Except there was a point. Marty was now married to the girl and they had three kids. And were happy.