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“For what it was worth, you’re not half bad.”
    The comment hit home. She couldn’t speak past the knot in her throat.
    Just then the music started up. “Fuck you, Jack!” She yelled, but he was gone. The man slipped through the crowd as if he was butter on a hot pan.
    No one paid him any heed as he made his way to the door and left.
    She watched him go. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision. I won’t do it. I won’t cry. Jerk!
    Honestly, what had she done wrong? Besides make out with a total a-hole!
    I told you so , said the voice from inside her head. You should have gotten to know him better. Then you would have realized he was a loon, or just another egocentric, self-involved guy like the last few dead-end souls you dated.
    As she wiped the wetness off her cheeks, she said, “I promise. No more leaping before I look, and no more spontaneous moments.” Part of her couldn’t deny, as awful as the parting had been, that it had been one of the most memorable kisses of her life. For a few minutes, Jack Roaker had made the whole world melt away.
    ***
    Laurie quickly shut down her little pity party. She was there to support her business and the SEAL community—she always did her duty. The party was in full swing and she should circulate.
    Plastering a professional look on her face, she smiled bravely as she walked around. It was pure torture. All she wanted to do was go home and pout. She’d had a string of horrifically bad luck in the romance department lately. There was Patrick, who’d slept with her ex–best friend, and the last loser was Kenny, who’d thrown her against a wall in a fit of anger. She’d never told Gich about him. Her adoptive dad would have killed him!
    Those guys had the moral fiber of dock rats, and that was insulting the rodent population. Add in the military element— soldiers and sailors who wanted to get drunk every time they had access to alcohol and get laid every night—and you had the definition of bad-relationship material. Not that she was opposed to sex or that everyone in the military was like that, it was just hard to find the good ones. Honestly, she loved sex! But talking was necessary to her and usually underrated in their minds. What she needed was a regular guy, maybe a lawyer or an architect. But not a doctor; her childhood friend married one and he was rarely home.
    Scanning the room, she didn’t think she’d find anyone like that at a Navy fund-raiser.
    Sure enough, other guys hit on her. She walked away from a few propositions midsentence and went back to holding up the walls. That’s where Hank G., Bruiser, and Jimmy—cronies of her dad’s from UDT (Underwater Demolition Team) 11—found her and hovered close. They amused her with stories she’d heard a hundred times.
    “Your dad ran naked onto the beach, having snagged his UDT swim trunks on some barbed wire. Didn’t stop him from slitting two throats before he stormed…” Jimmy’s voice was so familiar and the Southern twang was melodic, making her mind wander. If her dad were alive, maybe things would be different.
    “Yeah, Dad was a hero.” She was a military brat who had basically been raised by the West Coast SEAL community. Her mother had died when she was a baby, and her dad had drunk the pain away. Gich had stepped into the gap, and though the Commander was a bachelor, he was a pretty good father figure. She remembered her dad going out for milk when she was little and coming back two days later. An hour after he left the house, she’d called Gich and he had stayed there the whole time, playing Barbie. Gich might have had a proclivity for the same things her father did—alcohol and women—but Gich had rules and never let anything bad affect his life or hers. She wished her biological dad had been smarter about his choices. Was she following in his footsteps—making dumb mistakes or risking herself on the wrong things?
    “You’re not laughing, Laurie. Bruiser, do your thing. Make