Page 11 of Unexpected Christmas with the SEAL

Cal smiled, grabbed another piece, and tossed it to the dog before he went about making Bruno’s actual dinner.

He smelled her before he saw her. The exotic fruity scent of either her body wash or shampoo competed heavily with the enticing aroma of the pizza. Was that mango? Guava maybe? Either way, he liked it.

He was just pulling his pizza out of the oven when Hannah came around the corner. She was dressed down in a pair of flannel Christmas pajama pants. They had little snowmen on them, on a red background. She wore a black tank top, no bra, and the same gray cable-knit cardigan she had on when he met her yesterday. Her hair was wet and in a long French braid down her back.

“Did you scrub the Macklin slobber out of your hair?” he asked, using his special pizza scissors to cut her pizza into eighths now that it had cooled enough.

She nodded and her gaze slid to the bottle of red wine he had opened on the counter. He hadn’t poured any for himself yet. He wanted to check to see if she drank, if she drank red wine and if she was comfortable if he had a glass, too.

He’d dated a woman once who was a recovering alcoholic, and she said that although she couldn’t control what other people did, she generally just avoided being in the same space as alcohol and people consuming it because it made things easier for her. So now, Cal always made a point of checking with people before he just served up the shiraz. Or in this case, the pinot noir.

“Did you bring the wine?” she asked, wandering over to the bottle, opening the cupboard above and pulling down two stemless glasses.

“I did. You’re welcome to a glass.”

“Are you having one, too?”

“Is that okay?”

She shrugged one shoulder as she poured, but that shrug caused her cardigan to slip down her arm, exposing one slender shoulder and the tattoo on it. It was small, but it was beautiful. A realistic robin perched on a branch, all done in fine lines and grayscale. It couldn’t have been more than four inches tall and three inches wide, but whomever had done the work was very talented.

She finished pouring, set the wine bottle down, shrugged her cardigan back onto her shoulder and picked up both glasses, wandering over to hand him one.

“What’s going on, Cal?” she asked softly. That’s when he noticed her eyes and how puffy and red they were. He just chalked up her long shower to her washing her hair, but she’d probably been crying in there, too.

His chest tightened.

“Nobody should be alone for Christmas,” he said, accepting the wine glass. “Not you. Not me. Not anybody.”

“Maybe I want to be alone.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. You’re just trying to put on a brave face. But you don’t have to pretend with me.”

“I don’t even know you.”

He took a sip. “Then let’s change that. What do you want to know?”

Her eyes bore into him for a moment, then she took a deep inhale and slowly released it, which let her shoulders climb down from her ears. “What’s Cal short for?”

“Callahan. It’s my last name, actually. My first name is Peter. Or Pete. But I’ve been Callahan or Cal since the Navy.”

She nodded slowly and took a sip of her wine. The slow, sexy roll of her throat as she swallowed made his balls tighten up against his taint. “Have you ever been married?”

He shook his head. “Only to my job.”

“And your helicopter?”

He grinned. “And my helicopter.”

“So, no kids?”

He shook his head again. “No kids.”

“Pets?”

“Want a dog, but haven’t been able to find one that measures up to Bruno.” He glanced at the snoring dog in front of the wood stove. Bruno had spun around onto his back like a buffoon, and all four of his legs were in the air while his head was no longer in his bed, but on the floor, and his tongue was hanging partially out of his mouth. The animal looked dead, or like he’d suffered significant brain damage.

Hannah snorted. “Oh yeah, he’s one of a kind.”

---