Page 104 of Dangerous Games (Tempting SEALs 2)

And every time he'd drifted off he had awakened reaching for Morganna. Only Morganna wasn't there. And she wasn't answering her phone. Though the message on the phone was telling.

"If this is you, Clint, I'm checking out honky-tonks now." She was home. He knew she was home because Reno was answering his cell phone and he had been there twice when Clint had called to check up on Morganna.

"Between me and you, ole buddy," Reno had snorted the day before, "she came home with a cat today. That worries me."

Clint shook his head as he negotiated downtown Atlanta's traffic and headed for his mother's home, just outside the city limits. He hadn't seen her in years. He called, checked up on her, but bringing himself to actually walk into her home and pretend a bond that had never

been there wasn't something he had been able to bring himself to do since he had joined the SEALs. Now he had no other choice.

Admitting he was a coward wasn't something a man did easily, but as Clint negotiated the traffic through town, he admitted that was exactly what he was when it came to Morganna. He had held himself as far from her as possible until he had no choice but to keep her close to him. And just as he had always known, she had wormed her way so deep into his soul that he couldn't pull free.

He loved her. But until he faced his past, as well as himself, then he would never be the man he knew she needed. The man he needed to be.

He couldn't imagine being a part of Morganna's life and not having children with her. Not immediately maybe, but in the next few years. A little girl with Morganna's laughing smile and dove-gray eyes. A little minx determined to take on the world and drive all sane males crazy. Or a little boy ... Clint swallowed tightly at the thought of a son.

Reno's dad had taught Clint to play ball, to shoot, to be a man. Clint's father had taught him the wrong side of his fist and nothing else. What would Clint teach his son? The thought of it terrified him.

He pulled into his mother's driveway, turned off the truck, and stared at the small two-story home silently. It wasn't much different from the house he had been raised in, though the neighborhood was slightly better. She had lived in an apartment until recently, hoarding the money Clint sent her as she waited for her retirement and the small nest egg his father had begun when they first married.

Raven said Linda McIntyre was proud of the house. She talked often about grandkids and visits and holiday meals. That wasn't the mother he remembered. But then again, she had always been different with Raven, just as their father had been. And now that Clint was here, what the hell was he going to say? He hadn't seen Linda in five years and damn if he wasn't ready to turn around now and just leave. As his fingers tightened on the keys, the door opened and there she was. She was smaller than he remembered, older. Her hair was gray, her face lined, and her eyes, so like his own, were staring straight back at him. Clint pulled the keys slowly from the ignition before opening the door.

Damn, he should have just kept driving. He should gone straight to Morganna's. This was a mistake. But he forced himself from the truck, standing beside it silently, awkwardly.

As he stared back at Linda, he remembered the woman she had been twenty years before. Slender, beautiful, with long black hair, soft gray eyes. Clint had taken his facial features and his broad, muscular body from his father, but his coloring had come from his mother, as had Raven's.

"Raven just left." Linda's voice was the same as always- bitter, rough. "You may as well come in."

She turned, leaving the door open for him as she reentered the house. It was a hell of a welcome, but he hadn't come here for a welcome. He wasn't certain why he had come, but a welcoming might have been too shocking for him to survive.

Pocketing his keys, he breathed out roughly before heading up the flower-lined sidewalk to the small brick home. The door opened into a small entryway, then a classically pretty living room. His mother had always been a stickler for everything looking just right, color coordinated and prissy.

She was waiting for him in the middle of the room, standing stiff and silent as she stared back at him.

"How's Raven doing?" he finally asked as he closed the door and faced Linda with none of the anger he remembered feeling the last time they had been in the same room together.

"As forgetful as ever," she sighed. "She left the door cracked when she left. That girl never did understand how to close and lock doors. It's a wonder she hasn't been raped and murdered in her own home."

Linda was nervous. Clint heard the slight quiver in her voice, saw the wary look in her eyes. It was her habitual look whenever she saw him, as though she expected him to strike her at any time. He had never laid a hand on her, had never wanted to.

"I admit I bought the house with the money you gave me." she spoke up with a spark of anger. "You didn't say how I was to use it. So if you're here because I'm not in that dinky little apartment-"

"The house is nice, Mother."

"I was tired of the apartment-"

"I didn't come to argue with you. I don't care what you do with the money," he finally told her softly. "I just..."

He just what? He dipped his head, sighing wearily. This was a hell of a mistake.

"You haven't been around in more than five years." She clasped her hands in front of her as she lifted her chin in challenge. "Why now?"

He shifted, wondering what the hell to say, to do. Jeez, he was a glutton for punishment, wasn't he? In the years since his father's death, Clint had rarely visited and whenever he did, it was never for more than a few minutes. He saw her and the past swirled in his mind like a furious cloud. The beatings, his pleas each time his mother went out, how he would cry and beg her not let his father catch her. She would pat Clint's head and tell him to be a big boy. God, she had been as fucking crazy as his father had been.

"I'm thinking about getting married." Fuck. Okay, yeah, he had been thinking about it, but he hadn't been thinking about telling her about it.

She blinked back at him. "Anyone I know?"

"Yeah...." He nodded slightly. "Look, I don't know why the hell I'm even here." He pushed his hands over his head wearily before dropping his arms to his sides once again. "I'm sorry I bothered you." He turned to leave, to get the hell away from her and the memories that rose like a black cloud in his mind every time he saw her.

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