Page 31 of SEAL Mates

He laughed and they all joined in unison.

“So, she has no one. Blake has to get to the shop and I have to go on duty. What time should we pick you up to move in?”

Alec was a cop, of course he’d seen straight through me. I looked at the other two who had blank faces and clearly didn’t know what was going on.

I jumped out of my chair and said, “At one. Lunchtime.”

I didn’t wait for a response, I was too embarrassed to admit that I was trying to keep away from them. My nipples were as hard as rock. I hated them for letting on how I felt about them, and for Alec for knowing I was lying, I had to remember he was a sheriff and even if it was a quiet town. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t good at his job.

* * *

It’d been three days since I came here. I was only supposed to stay one week. Mom said that it would be good for me to stay away from the kids. Give them a sense of normality for a few days. I knew she was trying to offend me, and it worked. They would have a routine, not eat things out of a can and have her attention and care. I felt bad for even thinking of myself as a half in and half out mom, but I knew I was. I love the idea of having my kids, but then constantly criticized and questioned my parenting skills.

My phone rang and apart from my first potential interviewee who nearly fucked me against the wall and then ran out. I had no one. Not one person who had even suggested they wanted to be interviewed. Greg was busy and he told me that Stan was more than taken. I’d asked about him one too many times. He was in a poly relationship and they had five kids between the three brothers. It sounded crazy to think that guys lived like that and I remember thinking that my book would have more spice with a female protagonist having more than one boyfriend. If she had maybe three or four guys. I decided maybe Alec was right, that maybe the good folks here preferred to drop in rather than have an appointment.

“Hey,” I smiled trying to sound chirpy.

“P what’s wrong?”

There was no pretending with Stephanie, she could read through my false voice even if she was miles away.

“Nothing. I’m sat here hoping someone would come over to be interviewed. Yet nothing.”

“How are you doing after the porcelain incident?”

Yeah, I told her everything, and that was my first night here and something I was hoping to forget.

“Okay. I still have the cuts, but nothing serious. It wasn’t back then, it seems silly thinking about it now.”

“So…what’s making you sound that way?”

One thing I’d learned over the years was sharing was caring. My last ex spent so much time just talking about himself all the time. It was about how he was feeling, what he was doing that my relationship with Stephanie changed as a result of it. She became the one person I could tell how I was feeling, because I felt as if no one cared, as if it didn’t matter.

“No. Not all about me. I want to hear about you.”

She sighed, and then the phone started to beep. I looked at it, and as I’d expected she’d going from voice-call to video-call. I cringed as I put it on, knowing she was going to freak the moment she saw me.

“Look at you, sexy mama.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Put the camera back, so I can see all of you. Seriously, you wearing make-up? I thought you forgot what it was, shoot I can’t remember the last time you wore make-up. Maybe it was at my wedding…”

She was muttering, going on about me wearing make-up, that I knew once she saw the full-view of me, that she would scream her head off, and on cue that was exactly what she did do.

“Holy fuck! P is that you? Are you an alien pretending to be my friend. Where is she? What have you done with her?”

I was laughing so hard that I nearly dropped to the floor holding on to my stomach so tight.

“I scared him away. He came here three days ago. Pinned me to the wall and nearly fucked me against it. Then the phone rang and then he ran away.”

“Who? What? Where?”

I started jumping up and down as I re-told her the story about Blake and him nearly seducing me.

“So, since that day you’ve been in your room, getting rid of the bush underneath your armpits and down below and hoping he would come back. You need to go out there and find him. What did he say to you…”

“Folks here don’t call or text. They come to you.”

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