“New recruit?” Dustin asked. The latest BUD/S class had just received their tridents. Much as he loved their enthusiasm, he wasn’t looking forward to integrating someone green to the team.
“Nope, although they’re sending us one of those in the next few days as well.” The senior chief laughed. “But no new recruit is going to be able to duplicate Tomlin’s skills with explosives. The higher-ups are sending us a man out of Little Creek—Wesley Lowe. Absolute savant with explosives.”
“He better be,” the LT said darkly.
Dustin tried to follow along with what the two of them said next, but his breath had caught at the name Wesley. Wes. It wasn’t his Wes, of course, but just the sound of that name took him back a month earlier to DC, and that night that would be burned in his memories forever.
Wes had been busy, as he’d predicted, and hadn’t been around much online. They’d chatted here and there, but something was missing. The easy camaraderie they’d had before DC was gone, replaced with a tentativeness that Dustin hadn’t anticipated and didn’t know what to do about. All he knew was that he missed Wes with a ferocity that made his nerves jangle and his chest ache whenever he thought about him. And when they did talk, that missing him was worse, not better.
The phone on the LT’s desk buzzed and he picked up. “Lowe’s here. You want to bring him in?” he asked Dustin. “Might as well meet him here, then we can introduce him to the rest of the team.”
Dustin suppressed a sigh. He was used to the LT treating him as a glorified personal assistant. He headed out of the LT’s office to the lobby. The team spent most of its time in various training exercises, but the different SEAL teams had space in the office buildings on base too, mainly for the stacks of paperwork that fell to leadership.
The lobby was about as inviting as a county health office—a couple of metal chairs near the doors, a sterile desk with high walls where their beleaguered receptionist sat, a few cubicles behind him for the office support staff, with the offices and conference rooms down a hall beyond him.
A lone figure sat on the chair closest to Dustin, sea bag at his feet. Dark hair. Long nose. Full mouth. Slim but strong shoulders.
Oh fuck no. No. No. Dustin drew up short. It couldn’t be. It fucking couldn’t be. His Wes? Here?
“Lowe?” he squeaked. Fucking squeaked like a newbie recruit back in basic training.
Wes whirled around, eyes going dinner-plate wide and skin paler than those hotel room sheets back in DC. “Dustin?” he whispered, barely audible.
Dustin was intensely aware of the receptionist nearby. God, he wanted to run to Wes, hold him close, bury his face in his hair, see if he smelled as good as Dustin remembered. But of course he couldn’t do any of that. Could only school his expression to remain blank and his lips to lie. “Lowe? I’m Lieutenant Dustin Strauss, the team’s XO. Follow me.”
Do it, he told Wes with his eyes, jerking his head in the direction of the hall. Swallowing hard, Wes nodded and stood, hefting his bag over one shoulder.
“What the fuck?” Dustin whispered the second they were out of earshot. “What the fuck is this? You orchestrate this?”
“Me?” Both Wes’s eyes went skyward. “Corporal Oorah? You’re the one who said he was Marines. You think I arranged this?”
Dustin scrubbed at his head. He knew Wes hadn’t been feigning surprise back in the lobby, but this was one hell of a coincidence. “I never said I was Marines. You assumed. You, however, said you were in security. Always figured you were MP on some army base—”
“I am in security. National Security. And I knew better than to admit I was a SEAL on...there.” Wes kept shaking his head and blinking like that might clear up this fucking nightmare.
“Likewise.” Dustin took some deep breaths, which helped exactly not at all. “And I tried to only talk to non-navy personnel. For obvious reasons.”
“Obvious.” Wes’s breath came in little pants as if he too were having a hard time getting his lungs to cooperate. Dustin tried hard to banish the memory of Wes’s breath coming hard for entirely different reasons. “This is a fucking disaster.”
“What are we going to do?” Dustin sure as hell hoped Wes had a good idea.
“Do?” Wes gaped at him. Okay, then. Maybe not.
You’re the freaking lieutenant. Act like it.
“We don’t know each other. Obviously.” Dustin scrambled to try to quiet his racing mind.
“Obviously,” Wes echoed, but he didn’t sound certain.
“Listen. We go in there, act like we’re...buddies, and questions are gonna get asked. And I’m not going to make myself a target of fraternization regs. Not when I really don’t know you.”