Betting on a Hot SEAL

  BETTING ON A HOT SEAL

  Hot SEALs Series

  by NY Times & USA Today Bestseller

  CAT JOHNSON

  Boys will be boys . . . especially in Vegas and no one parties like a team of hot SEALs with a weekend liberty. What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, right? But Navy SEAL Craig Dawson discovers that some bets can follow you home.

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  BETTING ON A HOT SEAL

  HOT SEALs Book 11

  Copyright © 2017 by CAT JOHNSON

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter 1

  “Hey, Dawson. Bet you a hundred bucks you can’t eat that whole pizza in under five minutes.”

  “Dude, why would I want to do that?” Craig Dawson frowned at Bill Tompkins, the SEAL sitting opposite him.

  Tompkins drew back. “What the hell kind of a question is that? It’s Vegas. You gotta gamble.”

  If Craig wanted to gamble he could play the slots rather than make himself sick and ruin his meal. It wasn’t like there weren’t slot machines absolutely everywhere, from the gates at the airport to the grocery stores.

  He couldn’t even get to his hotel room without being led through the maze of gambling opportunities. It felt as if he’d covered miles just trying to walk from point A to point B this weekend because there was no direct path anywhere. But that, he supposed, was Vegas.

  “I’m not a big gambler.” Craig lifted one shoulder and bit into a piping hot slice of pizza, taking his time to savor the flavor.

  It was good—thin crust, tasty sauce, not too much cheese, just the right amount of grease. Good pizza was something he could appreciate and something that was damn hard to come by outside of New York State where he’d grown up.

  “But it’s Vegas.” Tompkins repeated himself, as if that fact would convince Craig to change his mind and take the ridiculous bet.

  “Yup, it is.” He nodded.

  Training in Nevada definitely had a few perks. The proximity to twenty-four hour fun was one of them.

  Last time they’d been aboard Naval Air Station Fallon the team had gone to Reno seeking entertainment since it was only an hour away from the air station.

  This time, during the weekend liberty the team had been granted, they’d decided to take the trip to Sin City itself—Las Vegas.

  There were many opportunities for entertainment there besides gambling, one of which Craig was very excited to take advantage of.

  “So what are you going to do while you’re here if not gamble? Take in the Celine Dion show?” Tompkins scoffed.

  “Nope.” Craig pulled a printed color brochure out of the back pocket of his pants and tossed it on the table. “That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow.”

  Tompkins might be jonesing to gamble on anything and everything this weekend, but Craig had a different plan for his money. It was better than shows or even showgirls. Definitely better than sitting at a slot machine or a blackjack table in a sunless casino for hours.

  The Adventure Range. He and a couple of his teammates were heading there tomorrow.

  “A shooting range?” Tompkins frowned, staring at the brochure in his hand.

  “Not just any shooting range. They take you in a helicopter over the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon, then you get dropped off to ride ATVs to the shooting range.”

  The furrow in Tompkins’ forehead deepened. “This crap costs hundreds of dollars.”

  “Yeah, but it’s almost a full day and you get a lot for that. And they feed you. At the end there’s a barbecue with hamburgers and hot dogs.”

  Tompkins cocked one brow high. “Did you get brain damage during your last op? You do remember what you do for a living, right? Pretty much all of this stuff and the Navy pays you to do it, not the other way around.”

  “But that’s work. This is for fun. And we’ve got a bet riding on who’s the best shot.” Craig figured Tompkins would appreciate that at least, since he seemed to be ready to bet on just about anything, including eating pizza.

  Tompkins rolled his eyes. “You’re nuts.”

  “If I am, then so is the rest of my team because a bunch of us are going. Brody Cassidy wants to check it out since his brother Chris is thinking about opening something similar back home.”

  “Fine.” Tompkins tossed the brochure onto the table. “Anyway, that bullshit is tomorrow. Right? You can still go out and have fun tonight.”

  Craig swallowed another bite of pizza and shrugged. “I guess. As long as I’m not home too late.”

  He didn’t want to be tired for the big day since he had a hundred bucks riding on this bet with his teammates about who could score best on the range tomorrow. But besides the money, there was his pride.

  Craig would be damned if the older guys bested him. They treated him like a kid already. And it seemed no matter how many months passed and how many missions he went on with them, he was still considered a new guy by the others who’d been on this team for years.

  No matter how well he performed during missions he would always have years less in the field than the older guys. At least until they retired and he became the old guy.

  He couldn’t seem to combat the image. Even more than a year after Craig had finished training and been accepted into the elite DEVGRU program and been assigned to his team they still called him the kid. Craig feared it was now his nickname, whether he liked it or not.

  Maybe when someone younger joined the team it would change. But for now—at the Adventure Range—there he’d be on equal footing. He intended to take full advantage of it.

  He couldn’t wait.

  Although, Tompkins was right. Craig could have a little bit of fun tonight and still be sharp for the range tomorrow.

  Hell, more than a bit of his training prepared him to function at peak performance on little-to-no sleep.

  “What are you planning on doing after you finish eating that?” Craig tipped his chin to indicate the single oversized meatball on Tompkins’ plate.

  The thing was the size of a baby’s head. He’d never seen a meatball that giant before in his life. It was a little freaky.

  No wonder his teammate Rocky Mangiano had turned up his nose at this restaurant. Rocky, a born and bred connoisseur of Italian cuisine, had sneered and called it tourist food.

  Looking at the plate in front of his dining partner, Craig had to admit the meatball sure didn’t look like something Rocky’s mother would serve up at home.

  As Tompkins attacked the beast of a ball with fork and knife, he said, “I’m hitting up a bar.”

  “A bar?” Now it was Craig’s turn to scoff. “You can go to a bar at home.”

  “First off, there are slot machines in the bars here, which there aren’t at home. Second, this particular bar happens to be strategically right outside the theater and directly in the path of the women leaving the male strip show, which gets out . . .” He referred to the watch on his left wrist. “In two hours.”

  The reason for Tompkins’ excitement about the bar was becoming clearer to Craig. “Ah, gotcha. You going alone?”

  “Nah. I’m meeting a couple of the guys from my unit there but you’re more than welcome to join us.”

  Tompkins was on a different assault team than Craig, but they were all part of the same line squadron and overseen by the US Naval Special Warfare Command.

  This Tier One special mission counter terrorism unit—what the media still referred to as SEAL Team Six even though the name was no longer technically correct—was currently away from their home base in Virginia and in Nevada for training.

  Rather than hang out alone, or go back to his hotel room, he figured he coul
d spend an hour or two with Tompkins and the other guys joining him.

  Craig nodded. “All right. Thanks. I think I will come for a little while.”

  Enjoying a drink while watching Tompkins and his teammates hitting on a hoard of women horny from the all-male show they’d just seen? Yeah, that could definitely make for an entertaining, not to mention amusing evening.

  Chapter 2

  Mary Elizabeth Smith stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door in her bedroom and sighed.

  Dressed in high heels and a black pencil skirt with a wine-colored blouse she looked okay. Good, even.

  Sure, she’d worn this outfit to work today but it was appropriate to go out in too. She’d thrown on bigger earrings and a chunky bracelet, pulled her shoulder-length brown hair out of the bun she’d worn it in all day and she looked ready to go out with the girls.

  So why was she worrying? Probably because she knew her friends would be so dressed up compared to her, she’d look like their mother. Or a teacher. Which she was, so there might be no avoiding that.

  Looking ready wasn’t really the issue. The problem was she’d far rather stay home tonight.

  Her girlfriends—one married, one single—didn’t seem to understand that. She’d managed to beg out of their weekly girls’ night out for months now, but all of the usual excuses didn’t work this time.

  For some reason her friends had taken it on as their single goal this week to drag her out with them.

  And to a male strip show too.

  What the hell was that about? For a bachelorette party, or for a birthday celebration, it would be fine. But this was just a normal Friday night.

  This was one of the hazards of living in the Vegas area, she supposed. Everything was over the top here, even girls’ night out.

  If she didn’t have a really good job at UNLV, she’d relocate, but it wasn’t like there was a whole lot of opportunity for someone in her area of study. She probably should have considered that before getting an advanced degree in Art History specializing in rare antiquities.

  Lesson learned.

  With another sigh, she turned away from the mirror.

  Shoulders slumping, she felt like she had the energy of a sloth as she moved to the closet to find a small purse to carry for the night in exchange for her oversized tote she used every other day. Her life was in that bag and she hated the idea of going out without it, but it would be crazy to carry and try to keep track of it all night long.

  If she knew one thing it was that the evening wouldn’t end with the show. Her girlfriends would drag her to a bar afterward where she’d have to smile and pretend to enjoy herself while nursing overpriced drinks and watching her friends flirt.

  Mary Elizabeth had just transferred her phone, money, identification, lipstick and travel-sized bottle of painkiller—because no doubt she’d need it for the headache this night would bring—into her small black bag when her cell phone rang.

  The display showed it was Amanda, one of the two women forcing her to leave her house at night when she’d rather be in her pajamas watching television.

  Reluctantly, Mary Elizabeth hit to answer the call. Cradling the cell on one shoulder as she clipped her clutch shut, she said, “Hello.”

  “Hi. Are you on your way?”

  “Um, almost.”

  “You’re not in the car yet?”

  “No.” Mary Elizabeth cringed and walked toward the kitchen in hopes of finding her car keys there.

  “You’re going to be late.” The panic in Amanda’s tone increased.

  “No, I won’t. I’ll be fine.” Although the traffic getting to a hotel on the Vegas Strip might be bad this time of night on a Friday. Just another reason to stay home . . . “If I am late, just go in without me.”

  “But I have your ticket. Mary Elizabeth! You had better not be planning on ditching us.” Amanda using her full name made it feel too much like her friend was her mother and she was a kid again and in trouble.

  Mary Elizabeth stifled a sigh. “I’m not.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’ve become a complete shut in since Rob broke up with you. You never want to do anything. You’re life is not over. You have to get out. Meet someone new.”

  Just the sound of his name caused a familiar ache in Mary Elizabeth’s chest. She’d gotten used to the pain, but not over it.

  The feeling of sadness, of loneliness, was simply the new normal. After all these many months it was duller, less sharp, but still ever present.

  With the hurt still fresh as a reminder of what havoc love could do to a woman, the last thing she was going to do was open herself up to that kind of pain again with someone new.

  Why did her friends think jumping into a relationship with a new man could help? That would be like nearly drowning in the undertow and then diving right back into the water thinking this time would work out better.

  No. No more men. At least not for a good long while.

  The sudden, completely unexpected end of a nearly eight year long relationship should take a while to get over. And she was getting over it, in her own way, in her own time, by herself privately . . . except for tonight when she had let her friends sway her into going out.

  Mary Elizabeth drew in a breath and felt the tightness in her chest that thinking of him—or rather the loss of him—had caused.

  “I promise you, Amanda, I’m walking out the door right now.”

  Or she would be as soon as the elusive car keys presented themselves to her.

  She flipped on the overhead light and finally spotted the keys next to the cell phone charger dangling from the wall in the corner of the counter. She swiped them up and turned toward the door.

  “You’d better be. Jenny and I will be waiting for you right outside the door.”

  “All right. See you in twenty minutes.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I will. Goodbye.” Mary Elizabeth hit the screen to disconnect the call before Amanda lectured her some more.

  Well-meaning friends might just be the death of her.

  They didn’t understand that painful memories of that relationship were everywhere.

  In the eight years worth of photos occupying half the space in her cloud storage account.

  Woven into the clothes in her closet as she remembered wearing each outfit with him. Hiding in her lingerie drawer in the form of the sexy matching bras and panties he’d given her each year for Valentines Day.

  In the fact the anniversary of the date they met was her password for every damn one of her devices.

  In the unfinished game in the Scrabble app on her tablet.

  At the beginning, even using her stupid toothbrush was painful as she remembered buying it while they were grocery shopping together. She’d thrown that one out and bought a new one, but seeing the replacement twice a day when she opened the medicine cabinet inevitably brought to mind the memory of the old one she’d tossed . . . and of how he’d tossed away both her and their life together.

  Mostly the pain was a daily reminder of the fact she now lived in an apartment she’d never wanted because she had sold her condo to get the cash to put a down payment on a house they had found and fell in love with together.

  It was to be their forever home. The place they’d spend their future together. Forever ended when he broke up with her right before the closing date leaving her out the deposit and basically homeless since she’d had to vacate the condo she’d sold.

  Her friends needed to understand that people were different. They healed in different ways. Recovered at different rates. Had different comfort levels.

  When Jenny broke up with her boyfriend, she got over it by going out every night with Amanda—though married—acting as wing-woman.

  That was fine with Amanda because she hated being at home even though it was a beautiful house and she was in a happy marriage. She just didn’t have it in her to sit still for too long so she went out as often as possible with
Jenny. Luckily, Amanda’s husband worked nights and didn’t mind her not being home.

  Mary Elizabeth mourned the loss of the relationship as if she was grieving an actual death. She couldn’t bounce back like Jenny had. Couldn’t go out nightly like Amanda loved to do.

  She was the complete opposite in almost every way yet she and Amanda and Jenny were friends and had been for half of their lives. That either spoke to the truth behind the saying that opposites attract, or to the fact that Mary Elizabeth was too anti-social to make new friends.

  As she battled the traffic, she decided not to beat herself up about it. She needed all her energy for the night of fun ahead.

  A male strip show. Honestly! What made her friends want to see that? Those shows were for the tourists, not the Nevada locals . . . and perhaps Mary Elizabeth was as much of a stick in the mud as her friends accused her of being.

  At least during the show, unlike at the bar, all the men would be on stage and she could safely sit in the dark and observe the whole carnival.

  Her dread of the night ahead pressed like a physical weight on her chest, nestling in nicely next to the tightness she’d grown accustomed to since the breakup.

  The lights of the strip came into view. Mary Elizabeth had to admit it was pretty. People traveled from all over the world just to see what she had right in her backyard.

  Strangely the lights cheered her up a bit. She rallied and vowed to try to enjoy the night. As long as she had to go out, she should just try to have a good time.

  Unfortunately, lately she’d become such a hermit she feared that was easier said than done.

  Chapter 3

  Craig swirled the ice and amber liquid in his glass on the table, listening to the three SEALs from the other unit talk.

  “Murphy’s team is still over there going door to door. Block by block. Street by street. Taking back one neighborhood at a time.”

  “It’s a slow process. It all looks the same when you’re there in the shit. Sometimes the only way to see that we made any damn progress is by looking at the map in the war room.”