Coming Undone Read online

  She’d had exactly two dates since she’d been back. One was a double date with Samantha and Joe and one of Joe’s friends, an experience she’d never repeat. The other was a blind date, the son of someone she knew from the magazine. A total and complete disaster. She’d find her own dates from now on.

  “We think you need to start doing something serious with your life, some settling down,” her mother continued.

  “I was doing something serious. I had a career, remember?”

  Her mother rolled her eyes as though she’d sooner forget and her father patted her hand. “Yes, sweetie, but it was time for you to give that up. There’s important charity work for you to do in the family’s name. People are counting on you.”

  Inwardly she cringed at the thought of her entire career being so easily dismissed even though she should be used to it by now. Besides, in surfing, you were only as good as your last ride.

  “And I spoke to a plastic surgeon. He said he could remove that with no problem.” Her mother pointed to the small tattoo of a shark Carly had on her right ankle as though it were a disease spreading over her daughter’s body. “I’m sure he could do something about those, too.” This time, her mother pointed to the constant reminders of the accident on Carly’s thigh and knee, then waved her hand around, as though making it all disappear.

  “I’m not seeing a plastic surgeon. The scars stay. And so does the tattoo.” She didn’t bother to use the plural. Her mother would never find out about the other one, anyway.

  “She’s always been so stubborn, Carl.” Her mother shook her head and her father sighed.

  “Maybe if you gave Evan another chance,” her father began. “Nicole doesn’t want you dateless at her wedding.”

  In actuality, she didn’t give a flying crap what her perfect younger sister, and former Miss Florida, wanted, but Carly’s next words came as much of a surprise to her as they did to her parents. “I’m already seeing someone.”

  The declaration stopped her parents short and Carly gave herself a mental pat on the back. The technique that had proven successful in several top-grossing movies was obviously as effective in real life.

  Time to watch those films again to figure out exactly how these women found their made-up boyfriends.

  “You said you were dating, but you didn’t mention anyone serious, Carolyn. Why haven’t we met this mystery man?” her mother asked.

  She’d been thinking the same thing. “He’s been away. Traveling. I was going to introduce you at the wedding.” The overactive imagination was good for a lot of things, including making up men in her life. And the traveling excuse came naturally, since she’d done it often for her own career. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?

  “Why not bring him to the rehearsal dinner?” her mother asked.

  Yes. That was why.

  “Or, better yet, the party we’re throwing this weekend?” her father suggested.

  Sure. She’d get right on that magic voodoo doll and conjure herself up a man. At least, her parents had stopped mentioning Evan.

  The phone rang, saving her momentarily.

  Sam’s number flashed on the cell phone’s screen. “Hey,” Carly whispered, “parents are here.” She leaned her back against the cool, white stucco wall in her front hallway.

  “Is it as bad as we thought?”

  “Worse. Remind me to tell you about the trouble I’ve created for myself.” She heard her parents move into the living room and she made a dash into the now deserted kitchen to start the strong coffee she knew she was going to need.

  Sam groaned. “With your imagination, I can only imagine. And I don’t mean to bug you, but Joe’s coming over tonight and I really wanted to give him that letter.”

  “It should be easy for you to finish it off. Didn’t you like what I wrote?” Carly asked as she crumbled coconut onto the white icing of the cake she’d baked earlier from a box mix. Coconut therapy, she’d joked to herself when she’d made it, and she’d used an extra thick layer of frosting to hide the lopsidedness.

  “I’m sure I will, once you send it.”

  A slight chill went through her at Sam’s words. “I sent it hours ago. It went through, because I got the confirmation.”

  “It didn’t come through here,” Samantha said quickly. “Can you resend it?”

  Resending it was not the most immediate problem. That fax contained some erotic stuff, and whoever got it would most certainly be in for a thrill.

  “Sam,” Carly said, trying to swallow her panic. “If you didn’t get the fax, then who did?”

  “Maybe it didn’t go through and you only thought it did,” Sam tried to reassure her, as she forgot her parents and headed to her office, taking the stairs two at a time.

  She pulled the fax confirmation out of the recycling bin where she’d tossed it earlier. She scanned for the number and read it out loud, number by number until…

  “I reversed the last two numbers and somehow I added a dash,” she said. Oh crap. And then she saw the initials underneath the confirmation. USN. “What the heck does USN stand for?”

  “I don’t know what it stands for, but I’m sure whoever gets it will just ignore it.”

  This certainly made finding a man a little less intense, but at least she’d signed Candy’s name as a joke and not her own. She hadn’t used a cover letter, either.

  Whoever got it wasn’t going to know it was her personal secret fantasy. “I hope so. And I’ll fax it to you again now, okay?” Carly snapped the cell phone shut and double- checked the fax number twice before pushing Send.

  “Carolyn, someone’s at the door,” her mother called up the stairs.

  “I’ve got it,” she called back. She crumpled up the confirmation paper and threw it back into the bin before heading down to the front door. She opened it without looking through the peephole.

  Camouflage greeted her. A brick wall of camouflage, leaning against her doorjamb with a very serious look on his very good-looking face.

  A face she had to look up to see, which, at her own height of five feet, ten inches, meant this man was much taller than that. He was well over six feet and filled out in all the right places.

  The army-green T-shirt fit more than fine across his broad chest and shoulders and showed off his sculpted biceps. His dark blond hair was sun-bleached in places, fell across his forehead casually. She was close enough to notice the flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, and a primitive thrill coiled in her belly.

  Maybe just thinking about the voodoo doll had worked, because this was more magic than she could’ve hoped for.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Yes, you can.” His voice was husky and unhurried as he leaned in toward her, his arm still resting on the doorjamb. “You want to explain why you’re sending pornographic faxes to a United States Navy SEAL team?”

  2

  HUNT HADN’T BEEN SURE what to expect from someone named Candy Valentine, but the woman who’d answered the door looked genuinely surprised, which was a good sign. It meant the letter had been faxed by mistake, that she wasn’t some kind of SEAL groupie or, worse, hadn’t been trying to hack the system. In truth, the teams got letters like this one all the time, by mail. But when it came through a secure fax line, it had to be investigated, and he’d been the lucky one pulling office duty at the Mayport Military Base when the fax rolled through the nearest printer.

  He was checking in regularly while on partial leave, and he’d never expected to find himself making the hour or so drive down the coast toward Daytona to investigate something like this.I want you to start by running your tongue slowly around my ear….

  Hooyah.

  “Who are you?” she asked, keeping her voice low and giving a quick look over her shoulder.

  She wasn’t home alone. Married, maybe?

  “Lieutenant Jonathan Huntington, United States Navy,” he announced, letting his gaze drop to her hand. No ring and no tan line. “Did you send this fax?” He held the
papers up, page one on top so she could read it.

  She licked her bottom lip nervously, and then nodded.

  Damn, she was sexy.

  Let your hand drift down to my breasts….

  He’d needed a frozen-cold shower before venturing to find the author. A cursory check through records told him that the owner of the fax line was a woman. He was relieved, but now…

  Get down on your knees….

  If a fantasy was going to turn him on this much, he sure as hell wanted it to be from someone who looked like her.

  A beautiful woman. A woman with tousled blond curls and deep brown eyes and a lithe, athletic-looking body, showcased in a pair of shorts and a tank top.

  Spread my thighs….

  She had the longest legs he’d ever seen, tanned and slim and finely muscled, and if he wasn’t mistaken there was a shark tattoo on her left ankle.

  Make me lose control.

  You have been OUTCONUS for too long, Hunt—out of the country and out of the bedroom. This was a hell of a welcome home. It was time for some much needed R & R, and he wondered what this Candy Valentine was up to.

  A list of names had been faxed along with the fantasy, some of which read like a who’s who of Florida society. He’d grown up in the area, close enough to know the wealthy by name but not close enough for any of it to rub off on him. And there was an expensive, top-of-the-line Mercedes convertible in her driveway.

  Was it possible she was some kind of high-priced call girl?

  “This is an extremely serious offense.” He continued to play the hard ass, although now his curiosity was more than piqued. Especially because of the thin, healing scars running vertically along her right thigh and knee. “The military doesn’t look kindly on solicitations of this kind.”

  But this letter sure as hell does it for me.

  “It…this…wasn’t supposed to be,” she stuttered, and then she stopped and gained her composure. “I’m sorry about the mistake. This was supposed to go to a friend and I obviously faxed it to the wrong number. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “A male friend?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said it was supposed to go to a friend….”

  “Oh. No. It was for a female friend.” Her blush was visible through her tan, and she shifted from one bare foot to the other as she crossed her arms. “It’s not what you think.”

  “I’m thinking a lot of things right now,” he said.

  “I don’t see how the specifics are any of your business. I’ll take those back and you can be on your way.” She reached out for the papers but he pulled them away.

  “No can do. It’s official government property.”

  “What does the government want with something like that?”

  “It’s become part of our records. Any and all unauthorized documents that come through our fax lines have to be investigated and properly recorded.” That wasn’t exactly true. It was also up to his discretion as to whether or not to drop this matter, but watching her defend herself was turning him on almost as much as her words on paper had.

  “So there’s going to be a file somewhere in our federal government titled Carly’s Fantasy?” she demanded.

  Hell yes, only it’s going to be in my personal file.

  “I don’t know who Carly is,” he spoke with a formal tone. “This fax was sent by Candy Valentine.”

  Busted. Her mouth dropped for a second, but again, he gave her credit for her quick pick-up. “Carly’s my nickname,” she offered, and then looked angry at herself for giving him that information. The nickname fit her—she looked like a Carly. She looked really, really good, too, and he wondered if it would be against any and all regulations to ask her out on a date, right then and there.

  After he did his job and got this mess sorted out, of course. After he found out that she wasn’t a hooker.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could tell me how you got ahold of a secure fax number. And why you’re using an alias.”

  “It was a mistake. I reversed the last two numbers and I’m not using an alias. And I’d appreciate it if we could let the whole matter go.” She was telling the truth on both counts. He could tell by the way her gaze held his steadily and the way she kept her voice low, so whoever was in the next room couldn’t overhear.

  She was a woman with a secret, but she’d already spilled some pretty personal ones on the papers he held in his hand.

  “You look familiar,” he said suddenly, and that wasn’t just a pick-up line. “I’ve seen you somewhere before….”

  “Well, you haven’t. So if you’ll give me back those pages, I won’t tell anyone about this.”

  He could do that. Or he could take this whole thing one step further and risk having her call his superiors.

  He was used to tougher risks than this. “So tell me, Carly. Is this one of your fantasies?”

  The flush spread again, over her nose and the smattering of freckles. “Are you here to make fun of me or to find out if I’m some kind of terrorist fantasy-writer?”

  “I’m not here to make fun of you,” he said.

  “Then what are you going to do about this? Are you letting it drop?”

  “There are two problems I have to deal with before I can do that.”

  “And what would those be?”

  “First of all, I need to know how and why you have a list like this, complete with addresses and phone numbers of some of the wealthiest people in Palm Beach.”

  “And what’s the second problem?”

  He leaned in and smiled. “You didn’t finish the fantasy.”

  “Carolyn? What’s going on?” An attractive woman, who looked much younger than she probably was, came up behind Carly and smiled when she saw him. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t realize you had company. Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?”

  THE CHANCES OF A situation like this happening were slim to none.

  The chance of you taking that wave is slim to none, Carly, her old coach’s voice echoed in her ear. On that particular day, the odds had been in her favor. The trophy was situated proudly in her office.It seemed as if her life was full of chances the book-makers wouldn’t dare gamble on. So what was one more?

  Oh, this was so not good.

  “Mother,” she began, well aware this man could probably read the slight panic that had to be showing on her face.

  Said man stepped forward and extended a hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jonathan Huntington, but you can call me Hunt.”

  “Hello, Hunt.” Carly would’ve laughed at the way her mother said the nickname, but she was beyond having fun. “I’m Carolyn’s mother, Sheila Winters.”

  Her father came from nowhere and shook Hunt’s hand. “Carl Winters III. You must be related to the West Palm Huntingtons.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah, the New York Huntingtons then. Huntington Oil.”

  Again, Hunt shook his head. “I grew up a short distance from here, but my family wasn’t in the oil business.”

  This was like living in some alternative universe where things like erotic faxes and sailors and parents ended up together in one place. This was not the planet Earth Carly knew and loved.

  “And you’re in the military?” her mother asked, and Carly gave her mental kudos for changing the subject so deftly. Part of the whole white-glove upbringing.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, we’re very patriotic. In fact, I ran a charity auction for our troops last month.”

  “We appreciate the support,” he said.

  “So, this is the gentleman you were telling us about, Carolyn?” her mother asked.

  Just kill me now.

  Heck, for all she knew, Hunt could be an axe murderer.

  “Um,” she said, looking into Hunt’s eyes and wondering how far he would be willing to go with this ruse. He hadn’t mentioned the fax yet, so maybe she could get through this with some pride intact.

  “I guess tha
t’s why my ears were burning. I just got off work and stopped by to see if Carly wanted to catch some dinner,” he said without a trace of hesitation in his voice. He grabbed her hand, his thumb traced her palm and then he brought it to his mouth and kissed it.

  Okay. Not an axe murderer, but he was definitely going to kill her if he kept doing things like that.

  Samantha was right. It had been way too long for Carly. And she wanted a lot more than dinner. She wanted to sink into the sand, never to be seen again. Then again, a big part of her wouldn’t mind pulling Hunt down with her.

  He knew her fantasy, knew how she wanted to be touched and where….

  No, he didn’t know anything, she told herself firmly. When her parents left, she’d explain things to this Hunt person. He was in the military, and they must have a code, or some kind of moral obligation that would make him keep his mouth shut and protect her secret.

  Why else was he playing along with this dinner thing?

  “We’ve finished dinner, but we haven’t had dessert yet. Why don’t you join us?” Sheila Winters asked.

  “Dessert sounds great,” Hunt said with obvious enthusiasm. Carly fought a gasp and squeezed his hand instead, since he hadn’t released hers. He took the opportunity to pull her closer and she swore he was hypnotizing her parents, right in front of her.

  Granted, it was a trick she’d be more than happy to learn.

  “I’ll pour the coffee. Come help me, Carl,” her mother urged with a smile on her face. A smile. Hunt definitely had to have some kind of special superpowers, which didn’t bode well for her.

  When her parents were a safe distance away, she whispered, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Apparently, helping you out of a jam,” he said with an innocent shrug. It would have worked, too, except the man was far from innocent. There was something so commanding about his presence that she’d been ready to spill everything, until common sense had taken over.

  Hunt was in the military, and all the guys probably gave off that air. Still, she’d known him for less than five minutes and she already knew he was nothing like any man she’d ever met. What were the chances…