Unwrapped: A Navy SEAL Holiday Romance Read online

  A few minutes later, she said goodbye and went out to bravely face the hordes of last minute shoppers at the grocery store. I chuckled as I imagined it something like a scene from a zombie movie. Everyone scavenging and fighting over the last bag of potatoes or apple pie.

  I finished my job application, a position in San Diego. It was only a couple of hours south of my parents’ house. Just far enough away I could have my own life—but close enough I could come visit for a weekend. And I could reconnect with some of the friends I’d lost touch with when I’d gone off to grad school in Chicago.

  By the time I got the vacuum cord untangled and plugged in, the doorbell rang. I abandoned the vacuum cleaner, grinning ear-to-ear, more than ready to scoop up my new baby niece and shower her with kisses and all the little pink gifts I’d already purchased for her—thankfully before I’d gotten the axe—but when I pulled the door open, it wasn’t Rick and Vanessa waiting on the other side with little baby Kayla.

  Apparently my parents had won some kind of “drop by visit from a movie star” because the Spartan on the front porch was tall, devilishly handsome, with a half-cocked smile that made my heart drop and my thighs clench at the slightest flicker of the naughty glance he gave me.

  “Wait a minute. I know you!” I forced myself to stop staring at his impressive body and my eyes made their way back to his face at his comment. My cheeks warmed as I realized he caught me giving him the once—more like the thrice—over. He gave me a crooked smile. You’re Ruby Brace Face.”

  My eyes went wide. “Max?”

  My cheeks flushed even more at the sudden lurch in my stomach as I realized the hotter-than-sin man standing on my parents’ front porch was none other than my brother’s best friend, Steven “Max” Maxwell. And from the brief glimpse I’d gotten, he was all grown up!

  Chapter Four

  Steven

  Wow! Ruby Westin had somehow morphed from a scrawny awkward teenager, glasses, braces, and crazy-ass hair into the bonafide hot piece on the other side of the welcome mat. Damn! When she first opened the door, I wondered if I’d gone to the wrong house. Something that would have been insane, considering how many times I’d walked up to the front steps over the years spanning from third grade to the summer after graduation. It was also one of the last places I went before shipping out for boot camp.

  Ruby crossed her arms and managed to twist her face into a slight scowl. I tried not to stare at the soft, rounded tits peeking out from beneath her V-neck sweater, propped up all the more by her arms. “Brace face.” She shook her head, her shoulder-length waves dancing around her shoulders. “I forgot you two assholes used to call me that.”

  I laughed softly. “Sorry.”

  A smile twitched at her lips. “Where have you been all these years? Marines, right?”

  “Navy, actually.” I pocketed my hands. “I’m on leave for the next four weeks and thought I’d come see Rick. We’ve been emailing a little bit back and forth and he mentioned he’d be in town for a few days before Christmas.”

  Something sparked in Ruby’s eyes. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and nodded. “Yeah. They’ll be here until Christmas Eve. But, uhm, he’s not here yet. Probably getting checked into their hotel. Vanessa didn’t want to stay here with us.” She gave a slight roll to her chocolate brown eyes. “Anyway, you wanna come in and wait for him?”

  Damn it, I did. Not a question about it. But I also didn’t trust myself not to make a pass at Ricky’s sister.

  Now, there was a thought I never expected to cross my mind.

  All throughout our school years, Ruby had tormented Rick and me just as much as we tormented her. There was barely a full year between them and she always insisted on getting into whatever we were doing. And if we didn’t let her join in, she’d run off to daddy and she had him wrapped. I smirked at the flood of memories of those years, trying to reconcile them with the gorgeous woman in front of me.

  The purple colored sweater clung to her figure, showing off hourglass curves that had my fingers aching to touch. A pair of jeans wrapped her long, lean legs all the way up to a spectacular ass. She was probably 5’7, a good half a foot shorter than me. Perfect fit. Her eyes were dark and glittered with amusement. I faltered at her lips. They were full and inviting and I momentarily lost myself, thinking of the way they’d feel wrapped around my cock.

  I blinked hard, forcing the image away.

  Damn it, Maxwell, she’s Ricky’s little sister. It’s Ruby! You cannot go there. No way.

  “I don’t bite,” Ruby prompted, smirking at me. Was she flirting with me?

  I had to get out. Now.

  “Ya know, I’ll come back by later. What time do you think he’ll be here till? Or—” I stopped and took a couple of calculated step back, getting a few more paces away from the temptress guarding the door. Her arms were still crossed and an amused smile lingered on her full lips. “Or, just have him call me. Ya know, when he gets a chance.”

  Ruby’s eyes flicked past mine at the sound of a rumbling engine. In the blink of an eye, the smirk dropped from her face and a look of terror took hold. I whipped around, following her gaze and spotted a large freight truck pulling up along the curb opposite the Westin’s home. “Shit!” she hissed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She was already lost to me, no longer hearing my voice. At least, I didn’t think so. She raked a hand through her hair, dragging it up and away from her face before letting it go. She squeezed her eyes closed. “Shit, shit, shit. It’s not supposed to be until after—”

  I reached out, brushing the back of her hand. “Ruby? What’s wrong?”

  I turned again and studied the truck. A man—the driver—hopped out of the cab and came over to the start of the walk. He had to be at least fifty, with a beer gut, and a blank expression. Did she know him? Who was he? Was he her ex or something? It didn’t fit. There was no way Ruby would be with a guy like that. But why else would she be having such a strong reaction to his presence?

  “Max—” I spun back around to face her at the desperate plea of my name. “Is that your truck over there?”

  She pointed at my blue Chevy and I nodded. “Sure is. What’s going—”

  “Can you do me a favor?”

  My eyebrows knit together, still completely lost, but I nodded again. “Of course.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” She moved past me, her hand gently grazing my bicep. “One sec.”

  She raced to the sidewalk and met the driver. I kept my distance as they spoke. Ruby was obviously flustered. He presented her with a clipboard and she signed with an agitated scrawl on the places he indicated. After a few minutes, she looked back at me and I jogged out to join her at the end of the driveway. “Everything all right?”

  Ruby heaved a sigh and then met my stare. “Okay, this is going to sound insane, but I need to take all those boxes—” she paused, pointing into the back of the freight truck at a small mountain of boxes. “To a storage unit.”

  “Right now?”

  Ruby bit her lip. “Yeah. Right now before my parents get home.”

  “You gonna tell me why?” I asked with a laugh.

  “Do I have to?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I guess not, but I’m holding you responsible if I die of curiosity.”

  She giggled and my heart jumped at the lighthearted sound and the sudden return of her beautiful smile. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “All right then. Let me back the truck up.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” She held my eyes for a moment and I smiled at the relief in her face. “Thank you, Max.”

  “Hey, Rubes, call me Steven.”

  She gave a slow nod and then a smile spread across those intoxicating lips. “Steven.”

  * * * *

  We loaded the boxes from the freight truck to the back of my truck in triple-time, both huffing too much to speak. Curiosity was still burning in my mind but I kept my questions to myself. Once inside the truck, Ruby plugged the
address of the storage place into my phone and as we neared the destination the only one who’d spoken the duration of the drive was the navigation robot.

  “Rubes?”

  She turned away from staring out the passenger side window to glance over at me. “Huh?”

  “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you?”

  She gave a hollow laugh. “Ma—Steven, don’t worry about me, okay?”

  “Shockingly, not reassuring,” I said. The GPS blared the next set of instructions and I turned at the stop light. “Come on, Rubes. We’ve known each other forever. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Ruby sighed as she rolled her dark chocolate eyes. “It’s a long and pathetic story.”

  I chuckled. “What a coincidence, I love long and pathetic stories.”

  She laughed a little. “Well, as much as I hate to deprive you of a whopper of a tale, I’d rather not get into it right now.”

  “All right. Fair enough.” I kept my hands on the wheel—firm at ten and two—but kept glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. Her fingers worked through her hair, tugging and twirling the ends as she stared out the window. Something major was stirring inside her mind. And with each passing mile, I was growing more and more curious. I knew it was none of my business—since I hadn’t seen her in years—but I still wanted to help her. Besides that, I needed something to distract me from the way my body was reacting to the smell of her perfume and the sweet scent of the glisten of sweat on her skin after hauling ass to get the truck loaded. She’d worked like a trooper and had ended up just as sweaty as me. The warmth in the cab, combined with the intoxicating smells brought out some primal side of me that was normally caged for months on end.

  And I wasn’t planning on fucking my best friend’s sister.

  In fact, I’d fully planned on having at least a couple of winter flings while on leave, but none of them had anything to do with my best friend’s little sister.

  The thing that blew my mind was the fact that I hadn’t even known Ruby’d turned into such a fox. She’d had to have been in the pictures from Rick and Vanessa’s wedding. Hadn’t I seen those on his Facebook page? Did I just gloss right over Ruby altogether? She’d had to have been featured front and center, right?

  I glanced at her again. There was something else that was drawing me to her. It wasn’t just her soft curves or her full pout. It was…something inexplicable. Something delicate.

  I shook my head slightly, trying to clear the thoughts away. The GPS alerted us that we’d arrive in another three minutes. Thank God, I didn’t know how much longer I could hold out. I needed some fresh air.

  “Sorry,” Ruby said, sighing again as she dropped her head back against the seat. “I don’t mean to be a weirdo.”

  I laughed. “You’re not a weirdo.”

  “Right. It’s totally normal for me to force a practical stranger into hauling boxes of mysterious crap into their truck and take a twenty-minute drive to then help unload.”

  “I wouldn’t say I’m a stranger,” I corrected, giving her a full glance. Her cheeks flushed again and my cock twitched uncomfortably in my jeans.

  “I guess not,” she whispered, still staring at me.

  The GPS signaled a turn and I struggled to get back on course before blowing a stop sign. “Shit!”

  “Woah!” Ruby grabbed onto the passenger side door handle. “Take it easy there, Max. Steven.”

  I laughed. “That really is strange from you, isn’t it?”

  “Well, you were Max for what…over half my life?”

  I nodded. “Guess so. Most of the time I get used to Maxwell. You know, Navy and all. But everyone else calls me Steven.”

  “I like it.”

  My heart slammed into my chest, and I pushed the gas a little harder, desperate to get to the storage facility and put some distance between us. It was not okay to have these thoughts about my best friend’s little sister. Not at all.

  Rick’d have my head. Granted, I could take him. Whereas I’d spent the last ten years in the Navy, and was in prime condition, Rick worked a desk job and the last pictures I’d seen of him, at his daughter’s one-month photo shoot, he’d been rockin’ some pretty serious dad jeans.

  Still, he might not be able to take me in a fight, but there were worse things. We’d been friends forever. I couldn’t risk fucking that up now. Not even for a woman as tempting as Ruby.

  We pulled into the small lot of the self-storage place and Ruby wasted no time in hopping out and making her way to the front doors of the small office by the front gate. I hung back, admiring the sexy little strut to the way she walked. The unsure, anxious woman from the drive over melted away, and she moved like a woman on a mission. I wondered where all that confidence had come from. The Ruby I knew was loud and bossy when it came to Rick and me, but with everyone else, she was a little bit quiet and reserved.

  How had she turned into such a firecracker?

  Whatever she’d done, I liked it.

  Stop it, Maxwell. Off fuckin’ limits.

  Damn! It was going to be a long fuckin’ day.

  Chapter Five

  Ruby

  Steven Maxwell.

  Seeing him again was a big surprise, and when he’d first arrived, my mind wandered into a new, unexplored territory…straight to the package in his jeans. I’d never thought about Max—Steven—like that before. Not even in high school when some of my friends said I was lucky he was always over at our house. I didn’t see it back then. But I would have to have been struck blind not to see it now.

  We worked side by side, unloading the boxes of my belongings that had arrived from New York and carefully stacked them inside the small storage unit I’d rented. My eyes roved over the way his shirt pulled tight over the muscles in his back. The way his forearms worked and moved as he lifted boxes full of books and other heavy items as though they were filled with pillows.

  Stop it, Ruby. It’s Max!

  It didn’t matter. He was hotter than any man I’d ever met in my life—the complete opposite of the stuffed shirts back in the city. Steven was dressed casually. A pair of jeans that fit him like a glove, a long-sleeved blue waffle knit shirt, and a pair of brown boots that added another inch to his already tall body. But it wasn’t just his body that had me panting as I worked at his side, unloading and moving things around. It was his deep voice and the sideways smile he flashed at me every time he caught my eye. It made me feel like we were sharing some inside joke or secret.

  And got me wishing that we could actually make some secret memories.

  I knew it was wrong, and that Rick would kill Steven, me, or both of us, but I couldn’t help but let my thoughts wander. Especially when he bent over to secure the metal door. Wow. Holy fuckin’ wow. I’d bet money his ass was just as sculpted as the muscles in his arms and back.

  “You got a lock?”

  “Hmm?” I shook my head slightly, realizing what he’d said a moment too late. Smooth, Rubes. “Um, yeah, here—”

  I pulled the shiny lock from my back pocket. I’d had to buy it at the front counter, since I wasn’t prepared for this. The delivery driver that dropped my stuff off at my parents told me that they were trying to get everything out before Christmas and my shipment got a bump. I knew most people would have been thrilled with an early arrival, but in my case, it was annoying as hell. I’d tried to be gracious, but I knew I’d looked like a total bitch. I just hoped that Steven hadn’t heard that part.

  The problem wasn’t that my stuff was there. It was that I hadn’t told my parents about losing my job or subletting my apartment on a whim. The right words hadn’t come to me yet. Besides that, my mom had been a one-woman tornado since I arrived and hadn’t slowed down long enough to have more than a utilitarian conversation. Things would settle down once my brother and his family were in town. My parents would both be off work and my mom wouldn’t be trying to do three hundred things at once.

  I sighed and sagged against the wall, lett
ing the stress wash over me as Steven locked the storage unit. When he was done, he brushed his hands off on the back of his jeans, and smiled over at me. “You all right?”

  I nodded, and pulled my hair back away from the slight sheen of sweat on my neck and forehead. I secured an elastic around it, smiling to myself at how short the ponytail was since hacking off six plus inches a few weeks back. “I’m good. Thanks for all of your help.”

  He looked as though he wanted to ask me something, but dismissed it with another heart-stopping smile. “Anytime.”

  “Hey, there’s a little bar just down the way from here. They have killer margaritas. What do you say? Let me buy you a drink to say thanks.”

  Steven grinned. “Not necessary. But—”

  “But you’ll take one?” I interjected, laughing softly. Pleading in my head he’d say yes.

  He shrugged and flashed another heart-stopping grin. “Sure! I haven’t had a proper drink with such beautiful company in quite a while. It would be nice.”

  My stomach flip-flopped at his compliment. Steven Maxwell thought I was beautiful.

  If only our seventh grade selves could see us now.

  I smiled. “All right. Then let’s go!”

  * * * *

  The small, cantina style bar, was pretty busy for a weeknight but Steven snagged us a spot at a table for two in the corner and insisted I take a seat while he went up to the bar to order our drinks. As he crossed the room, I saw just about every woman in there take notice of him. I grinned to myself. He certainly hadn’t had that effect in junior high or high school. Sure, he’d been popular enough, but he was always too busy playing sports to pay much attention to the girls in his class—or any of the others, for that matter. Even now, it appeared the extra attention went unnoticed. He leaned against the bar, caught the attention of the bartender, and placed our order, gesturing over to our table. Our eyes met and I clenched my thighs together. He certainly knew how to make me squirm, and I had a feeling he wasn’t even trying. But those eyes…they were going to be my undoing.