“So we could use you here. The certification, a year as a trainer—it’d bump your pay grade and move you a lot closer to those captain’s bars.”
Cade frowned. He didn’t care about the pay or rank. But he did care about losing his edge, about this depthless funk he’d sunk into, dragging his team down, too. He glanced out the window at the grown men falling all over themselves in the surf, struggling like toddlers to reach their boats. Those guys wanted to excel. To be the best. And he could be damned good at helping them get there. But to do that, he’d have to quit being a SEAL. And he didn’t quit. Not one damned thing.
So he shook his head. “Nah. I’m good.”
“Don’t you think it’d be mighty impressive?” the captain asked as he and his steaming cup of coffee settled behind the desk.
“Borden, I’m already a SEAL. There’s not a damned thing more impressive than that.”
“Sure, maybe to the ladies.”
“Who else matters?” Cade laughed.
Hell, it was rare that he ever even had to pull out the SEAL card to impress a woman. He looked good enough that the women tended to fall all over him anyway. They always had. And it wasn’t ego talking. He credited genetics for his sandy blond hair, sharp green eyes and chiseled features and the navy for his ripped body.
He had nothing to prove to anyone else.
“You want to climb higher than Lieutenant Commander?”
Cade shrugged again. Rank and money didn’t mean anything to him. Neither one had the thrill, the excitement, or the rock-solid satisfaction of being a part of Special Ops. At least, up until last fall, when Hawkins had taken a piece of shrapnel to the head while under Cade’s command.
“I’ll bet there are some people who’d like to see you move up the ranks,” Seth said, staring into his cup like it held some fascinating secret. Or, more likely, because he didn’t want his expression to give away his trump card.
“I don’t live my life for other people,” Cade countered with a grin, dropping to a chair and getting ready to play. Mind games were almost as much fun to win as war games.
“What about Robert?”
Cade’s smile fell away.
“I definitely don’t live my life for my old man.”
“Not saying you should. But I’ll bet it’d go a long way toward keeping him off your back for a while.”
“You mean it’ll keep him off your back?”
Robert Sullivan had married Seth’s little sister Laura thirty-five years ago and had probably muttered an average of a few dozen words a year to his brother-in-law since the reception. Less after they’d lost her to cancer five summers ago. But Robert somehow managed to find a few here and there to touch base with Seth for a little secondhand haranguing for his one and only child.
“Robert doesn’t bother me,” Cade’s uncle said, dismissing him with a jerk of one shoulder. As if his ex-in-law was that easy to flick off.
Cade wished that were so. But he knew better. Robert Sullivan, of Sullivan Enterprises, specialized in tenacity, had the personality of a bulldog and the charm of a cactus. He’d been furious when Cade had joined the navy instead of taking his rightful place at the helm of the family’s financial consulting firm.
“If he doesn’t bother you, then why are you using him as bait?” Cade challenged.
“Because you’re a damned good soldier. A fine SEAL and a strong leader. I don’t want to see you derailed. You’re on edge lately. That’s the kind of thing that some people look for, try to take advantage of in order to make things go their way,” he said, referring to Cade’s father. “A break would let you figure it all out, before you’re played.”
His pleasant expression didn’t change, nor did his body shift even an inch as a painful sort of tension spiked through Cade’s system.
“No offense, Captain,” Cade said with a grin as he got to his feet. “But I don’t give a good damn what my father does. And nobody plays me. Not even the old man.”
To Robert Sullivan, Cade was a pawn. A useful tool. He’d expected his only child to follow in his footsteps, to learn the ins and outs of finance and take over the vast Sullivan holdings if and when Robert deemed it time.
Cade had never been interested in any of that. Not even as a kid. So he’d never let the old man in on his plans. He’d enlisted the day he’d turned eighteen, three months before he’d finished high school. Already knowing the value of good strategy, he’d waited to tell his father until the morning after graduation. And he’d left for basic training right after the ensuing big ugly fight.
It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to take some bullshit business major if his father covered tuition that made him decide not to go to college.
He simply hadn’t wanted to wait to get started in the navy.
And then, like now, he hadn’t given a damn about rank.
He just wanted to be a SEAL.
He was born for the military.
He just had to remember that and get through this damned … What did his squadmate and amigo, Blake’s fiancée, Alexia, call it? Journey of grief. Stupid thing to call being pissed off over losing his buddy. And definitely not something he wanted to talk about. Not to Blake, not to Alexia. And definitely not to his uncle.
Before he could make excuses to leave, Cade’s cell-phone rang.
“Speak of the devil,” he muttered, noting the number on the screen.
“The old man?”
“Close enough—it’s my grandmother.”
The only thing that kept Cade from turning his back on his family, and all the drama and crap that went along with it, was his grandmother. He would do anything, even play nice at holidays, to make Catherine Sullivan happy.
With that in mind, he gestured his apology to Borden and took the call. Five minutes later, he wished he hadn’t.
“Robert had a heart attack,” Cade murmured as he slid the phone into his pocket.
“Is he okay?” Seth asked, looking up from the paperwork he’d been pretending to do to give his nephew some semblance of privacy.
“He’s in intensive care. They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
Seth frowned, coming around the desk. “Are you okay?”
Cade shrugged. He didn’t know what he was. Numb. Despite a lousy, contentious relationship, shouldn’t he care that his father might die? That he was hanging by a thread?
Cade’s mind couldn’t quite take it in.
He was a SEAL, specially trained in multiple ways to cause death. He’d served during wartime. He’d watched men die. He’d held one of his best friends as life drained away. It wasn’t that he wasn’t familiar with the concept.
But his father? He’d always figured the old man was too stubborn, too obnoxious, too uncompromising to allow it to happen on anything but his own approved timetable.
“You need anything?”
Cade gave Seth a blank look, then shook his head. “Gotta see my CO, get leave. Grandma wants me home.”
Seth’s wince pretty much summed up Cade’s lifelong feelings about returning to the Sullivan Estate.
Cade grimaced in return. “Looks like I’m getting that break after all.”
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