What? Why?Harry still didn’t get it.
Look around the room, Shay silently told him. Because, yeah, she’d written this type of book enough times to recognize that one of the two gorgeous and far more age-appropriate women gathered in Lieutenant Peter Greene’s remarkably neat living room had to be the heroine to his Navy SEAL hero. And whoops, make thatthreegorgeous and far more age-appropriatepeople,Shay mentally corrected herself before Harry could yowl, because there was also a very adorable and probably gay young man sitting on the sofa.
Harry actually gasped.Holy shit, that’s not just some random adorable gay man, that’s Hollywood film actor Adam Wyndham!
Holy shit, it was. And the actor was clearly a regular in this house, because Peter greeted him with a casual, “Hey, Adam. Lindsey.” The second name was aimed with a nod at a delicately pretty dark-haired woman sitting on the other end of the sofa.
But then all three of the beautiful people spoke at once.
“Any luck?” asked Lindsey, who was Asian American and—whoa!
Yeah, I didn’t seethatcoming,Harry agreed.But she’s not leaping to her feet to greet him, so she’s probably just a friend.
Lindsey wasn’t leaping to her feet because she was hugely pregnant.
Or that. But the SEALdidgreet her like he didn’t expect to see her in his house,Harry observed.
“Did you find her?” asked the literal movie star as the second woman—slim and ridiculously young, like barely-out-of-college young—chimed in with, “Any sign of her?”
“No,” Peter answered them all at once. “I thought I saw Maddie getting into a car, but…” He shook his head.
“Did you get my text?” demanded the college student. She was as strikingly beautiful as the pregnant woman, with long, shiny, straight brown hair and dark brown eyes in a face that was quite possibly perfect. “I just sent you a screenshot. Maddie texted me.”
“What?” Peter dug for his phone. “She did? When?”
“Just a minute ago.”
“That’s great news,” Shayla exclaimed.
“She says she’s okay, she’s with a friend and basically, you know,Leave me alone. She blocked me again, right after she sent it, so I couldn’t respond.” The young woman turned to Shayla. “I’m Eden Zanella. My husband, Izzy, is one of Grunge’s teammates.”
“Grunge?” Shayla repeated, even as she looked over Peter’s shoulder to read the text that Maddie had sent. And okay, so the gorgeous young woman was the Eden of Zanella-and-Eden that Peter had mentioned earlier, and obviously not his present-or-future soulmate. Not that Shay, as the witty neighbor, should care.
I don’t know why you concluded you’re only the neighbor,Harry complained.And by the way…Yowl? Really?
“Shh,” Shay whispered, but then smiled weakly when Peter glanced over at her. Yup, he’d definitely noticed that she regularly hushed her invisible friend. Although, in her defense, big sisters and witty neighbors were allowed to have a larger amount of quirkiness in their personalities, so he was just going to have to deal with it.
Meanwhile, Maddie’s text to Eden had been brief and to the point. “She was definitely in that car tonight,” Peter concluded after he read it. “She knows I’m looking for her.”
“Either that, or Dingo and Dumber called her,” Shay said. “Grunge?”
The SEAL glanced up again and twinkled his eyes at her as he smiled tightly. Well, he didn’t twinkle them intentionally. It just happened automatically whenever he smiled—and she was just going to have to deal withthat. “Nickname. Don’t ask. Everyone, this is Shayla. She lives across the street, and oddly enough, knows me asPeter.”
“Nice to meet you, Shayla. I’m Izzy.” There was another man in the room, lurking over near the front window, but Shay hadn’t noticed him until he spoke—and then she couldn’t believe that she’d missed him. He was even broader and taller than Peter, and darkly, interestingly handsome, with midnight-colored eyes that gleamed with intelligence and amusement as he added, “And yeah, it’s a nickname, too. Izzy for I Z—my initials—Irving Zanella. Nicknames are rampant in the Teams.”
“I’m Adam,” the actor said as if she didn’t recognize him, then gestured to the pregnant woman, “and this is Lindsey Jenkins, with her soon-to-emerge plus one. So you live across the street, hmm?”
Lindsey’s got a different last name and a wedding band, and FYI, your SEAL isn’t gay,Harry noted.
Okay, but maybe Lindsey’d kept her own name upon marriage. Shayla had.
Maybe.Harry wasn’t convinced.But think about that question, with itshmmthat’s loaded with subtext. Adam’s really asking “How long have you been shagging our friend Grunge?”
“Ohmigod, no!” Shay blurted. “I mean, yes, I live across the street. I do. But I just happened to see Lieutenant Greene when I was dropping my son off at the high school, and, um…”
Oh, good. Now you sound weirdly defensive, so Adam’s gotta think you’ve been sleeping with the SEAL nonstop for the past two months. And look at Grunge and Lindsey. Do they look evenremotelymarried to each other?
They didn’t.
