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Chay’s hotel was just off Central Park.

His room was almost the size of his entire place on the beach back in Santa Barbara.

Well, okay, maybe not.

But it was big, with a separate sitting area, a picture-postcard view of Manhattan from the floor-to-ceiling windows, a bed that could have slept his whole unit on bivouac, and a bathroom that was all granite, stainless steel and glass.

Aidan Maguire, one of the guys in his unit, had a sister who was a travel agent. When Aidan found out Chay was heading to New York for a couple of days, he’d offered to call her and let her put the wheels in motion.

“She’s three years older than I am and she owes me,” he’d said with a grin, “considering all that I tolerated from her when we were growing up. No, seriously, dude, she’s great at this shit. She’ll get you one hell of a room at a price that’ll make your jaw drop. I promise, you’ll come back spoiled.”

The niceties of a room had never mattered much to Chay.

When he was growing up, his home had been a falling-down trailer where you froze in the winter and boiled in the summer. College had been an improvement, but living arrangements went on the back burner when he made it into the SEALs and then into STUD.

Running water, soap and a roof over your head were luxuries.

Most often, all you needed was a place to put your head that was out of the line of fire.

He figured Bianca was accustomed to luxury.

Her Manhattan apartment was fairly conventional, but he’d been to El Sueño, the Wilde ranch. He knew she’d grown up in Italy, but if the Bellini branch of the family had lived a life comparable to the Wilde branch, he’d have bet she wouldn’t have been comfortable in the kind of cheap hotel he’d probably have ended up with on his own.

Now, as he inserted his key card into the lock on this hotel room door, he reminded himself to send flowers to Aidan’s sister when he got back to California.

Not that the room seemed to matter to Bianca. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left her apartment, and it worried him. Still, he figured that a pleasant room, with flowers on a little table in front of the windows, handsome furniture, and high ceilings, might be good for her.

Maybe all of those things would help mask the image that had to be lodged in her head, as it was in his.

The open drawer. The neatly stacked bras and panties.

The condom.

The condom was in his pocket now, encased in a plastic baggie.

He closed the door, locked it, tossed the key card on a table.

Then he opened the wall-length closet. It contained a safe, and now he squatted before it, set a combination, hustled the baggie inside and shut the safe door.

If Bianca had noticed what he’d done, she gave no indication.

In fact, she gave no indication of anything.

She was still standing where he’d left her, her arms at her sides, everything about her tightly contained and unmoving. He knew only the ways to handle guys who were back from a mission gone bad and seemed to be falling into darkness. Some you left alone. Others you cracked jokes with, the kind of jokes that only men who’d faced death and worse could handle.

Still others you treated as if nothing had happened.

It was the method he figured he’d try first.

So he walked briskly to the windows and drew open the blinds.

“Some view, huh?”

She nodded.

“The room’s not bad, either. Just look at that bed. It’s the size of a football field. And wait until you see the bathroom. A double sink. A tub that’s got to be three feet deep, and a shower big enough for a party.” Hell. He sounded like an advertising brochure. “All in all, it’s not much to look at, I admit, but it’ll have to do.”

Now he sounded like a bad late-night comedian.