Page 36 of Stranded with the SEAL

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to touch you,” he said.

“That’s not fair.”

“I wasn’t necessarily going for fair.” He walked to the front window, then circled back to the kitchen. “I’m going stir-crazy in here.”

She frowned.

“No offense,” he added. “I didn’t come to Warsaw Mountain to sit around.”

“Tell me about your friend.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Your friend. The one you were on your way to visit.”

He plopped down in a chair. “I wasn’t on my way to see a friend.”

“But you said…”

“I lied.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you very well at the time.”

She swallowed. Why did it matter if he was seeing someone? She certainly was. Or so it would seem, anyway. She worked to smooth out the jealous lines she knew were affecting her expression. “A woman?”

His eyes shot to hers. “No. There is no woman.”

She wrenched her eyes away. “Oh.”

“I had this friend, Ralph,” he said. “We were on the Teams together — Navy SEALs — right from BUD/S training, the very beginning.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was murdered two years ago, right on this mountain.”

She gasped. “Do you know who killed him?”

“Yes. I’m just waiting for the weather to break before I make my move.”

The steely look in his eye was beginning to make her uncomfortable. “And then what? Are you going to call the police?”

“Not exactly.” He stood up and walked to the kitchen, peering out the window. “Just out of curiosity, what game did you want to play?”

She wondered what “not exactly” meant but wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. From the look in his eyes, Trevor was going to extract his own kind of justice from Ralph’s killer. “How about checkers?”

“We don’t have any checkers.”

“We could make some.”

He eyed her grumpily.

“I mean, I could make some,” she said. She stood up. “Why don’t I do that.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were playing checkers made with two different pasta shapes and a board drawn on a piece of paper. Two hours later, she was winning, three games to two, and Trevor was actually smiling.

“I’m going to have a drink,” he announced. “Would you like one?” He took the unlabeled bottle down from the mantel. “I have no idea what this is.”

“That sounds perfect.”

He poured them each a glass and sat back down. “Do we have to play more checkers?” he asked.