Burning For Nero (SEALs Going Hot) by Cerise DeLand

saying he’d join the group, too.
    As Cass carried Jon inside her in-laws’ house, she heard Tessa tell everyone that she would do the cleanup. Her girlfriends pitched in and many of the guests said they’d help out.
    Cass took Jon upstairs to his bedroom and heard the emergency vehicle drive away. She quickly bathed Jon in warm water, insisted he drink some hot soup and then sat with him while he drifted off into a deep sleep.
    The Fourth of July party ended early as the guests hurried home. Through Jon’s window, Cass saw the fireworks from a nearby school grounds shower the black velvet sky with a red, white and blue celebration.
    Sitting in a chair near Jon, Cass had fretted. She had to know how Tony was, tell him what a fool she’d been and she shot from her seat, unable to wait to do it until he returned from Bethesda. He had injured his arm badly to save her son, and she owed him her thanks. Not tomorrow or the next day. He had done what no one else at the party could have done. What no other person was trained to do. He had saved Jon from an undertow. Saved him from drowning. He’d done it before any permanent damage had occurred to Jon. Done it with ease…except for the disastrous effect on his own arm.
    She had walked into the family room and told Peg and Tom of her need to go to the hospital. Asking them to watch Jon, she told them she’d be back in the morning. But because she had been up most of the night, her in-laws begged her not to go. Only when Tessa walked in to ask how Jon was did Peg and Tom say they’d happily see her go if Cass would take Tessa with her to Bethesda.
    “She’ll be good company,” Peg had said.
    “My two friends can hold down the fort. I’m ready,” Tessa said.
    “Let’s go,” Cass said and minutes later they were in her convertible headed west.
    Nearly two hours later, Cass drove into the hospital parking slot and turned off the engine. Bone tired, she pulled herself up to glare at herself in the rearview mirror.
    “Tony won’t care what you look like.”
    Cass stared at Tessa. Worn out by her erotic night and day in bed with Tony, then her argument with him, the near disaster with the three children, the EMTs and her own turmoil, she felt like one raw pulsing nerve. “I am such an idiot.”
    “I would say you are very smart. You’re here. He’ll value that. Forget your hair. He won’t care.” Tessa got out and when Cass came around to her side of the car, she said, “Did he get around to telling you that he loves you? Badly?”
    Cass wanted to laugh and cry. “In so many words.”
    “Terrific.” Tessa looped her arm through Cass’ as they headed up the stairs toward the main entrance. “I feared he’d carry that secret to his grave.”
    “Does he know you are so precocious?”
    Tessa fixed Cass with hard gaze “Careful. I may still agree with you about the sad state of your intellectual abilities.”
    “Wow. Color me the woman in the dark.”
    “For a long time, you had crap to deal with. Understandable crap. It dims the mind.”
    “Are you too wise for your age?” Cass climbed the steps, marveling at her own failure to see how much Tony cared for her. Loved being the operative word. Love.
    “Yeah, very. I come from a long line of people who take careful assessment of their surroundings. That includes the adoration I see on others’ faces.”
    “Gee. I am suddenly wild to watch you falling in love.”
    “Not for a long time, you won’t. I have a lot of living to do…and if past is prologue, odds are I get a sailor or a jarhead for a lifelong companion.”
    “Aren’t you looking forward to that?” Cass would be surprised if Tessa’s answer were any other.
    “To that? Absolutely not.”
    Cass stopped on the landing. “I don’t understand. If you think you’re prone to take a military man as a husband, then what’s your objection?”
    “I don’t want the tension, the uncertainty of knowing where he is or how he is. I don’t want the