SEALed at Midnight by Cat Johnson

day. At least she had put on a bra.
    The driver’s side door opened and the man who stepped out had Ginny’s heart skipping a beat.
    “Um, Molly, I gotta go.”
    “Everything okay?”
    “Yeah, just somebody at the door.”
    “Who would be at the door?”
    “I don’t know.” Ginny’s hand shook as she watched Thom walk up the path and toward the porch. “I’ll call you back.”
    “All right. Bye.”
    “Bye.” Ginny hit to end the call and stood frozen in place.
    As much as she wanted to see him—wanted him to have a good excuse for disappearing—she held firm to a healthy dose of distrust.
    This was a man who’d been intimately familiar with every inch of her, and then had disappeared without a trace.
    She’d listen to his excuse and decide if she believed him or not. Thank God she wasn’t so gone over him that she’d given in to blind trust.
    Sometimes being a suspicious pessimist worked in her favor, such as when she refused to let his appearance at her door raise her hopes . . . but God how she wanted him to have a good excuse.
    She flipped the lock and drew in a bracing breath as she pulled open the door.
    He stood on the porch, hand raised to the button for the doorbell he’d never gotten a chance to push. “Ginny.”
    “Thom.” She crossed her arms, not moving out of the doorway.
    “I’m sorry.”
    His apology was a start, but not nearly enough. “What happened?”
    “Can I come in?”
    “To explain?” She countered his question with one of her own, somehow maintaining her hard ass demeanor.
    “Yes.” He dipped his head, looking contrite.
    It was hard to ignore that he looked even better than the last time she’d seen him.
    That shouldn’t have been a surprise. This time he didn’t have hypothermia from hiking through a blizzard after cracking his head open in a car crash.
    “Come on in.” It was probably a huge mistake, her resistance was plummeting, but she took a step back from the door.
    “Thank you.” He wiped his feet on the mat before coming into the house.
    Damned gentleman . He was making it very hard to stay mad at him.
    She closed the door, walked to the sofa and sat. She wasn’t about to stand on ceremony with Thom. He might be a guest but they’d done enough together in this very room she wasn’t going to treat him as one.
    He followed her into the room and hesitated, as if debating where to sit before he settled on the chair.
    Forearms braced on his knees he leaned forward and leveled his gaze on her. He took so long to start speaking she felt the need to prompt him.
    “Go on.”
    “I’m deciding where to start.” He shook his head. “I went over what I wanted to say in my mind the entire drive from Virginia, but I’ll be damned if I remember a word of it.”
    She raised a brow. “It shouldn’t be that hard if it’s the truth.”
    He let out a short laugh. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?”
    He drew in a breath and then said, “I left that morning to find my car, planning to assess the damage and then come right back. I found the SUV and my cell phone. I also found out I’d been called back to base. I had to go, Ginny. I didn’t have time to come back here to explain, and I didn’t have your number to call.”
    It all sounded a little too convenient and not all that plausible.
    She cocked a brow. “On Christmas Day the Navy called you back to Virginia knowing you were in Massachusetts?”
    “Yes.”
    The son of the family who lived next to her parents was in the Navy. Yes, some years he was deployed for the holidays. But when he wasn’t he had a bunch of days off for Christmas. He’d come home to visit and never once had he been called back to base.
    Ginny folded her arms. “I don’t believe you.”
    It pained her to say it because she so wanted to believe him, but she just couldn’t.
    “You don’t?” He looked a little shocked.
    “Nope.” She shook her head.
    “Why not?”
    “Because the sailors I know aren’t on call like doctors