The Navy SEAL's Bride by Soraya Lane Read Free Book Online Page B

dark.
    The beast, she thought, anger pumping like adrenaline through her veins. Rude, arrogant, cold son of a…beast. She corrected her thoughts. There was no way she was bringing herself down to his level.
    So she’d thought he was nice, that he deserved a chance. That maybe, just maybe, she could have been attracted to him. That he could prove her wrong, that it was time to trust her man-radar again.
    Caitlin put Smokey down, locked up and made herself walk into the kitchen to start loading the dishwasher.
    She’d been way wrong about Tom Cartwright. He was exactly like she’d originally expected him to be, and she’d been a fool to think he could be anything else. There was a reason she didn’t let men into her life so easily, and he was only making her see that more clearly.

CHAPTER FIVE
    T OM pushed himself to run faster, punishing his body with every pounding footfall. He lived for the adrenaline of exercise. For the way he could lose himself so completely from his thoughts, push so hard, make his body hurt and scream out from exertion. Sometimes it was his only savior, the only thing he could cling to when his thoughts were at their darkest.
    Tom slowed, wanting to keep his control while he trained the young men working hard to keep up with him.
    What had happened to him could at least help him produce the most elite of SEALs. He doubted any of the men he was training would struggle with their physical exams. Not if he had anything to do with it. So long as he stayed focused instead of acting as though the demons troubling him were literally hot on his heels.
    “Keep going!” he commanded. “Let me hear you!”
    The recruits’ feet hit the pavement in time with his as he started the running cadence, singing for them to follow the beat, trying to pick his mood up and encourage the young men. “Hey buba-louba SEAL team baby.”
    “Hey buba-louba SEAL team baby,” they chanted back.
    “I joined up for this, now people think I’m cra-zy.” Tom ran backward, watching the men, pleased to see them sweating hard. “I shaved my head, make me pretty for the la-dies, ” he bellowed out.
    “I shaved my head, make me pretty for the la-dies, ” they sang back.
    Tom kept up the song along to the thump-thump of their footfalls, but he couldn’t help reaching up to run a hand quickly through his too-long-for-his-liking messy hair. Maybe that was his problem. He needed to cut his hair again.
    Not that he wanted to be “pretty for the ladies” but he sure wanted to feel like a SEAL still. At least he wanted to look like the team leader he sorely wanted to be, no matter how much he moaned about his new role.
    Because training the young recruits was important; the Navy was nothing without them.
    Only it didn’t feel anywhere near as important as being out there in the field, and he doubted that for him, personally, it ever would be. No matter what anyone said or how much he tried to convince himself.
    “Anyone who do this just ain’t right, ” he continued, pushing their pace to make them work even harder. “Left, left, left-right- left. ”
    Tom tried to focus on the constant of each foot thumping down, the sounds of all their feet hitting in unison as they ran in rhythm, but there was only one thing he could see, no matter how hard he pushed himself.
    Black hair caught up in a ponytail and aqua eyes looking at him as though he’d just run over her cat as he turned before leaving her house last night.
    He shouldn’t have walked out like that, not when she’d been so kind to him, but he couldn’t deal with people trying to pretend that they knew how he felt. Because no one did and no one would.
    Not his brother, not his sister-in-law, and certainly not a pretty little teacher with not a care in the world. The darkness that he’d lived through was hard enough for him to talk about without people pretending they’d ever understand, without seeing others pity him for what he’d lost.
    “Let’s go, boys,”