SAVED BY A SEAL by Susan Stoker

Date of Publication: February 6, 2016

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Wolf would’ve preferred to sit in the same row with his friends, but because they’d made their flight arrangements so late, they didn’t have a choice and had to take seats that were available. Mozart offered to flirt with the airline employee in the hopes they’d be able to get upgraded, or at least be seated together, but they’d agreed to suck it up and sit where they were assigned. They all knew they wouldn’t fit in the seats if they all sat in the same row anyway. Their shoulders were just too broad to fit comfortably side-by-side in a crunched airline row. Wolf knew his friends felt the same way he did—they didn’t flaunt their SEAL status to receive preferential treatment. It was bad enough women hit on them back home in San Diego in the bars just because they were SEALs.

Wolf hated to admit it, but he’d gotten bored with the bar scene. He was picky in the first place, and he’d found too many women just wanted to sleep with a SEAL, it didn’t matter who the SEAL was, just that they could brag later to their friends they’d done it with a legendary SEAL. The sadder part was that too many SEALs took advantage of it. Wolf could admit to himself that once upon a time he’d done that exact thing, but time and experience had shown him the encounters left him feeling dissatisfied and used. If someone had asked him right after he’d graduated from BUD/S if he’d ever feel used by a woman who wanted to sleep with him, he would’ve laughed himself silly.

Wolf knew what love looked like. His parents had been together for almost forty years. They were still as madly in love now as they were when they got married. It used to embarrass him, but lately it made him feel wistful. They’d still go on dates and hold hands wherever they went. His dad surprised his mom with romantic gifts and, every now and then, a special trip. Wolf wanted what his parents had. He wanted someone he could be himself with. He wanted someone to need him. He wanted to need someone. Wolf supposed it wasn’t manly to admit any of those things, but it was what it was.

Wolf had no idea how to go about finding that special woman though, except he knew he wouldn’t find her in a bar. The other issue was that he was a SEAL. He was sent off to crappy little countries to kill people and to keep the peace. Every now and then they were sent off on a rescue mission. He wasn’t allowed to talk about the specifics of what he did with anyone. He had no idea how that would work in a marriage. He’d seen too many of his SEAL friends get married and then divorced because their wives just couldn’t handle the secrecy and the uncertainty of when their husbands would be coming home, or even where they were going in the first place.

To be fair, not all of the marriages ended because of the secrecy and danger inherent in being a SEAL. Some ended because one of the people in the marriage cheated on the other. Sometimes it was the wife who cheated, and other times it was the husband. Wolf shrugged. There wasn’t any use in obsessing about it. Hopefully he’d someday find someone to settle down with. If it didn’t happen during his military career, perhaps it would once he was retired. There was no rule that said someone in their forties couldn’t find true love and get married.

After drifting off and thinking about his lack of a love life, Wolf flinched when he felt a hand on his arm. He hadn’t been paying attention and was actually startled. His team would get a kick out of that. Wolf was known to always be one step ahead of the enemy and to be able to have a good idea what they were going do before they did it. Now here he was letting a civilian take him by surprise.

He opened his eyes to look at the woman sitting in the aisle seat next to him. She was ordinary. He took in her jeans, sneakers, and long sleeve T-shirt at a glance. Her brown hair was pulled up into a messy knot at the back of her head. She looked to be in her early thirties. She wore no rings; had very little makeup on, her nails weren’t polished; she had little gold studs in each ear and was looking at him expectantly. He inwardly sighed. When he was younger Wolf loved when women hit on him, now it had gotten old. Granted, this woman didn’t look like she was the type to throw herself at a man, but he’d learned that looks were deceiving when it came to what women wanted.

Glancing in her direction, Wolf thought the woman appeared to be mulling over telling him something. This in itself was fascinating, since in his experience, women tended to get right to the point of what they wanted to say. Her hesitation made him more interested in hearing what she had to say to him and he waited, patiently, as she gathered her thoughts.