Seal’s Promise: Bad Boys of Team 3

Seal Brotherhood Series- Book 8

By Sharon Hamilton

Synopsis

Special Operator T.J. Talbot had watched from afar as his best friend married the love of his life. Raised in and out of the foster care system and nearly ruining his chance to become a SEAL, he figured his Happily Ever After would never be. But Dr. Death plays a heartbreaking trick on him and he winds up being the man’s father confessor, where he makes a promise to the dying SEAL to look after his friend’s wife and baby.

Back in the states, Shannon Moore is grateful for the baby she is carrying, though she is a constant reminder of the man who no longer lives at her side. She is not ready for the attention from the community she receives, especially from T.J. She’s decided to honor her fallen husband by giving her whole life to the child he left behind.

Recovering from his wounds, Talbot is plagued by the depth of the wounds he still carries inside him, as he tries to perform a mission he wishes he was not given. Rebuffed at every turn, he struggles but understands his promise might not be able to be fulfilled. He does not want to take what was never given to him in the first place.

But what starts out as an improbable love story begins to bloom and grow. When Shannon and the child are endangered, he will not quit fighting for the family he now knows he was meant to love forever.

Excerpt

Four other SEALs were in the wedding party, and he had to admit they’d make a wedding portrait which would look good on the cover of any bridal magazine, except for their dark glasses. Only Frankie, the groom, posed without shades. Shannon had wanted them all without the shades, but T.J. smiled at her and put his back on in open defiance, and the others followed his lead.

She’d flounced off in a huff, a flurry of white organza and chiffon, and her perfume that made him sneeze. He’d watched that hellcat streak she had, angled his head to the side and watched her march off to some mythical place brides hide when they go crazy. Lovely, though. Even he had to admit that.

Frankie was white as a sheet as they gathered. “I wanna pray first,” he’d said to his best buddies. Tyler was there, of course, and Kyle, Ollie and Rory were as well. But T.J. was Frankie’s best friend, and that meant he had to be best man.

“Fuckin’ going to need a lot more than fuckin’ prayin’. Gonna need a miracle, Frankie. Shannon’s had the evil eye on me all morning…yesterday, too, and that means I don’t think you’re getting any tonight, not that you haven’t—”

“Fuck sake, T.J. It’s my fuckin’ wedding and has nothing to do with how my bride looks at you. Get that fuckin’ thought out of your head.”

“I was just sayin’—”

“Not what you’re sayin’ I have a problem with. It’s what you’re thinking.” Frankie was so nervous he was seeing conspiracies behind every plant, guest and bouquet.

“Just be glad we didn’t send you to Alaska,” Tyler said, making it worse. Last year one of the young recruits had gotten time off from BUD/S to get married—a request which was almost never granted, and then the boys thought it necessary to save him from that quickie wedding in Las Vegas, and so got him stinking drunk and put him on a plane to Alaska so he missed his own wedding. They incurred extra wet and sandy for that one, and had the toilets cleaned so many times you could eat out of them.

This had worried Shannon, and her mother even more. Mrs. “I Want Moore” was one of the hottest women T.J. had ever seen, all toned and a marathon runner in her fifties. He had never before had fantasies about the mother of the bride. Mrs. Moore was twenty-five years his senior, but he knew she could clean his clock. He’d enjoy chasing her around a few places.

Turning to face Frankie again, he felt a tad sheepish about his lusty thoughts. He wiped his mind clean and decided to concentrate harder on Frankie’s day. His buddy was so crazy in love with Shannon, he needed extra protection to keep him from stepping out in front of traffic, or bumping into caterers, which he’d already managed to do several times today.

“Come on, Frankie. Lighten up.” T.J. slapped his cheeks to redden them up. “You need to stop looking like a dead man if you’re really gonna do this.”

“Yup. I’m doing this,” Frankie said to the auditorium full of people, the organ music now swelling up to the rafters. “I’m fuckin’ doing this.”

T.J. had a hunch he was looking for his courage and had come up short. He glanced down the hallway. Cindy was leaning against the wall right outside the bride’s dressing room, keeping sentry, but also giving him the long vacant look he knew only too well. He unabashedly scanned her entire body and let her see he couldn’t wait to get her naked.

She abruptly turned after blushing.

Perfect.

Several minutes later T.J. thought he might have to prop Frankie up he was so pale. “You okay?”

“Fuck you,” Frankie whispered a little too loudly. Mrs. Moore in the front pew frowned. Her eyes swept over the row of SEALs, but zeroed back in on T.J.’s face with an admonition he couldn’t mistake. Merely the little tilt of her chin down and the knotted brow told him he was on probation. Didn’t help he’d given Frankie more Tequila than he usually drank in a whole month. Right now Frankie was spacing out and losing track of where they were and what they had to do next. T.J. had never seen him so fuckin’ scared. Even in firefights overseas.

So he’d screwed up, been a bad influence on the groom. So what else is new? With a past of foster care home rejections and “repositioning” he was used to being on probation. It felt normal. Not until he got into BUD/S did he feel like he’d found home. A real home. Guys who finally shared his intensity for life and irreverence for batshit rules that everyone else thought applied to him. The SEALs ethos were the only rules he wanted to live by. And the beginning pretty much said it all:

In times of war or uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.

…I am that man.

He thought about it while he watched Shannon’s white dress fill the aisle as she began her stately walk along the burgundy carpet to her willing but completely shitfaced groom. Her father was proud, as any father would be, to have such a radiant daughter, pink and soft in all the right places, and strong in the way she walked, her steady gait of a fearless warrior, full of a plan she was going to fully execute, just like any SEAL, her eyes fixed on Frankie, who didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into.

That made T.J. smile and check out his shoes. She was the kind of woman who would call the shots, run the household, run Frankie, manage the hell out of his schedule and get her future soccer players up on time and off to everything moms did with a house full of hellions. He saw lots of them in their future for some reason. Kids with snotty noses and hair a bit too long. Band-Aids and skinned knees. All the things he never had as a child.

But he’d watched those kids play through chain-link fences. Watched their parents cheer. Watched the juice breaks and the encouragement he never got from a single coach or foster mom. He was never noticed. Never special.

And that was just fine.

The Seal Brotherhood Series

Accidental Seal- Amazon

Fallen Seal Legacy- Amazon

Seal Under Covers-Amazon

Seal The Deal- Amazon

Cruisin’ For A Seal- Amazon

Seal My Destiny- Amazon

Seal Of My Heart- Amazon

Seal’s Promise:Bad Boys of Team 3- Amazon

Author Bio:

Sharon’s NYT and USA Today bestselling novels are almost-erotic Navy SEAL stories of the SEAL Brotherhood. Her characters follow a spicy road to redemption through passion and true love. This series continues with book 8, SEAL’s Promise, which will release November 11, 2014. All of her SEAL Brotherhood Series are available in audio book. She has maintained an Amazon top 100 author status in Romantic Suspense for since the end of 2012.

Her Golden Vampires of Tuscany are not like any vamps you’ve read before, since they don’t have to go to ground, and can walk around in the full light of the sun. Honeymoon Bite, Book 1 of the Golden Vampires of Tuscany Series, has earned the Amazon designation of #1 Gothic Romance. It and Book 2 in the series, Mortal Bite are both available on audio as well.

Her Guardian Angels struggle with the human charges they are sent to save, often escaping their vanilla world of Heaven for the brief human one. You won’t find any of these beings in any Sunday school class.

Sharon lives in Sonoma County, California, with her husband and two Dobermans. A lifelong organic gardener, when she’s not writing, she’s getting verra verra dirty in the mud, or wandering Farmer’s Markets looking for new Heirloom varieties of vegetables and flowers.

“True Love Heals in the Gardens of the Heart”

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ Amazon Author

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