Page 6 of Shark

“Yes, sir,” Tex said, his look telling Shark that he wasn’t pleased. That bothered him immensely.

“We also have a basketball court. Let’s see your moves.”

Shark nodded. “With all due respect, Mr. Ambassador, if my CO thinks I’m underdressed, then I’m underdressed. I’ll be right back. Please don’t hold dinner on my account. It’ll only take a moment.”

Maddy slipped by him and walked to his CO. “Lieutenant,” she started with the same inflection she’d used on her dad. “Please don’t stand on ceremony when this is a very informal dinner. As my dad has already said, we, including my mom, aren't offended. Surely, after all your hard work, he can have one evening where he can relax.” She gave him a sweet, genuine grin. “And, besides, he’s got a nice set of legs.”

His LT gave the ambassador an indulgent, sidelong glance and said, “She’s a chip off the old block, sir.” Shark knew when Tex was in a good mood and when he wasn’t. He wasn’t exactly happy about his authority being questioned in front of civilians, especially an ambassador, but he had the kind of tact that he needed to defuse the situation.

The warm, affectionate smile Clay gave his daughter was just as genuine. “That she is and always charming.”

“All right, Dr. Towson. We’re stuck with his legs for the remainder of the evening.”

She rolled her eyes at his formality. “Please, it’s Maddy.”

Shark shifted uncomfortably where he stood. He wasn’t used to someone, especially someone he just met and pretty much insulted, going to bat for him. He was used to being independent, and although he had a team mentality, he was aware that interacting with her was on a one-to-one basis. Suddenly, he thirsted for contact with her on any level.

It was strange to him, this feeling of wanting to know how someone else felt, what they were thinking. In fact, it was only recently that Tex had stripped the team down to the basics with a surprise log PT to show how they weren’t pulling as a team, and the blame had landed on his shoulders. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his teammates. He did. He liked them, respected them, even trusted them. He just didn’t know how to interact with them on a level where they knew his thoughts, his feelings. He’d never shared those things with anyone. He knew it was his fault the team didn’t always gel, and it terrified him that his need to create a space between him and them would get one of them killed. He was feeling swallowed up by his inability to get out of his own way.

Just the way most of his romantic relationships had gone…he was too jaded and cynical for most women. They didn’t get him, and he’d been too afraid to open up, so he sabotaged and made sure he was the one to leave and continue operating.

Deep down, he was devastatingly lonely, and he had a healthy fear of staying that way because it was so difficult for him to allow himself to be who he was at his core, the part he thought was unlovable. Not Shark, the Navy SEAL, but Bale, who had overcome a lot in his life to get where he was, doing what he loved. It drove home to him, with her kind interference, how isolated being independent was. It also made him miffed. He’d stood up for himself all his life, but the Navy was different and going against orders just wasn’t done.

Okay, so he’d sometimes ignored orders with some excuse that he hadn’t heard them, like when he’d pursued Easy on his own in Venezuela. He’d been pissed at Twister for attending to the bad guys during their previous mission, while Easy had been drowning below decks. It had been up to him to bring Easy back, and when he’d gotten separated from the team, Shark couldn’t handle letting him down…again. It was complicated.

He had been a rebel and that had landed him in juvie several times. On his last strike, they’d offered him hard time or the military. Best thing that had ever happened to him.

Unsure about what to do, feeling bitter and pissed that his clothing was in question, irritated that some light-filled angel felt the need to stand up for him, he glowered at nobody in particular.

They sat down to dinner, and it was uneventful until the ambassador suggested they play some pool.

Shark didn’t think refusing to engage was a good idea, especially after the whole clothing-related debacle. To be honest, Shark found it rare to be challenged at pool. One of his foster homes, his favorite in the morass of social services, had been with a guy who taught him everything he knew about pool from the time he was ten to when he was fifteen. He’d been a hustler and a good one, and he’d taught Shark how to scam marks. The moment he’d picked up a cue, he had been good at the game, but Sandy, Roger Sandman, had honed his natural ability. He also adored Sandy’s wife. She was always there to pick him up from school, bake him cookies, and always make sure he was clean and fed well. He loved her. His social worker had just shown up one day, and they had taken him away from the only real family he’d known. It had been a hard blow to be placed in a group home when he’d been fifteen. But when Shark had asked repeatedly about them, his social worker had told him they hadn’t put up a fight. It gutted him as he lay alone in that group home, all his belongings stuffed into a trash bag, all his feelings of being unlovable dropping on him like a ton of bricks. That’s when the trouble began.

Pool was in his blood. Reluctantly, he followed the ambassador and the crowd into their game room. It was a sweet setup with a dart board on the wall, foosball, card table, and a pool table with a rack of cues on the wall as well.

Pool tables were expensive for a reason. They were engineered to be level, requiring a perfect balance. A wool and nylon cloth stretched over an absolutely flat bed of polished slate was mandatory. Ambassador Towson had an expensive table. “A Kingswood. Very nice,” he murmured as he walked around the polished wood table, sliding his hand along the felt top. “What’s this wood?”

“Tiger. It’s the same as the pool decking outside,” Towson said.

Shark smiled. He liked the symmetry of that.

“It’s a hardwood and imported from Brazil,” Maddy said, her eyes following him as he moved around the table.

The playing area of the table was known as the bed, and included the cloth, the rails, and the pockets. Tables came in three sizes, but this one was the standard of four and a half by nine feet with a playing area of one hundred times fifty inches. The corner pockets were from four and five-eighths to five and one-eighth and the side pockets were just a tad bigger.

“Would you like me to rack them, sir?” Shark asked. Sandy always let him rack the balls.

The ambassador nodded, already standing at the cues waiting.

Struggling with a thickness in his chest, trying to ward off feelings he didn’t want to acknowledge crowding in on him, he grabbed the triangular rack and set it on the table. He walked around gathering up the six-ounce balls. There were fifteen of them with balls one through eight a single color, and nine through fifteen white with a stripe of color with the cue ball being white and the eight ball being black. The cue was the first ball struck, and the eight ball last.

While all this was happening, his teammates watched with glittering eyes. They knew what he could do with a pool table, and they were probably placing bets on whether he would run the table or give the ambassador a chance to play, their voices a low murmur on the edge of his consciousness.

He set each ball inside the rack, rolled them to get them all balanced, then removed the rack. He walked to the cues. “Guests choose first,” the ambassador said.

Shark studied the cues. The ambassador hadn’t skimped on the quality, which was smart. The cue was an extension of a player’s arm, his mind, his reflexes, and his skill. It had to feel right in his hand. He made his choice, weighed the cue, and then rolled it on the table. Yeah, it felt perfect.

“I would suggest that Shark break and you go first, Mr. Ambassador,” Tex said.

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