Hot SEALs: Reclaiming the SEAL (Kindle Worlds) (Lost and Found Series Book 11) Read Online Free

the world and she knew it was only a matter of time before tragedy visited their little group. She’d never expected it to happen this way.
    Julie crawled across the pile of gear and into his arms. Gabe’s deep voice broke into a sob, as always, constrained. She cried more openly, giving release to the emotions she’d tried to control all day. His strong arms crushed her against him, his face buried in her neck. Julie wrapped her arms around his head and neck and held him as tightly as she could.
    They stayed like that for a good while, giving vent to their grief. It was Gabe that drew back first, as she had known he would. He swiped at his lean cheeks, clearing away the evidence from his breakdown. “Sorry about that.” His voice was guttural in the aftermath. He pushed up from the floor. “I’ll be back. I need to go change.”
    Julie watched him go, trying to rein in her emotions. It seemed like she’d cried gallons of tears, but there always managed to be more.
    She glanced around the apartment but of course there were no tissues. She pushed to her feet and padded to the bathroom, retrieving a roll of toilet paper from under the cupboard. She blew her nose a couple of times then walked back out. She set the roll on the coffee table and moved to the kitchen. Same apartment, same decor, maybe he would still have tea tucked away in a cupboard for her. It took a few tries, but she found the glass lidded tea jar, and it was overflowing. Julie was a little shocked at how many tea bags were stuffed into the container. More than when she’d left, certainly. Julie held the container in her hand for a long time, just looking at it, wondering what it meant that he had continued to buy her tea in as many exotic locations as he could.
    Maybe Gabe had taken up drinking tea.
    Shrugging, she chose a bag at random and put a cup of water in the microwave to heat. She opened the refrigerator door. Yeah, exactly what she’d expected. There were a few yogurts, well past their prime, as well as some mustard and mayonnaise in the door. There were a few bottles of beer on the shelves and a whole case of water. She grabbed one of the waters for him, retrieved the steaming tea from the microwave, and went back into the living room.
    Gabe was back, again sitting on the floor, his back now curled against the front of the couch, arms propped on his drawn up knees. The tears had dried and the skin around his eyes was puffy but less tense. He didn’t look like he was going to go off on someone anymore.
    Julie pushed the table out of the way and sat down beside him, her knee not quite touching his leg. She set the bottle of water in front of him and curled her hands around the teacup. Though it had been a while, her clothes remained damp, and they would until she changed out of them. Her bag was in the car, waiting for her to decide where she was going to spend the night. If Gabe needed her here, she would stay right here.
    They sat side by side for a long time, not talking. Julie sipped her tea, charmed by the spices in the exotic blend. Gabe reached forward and snagged the bottle of water, ripped off the cap and chugged the entire thing in a few heavy swallows. “I needed that. Thank you.”
    She held up her cup. “And thank you for having tea on hand.”
    He shrugged as if embarrassed. “It became habit to buy you tea when we were together and it stuck, even after you left. Even Butter bought you some.”
    Julie smiled at the thought of those SEALs bristling with weapons and fishing out coins to buy little packets of tea for her. “Thank you very much. That was a nice surprise opening the cupboard and seeing my jar there, overflowing.”
    Gabe’s wounded eyes cleared and he gave her a thoughtful look. “We missed you, Julie. Every time we came home we hoped that you would be here to greet us, even though we knew that you wouldn’t be.”
    Her eyes filled with tears again, because those had been some of the hardest times for her, when