The other guys piled out behind him in a disorderly jumble, and he was suddenly acutely aware of what a disheveled mob they made, slouching in rumpled lounge-lizard tuxes, all of them in need of a shave and a shower, smelling like booze and stale sweat, cringing away from the sun and their hangovers.

As one, the women burst into gales of laughter.

They were laughing at him and his guys.

Laughing.

He was a United States Navy fucking SEAL, for crying out loud. The pride of the American armed forces. The best of the best. Embarrassment started a slow burn in his gut.

The smoking-hot blond on the end who honest-to-God looked like Malibu Navy Barbie gasped at Calvin Kettering. “Good one, Commander. Where’d you scrape up these losers to masquerade as SEALs? You really had us going there…” She dissolved into another fit of laughter.

Griffin indignantly straightened to his full six-foot-plus height, but he supposed it was hard to take a guy seriously when he looked like a bad impersonation of Dean Martin and smelled like a sewer.

Kettering looked even grimmer than usual. “It’s not a joke. These…degenerates…are SEAL Team Reaper. The hand-picked team I’ve chosen to turn you ladies into the first female Navy SEALs.”

A bucket of ice water couldn’t have sobered up Griffin faster. Female SEALs?

Female.

SEALs.

“Come again, sir?” he choked out.

“Welcome to Operation Valkyrie, gentlemen.”

* * *

Sherri slid behind the wheel of the topless Jeep, slipped on mirrored sunglasses, and peered sidelong at the dark-haired hunk shrugging out of his baby-blue tuxedo jacket to reveal a ruffled white shirt clinging to acres of muscles. He was six-feet-two of rugged deliciousness as he tossed the stained jacket in the back of the Jeep and swung into the seat beside her.

Kettering had briskly introduced him as Reaper platoon leader Griffin Caldwell, who had the good grace to look chagrined as the commander declared the men unfit to drive and ordered her to take the wheel of the Jeep.

She steered the Jeep behind Kettering’s Hummer, which everybody else had piled into. The vehicles drove away from the asphalt runway in the middle of Nowhere, USA and headed deeper into nowhere.

Her passenger filled more than just the seat beside her. His masculine presence filled the whole Jeep. He smelled like whiskey and the clean sweat of someone who worked out a lot. It was actually a whole lot sexier than she’d like to admit.

She’d met SEALs at various formal events in DC, but they’d always been buttoned into starched uniforms, tugging at their shirt collars and looking intensely uncomfortable in the limelight. This was the first time she’d ever seen a SEAL in his native environment, bumping down a dirt road, his gaze on a swivel, headed into an op—that ridiculous baby-blue tuxedo notwithstanding.

She stifled a smile as she eyed her passenger discreetly.