Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Shielding Harlow (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Fierce Protectors Book 2)

by Casey Hagen

  She’d had his child and hadn’t sought him out. Oh, she had wanted to… there were times she almost couldn’t resist. Days where life had been so damn hard as a sleep-deprived, overworked, and underpaid single mother. But looking back now, despite the pure venom in his dark brown orbs, the way his shoulders bunched as though ready to attack, she wouldn’t change a single thing she had done. He had made it clear that their time together had an expiration date.

  And she had honored it.

  “Are you sure I’m the father?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “Yes, I had only been with one other guy a year earlier. I told you that. You believed me then. But if you need a paternity test to prove it, I’d be more than happy to have one done. Hell, I’ll even do you one better—I’ll pay for it. I have nothing to hide.” At least, not anymore.

  “How could you?” he said, the words filled with desolation.

  She’d expected him to be angry. She’d expected wounded pride.

  What surprised her was the pain that came on the heels of both.

  That sexy, square jaw of his locked, the muscles jumping as he clenched his teeth. His large hands, hands that once brought her endless pleasure in a shared sleeping bag on the sand of Long Beach, had curled into fists on the table before her. More than anything, she wished she could cover them with her own and feel his skin against hers again. If for no other reason than to take comfort in the fact that she was no longer alone in this.

  She had missed him from the moment they parted. Passion she had never known, a connection with a man unlike anything she could imagine despite her love and frequent indulgence of romance novels and happily-ever-afters, had been brought to life with every glide of his fingers over her skin, every kiss of his powerful lips, and the whispers of his deep voice full of wonder riding a wave of warm breath over her ear.

  She couldn’t have him, but she’d managed to unintentionally hold on to a part of him. No matter where he was in the world, she looked into the same brown eyes, day in and day out, as she raised their daughter who looked so much like her father that it broke Harlow’s heart every day.

  “I did what I needed to do to make sure she had a stable home. I didn’t want her to have a dad who just popped in and out whenever he felt like it—and I didn’t know you well enough to know what to expect,” she said quietly. She choked back the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. Her daughter didn’t need tears now. She needed her mother to be strong and find her. “You made it clear that nothing was holding you back. When I found out I was pregnant, I did everything in my power to take care of my child.”

  “Our child. A child I had a right to know about,” he bit out, his hands locking on the edge of the table with so much force the tips turned white—as though he forced himself to strangle the wood rather than wrap his strong fingers around her neck and throttle her.

  She folded her arms on the table before her and scraped her thumbnail over the chipped edge of the dark-stained wood. “Yes, you had a right to know about her.” She met his eyes and willed herself to hold his gaze no matter how the anger he leveled at her made her want to put up all her defenses. “But tell me, Dylan, would it have changed anything? Would you have left boot camp and abandoned your dream? And to support us, would you have taken us home to Arizona where you would have ended up taking over the family business?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He slammed his closed fist on the table, making the salt, pepper, and Parmesan shakers jump and rattle.

  She glanced around the room, but no one noticed the six-foot-four man in the corner who had just been blindsided by years of deceit. “You would have had to tell your parents you messed up, you would have had to surrender every dream, and over time you would have resented me for it. It would have destroyed any chance we had to make a go of it. Resentment would have spilled over onto our daughter.”

  “What about your dreams?” he asked.

  “My biggest dream was Ghana, and it was only for a year. I got a few months before I had to head home. That’s a whole lot different than giving up an entire career. And you would have. You know it. Remember what you told me about your parents?”

  “Yeah,” he ground out, glancing away from her.

  “Did your dad ever manage to work past the PTSD from Vietnam?”

  “Not before it cost my parents’ marriage, no,” he admitted, his voice devoid of the bitterness it held before.

  “I stand by my decision. I’m sorry it hurts you. I’m sorry that you’ve missed so much, but I did it because I believed, and still do, that it was best for Ashton. And I thought it was best for you.”

  He blinked. “Ashton?”

  “Yes, Ashton Dylan Cassidy.”

  The flush that had stained his cheeks from his earlier anger drained from his face upon hearing his daughter’s name.

  “You named her for me,” he said.

  “I did. As much as I could, with her being a girl and all.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and slid a picture of Ashton from the flap inside the case. “This is her school picture. She’s a freshman.”

  He took the picture from her, his eyes devouring the image in such a way that she felt like a voyeur capturing a stranger in an intimate, emotional moment. And although he wasn’t a complete stranger, he had changed so very much from that nineteen-year-old guy she met at a bonfire. She had never witnessed such a private moment, let alone one she’d had a hand in making.

  He ran his index finger over the image. “She looks so much like my sister,” he whispered.

  “She looks like her father. Every day you’ve been right there with me, through her. Until now,” she said quietly. She pulled up an album of pics she had of Ashton from her field hockey games, chorus, and the Sadie Hawkins dance. “Here, a few of the highlights of freshman year.”

  He took the phone from her and cradled it in his palm as though it was spun glass. His eyes lit up more and more with each picture.

  “She’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning.” He glanced up to her. “She’s smart?” His gaze dropped down to the phone again. “She looks smart.”

  “She’s ranked third in her class. Has always had straight As. Perfect attendance. She’s got an immune system of the hardest steel, and that big brain of hers has given me a run for my money since her toddler years.”

  “I missed it. She’s practically a grown woman and I missed all of it,” he said, his deep voice breaking as he shuddered.

  Shame filled her as he spoke, his voice breaking. Despite her claim to have no regrets, in that moment, witnessing such a strong man being laid low by something she’d done, she was willing to do just about anything to soften the blow. She couldn’t go back in time, but when this was all over, when they got Ashton back, she had some atoning to do. “Dylan—I, I, God, I don’t know what to say. I’ll make it up to you. When we get her back, I swear I’ll make it all up to you.”

  He set the phone on the table and leaned back, shooting a glare in her direction. “How, Harlow? How exactly are you going to do that? You can’t give back a chance at seeing her born, holding her for the first time, her first words, her first day of school…”

  “I know. There are pictures—” She stopped talking the minute his dark brows snapped down over his eyes and they narrowed to slits.

  “Pictures? That’s what you’re going to try to appease me with? You stole my kid from me.”

  She slapped her palms on the table in frustration. She hated the way he was making her feel as though she was a common thief. Worse, she feared he might be right, not that she could admit it just yet. “And now someone stole her from me. Dammit! I get it, okay? I need your help getting her back. Please.”

  He pulled out his cell and clicked a number.

  “You’re making a call now?”

  “Yeah, to my partner. We’re getting her back. I’m getting her back. And then you and I are going to have a good long talk in a court of law about what kind of time she’s going to spend with me going forw
ard, to make up for everything you took from me.”

  She gasped at his sharp words, scarcely recognizing the volatile man before her. “Wait, you’re going to help me get her back, only to take her from me? In just a handful of minutes and a few photographs you’ve decided that I deserve to be paid back by losing her twice? Well, fuck you, Dylan. I’ll do this alone or I’ll find someone else, but I won’t let you take her from me. I’m her mother. I’ve sacrificed everything for her.” Her stomach sank with disappointment and fear of what would happen. She pushed away from the table and hopped down to the floor.

  She took two steps before his hand curled around her elbow and he spun her on her hot little heels which couldn’t wait to flee his verbal attack.

  “Oh, no you don’t. You don’t get to dive into my life, drop a bomb like this, and then just take off. I’m in this, Harlow, and you have some serious explaining to do. But first, I need every detail of Ashton’s disappearance and I need it now.”

  She bit back the words she wanted to hurl at him, leaving them to burn in the back of her throat. “Not here,” she said, searching the room. The hairs on her neck stood up and her skin prickled with the awareness that someone was watching her. Someone she couldn’t trust.

  “What is it?” he said, his eyes darting around the deli without actually moving his head. Anyone looking on would think he hadn’t stopped looking at her when, in fact, he hadn’t looked at her once since she said, ‘not here’.

  “I don’t know. I just get this feeling someone is following me, watching me to see what I’ll do. To make sure I get the money.”

  “She’s being held for ransom?”

  “She’s being held to ensure that I pay my brother’s gambling debt. They took him first and tried to get the money out of me then. When I said no, he’d have to clean up his own mess for once, they took her.” A tear spilled over and ran down her face, leaving a hot, wet trail. “They just plucked her right off the sidewalk in front of the school library. I was right there, Dylan. Right there waiting for her, waving to her, when they rushed up in a black van and snatched her before I could even get out of my car.”

  His gaze dropped to her cheek. He brushed the tear from her skin and sucked the pad of his thumb. She stuttered out a breath at the intimate gesture as his eyes held her captive.

  “We’ll get her back. I promise you, Harlow. If I have to die doing it, I’ll get her back to you.”

  “And then you’ll take her,” she whispered.

  He sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. “I may have been harsh,” he admitted. “We’ll work it out. After. But I want to see my daughter. I want to get to know her. I expect you to support that and not interfere. You owe me that much.”

  “If you can help me get her back, I owe you everything.”

  “I’m not asking for everything. Just my daughter.”

  He didn’t want her. Not that she was offering herself up on a silver platter or anything, but it humbled her to make such an unintentionally loaded statement and have him clarify that he’d pass on that.

  Especially when her heart had taken off at a run that could rival any thoroughbred given his head in an open field.

  She needed to push the attraction out of her mind and focus. It’s not like he was the only man on the planet.

  Only, in just a handful of minutes, her body had reacted more to him than the men she had dated off and on over the years combined. Not that there had been many. She had her priorities; being there for her daughter day in and day out had always been at the absolute top of her list. No man she had met in the years since having Ashton had tempted her enough to even contemplate introducing them to her daughter.

  And she hadn’t managed to be intimate with any one of those men without a flash of her hot night with Dylan reminding her what it was like to be so thoroughly consumed by one man, and how poorly the man she lay with at that moment was measuring up.

  She brushed at her cheeks and straightened her spine. “Understood. So, what do we do next?”

  He glanced around the dining room. The table of kids had stopped eating and thumbed their phones. One of the families by the windows had finished and left.

  “We go back to my office and you give every single bit of information you have to my team. From there, we work the case.” He took her hand and started leading her out to the front room with the deli counter and cash register.

  “What did you mean by this is what you do?” she asked, hustling to keep up with his long strides. He towered over her by almost a foot, and his aggressive pace ate up the ground and kept her on her toes as he pushed open the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. She flipped up her hood just in the nick of time before she followed him out. The setting sun blinded her. She shot up her hand to shield her eyes.

  “I run a private investigation and personal protection business. I can’t say that we’ve ever had to go in and extract a kidnapped child, but we’ve had to pull people, including our own team, out of sticky situations. We’re all former SEALs. This is what we trained for, for almost three years, to become SEALs—well, those of us who made it in. I worked on extraction team for six years, as did my partners. They’re the best. We can get her out, but we need information first. All of it. I want to make sure every contingency is planned for, so she doesn’t get hurt.”

  She sighed with the first sense of relief she’d had in the fourteen hours since they’d taken Ashton. “Thank you, Dylan,” she said.

  He nodded, and then made a motion with his hand as he looked over her shoulder to a spot somewhere across the street. A black-haired guy in silver SUV nodded, rolled out of his space, and proceeded through the green light at the intersection.

  “One of the good guys?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Did you park somewhere around here?” he asked, glancing around the general area.

  “No, I used public transportation. This way if they’re watching my house, hopefully they think I’m still there.”

  He smiled and nodded. “Smart move. I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t be. I feel like I’ve been calling up every damn tactic I’ve seen on crime shows, and it feels ridiculous.”

  “Most of those shows are pretty accurate. They skim over heavy-duty details, but what they choose to show is usually close.”

  “I’m not sure that makes me feel better.”

  “You won’t feel better until we have Ashton back. So, let’s get to it.” He led her to his Land Rover, opened the passenger door, and guided her in. “Buckle up.”

  Her lips twitched. “You really think you have to tell the mom to buckle up?”

  Something flashed across his face and then it was gone. “I’m still getting used to the mom part.”

  “Yeah, you probably see me as trouble,” she muttered, clicking her buckle into place.

  “More like the one who got away,” he said quietly. He glanced down at her legs and clicked the door shut, the sound narrating the finality of the moment.

  Chapter 3

  Dylan was a father.

  He was a motherfucking father.

  Christ, he hadn’t had a serious relationship in… well, he hadn’t had one. The last woman he had been seeing was a damn lunatic. Seven dates and she thought they should be shopping for rings.

  She hadn’t even spent a full night at his house yet, and he sure as hell hadn’t stepped foot in hers. At the time he hadn’t minded indulging in her surgery-enhanced body because, damn, it was like having a new car with all kinds of cool buttons and knobs that did state-of-the-art things.

  Six months ago, she’d sounded like a good time.

  Now, as of about an hour and a half ago, the idea of her and their short-lived relationship just made him feel stupid and tired.

  Old, stupid, and tired… because, yeah, there was the whole having a daughter thing.

  A teenage daughter, no less.

  There was no way to keep this from Evan and Cole. None. And Evan had some serious suspicions that Dyla
n couldn’t be impartial, because he acted like a lovesick puppy at just the sound of Harlow’s voice and forgot how to do his job.

  The bottom edge of the sun started disappearing behind the horizon and the streetlights lit up along the avenue, casting a faint glow on the sidewalk where the occasional couple strolled, hand in hand, their gazes fixed to the sun setting over the Pacific.

  He glanced at Harlow. She kept her eyes aimed out her window, which had to be making her sick to her stomach. At least it did most of the people he knew, but she likely preferred that to going another round with him about their daughter.

  With the way her jaw worked, as if she were fighting tears, he’d bet his left nut she didn’t notice one bit of the magic of the landscape before her.

  She had changed so much, yet not at all. That patient, sweet girl still showed through in the way that her eyes softened with love and adoration when talking about Ashton, and the way she pleaded with him when she finally seemed to realize just how much she had hurt him by keeping Ashton a secret.

  But under that lay a core of steel and resolve he imagined came with raising a child on her own. A part of him had to admit that it might be just the kind of strength that would see her through this. Although he hadn’t taken on any kidnapping cases before, as he’d never been approached on that level, he had seen other families going through it over the years. More often than not, with intact couples, the mother fell apart. Not that he would blame her if she did, but Harlow had had to be mom and dad for so long; being the one constant in Ashton’s world, the anchor in every storm, she didn’t have the luxury of freely feeling everything.

  Instinct told him to comfort her. His anger scoffed at the very idea.

  Distraction it is.

  “Are you married?” he asked, and immediately wished he could stuff the question back down his throat.

  Idiot.

  She glanced at him, those dirty-blond eyebrows raised with derision. “Do I look married? Don’t you think if I were married he’d be here now, helping? Would I have even—” She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said, turning back to the window.