KIRKLAND: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security)

by Glenna Sinclair

  KIRKLAND

  A Gray Wolf Security Novel

  Bonus: My first box set. Enjoy!

  Glenna Sinclair

  Copyright © 2016

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Billionaires In Love

  HIS

  Beauty and the Billionaire

  THORN

  Blindsided

  Addicted To You

  Prologue

  Mabel

  “Please, please, don’t tow my car!”

  The cop looked up, his eyebrows rising as he studied me rushing toward him from further up the street. I stopped in front of him, breathing hard from running.

  “Please,” I said again. “I was just about to leave.”

  “But this car has been here for more than an hour.”

  “I know. It took longer than I expected upstairs. I’m so sorry.”

  “You see that sign,” he said, gesturing to the sign right smack in the center of the sidewalk where my car was parked. “It says, ‘No parking.’”

  “I was in such a rush, I didn’t see it. I’m so sorry.”

  I was hoping if I apologized enough…but it seemed his only interest was in my chest. How typical! But, again, if it saved me the hassle of having to go to the impound lot…

  I leaned forward a little, happier than I ever imagined I’d be that I’d chosen to wear a low-cut top today. Normally my clothes tended toward the conservative—like the Catholic schoolgirl skirt I was wearing—but my wool sweater was dirty, and I didn’t have time to search out anything else. His eyes went right where I expected them to go, and he bit his lower lip.

  “Where were you?”

  I gestured behind me. “Dentist.”

  “Well, can’t really fault someone who makes oral health a priority.” He gestured to the tow truck driver to back off. The man seemed to be expecting it because his truck was already in reverse. He backed up, stalling traffic on the busy street behind him.

  “Thank you so much,” I said, touching the officer’s arm lightly. Probably shouldn’t have done that. He gave me a warning glance, even as I scooted around him and hopped into my car, taking advantage of the break in traffic because of the tow truck to speed off.

  I wondered what he would have said if I’d told him the truth? I was actually picking up some artwork for my website. Let’s say that it wasn’t really the kind of art someone might want to show his or her mother. However, it was popular on my website—even if the artist was as slow as molasses in getting the work out each week. That’s what took so long. He wasn’t quite finished matting the cartoons. I could have had my team at the office do it before they started the animation process, but this artist was temperamental. It was better to wait than anger the dog.

  I slowed down, my heart finally calming in its ferocious beating. I had a meeting at five, but I thought I would make it. And this week’s videos were ready for release first thing in the morning. Everything was going the way it should for once. I could finally relax.

  Even as the thought crossed my mind, my cell phone buzzed. A new text message.

  I hoped it wasn’t a problem. I really didn’t need any more problems.

  I slowed and stopped at a red light and picked the phone up.

  This will be you by the end of the week.

  Underneath was a picture of a faceless, young woman, hanging from a rope.

  Chapter 1

  At the Compound

  Ash Grayson shuffled through the paperwork on his desk, thinking that paperwork was all he did anymore. In the Green Berets, he’d resented anything that took him out of the field. But now…he’d gotten soft, and he knew it. Running Gray Wolf Security was something he’d never thought he’d want to do, but it’d been satisfying. He was lucky to be able to work each day with people he deeply respected and cared about—as if they were members of his family. One actually was family. His brother, David, ran the technical parts of the company, watching over the operatives as they protected the clients. But things were changing. All Ash had to do was look across the room and see his brother standing at his workstation to see just how much things were changing.

  David was confined to a wheelchair after an accident that took the lives of their parents. It was an accident, a patch of black ice that no one could have predicted would be there, but David allowed the guilt over their parents’ death to lead to his decision not to have the surgery that would fix his paralysis. But then he met a woman he wanted to love, to protect, and that finally convinced him that he was worthy of the life-changing surgery. He was engaged to marry that woman now, a wedding that would take place later this month.

  That would be the second wedding Gray Wolf had seen in recent months. Donovan Pritchard, a former member of the same Green Beret unit Ash had belonged to—and his good friend—had married his high school sweetheart in November after they reunited when the bride’s father hired Gray Wolf to protect her in the aftermath of a murder at the bank where she worked. They seemed disgustingly happy. Ash moaned and groaned about it, but he was secretly pleased to see his friend so content in his life. The man had beat himself up for years over the death of his best friend. He deserved to find a little peace in life now.

  And, Ash assumed, there would be wedding bells soon for the one lady on their team. Joss Grant Hernandez worked a case back in October that led her into the arms of shipping magnet, Carrington Matthews. At Christmas, she let Ash know that she was expecting a baby. This was after he’d assigned her to a case that saw her chasing a stalker through a canyon behind the client’s house and after she’d been shot, not once, but twice while working the potential kidnapping case Matthews had hired them to prevent. She was a tough lady, and she made it clear that she expected to continue working until she was ready to give birth. But Ash was quietly assigning the more dangerous jobs to Donovan and Kirkland Parish, his other operative, while giving her simpler jobs, like background checks and corporate espionage, the sort of thing that didn’t involve drug cartels and automatic weapons.

  Changes. He wasn’t sure he liked them.

  “Hey, boss,” Joss said, coming to lean against the front of his desk. “How’s it going?”

  He shrugged, as he sat back to look at her. She was wearing a pair of low-rider jeans and a long t-shirt, the swelling of her pregnancy just beginning to show. She reached up and tightened the ponytail she almost always wore her long, blonde hair in, her eyes moving over Ash as she did, as though she was trying to be subtle in her evaluation of him.

  “I heard yo
u were in Maine last week.”

  “I was.”

  A little wrinkle appeared at the corners of her eyes. “Find anything?”

  He knew there was no point in playing games with Joss. She could see through his lies no matter how he twisted them. And he knew that she knew the only reason he traveled anymore was to check out leads on his missing fiancée.

  Alexi was a CIA agent who worked undercover in Afghanistan while Ash was running ops there with the Green Berets. It was all super-secret, the kind of operations that he and every member of his unit had to sign non-disclosure agreements over that went above and beyond the promises made to the Army when he enlisted. He and Alexi were attracted to each other immediately, drawn not only by the danger of what they did together, but by the amazing number of things they’d had in common. If they’d met under other circumstances, normal circumstances, he fully believed they would have gotten together just the same. They might have just lacked the constant sense of urgency that had overshadowed their relationship in Afghanistan.

  And she wouldn’t have gone missing during their last operation together.

  He sighed, his hands dropping to his lap. “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “I believe I’ll find her someday. They never found a body, never found any indication that she’d been captured or tortured or whatever else. I believe she came back to the States, maybe with a head injury or…” He stopped, aware they’d had this conversation before and he was simply repeating himself. Joss didn’t seem to mind, but he did. He couldn’t stand becoming repetitive or, God forbid, coming off as obsessive. He wasn’t. He just believed in Alexi.

  She rested her hand on his shoulder, her support clear but unspoken.

  “Ash,” David said, coming over to interrupt their conversation. “Did you get a call from Mabel Watson?”

  Ash picked up one of the file folders he had sitting on top of his desk. “I was just about to send this over to you for the background checks.”

  “She’s a friend of Ricki’s,” David said, mentioning his fiancée. “She actually recommended that Mabel call us when she found out she was getting threats via email.”

  Ash’s eyebrows rose. “Ricki keeps interesting company.”

  The case involved the CEO of Cumming’s Treasure, a website that offered everything from pornographic videos to X-rated comic strips to the sale of sex toys. She was apparently getting emails from someone threatening to kill her. Ash had just gotten the call a little over an hour ago and was still running the preliminary paperwork before assigning it to an operative.

  “They were friends before Mabel started the website. And, from what I understand, it was kind of an accident. She was desperate for money and a friend told her about a domain for sale. She didn’t even know what she was getting into until the ink was drying on the contract.”

  Ash wanted to smile. He didn’t understand why David was making such a big deal out of this, but he suspected it was because he didn’t want his brother to think badly of his fiancée. What he didn’t know was that Ash had a great deal of respect for Ricki. Any woman who could love his brother so completely, who could accept David in or out of the wheelchair, earned his deepest respect.

  “I’m going to put Kirkland on it as soon as he surfaces.”

  “Where is Kirkland, anyway?” Joss asked.

  “He had a late night last night,” David said with a roll of his eyes. “He stumbled in a little after two with some blonde.”

  Joss chuckled. “I’ll go roust him out.”

  The moment Joss walked away, David moved a little closer to Ash, lowering his voice.

  “Do you really think Kirkland is the right choice for this one?”

  “I think Kirkland’s the perfect choice.”

  The amusement dancing in Ash’s eyes was hard to miss. So was the anger that suddenly jumped into David’s eyes.

  “Kirkland is a…” David hesitated, trying to find the right word. They were all family at Gray Wolf, so he probably didn’t want to say anything offensive. But Ash knew what he was getting at.

  “He’ll probably enjoy hanging out with someone who makes their living selling sex.”

  “That’s the problem,” David said. “Mabel isn’t really that kind of person—despite her day job.”

  Ash lifted an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “Let’s just say, she sells sex, but that doesn’t mean she knows much about it.”

  Ash started to ask what the hell he meant by that, but then the light dawned. Ash couldn’t help but let the surprise show. “You’re joking!”

  David shook his head.

  Ash laughed, trying to catch himself when he realized David was glaring at him.

  “This means a lot to Ricki. Please assign someone else to the case.”

  Ash sobered and shook his head. “Donovan’s in Las Vegas with that singer, and Joss is working with me on this new company that wants us to vet the candidates for their CFO position.”

  “Can’t you put Joss…?”

  Ash could see that David knew why Joss couldn’t do the job, but he was growing desperate.

  Ash leaned forward and lay a hand on David’s wrist. “How about if I tell Kirkland that if he touches this girl, I’ll make him give the best man’s toast at your wedding.”

  David cracked a smile. “Or you can tell him that you’ll tell all the single women at the wedding that he has crabs.”

  “Oh, that would kill him,” Ash laughed. “That’s the winner!”

  They both laughed for a long minute. Then Ash stood and slapped his brother’s shoulder as he moved around him to get another cup of coffee.

  “I’ll lay down the law with Kirkland,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I will. It’s Kirkland.”

  Ash couldn’t help but agree with him. He kept hoping that Kirkland would grow up, but that day seemed to be quite a ways away. But he was good at his job and he was a friend. They all just tried to overlook his proclivities.

  Chapter 2

  Kirkland

  I rolled over and groaned as pain sliced through my head. But then my hand brushed against bare skin. I peeked and found myself staring at the back of a head that sported long, silky blonde hair. It began to come back to me then. A bar. Beautiful women. Way too much whiskey. And the stumbling dance into bed.

  It was a good night.

  “Wake up, baby,” I said, rolling into her and kissing her shoulder.

  She moaned. “What time is it?”

  “Probably later than it should be.”

  I ran my hand under the thin sheet that was the only thing covering her ass, slipping my hand low between her thighs. She groaned as I touched her, slipping one finger over the hood covering her clit. It wasn’t covered for long, peeking out to join the party as I increased the pressure, making her hips move against my hand.

  “How about a quickie before you go?” I asked against her ear.

  “How about we spend all day in bed like you promised last night?”

  Did I? Funny the things I said when I was trying to get some girl into my bed.

  “Got to go to work, baby. But we can have a little fun until then.”

  She rolled toward me, her makeup smeared on her face. She smiled what was probably a seductive smile last night, but was just tired and a little sad today.

  “Why don’t you say my name?”

  I bit back a groan even as I slid my hand between her thighs again. She opened them quite willingly, her cunt warm and ready for more fun. I slid a finger inside of her and watched as she lifted her hips, giving them a little roll to welcome me inside of her. Maybe if I got her going enough, she wouldn’t realize that I avoided the question?

  I didn’t know her name. I was so drunk last night, it was a miracle I remembered where I lived, let alone what my own name was. How was I supposed to remember hers?

  Why did women think that men paid attention to superfluous things like names?

 
; “You were so sexy last night,” she said, peppering my shoulder with kisses. “The way you were dancing, all my girlfriends were so jealous when you picked me.”

  “Were they?”

  “Abigail, the one in the purple blouse?”

  Like that told me anything. They were all wearing dark clothing—as if they were at a damn funeral or something.

  “Sure,” I said just the same.

  “She was so mad. She told me in the bathroom that she would have done you right there on the dance floor if you’d asked.”

  “Really?”

  That might have been more interesting. Public sex could be fun.

  All sex was fun.

  I grabbed her hip and pulled her closer to me, sliding my leg over hers. I buried my face between her breasts, taking a deep breath of the smoky smell that an evening in the bar left on her skin. She ran her hands over my head, directing me to her nipples. I was okay with that, enjoying the feel of her thick, elongated flesh against the roof of my mouth. She moaned, pulling me closer. I climbed on top of her, my lips sliding over her throat and up along her chin, her breath warm and sour as she sighed against my cheek. I reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a condom from the box I always kept in there. Before I could rip it open, she reached up and snatched it from me.

  “Say my name.”

  Shit! I thought we were past that.

  I studied her face a second, hoping inspiration would suddenly strike. Heather? Candi? Melissa? Miranda? I couldn’t remember.

  I brushed a piece of hair out of her face, caressing her face with the tips of my fingers.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I said. “I can’t stop touching you. You drive me crazy!”

  She smiled, her hands moving over my naked back. “Say my name.”

  “Gorgeous. Sexy. Amazing. What other name do you need?”

  At first, light danced in her eyes, but then they narrowed, and her thin lips grew even thinner as she pursed them together.

  “You don’t know my name, do you?”

  “Baby…”