“Doesn’t the place look great? Tomorrow’s opening will be tremendous.” Tabitha does more unapproved bouncing until she’s behind the counter. The glass case is empty at her side so I get a great view of her boobs. They bounce under her tight grey t-shirt, a graphic for a Sunnydale ten-year reunion on it. Must be her high school in Oklahoma.
“Well I got the stove on again, but we need to watch everything to make sure it’s baking right. I’ll be here all night.” Anessa walks out front, the double doors swinging behind her, and saves me from having to agree how great the place looks.
Bennett passes by the large front window and waves. He steps into the bakery and comes to a stop two feet into the building. “Holy shit you’ve made the place more girly.”
“Isn’t it great?” Anessa asks not picking up on the horror in his eyes.
“It was pink before, but this…. How?” Bennett’s eyes roam the open expanse and stop on the collection of throw pillows, his eyes widening.
“Bennett I’m so glad you’re feeling better. You’re even out walking around and socializing.” Tabitha’s comment draws his attention before he sticks his foot further in his mouth.
“I’ve been walking around for weeks.”
“Yeah and I’m the one who saved you,” I cut in. It’s a good time to remind her who’s the hero here.
Tabitha hugs me with a tight squeeze. “Yeah but you didn’t get hurt. Bennett got hurt.”
“He won’t let me forget it.” Bennett hits me on the back a little harder than required. “When are you going to let me get away from a desk and back to field work?”
“Yesterday you told Margo you were still having flashbacks of the horror.” There’s enough censure in my words he knows where I’m going with it.
“Dude, she offered to make me a batch of her cookies,” Bennett whispers in my direction. “And not the chocolate chip kind if you know what I mean.”
“Who offered to make you what?” Tabitha asks Bennett. The man needs to work on his inside voice. “Nessa do you need help with that?” She turns away from us before Bennett has to give her an answer on the cookies, thank god.
Anessa’s pulled up a small stool to the window her arm outstretched, fiddling with an end of a hideous lace curtain. The chair wobbles and Anessa’s arms wave in the air as she works to regain balance. It happens in slow motion, but with Tabitha clutched to my midsection there’s no way for me to help her.
Bennett races in her direction and braces the chair on the floor before we have another Pelican Bay resident making a trip to the ER.
“You should let someone taller handle that, cupcake.” Bennett says, grabbing her around her waist and lifting her off the chair.
Anessa laughs. Never the response a guy wants when he hasn’t made an outright joke.
“What? You own a bakery. It fits.”
Bennett and Anessa squabble back and forth. Anessa is inches shorter than my towering right-hand man, but if looks could disintegrate he’d be a pile of ash on the floor.
“Yes. That’s why I laughed because it’s so original.”
“Okay, how about flower.” Bennett doesn’t know when to walk away from his losing battle.
As expected Anessa gives him a “you’re a moron” expression. He deserves it.
“It’s great. People will think it’s a cute platitude like a regular flower, you know with the petals and leaves, all that,” he continues.
“Yes, I’m aware what a flower is.”
“But it’s not that flower but the baking kind. F-l-o-u-r.” He spells out the word for her. “It will be our secret.”
“Except for Ridge and me who are standing right over here.” Tabitha points between us.
Bennett laughs and pushes Anessa’s vacated chair back under the table. “Yeah, but we all know you can keep a secret.”
“Speaking of secrets.” I lean down, catching her earlobe between my teeth. “We’ll need to talk about the stash of money you have hidden around your place.”
Since the cash wasn’t connected to the crimes Mario committed in Pelican Bay, the police haven’t asked about it. And no one has told. Even if Mario is behind bars for the rest of his life, I don’t want Tabitha using his money for anything.
“Yeah, I figured.” She bats away my hand before it can creep up her shirt higher than her belly button.
I have more than enough money to support us for two lifetimes. Tabitha doesn’t need and shouldn’t keep his dirty money. I’ve found the girl for me and I plan to do everything in my power to keep her mine. The fortune from our first dinner — The one you love is closer than you think — was spot on.
“What can Bennett and I do to help?” I ask to change the subject.
“We could use help with baking and final clean up. Last minute stuff.” Tabitha walks behind the counter and pulls out a wad of pink fabric. Shaking it out she unveils a full length pink apron with lace frills around the edges. “You and Bennett can wear these to keep your clothes clean.”
“I’m not wearing that.” She’s out of her mind.
“Oh come on.” Tabitha leans over the counter pulling my shirt collar until I’m close enough and whispers. “If you wear this now, I’ll wear only this later.”
“Give me the apron.” The shit I’m willing to do to get my hands on her pert little ass. “Are you going to cook for me in it too?” The thought of Tabitha bent over, her bare ass stuck out while she checks food in the oven has my dick hard in an instant.
Yes, definitely the perfect woman for me.
“I’ll pour you a bowl of cereal?” She damn well knows I’d agree to whatever she wants.
Falling for the new neighbor wasn’t in my long-term plan. I wanted to unload her car, give her a meal, and then exchange a few waves across the yard every couple of weeks.
My time as a SEAL didn’t prepare me for Tabitha Thompson. She came at me like a freight train in the middle of the night and I needed to grab on or get run over. It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.
I’ll hang on tight every day for the rest of my life.
Keep Reading!
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Revealing by Calle J Brookes
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A note from the author:
Thank you for reading Security Risk! I hope you enjoyed Tabitha and Ridge’s story. If you’d like to find out more about the stories in Pelican Bay or read my other series you can find information about all of my books on my website: www.authormeganmatthews.com
You can also visit the town of Pelican Bay online at: http://pelicanbaymaine.com/
If you’d like to stay up to date on information happening in my worlds and new releases you can find my author page on Facebook or join my mailing list. Fans can also join my Facebook Reader Group for the inside track on what’s happening behind the scenes, special giveaways, and advanced reader copies of new books.
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Megan Matthews writes smutty romance by day and hides behind her secret identity as a responsible Pinterest mom when other parents are around. She believes morning shouldn’t start until noon and chocolate should be calorie free. Living in Michigan she prefers sun over snow, hot chocolate over coffee, and wine over beer.
Preferring books over nature, Megan once displayed the entire Goosebumps series on her bookshelf. Her taste in reading has matured. She now prefers her heroes with rippling muscles naked in bed over brace-faced nerds running from murderous dummies.
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Excerpt of Revealing, Mich and Paige’s story. It is available eve
rywhere, and is part of the PAVAD:FBI Romantic Suspense series.
**
Sometimes the past didn't stay in the past.
Secrets had a way of coming out.
Paige Daviess had built herself a new life, a good one. One with meaning and purpose. As an agent with the best FBI division in the country, she knew she was good at what she did. She was making a difference, protecting vulnerable children from the horrors she'd faced when she was young.
One of those horrors had returned to haunt her.
He was determined to take from her everything she had earned. And make her suffer while he did it.
Mick Brockman wasn't about to let that happen. They'd fought each other from the moment they'd first met, but the Internal Affairs agent would do whatever he had to in order to protect the dark-eyed woman who pushed his buttons faster than anyone he'd ever met.
Anything.
Including bending--breaking--the rules he'd sworn to uphold. No matter what.
**
PROLOGUE
HE watched the car as it pulled out of the college parking lot. It was a small school, an offshoot of a main campus, and focused on performing arts. The woman looked like the sister she didn’t know she had. Long legs, long hair, dark eyes, and a thin build. A beautiful laugh. A sweet soul. That made this even harder.
He was about to shatter this young woman’s trust in a way he would never forgive himself for. But what other choice did he have?
He could not lose his family; he had already lost his soul several months earlier. He’d never thought he’d betray the company he’d worked for since he was in his mid-twenties. It had provided for his family for over thirty years now. It had sent three of his four children through college, and it had paid for his wife’s cancer treatment until her death three years ago.
It had been good to him.
But it was his job that had brought him to this low point. The job and his fourth child. His son had made some seriously bad decisions since his mother’s death. And now he had to bail the boy out again.
He’d made a decision four months ago when the first telephone call came—give over the information the caller wanted or watch his son go to jail for a decade or more for his latest stupidity.
A trade of a woman’s whereabouts versus his son’s life. It had seemed like such a simple, logical choice. But he should have known—once a blackmailer got his hooks into you, they never stopped.
He shouldn’t have been so stupid. And he should have let his son face the consequences of his actions.
But now he had to face the end results of his own choices.
And that involved this beautiful young woman.
He pulled his car out in front of hers. It was a rainy night, and she was driving cautiously. But he knew how to set her up. How to take advantage of her youth and inexperience, and even Mother Nature.
She didn’t stand a chance.
He braced himself for impact.
Everything went according to plan.
She ran up to his car to check on him, sweet and concerned. She reminded him of his baby daughter, who was probably a year or so younger. That made him feel like even more of an evil bastard.
He clutched his chest and she helped him to stand.
That was all it took for him to sink the syringe into her shoulder. He caught her when she collapsed. He placed her carefully in his trunk, then returned to her car. He drove it back to its original parking spot, grabbed her purse and a battered gym bag from the front seat, and climbed back into his car.
He’d effectively kidnapped the young woman in less than ten minutes.
And no one had seen a damned thing.
Chapter 1
IT was the kind of life you could never escape. Not really. No matter how many trappings of normalcy she put on it, she would always have that dark connection that she could not sever.
At least in the world she lived in.
Paige Daviess walked away from the crime scene. She kept walking until she got outside. She’d been in the warehouse for way too long.
Why?
She wanted answers to those questions, but she’d long known she wouldn’t ever get those answers. The profilers she worked with could tell her theories and statistics and information from their own considerable experiences, but it would never fully tell her why some monsters existed.
Why they chose the most vulnerable to target.
Thirteen young women—the oldest probably no older than Paige’s own twenty-eight—were dead in the piles of old blankets they’d called their beds.
The youngest girl was no older than her landlord’s teenage daughter. The victim’s hair had been just as golden red as Gracie’s.
Paige had had to turn away. She kept seeing Gracie lying there.
“What do we know?” Her boss—and brother-in-law—Sebastian asked as she stepped around the back of the Bureau issue SUV he’d arrived in. She’d hated to call him in today—he was about to become a father any day, and he needed to be at home with her sister.
“Absolutely nothing yet. Thirteen females, most likely vagrants. I’ll let you see for yourself. How’s Carrie?” She’d wanted to take a few days off to be with her sister, but it hadn’t been possible.
“Telling herself she’s not worried. That she’ll be just fine. Running through birth statistics.” A faint smile touched his mouth. She loved how he loved her sister. “She’s beautiful, perfect.”
“I’m sorry to drag you out today.”
“Don’t be. I’m not here long. Ed is assigning a temporary team leader, and I wanted to be here when he showed up. Smooth over any problems.”
“Who?” She tried to think of who was free and available to lead a team temporarily.
“Brockman.”
“Mal?” He had his own team, and she seriously doubted Ed Dennis—head of the PAVAD directorate—would be moving an established team leader to Team Three. Not when Team Two needed him. It made more sense for Mal’s sister Alessandra—Paige’s partner—to take over. “Al, I guess?”
She could deal with that, easily. Al was Sebastian’s second-in-command and had been since the teams were formed. “But I thought she was taking a few days to plan the ‘great wedding of the century’?”
Al was driving everyone crazy with details of her dream wedding, to Sebastian’s brother Seth.
“Not Mal. Not Al… Paige… Ed’s put—”
A Bureau vehicle pulled in and Paige recognized the behemoth behind the wheel. Horror filled her. “Not—”
“I knew you wouldn’t like it, but Ed was able to pull him from Internal Affairs for a few months to help out the CCU.” Sebastian’s face was full of compassion.
Everyone knew she and Al’s brother Mick burned one another every time they were within fifty feet of each other.
Working one-on-one with him ranked right up there with her top ten nightmares.
“He can’t be partnered with Al because of the familial relationship. She’s switching for this case with Compton on Team One. So that leaves you.”
“No choice?” No, no, no, no, no.
“None. You’re stuck with him. For the time being. I’m sorry. Maybe I can get you switched, too.”
Paige thought of those thirteen young women. Thought of what their lives had been like.
Thought of Beaver Cleaver Brockman, with his perfect background and everything-in-life-was-either-black-or white attitude.
Those thirteen victims needed someone who understood the different gray that most people actually lived in.
“No. I’ll stick it out. Can’t guarantee that he will, though.” He wasn’t capable of sticking through a case like this. His shtick was to rip the people who worked the field, who actually got their hands dirty. To make them feel like crap and make them second guess every decision they made on the job.
She’d always despised Internal Affairs.
She’d keep her eyes on him, make sure he didn’t mess it up.
Thirteen lost gi
rls depended on it.
***
MICK hadn’t been on an active crime scene in more than a year. IA agents often were called in after investigative agents screwed up. And then there was a lot of ass-covering that he had to ferret out.
But this… this wasn’t just him filling in for Sebastian Lorcan. It was his entrance into the world of the CCU.
The very unit he was trying to preserve.
Ed Dennis had called him into his office again that morning for an update on the special assignment Mick had taken months ago. Mick hadn’t been able to give him an answer.
There was a traitor, a mole, inside the Complex Crimes Unit within the entire PAVAD—the Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division. It was Mick’s job to find that traitor.
He’d been working the case off the books for months, and had gotten nowhere.
Mick wasn’t used to failure in his cases. His personal life—hell, yeah, he’d had a few noticeable screw-ups there—but not his professional.
He rubbed the scars from his most recent screw-up more out of habit than pain. Although sometimes those bullet holes itched like hell. Usually when something he wouldn’t like was about to happen.
Mick scanned the gathered agents for the one he needed. Sebastian Lorcan had told him where to meet the rest of the team, and Mick needed to find the head of the CCU Team Three before he could do anything else.
Lorcan wasn’t hard to spot—he was taller than many of the other agents around him and was at the center of the action.
Right next to Daviess.
Daviess.
Why had he forgotten her?
The scar just above his heart pulled and itched worse than it ever had before. Something damned bad was about to happen.
It always did when that woman was involved.
Security Risk Page 20
