Gray Wolf Security: Back Home

by Glenna Sinclair

  “How bad is it?” Mike demanded of the men working around me.

  “We won’t know until we can get her to the hospital.”

  They lifted me onto a gurney, the pain in my back red hot for a brief moment.

  “I’ll call Carrington.”

  I shook my head almost violently, sitting up even as the paramedics tried to push me down. “Don’t, please! I don’t want to worry him.”

  “Joss, he should be there with you.”

  I shook my head again. “Please, Mike, promise you won’t.”

  I could see the shadows dancing on his face, the shadows that were born of uncertainty and hope. Finally, he inclined his head. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  I saw him pull out his phone as they loaded me into the ambulance. My heart missed a beat as I worried that he was calling Carrington even as I realized that he was likely coordinating with the local police, bringing them up to speed as a patrol car pulled up behind him.

  The chief of the Santa Monica police, Jack Warren, was married to Gray Wolf’s long-time police liaison out of Los Angeles, Emily Warren. Mike knew him, knew about our relationship to him. The two of them would keep my name out of the papers.

  I had to trust…

  We arrived at the hospital and there was suddenly this fury of activity around me. People taking blood, others asking me questions, others taking my vitals. I didn’t know who to pay attention to, who to ignore. And then there was a wand pressed to my side as they tried to figure out what the knife had damaged.

  “You’re a really lucky lady,” the doctor, a young, good-looking man of about thirty, said. “The knife didn’t touch a damn thing. Never saw anything quite like it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The size of the wound, the positioning…it’s almost like your attacker wanted to slow you down, but didn’t want you out of commission for long. He knew exactly where to stab you.”

  “Dumb luck,” I muttered and the doctor laughed his agreement. But it didn’t feel like dumb luck. It felt like a warning.

  Back off or things can get much worse…

  A nurse rolled me onto my stomach and the doctor used what felt like a million needles to numb the area. I think the needles felt worse than the stitches ever would have. He was in the middle of closing the wound, chattering about other knife wounds he’d repaired in the emergency room during his short career, when a nurse walked in.

  “Test results, Dr. Bishop.”

  He gestured for the nurse to open the file to allow him to glance at it while he continued to sew up my back like I was a ripped garment. Then he grunted, his eyes falling to my face.

  “Well, we’re going to have to forget about the morphine, I’m afraid.”

  I pushed up a little on my hands. “What do you mean?”

  He smiled brightly, his handsome face made even more so by the dimples that appeared in his cheek. “We can’t use morphine in pregnant women. But we have some lesser opioids we can give you.” He patted my arm lightly. “We’ll make sure you aren’t in too much pain.”

  “No,” I said immediately, rolling a little away from him even as he was attempting to tie a knot in one of his stitches. “I can’t be pregnant. My husband and I went through infertility treatments a little over a year ago and nothing worked. I can’t get pregnant.”

  The doctor frowned. “That’s not what the blood tests show. But we can do some more tests, if you’d like. Just let me finish this up.”

  I nodded, rolling back onto my belly so he could finish sewing me up.

  There was no way I could be pregnant. Not only had we struggled with the fertility treatments after trying for more than two years to get pregnant on our own, but our marriage had been so strained these last months that we hadn’t touched each other with any sort of affection for a long time… with the exception of that one night, but that was a while ago. More than a month ago. Wouldn’t I know? I would have missed… but I’d been so busy lately, sometimes I couldn’t remember if I’d bothered to shower.

  The doctor finished with my wound not more than twenty minutes later, but it felt like hours as I waited. The nurse placed a bandage and helped me roll over as the doctor pulled the sonogram machine they’d used to search for internal bleeding back over to the bed.

  The nurse lay a thin, paper sheet over my legs as the doctor moved the hospital gown up over my belly, exposing the stretch marks left from my previous pregnancies.

  “How many children do you have?” he asked as he prepared the machine.

  “Three.”

  I chewed on my lip after I said it, always feeling as though an explanation is in order. I did have three children, but one had died and one I didn’t carry in my belly, so it felt a little like a lie. But he’d already moved on.

  “I’m going to put this gel on your belly to help us see what’s going on with you, okay?”

  I watched his every move, my heart pounding as he pressed the wand to my belly a second time. This time it was pressed under my belly button, moving firmly over my bladder—which happened to be pretty full at the moment. I couldn’t see the screen of the monitor on which the wand transmitted information, but I could watch his face, see the frown his perfect lips were twisted into as he searched my body for what the blood tests had told him was growing inside me. I knew it couldn’t be true even as I recalled reading that false positive pregnancy tests were extremely rare.

  “Is it cancer?” I asked. I’d also heard that a false pregnancy test could indicate certain cancers.

  “In a way.” The doctor turned the monitor around so that I could see what he was looking at. He touched the screen with the tip of an index finger, that joyful smile back on his lips. “There’s your peanut. Heart rate is perfect. And it's moving like a soccer player—or ballerina—already.”

  I stared at the screen in disbelief, unable to convince myself I was seeing what I was. A baby. After all we’d gone through these last five years, it just happened. Spontaneously. After I’d accepted the fact I would never be a mother again, that I’d never hold an infant of my own again. It was like God was playing a colossally unfunny joke on me.

  How was I supposed to tell Carrington? I walked out of our marriage not a full thirty-six hours ago. Some insane criminal was trying to kill him, collecting information on my child. How could I tell Carrington that in the middle of all this insanity the pregnancy that he’d so desperately wanted a year ago had finally become a reality?

  The answer was simple. I couldn’t.

  Chapter 2

  Kari

  I heard the door pop open behind me, felt the slight breeze that came into the shower stall with him. A shiver moved up the length of my spine, but it was quickly washed away by the warmth of his hands slipping around my waist. He tugged me back against him before reaching for a bar of soap that sat on the little caddy hanging from the showerhead.

  “What some help?” he asked softly, his voice like a musical note dancing around my head.

  “I’ll always take this kind of help.”

  He laughed softly as he wet the bar of soap and rubbed it against my belly, creating a rose-scented lather. I leaned my head back, resting it against the spot below his shoulder that dipped just slightly before swelling into his pec. His body seemed to swallow mine up, his dark skin a shocking contrast against my redhead’s pale skin. I liked the way it felt, standing this close to him. There was a certain sense of security being in his arms that I’d never felt before. It was dangerously addictive.

  Not that I was the kind of girl who needed to be taken care of.

  I twisted in his arms and pushed him back, catching him off guard for an instant. Then he smiled, his eyes moving hungrily over my body. He reached for me, but I grabbed his thick wrists and forced his hands down to his sides, moving close enough to slide my lips along the side of his neck.

  He grunted, his hands twitching but not offering any real resistance to my grasp. Instead, he leaned back and rested against the c
ool wall of the shower, watching me as I ran my tongue slowly over his wet skin. And that skin… it was like caramel at the moment melted sugar turned to a thick, golden candy, or like butter allowed to brown slowly in a hot pan. I almost expected it to be sweet as I ran my tongue along it, but it was warm and salty and… perfect.

  “Kari,” he moaned, saying my name with such thick need in his voice that it was like a touch in the perfect place, sending shivers of pleasure through my body.

  “Tommy…”

  He grunted again, pulling his wrists from my weakened grip. I’d slipped down to my knees, my lips grazing over his thick hip bone as I made my way down the length of his impressive body. He buried his fingers in my hair, tugging me in the direction he wanted to go. I resisted despite his firm grip, nibbling at the long, wet hairs that grew along the thick, ropy muscles of his thighs.

  “You drive me fucking crazy,” he said, giving my hair one more tug.

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  I smiled up at him and he lost his patience, grabbing me by my upper arms and jerking me up onto my feet. He was a full two feet taller than me and a hundred pounds heavier. He could have snapped me in half if he wanted to, despite the fact that I won awards in the Marines for my skills in hand-to-hand combat. But, again, he’d been a Marine, too. He knew everything I knew.

  Now on my feet, he grabbed my ass and lifted me up, turning so that it was my back against the wall. He kissed me, his pillowy lips rough and tender all at the same time, his tongue filling me with the familiar flavors of coffee and bacon and something else that was just him. I drew his bottom lip between my teeth and bit down, groaning when he pulled away to bury his mouth against my throat.

  I ran my hand over his head, his perfectly-shaped skull nearly bare from the buzz cut he still preferred even four years after leaving the service. And it looked good on him, neat and clean. Everything about him was neat and clean.

  And bulging and hard and…

  His arms flexed as his hands moved over my ass, his fingers seeking the tender places that hid between my thighs. I cried out when a fingertip grazed one of those sensitive spots, moving my hips to give him the access he desperately wanted. But he wasn’t the only one who wanted. I slipped a hand between our bodies, brushing my hand over his barrel of a chest, scraping a teeny nipple as I sought his most powerful muscle. It twitched against my hand, as ready for me as I was for him.

  He slid inside of me with a control I’m not sure I would have been able to exercise if I were standing in his shoes. But that was Tommy. No matter how much I teased him, no matter how long I made him wait for what he wanted, he was always gentle, always patient. There wasn’t a cruel bone in his entire body.

  His hands moved along my thighs, tugging me closer to him as his mouth found mine again. It was a passionate kiss, but tender in a way that made my chest ache and a lump rise in my throat. I promised myself I wouldn’t fall for another guy. Not now. I’d only been out of the service for six months, had only just begun a new career. Only eight months since my high school sweetheart announced that he’d taken a job in London because he’d decided he wanted to sow some wild oats before he settled down. This wasn’t a good time for starting something new.

  But then what were the chances I’d move into an apartment directly across from the perfect guy? Tommy was a former Marine, an FBI agent who worked out of the same office as the agent my boss was constantly consulting. And he was tall, broad as a barn, and all muscle.

  Not to mention those tender kisses and his intensely erotic touches.

  He’d started flirting with me almost the instant I moved in, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I finally invited him in. And, let me tell you, I was so happy I did!

  So happy…

  I arched my back and sighed as his mouth moved over my chin and down to bury itself in the valley between my breasts. I wrapped my arms around his head and pulled him as tight as I could get him, never wanting to let him go. This was the moment I liked the most, the one after the need had become almost desperate but right before pleasure rocked its way through my body. This moment, when we were as close as two people could get and fully aware of one another. The moment before our mutual pleasure pulled us apart.

  I pulled at his head, tugging him up so that I could see his eyes. They were a deep brown, the kind of brown that’s purer than it has a right to be. And they were filled with a need that only I could fulfill in that moment. It was powerful, that look in his gorgeous eyes.

  He kissed me, and a dam broke somewhere deep inside of me; sending my body, my mind, over that cliff that everyone aspires to find - but only with the help of the right person at the right moment.

  He followed a moment later, gripping my thighs so hard that I’d probably have bruises later. It wouldn’t be the first time. I kind of liked it. It was like Tommy was leaving his mark on me, announcing to the world that I was his, but it made wearing a bikini kind of complicated.

  “I have a new case that’s going to take me out for a few days,” he told me a little while later as we moved around my bedroom, him searching for his discarded clothes from the night before and me searching the closet for something professional but comfortable to wear.

  “How long is a few days?”

  He shrugged as he settled on the end of my bed, tugging a sock over his foot. “I don’t know. Could be two or three, could be a week or more.”

  I’d known that was what he would say. Weren’t we in the same line of work? He did it for the federal government and I did it for private clients, but it was similar enough.

  “Jules told me yesterday that Joss had something new for me too, so I guess we’ll both be busy.”

  “It’s only for a little while.” He glanced at the clock as he stood, dressed once again in the same jeans and t-shirt he’d been wearing when he knocked on my door in the middle of the night. He came over and brushed a piece of wet hair away from my face. “I gave you that card. You need me for anything, call it. They’ll get a message to me.”

  “I know.” I reached up and kissed him, dragging my teeth over his bottom lip again. “But I don’t suppose it’ll help if all I need is a booty call.”

  He smiled softly. “You’ll just have to suffice with what I just gave you.”

  I tilted my head. “Only one orgasm? You really expect me to last weeks on one?”

  He pushed me back against the closet door, his hand sliding between my legs. “I think it was more than one.”

  “Oh, are we counting last night, too?”

  “Definitely.” His finger brushed against my inner thigh. “But I could give you another before I go.”

  “Talk about egos. You think you can satisfy me with just your hand?”

  “Just a finger.” He leaned down and nibbled at my shoulder briefly. “I’ve done it before.”

  He was laughing. I slapped his shoulder and pushed his hand away, ducking under his arm.

  “Go to work, Tommy. I think I’ll live.”

  “Are you sure? Some women have been known to fall into hysterics when separated from me.”

  “Oh? That ego just gets bigger and bigger, doesn’t it?”

  “What can I say?” he asked, shrugging those massive shoulders. “When you’re that good—”

  I slapped his arm then laughed as he pulled me into his arms, his breath tickling my neck. I sobered quickly when he kissed me again. That same, tender kiss that was irresistible. But then he was gone, slipping out of the bedroom with a brief wave over his shoulder. I sighed, all joking aside, as I realized I would miss him.

  I dressed slowly, twisting my red hair into a knot at the back of my head after I donned a simple pair of black linen slacks, a white baby doll top, and a black blazer. Finishing off with a pair of simple black pumps, I grabbed my leather satchel and headed out, looking over at Tommy’s place in hopes of catching him slipping out. But the curtains were pulled tight in the front window and the door was closed. It looked as though he
’d already gone, not requiring the time it took me to dress to change into a proper suit.

  The office was buzzing when I walked in. It seemed like everyone had come in today, including a few operatives I was pretty sure I had yet to meet.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I sidled up beside Audra, an operative who’d been hired at Gray Wolf about the same time I was.

  “Ash and his wife were shot at last night. And something happened to Joss, but she’s not talking about it. Tony told me he thought she was attacked outside her house.”

  I’d heard rumors that the crime boss, Jack Mahoney, was after Joss and her family because her husband, Carrington Matthews, was set to testify against the man in a few weeks at his trial. And I knew Joss had a regular detail following her family around. But nothing like this had happened before.

  “Things with Mahoney are heating up, then.”

  Audra nodded, the deep lines of concern crisscrossing her pretty face. “Tony also said she moved her family to Ash’s compound last night. She must be freaked out if she did that.”

  I nodded in agreement just as Joss herself came out of the conference room followed by Mike Spencer, the FBI agent she’d been hanging around with lately. They were deep in conversation until Joss saw me.

  “Kari,” she said, gesturing to me. I immediately strode toward her, years of military training straightening my back and wiping all curiosity off my face. Joss paused, looking up at me.

  “We’re re-vetting all employees for security reasons. I’d like you to go with Jules to one of the back offices and talk with the operative waiting there. It’s just routine questions, just like you answered when you first came to work here.”