Search and Seduce

by Sara Jane Stone

  Subject: Air Force Pararescue Jumper Mark Rhodes

  Mission: To be the man she needs...and wants!

  It’s taken Amy Benton eighteen months to move on after her SEAL husband’s death. Now she’s nearly realized her dream of breeding and training military war dogs. Unfortunately, no one sees her as anything other than “the grieving widow.” Her ambitions, determination, even her longing for a man’s touch are invisible to everyone...except the man she can’t have.

  Pararescue Jumper Mark Rhodes has always been there for his best friend’s widow. But lately, there’s been a growing awareness between them... And when he comes home to help open her training facility, the heat between them is impossible to resist. But is Amy willing to risk her heart on another soldier who may never come home?

  Can’t resist a sexy military hero?

  Then you’ll love our Uniformly Hot! miniseries.

  Harlequin Blaze’s bestselling miniseries

  continues with more irresistible heroes

  from all branches of the armed forces.

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  by Anne Marsh

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  A SEAL’S PLEASURE

  by Tawny Weber

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  FEVERED NIGHTS

  by Jillian Burns

  June 2015

  Dear Reader,

  On the surface, Search and Seduce is a sexy romance about a smoking-hot solider, a strong military widow who is trying to find her way, and puppies bred to be war dogs. But beyond the red-hot moments, the Air Force Pararescueman who looks yummy in and out of uniform, and the adorable canines, this is a story about what it means to be a military wife, girlfriend and widow. And I sincerely hope that part resonates with readers. Every day brave military partners face the fear of not knowing if the person they love is in danger. They wait day after day for their partners to come home, knowing they will leave again. In telling Amy and Mark’s story, I tried to offer a window into their world—and give two very brave characters a heartfelt happily-ever-after ending.

  And, of course, I hope you love the puppies! Thank you to my Facebook fans for suggesting names for Amy’s dogs. Your ideas were excellent and I used many of them in the book. As I said in the dedication, this one is for you!

  As my Facebook friends know, I love hearing from readers! Please find me on Facebook or drop by my website, sarajanestone.com. And while you’re there don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive information about new releases, contests and more.

  Happy reading!

  Sara Jane Stone

  SARA JANE STONE

  Search and Seduce

  Sara Jane Stone lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her very supportive real-life hero, two lively young children and a lazy Burmese cat. When she is not finger painting with the kids, she loves writing sexy stories featuring military heroes (and heroines!), reading sexy contemporary romance and chatting with her readers. Visit her online at sarajanestone.com, and become a fan of Sara Jane Stone on Facebook.

  Books by Sara Jane Stone

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  For my Facebook friends and fans. Thank you for helping me name the puppies! This one is for you and I hope to see you online again soon.

  And to my husband, I love you!

  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

  Epilogue

  Excerpt

  Prologue

  SAILORS, SOLDIERS AND AIRMEN lined the grave site. Amy Benton stared at them, noting the differences in their dress uniforms. The men in the dark blues stood at attention beside the ones in the bright whites. Medals lined their chests, every single one.

  These men were Darren’s brothers, teammates and friends. And their presence here, at her husband’s grave, made the truth undeniable. Darren, the man she’d fallen head over heels in love with more than a decade ago, back when they were high school students, was not coming home again.

  Her chin dropped to her chest. Freshly shined shoes stood in sharp contrast to the bright green grass. She looked at her scuffed black flats, drawing her lower lip into her mouth. She’d forgotten to polish her shoes.

  Amy’s hands formed tight fists, her pale pink nails digging into her palms as the tears threatened. She’d painted her fingernails. That had to count for something. But how could she forget about her shoes?

  Maybe she’d worn the wrong pair. She tried to think back to this morning, but the hours blurred together. She felt as if she’d spent a series of endless days, unable to sleep, fighting her way through a sea of pain, allowing herself to bury the truth.

  Standing here in her scuffed shoes, she couldn’t hide anymore.

  But falling apart surrounded by these men in their pristine uniforms? Impossible. Biting back her sobs, she closed her eyes, fighting the urge to run. That wasn’t her. She didn’t draw attention. Darren’s place was in the spotlight—and hers was waiting off to the side with a smile plastered on her face.

  Once upon a time that smile had been real. Slowly, it had become something she wore only when leaving the house, not much different from a hat. And then she’d lost it altogether. It was as if she’d set it aside the day those strangers in uniform had knocked on her door, their expressions lined with pity. She’d put her smile in a closet and closed the door.

  Damn him for leaving her to face this alone!

  Opening her eyes, Amy turned away from the burial. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t watch. She moved toward the trees, unsure where she was going. Away. From his death and the seemingly insurmountable, endless pain.

  She stumbled over a root. A man’s hand grasped her elbow, steadying her.

  “I’ve got you.” The familiar voice was a low steady rumble.

  “I can’t go back,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t have to.” Mark Rhodes, her husband’s best friend since grade school, kept a hold on her arm, leading her away.

  The tears came, hot and fast, so far beyond her control, she didn’t try to hold them back. Mark stopped beside her car, gently leaning her against the passenger-side door while he reached in his pocket and withdrew a key.

  “I’m taking you home,” he said.

  Amy nodded, allowing him to guide her into the seat and fasten her belt. She should protest, ask him to drive to her mother-in-law’s house, where the family, friends and all those men in uniform planned to congregate after the burial. But she didn’t say a word.

  Mark drove in silence. He didn’t demand to know how she was feeling—though it was probably obvious from her tears—or offer reassurances. When they pulled up to her house, he helped her out of the car as if she were a child.

  Taking her hand, he led her away from the front door and down through the grass. Out back, only a short distance from the home she’d shared with Darren, stood her kennel. It was a modest building capable
of boarding a dozen pets. At the moment, it stood empty. Her customers had all come for their dogs to give her the time and space to grieve.

  But right now, she wanted to hear barking. She craved the sounds of everyday life.

  Mark guided her to a wooden bench beside the dog run, a large fenced-in area.

  “Sit down, Amy,” he said, tempering his command with a gentle tone as if she were a frightened animal.

  Amy obeyed, staring out at the mountains in the distance. Heart’s Landing, Oregon, her home since birth, sat a few miles inland from the coast, surrounded by distant mountains. She loved this view and this place. But not today.

  “I wish I’d worn ruby slippers,” she said.

  Mark sat down beside her on the bench. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at her black flats. “Might have looked out of place.”

  She shook her head. “Ruby slippers so that I could click my heels three times and disappear.”

  “Dorothy went home. She didn’t vanish,” he pointed out. “And the loss would follow you.”

  Her brow drew together as she studied him for the first time since he’d helped her run away from the burial. Like so many of the other men, Mark wore his dress blues. The maroon beret on his head set him apart from the others, denoting that he was a member of the Air Force Pararescuemen. But beneath his uniform and his elite status, she saw her friend, the man who’d been a part of her life from the moment she’d met Darren.

  “There’s no escape?” If anyone would give her the truth, it was Mark.

  “From grief?” He took her hand and held it tight. “No.”

  “But you look so calm and in control. You know Darren’s gone, right? He’s never coming back.”

  “I know, Amy. Trust me, I understand what it feels like to face the irrefutable fact that someone you love is gone.”

  This time when she examined his expression, she saw the sadness, swirling in his brown eyes. “Your mom,” she said quietly. “How did you get past it?”

  “I tried to escape. Moving away, joining the air force, pushing myself to complete the courses and become a pararescue jumper. But it stayed with me.”

  “Nothing helped?”

  “Time.” He stared out at the scenery. “And I started a list.”

  “Of what?”

  “Memories. I wrote down the little moments, the pieces I didn’t want to forget.”

  “A list,” she said as if she didn’t understand the meaning of the words. How could something so simple, so banal, ease this monstrous ache?

  Mark shrugged. “It might not work for you. But I can tell you ruby slippers won’t do the trick, either.”

  “I’ll give it a shot.” She couldn’t stay here forever, unable to eat and sleep, feeling lost in her own life. If she didn’t do something...

  Tears started flowing again. She hiccuped, struggling to control the sobs as her chin shook.

  Mark wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her close. “I’ll tell you what, write down your memories and send them to me. Write a letter or email. Send a carrier pigeon if you want. Whatever you need to share. Every small memory matters. And I’ll do the same, send my favorite Darren moments to you.”

  “Do you have a memory at the top of your list?” Her voice sounded foreign, still trembling from her latest bout of crying.

  “Not yet,” he said, and for the first time she heard his calm and collected tone waver.

  Amy looped her arm around his waist, holding him tight as they stared out at the mountains, both thinking about the man they’d loved and lost.

  “Mark,” she said softly. “Not all of my memories are good ones.”

  “That’s okay, Amy. That’s okay.”

  1

  One year later

  “SCRAMBLE. SCRAMBLE.”

  The commander’s voice echoed through the tactical operations center’s loudspeakers. Mark Rhodes leaned over the intel officer’s shoulder and scanned the details on the computer screen. IED blast. Double amputee. American. Special Forces. He ran for the door.

  When he’d first joined the PJs, if he’d heard a mission drop, fear would have settled in his gut. What if their helicopter got hit? What if they landed on a mine? Sure, they touched down in swept areas, but shit happened. In Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, it happened every day.

  But now, on his fourth deployment, he wanted to get out there and do his job. Save a life. Send a soldier home to his loved ones.

  Mark reached the helicopter and started pulling on his gear. “One Alpha,” he shouted to his teammates over the bird’s roar. “This guy needs a hospital within the hour. And we’re going in hot. We’re picking him up outside the wire.”

  His team nodded and climbed into the bird. They went to work, prepping IVs, getting ready to do whatever they could to keep the fallen soldier alive.

  “How long has he been down?” one of Mark’s teammates asked as they lifted into the air.

  “Twenty, based on when the call came in,” Mark said. By the time they reached the soldier, they would have only minutes to get him in the air and to a hospital. After one hour, the guy’s chances of making it dropped significantly.

  Minutes later, Mark’s lead helicopter landed, leaving the trail helo circling overhead to provide cover. When the dust settled, three men carrying a stretcher emerged, running toward Mark and his team. They loaded the injured American on board. The soldier was conscious, a good sign. But he’d lost a lot of blood.

  “Let’s go,” Mark shouted into his headset, then turned to his teammate. “Start an IO, this guy needs blood.” Drilling into the man’s arm and sending the blood directly to the bone was their best shot. Still, Mark added, “Prep an IV as backup.”

  The solider turned his head toward Mark. His lips moved. Mark took the injured man’s hand and leaned over, pressing his ear close to the guy’s mouth.

  “Repeat that,” Mark said.

  “I wish I’d told her I loved her,” the injured soldier whispered. “My girl.”

  “Stay with me and you’ll get your chance.”

  “Not this time, man.” The soldier’s eyes fluttered, then closed. The hand Mark was holding went limp.

  “We’re losing him.” Mark pressed his fingers to the soldier’s neck, searching for a pulse. It was there. Barely. Dammit, at times like this, he wished he’d gone to medical school and had the skills to open the guy up. But even the best surgeon probably couldn’t do more than Mark and his team in the back of a helicopter flying over a war zone.

  His teammate, hovering over what was left of the man’s legs, shook his head. “This is bad. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “How far are we from the hospital?” Mark spoke into his headset, hoping like hell the pilot said five minutes or less.

  “Wheels down in fifteen. Maybe more. There are reports of enemy fire to the east. We need to take the long way around.”

  Shit. They couldn’t risk getting shot out of the sky, but this guy didn’t have fifteen.

  “Starting CPR.” Mark checked for a pulse again. Nothing. They were losing him. Fast. He began compressions on the guy’s chest.

  Twenty minutes later the bird was still in the air, taking the goddamn scenic route to avoid rocket launchers, and the soldier still didn’t have a pulse. They’d lost him. Mark knew it. But he refused to give up. He continued CPR until the helicopter touched down.

  On the ground, Mark and his teammates rode with the soldier in the ambulance. He ran alongside his stretcher as they wheeled him into the trauma bay, conveying every detail to the doctors. But he knew that look in their eyes. The doctors were good, but they couldn’t save him now.

  Mark stood, his teammates beside him, watching and waiting. What felt like an eternity later, after they’d tried everything they could, the attending called it.

  His teammate stepped forward and handed Mark a folded American flag, one of the ones they prepped during their downtime at the base. He carried it forward and laid it on the fallen sold
ier’s chest, and then he turned and walked away.

  They did their best to honor fallen soldiers. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Somewhere, half a world away, this man had a family and friends who had no idea they’d just lost their loved one.

  And this guy—he had a girl.

  Mark climbed into the helicopter for the ride back to base and closed his eyes. He hoped the soldier was wrong. He hoped the man’s girl knew how he felt about her.

  But if she did know, when she learned of his death, her world would shatter. And picking up the pieces wasn’t easy. Sometimes he still felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him when he thought about losing his best friend. And he’d watched Darren’s widow navigate her own pain. Witnessing her struggle, especially in those early months, was hard.

  Mark opened his eyes and stared out the window, watching the colorless landscape speed by beneath the helo. As much as he missed his mom, part of him was glad she’d already passed away. If a rocket launcher hit this helicopter right now, if tomorrow he took a bullet trying to save a fellow solider, he wouldn’t leave behind someone deeply bound to his memory. He couldn’t do that to someone he loved. And loving him—the kid who’d grown up with nothing, whose father had never given him a second thought and whose mother had worked two jobs just to get by—wasn’t worth the pain of losing him.

  Back at base, the helicopter touched down, and Mark headed for the barracks. He needed to wash up and check his gear. In twelve hours, he had to be prepared to go out there again and risk his life to save a life.

  The alarm on Mark’s watch sounded. He glanced down and checked the time. Shit. He was late for his video chat with Amy, the one person he made an effort to keep in touch with back home. He picked up the pace.

  “Hey, Mark, time for your date?” Tommy, the team rookie, joked.

  “It’s not a date,” he said gruffly, jogging past his teammates.

  “You talk to that chick every week. She must be giving you something.”

  “Show some respect,” Mark said. “She’s a widow. Her husband was my friend. When he got hit, he had less of a chance than the guy we lost today.”