by Jen Talty
“Yes,” her mother said, picking up a few items and folding them. “He’s gone through three maids this year. I feel bad for your poor mother as we use her service for everything.”
Mia watched Logan as he knelt in the bathroom floor. He’d always been level headed, even as a teenager. Never partying…too much. Almost always doing the right thing, though he did enjoy bending a rule or two when it came to their sexual relationship and sneaking into her bedroom at night.
“When was the last time anyone saw him?” Logan asked.
“Lunch,” Mia said, sitting on the bed, eyeing Logan and his glutes. “Then he went back to work on trying to figure out who hacked my system this morning.”
Logan glanced over his shoulder. “You got hacked? This morning? Why didn’t I know this?’”
“I figured it could wait until you got here.”
“You figured wrong.” Logan stood. “That’s definitely blood.”
Her mother gasped.
“He could have cut himself shaving,” Logan said, with a reassuring tone as pointed to a razor on the vanity. “Anyone have their phone on them? Before we panic, let’s try calling him.”
“I’ll call him,” Mia said as she tapped her phone, but it didn’t even ring before going straight to voice mail. “He often lets the battery run out on his phone.” Mia pointed to the empty desk. “His computer is gone.”
“As I recall, he never went anywhere without that.” Logan scratched the back of his head with one hand, the other one rested on his hip.
In the scope of Logan Sarich’s body language, that wasn’t a good sign.
“He wouldn’t take his computer without taking these.” Her father stood next to the desk, holding up a set of noise canceling headphones.
“All right.” Logan let out a long breath. “I’m going to make a few phone calls while we search the house. When he was younger and not in his room, where would he go?”
“He’d come hang out with me, or maybe the game room,” Mia said.
Logan rubbed his scruffy face as he looked around. “You and Markus are the complete opposite. Your room was always clean as a—”
Her father cleared his throat. Loudly.
Logan glanced at her, his eyes closing briefly and he got that scared little boy look, like her father was going to chase him out of the house with a baseball pat. Logan held out his hand.
“I can walk,” she said,
Logan nodded, obviously relieved.
CHAPTER 3
LOGAN DUMPED HIS RUCKSACK on the bed in the pool house and glanced out the window. The beacon from the Lighthouse flashed across the darkening sky casting an eerie glow. There were only a few houses on Jupiter Island that looked over both the ocean and the intercostal.
The Vanderlin home was one of them.
Mia stood next to him, heating up his body like a good cup of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows on a chilly winter morning. He hoped the A/C would kick in soon because he needed some cooling down.
“You’re father still scares the shit out me.”
She laughed. “You carried me up the stairs. Don’t see how you could do that if he intimidates you so much.”
“Totally different. I was on the job, protecting you. He’s paying me to do shit like that, not remind him of my past transgressions.” He shook his hands out. “My little brother texted about a half hour ago. He’s headed to your brother’s townhouse now. I’m sure it’s as you said and Markus just couldn’t work in your parents’ home.”
“We’re lucky Dylan was home on leave. Please thank him for us.”
“He doesn’t mind.” Logan did his best not to stare, but Mia Vanderlin, with her long wavy hair, airy smile, and perfect completion, commanded his attention. “You need to make your parents understand that I’m not sleeping in here, because I can’t look your father in the eye again and ask.”
Mia sat in the chair next to the bed, her feet resting on an ottoman, showing off her sexy, tanned, legs. The first time he’d seen those legs had been their junior year. He’d been warming up, tossing a few pitches over the mound when those legs graced his vision as she ran around the outer track. He figured it had to be a new student, so the next time she made her way around the field, he made sure he stood on the side. He had the best one-liner ready. He waved to her, smiling until she stopped, pulled off her baseball cap, letting her long hair flow over her shoulders, revealing her identity as his sophomore biology lab partner from the year before.
“My mother is talking to him now, but with Markus missing, not sure how well that’s going to go.” She’d dropped her head back on the chair, eyes closed, twirling a piece of her hair.
“They hired me to do a job and I happen to be quite good at it.”
“They both know that. When my dad called The Omega Team, mom said he actually smiled when he hung up the phone and told her Logan Sarich would our protector, but seeing him with you earlier, well, I think catching us in bed scarred him for life.”
“If he had come in ten minutes earlier, it would have been way worse.” Logan sighed as he fell back onto the mattress and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know what was more frightening. Getting caught naked in your bed with my arms around you by your dad, or the wrath of my mother when she came to work that morning.”
“We certainly surprised a lot of people our senior year,” she said.
“Yeah, well who would have thought a poor, dumb jock like me would have hooked up with a rich, geek like you.” He rose up on his elbows. “You weren’t the most social girl in school.”
She opened her eyes, tilting her head. “You saw how people treated me. Hell, you were even stand offish.”
“You terrified me,” he said. “I screwed up that lab, giving you your only B and you went off on me. I seriously thought you were going to hit me.”
“I thought about it.” She smiled, but the strain of the situation couldn’t be hidden in her blue eyes. “My mom has always liked you.”
“She tolerated me, but your dad? He always looked like he wanted to stick a knife in my heart. Besides being a poor boy who couldn’t give you the life you’d been accustomed to—”
“Did he really say that?”
“Senior prom night. He took me into his office and lectured me. I almost backed out of taking you, he had me so frightened. We were seventeen. It wasn’t like we were gonna run off and get married.
“Ha! That’s basically what your brother Nick did.”
“I’m not Nick and still, your father thought I was beneath you.”
“No one will ever be good enough for me, but he did do a little happy dance when we broke up.”
“That’s funny.” Logan winked. “Because technically we’re still in a relationship.”
“How do you figure that?”
He adored the way her eyes narrowed as she cocked her head in a playful gesture. “You flew off to Poly-Tech and I went to Florida University, but neither of us ever got a chance to say it was over that day.”
She kicked his leg. “We always said that at the end of our senior year we’d go our own ways. Do our own thing, never preventing the other from achieving whatever it is they wanted. It’s not like we were madly in love and couldn’t live without each other.”
“The distance didn’t help us either.” He kicked off his boat shoes and ran his big toe across her muscular calf. Her smile still took his breath away. He continued to tickle her leg with his foot, enjoying the familiarity.
“Can I ask you something?” Her fingers glided through her thick hair, a habit that used to bug the shit out of him, but as more memories flooded his brain, he thought it sexy as hell.
“Shoot.” He didn’t expect there’d be any awkwardness with her, but he didn’t predict such a strong desire to take the woman to bed, much less pick up where they had left off fourteen years ago.
“Why’d you drop out of college when you blew out your shoulder?”
“I lost my scholarship and couldn’t afford
it,” Logan said, still staring into her eyes, remembering every curve of her body, right down to the dimple she had on her right ass cheek. She’d been the first girl he’d had sex with. The first girl he had any real feelings for, though he wasn’t sure if it had been love or not, which seemed to elude him anyway. Of course, the majority of his military career, there hadn’t been any time for romance.
There still wasn’t time for it.
“You could have taken out a loan for the last year.” The way she rolled her head to the side, locking gazes with him, sent his body into a frenzy of passion.
Don’t sleep with the client.
He nodded, pushing himself to sitting position, rubbing his right shoulder. “Coach kept telling me I was good enough for the major leagues, and I wanted it so bad I could taste it. After surgery, the doctor told me it would be a long recovery. I worked my ass off, but after sitting the bench my second year, my shoulder still wasn’t right. So, when coach called telling me I’d essentially been replaced, I kind of lost it and joining the Army seemed like a good idea at the time.”
She dropped her legs to the floor, crossing her ankles. “I have to admit, I was a little surprised when I’d heard that.”
“My mom wasn’t so happy about it, especially since all three of my little brothers seem to be following my lead.” He let his gaze roam from her toes to her hips to the swell of her round perky breasts pressing against her form-fitting white blouse. He’d had his share of pretty women, but seeing Mia again, well, nothing could compare.
“You can stop gawking,” she said, battling her eyelashes and puckering her lips
“I’m not—”
His phone vibrated. “It’s Dylan.” He tapped the green button. “Any luck?”
“Yep. He’s been at his place this entire time.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Why?” Logan shifted, propping his head up on a few pillows.”
Mia mouthed: He found my brother?
Logan nodded as he patted the comforter, motioning her over.
“He used a bunch of tech words I didn’t quite understand, but I deciphered enough that he needed some of his equipment,” Dylan said. “He’d planned on bringing a lot of it back to his parents, but got caught up following some digital trail to whoever hacked Mia’s computer.”
“Can you follow him back here?” Logan asked.
“If you give me a tour of the mansion and—”
Logan cut off his baby brother. “Not happening.” He tossed the phone on the bed, shaking his head. “Does your brother understand that these threats are real?”
“I’m sure he does.” She curled up next to him, her knee touching his thigh, her hands tucked up under her cheek. “But he doesn’t think they are after him.”
“Why is that?” He glided his fingers in a circular motion across her bare shoulder.
“It was my job, not his. He only came into help once I screwed things up.”
“Screw up how?”
“A lot of our clients will have their IT person put in some virus, or dummy security problem. I even had one client go as far as to hire an actual hacker to mess with me. So, when I was in the DANA Corps system, and I saw the file switches, I thought they were fucking with me.”
“My boss told me you were threatened.”
“That happened after I sent a virus that wiped out part of the hacker’s system.”
“If you thought it was just your client, why fuck with them by screwing up part of their system?”
“To show them that when they do something like that while I’m testing , it creates a bigger gap in cyber security. I also wanted to demonstrate to them how vulnerable they were. I just moved the files to an outside server, making it appear a virus had wiped out their system.”
“When did you figure out someone else hacked into DANA Corp?”
“Three hours later when they hacked back in and threatened to kill me if I didn’t give them the data.”
“So that’s when you decided to dummy it again, giving it to the CIA?”
“I couldn’t let whoever these people were get away with it.” She wrapped her arm around his middle and draped her bare leg over his thigh. “Markus didn’t even know what I did, until it was too late.”
“We’ll find the culprits and I’ll make sure you and your family stay safe until then.”
“Logan?”
“What?”
“Are you as uncomfortably comfortable as I am?”
He rolled, cupping her face, staring into her crystal blue eyes. His heart beat faster than when he would prepare to jump from a perfectly good plane. “I’m not exactly sure what you mean.”
“We don’t even know each other anymore, and yet, here we are, arms and legs wrapped around each other, about to kiss as if we hadn’t been apart for over a decade.” She licked her plump rosy lips.
He groaned, pulling her body hard against his, wondering why he’d be willing to risk his new job, and probably his life if her father walked in again, to taste her one more time. He stared at her, searching her face for something unfamiliar. Something that told him he had no idea who this woman was anymore. But the way she smiled, with her lips slightly parted, and her fingers digging into his back, all he saw was the young girl he’d never quite forgotten.
“Are you going to kiss me or what?” she whispered before she engaged his mouth with her fiery tongue.
He cupped her ass, pushing his knee further between her legs, her heat landing directly on his thigh. Hard to believe that in all his years, his first still had the ability to pull him completely from reality.
He slipped his hand under her short skirt finding her firm, bare ass. His fingers twitched to feel her warmth wrapped around them.
She wiggled against his leg, her hand wedged between their stomachs, fingers working their way into his shorts, snapping him back to the present. He slowed the kiss down, gently pushing her a way.
“We can’t do this.” He cleared his throat. “Besides, the door isn’t locked and I’m not in the mood to get caught, and subsequently murdered. There is the little problem of who I’m working for.” He stood. “I’m your bodyguard.”
“I’d say that was guarding my body.” She’d rolled over on her stomach, feet in the air, her skit not covering that damn dimple that he wanted to press his lips against.
He bent over, smoothing down the fabric and retracting his hands quickly before he jumped on top of her.
“I’m serious, Mia. My boss did some digging and STEALTH is one bad ass organization that sells information, technology, and other stuff to homegrown terrorists. I can’t be having a trip down memory lane with the first girl I had sex with.” He shook his hands out, hoping to ease the tightness in his body. “And your father would kill me.”
He must have driven his point home as her beautiful eyes went from laden to concerned.
“I’m sorry.” With dignity and a sense of grace like no other woman he’d met, she rose, meeting his gaze. “I’m scared and I think it just felt good to be in your arms again.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He drew a hand down his jaw. “If you can’t talk your parents into letting me stay in the main house—”
“Mia? Logan?” her mother’s voice cut through the thin walls.
“I’ll let her in.” Logan opened the door. “Yes, Mrs. Vanderlin?”
“Markus is back and your brother is with him. Is it okay that I let Dylan in?”
“That’s fine,” Logan said, wiping his lips, hoping he didn’t have lipstick plastered on his face. “But we need to discuss the new system for people coming in and out. The locks are being changed in the morning and Mia said she changed all the passcodes.”
“You mother has a key,” Mrs. Vanderlin said. “All my full-time staff does as well and they’ve been with me for years. I don’t understand why they can’t have a key.”
“Mom, it’s only temporary.” Mia looped her arm around her mother. “Were you able to
talk any sense into Dad?”
“He’s agreed. Logan can sleep in one of the guest rooms.”
“I need to be on the first floor, and no bedroom is necessary. I won’t be sleeping much, so a sofa will do just fine.”
Mrs. Vanderlin scowled, but nodded.
“Let’s head over to the house. I need to talk to Markus.” But what Logan really needed was some magical pill that would turn off the instant arousal he got anytime he looked at Mia.
CHAPTER 4
MIA STEPPED INTO THE KITCHEN with her mom at her side and Logan trailing behind. Her brother sat at the table, eating a bowl of something.
“You’re a jerk.” She smacked her brother.
“Ouch.” Markus rubbed the back of his head. “Was that really necessary?”
“It was,” Logan said, leaning over the table and towering over her brother. “You should be grateful it came from her and not me.”
“Nice to see you too.” Markus smirked, reaching his hand out. “I have to say not only was I shocked to see your brother banging on my door, but I’m stunned your part of this Omega Team.”
“Someone has to protect your pathetic ass…sorry Mrs. Vanderlin.”
“It’s fine,” she said quietly. “Do you need me for anything? I think I want to go join Brett upstairs.”
“Nothing tonight. We’ll talk in the morning.” Logan nodded.
“Night mom.” Mia gave her mom a kiss on the cheek, hugging her a little longer than normal.
“Where’s my brother?” Logan asked.
“Right here.” ‘little Dylan Sarich’, who wasn’t so little anymore, stepped from the bathroom.
“Oh my,” she whispered, craning her neck. “You weren’t that tall the last time I saw you.”
“I was what? Eleven or twelve when you two graduated?” He glided across the room toward Logan.
“Nothing worse than having the baby of the family be the tallest.” Logan grabbed his brother’s hand in one of those bro shakes, then a huge hug with a couple of loud slaps on the back. “How’s Fort Bragg treating you?”
“It fucking sucks,” Dylan said. “I mean the training is going fine, but that has to be the worst Fort to be stationed at.”
