by Amelia Jade
Garath wrenched the wheel around in a panic, turning it so hard he warped the shape of it, even as his massive booted foot stomped down on the brakes, trying to stop the desperately swerving Jeep.
Instead of the brake though, his foot must have caught the gas, the pedals in the infernal contraption far too small for someone his size. The big diesel engine roared to life, the entire inside shaking as it injected gasoline into the engine, immediately transforming it into forward thrust. Garath lifted his foot to switch to the brake, but it was too late.
“HOLD ON!” he bellowed.
The Jeep struck the brick wall and plowed halfway through it before coming to a sharp halt. Red brick cascaded down, a particularly large section denting the roof in while other chunks rained across the windshield, cracks spreading like spiderwebs. The bulletproof glass held strong, however, keeping the occupants protected while both of them shook their heads and gathered their senses.
Garath tried to push his door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Horrified that someone could be possibly trapped underneath, or had been hit by flying debris, he flexed his muscles and with a fist like a battering ram blew the window out. The glass didn’t shatter, it just bent and ejected itself outward under the impact. He was pulling himself out before it hit the ground, surveying the damage as dust and debris settled to the ground around them.
“Is everyone okay?!” he shouted, ducking low to see if anyone was under the vehicle. It was clear on both sides of the wall that it had shattered, and so he turned his attention to the inside of the building.
Calling into the dust-filled interior he looked through the rubble and scattered equipment and food supplies. “Anyone in here hurt?”
A chorus of noes reached his ears, and he breathed heavily, thanking his lucky stars that his mental lapse hadn’t resulted in personal injury. He could help rebuild a wall and the Jeep, but he couldn’t bring someone back from the dead. Wounds could be healed, but death was permanent.
The dust cleared, and Garath found himself face-to-face with a diminutive woman full of curves and fury, if he judged the cold, arctic ice-blue of her eyes properly. She was standing with her arms out to her side, coated in what appeared to be some sort of tomato sauce, creamy potatoes, and long stringy pasta. She didn’t look impressed.
Garath started looking around wildly for an escape route, not wanting to deal with the monster temper that was about to be unleashed upon him. She reached up and wiped the white and red liquids from her face, leaving streaks of mixed substances, adding new meaning to the term “rosy cheeks”. Her lips were barely visible, anger compressing them so flat they were almost nonexistent.
Her clothes were covered in food too, though thankfully she was wearing all black, pants on the bottom and a button-up dress shirt on top that had been tucked in. If she started cleaning it off now, she might be able to…who the hell was he kidding, there was no saving this.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Garath stared at her.
“Well?”
He couldn’t reply. Every function of his brain was offline, overwhelmed by the smooth, even, alto voice. The anger beating inside of it couldn’t shake him out of it, even when she spoke up for the second time. Garath’s eyes roamed over her again, viewing her in a different light.
This time he subtracted the tomato sauce, the mashed potatoes, dust, and even the bits of pasta. All he could see now was a heart-shaped face with slight cleft in the chin. Her cheekbones were naturally big, catching the light and highlighting them no matter what angle she faced. Eyes the size of the moon glared up at him, amplified by her thick, curly lashes. Garath just wanted to fall into them, to dive deep into her soul and swim in everything that made this woman her, forgetting the outside world and keeping it at bay while he devoured every bit of her.
It was a terrible way to meet his mate, but his dragon didn’t doubt it for a moment. She was the one for him, and he needed to make her his. To claim her and make her his own, so that no one else could have this beautiful woman. He’d have to go about it right, though.
“Hi, I’m Garath. We’re mates.”
“What?”
Perfection. Couldn’t have done it any better if you’d given me even ten seconds to think about what to say.
Garath cursed his brain silently and tried to figure out a way to salvage the situation.
“I’m so sorry about everything,” he said, deciding that pretending he’d never said anything was probably the best way to go about things. Hopefully.
Whoever she was, it was clear she had heard his opening line clearly, and was now deciding whether to go along with him, or bring it back up and find out just what the hell he’d meant.
His dragon was screaming at him, telling him to move forward, to claim her then and there. It felt it had waited for forever and a day to find her, and now that she was here, it didn’t want to take another second. Garath knew better though. Humans weren’t dragons, and after an entrance like the one he’d just made, it was going to be hard enough to convince her to talk to him. Picking her up and carrying her out of the building and back to his lair was not an option.
You don’t have a lair anymore.
Choice oaths were exchanged mentally while he waited for a response, which finally came just before he started to speak again.
“You destroyed my kitchen.” The dull monotone of shock colored her voice.
Garath had to keep her moving, keep her thinking, otherwise she might shut down on him, and he couldn’t do that. “No no. It’s not destroyed. Just damaged. It can be fixed. See?”
He reached down to grab one of the wire-framed stands used for storing bins of food on it and set it upright. Looking around frantically, he grabbed a couple of bins that hadn’t exploded upon impact and set them down on the shelves. “There. Good to go.”
The blue eyes that had gone from ice-hard arctic to dull and dreary moved slowly from him, to the rack. Garath stared closely, and he was boosted by the slight flicker of light. He could salvage this. It could be fix—
Metal groaned and with a loud clang the shelves caved in upon themselves and everything crashed to the floor. One of the tubs he’d collected had contained pasta sauce, and it hit the ground squarely, red paste exploding from the top like a volcanic eruption, coating the two of them in a fresh layer of foodstuffs.
Garath cringed, eyes slammed closed until the noise faded away, the last echoes dying off in the deathly silent room. Nobody seemed to move. Behind him a few more bricks crumbled off the outside of the wall.
“I am so fired.” Dejection wove itself through her words. She was beyond being upset, beyond anything feeling, her world having imploded upon itself because of him.
He had ruined it. And he needed to fix it.
“No, you aren’t,” he hissed fiercely. “This can be fixed. I’ll get the arrangements made to have the supplies brought over, and I’ll do the work for free. Trust me, it’ll be fine.”
“Not that.” Sauce dripped from her chin, but she paid it no mind. “There’s an event going on today. All sorts of brass. This,” she waved her arms around the ruined kitchen, “this was the preparation for it. Now how are we supposed to have food ready for both them and the normal officers of the base?”
Garath didn’t have an answer for that. “We’ll find a way,” he promised. “We’ll do whatever it takes.”
She looked at him skeptically in disbelief. Garath wasn’t backing down though.
“How can I help make it happen?”
Chapter Three
Marie
“You can’t.”
How did she tell him to just go away? To leave her alone and let her sort out this disaster on her own. There had to be a way. Someone would accept that this was not her fault. There was no way it could actually come back against her…could it?
Someone will claim I should have had it all ready and in the fridge by now. That it was my poor planning that resulted in most of the food still being on th
e racks against the wall and not put away. They’ll blame me, and they should.
There was no way around it. This was all her fault.
“Sure I can.” The giant was attempting to put his foot down and be stubborn about it.
Marie wasn’t ready to argue; there was just too much else going on that required her energy. One earnest mass of muscles who wished to be of assistance was way down the priority list, even before he’d decided to drive a car through her wall.
“Get the car out of my kitchen then,” she told him, pointing at the green and black Jeep. “That’s a starter.”
Her brain was starting to work, neurons finally beginning to fire again as she tried to figure out how they would go from there. There was a way to salvage this, she knew there would be. All Marie had to do was find it.
While her thoughts coalesced about as slowly as molasses dripped, she watched the tall, awkward, and deliciously muscled man go over to the Jeep. Her fractured thoughts tumbled back into pieces as he carelessly picked the Jeep up and simply pushed it back through the wall. Then he barked some commands at the other occupant, who was looking thoroughly rattled by what he’d just experienced. That done, he climbed back through the hole and marched right up to her.
“Done. What now?”
“Uh.” Marie had no answer. Had he really just deadlifted the Jeep and tossed it back out of the building? That was an insane feat of strength. It must have been easier than it looked. Maybe the other occupant had already put it in reverse. She shook her head, clearing the questions from her mind. There wasn’t time to think of all of that now. He was weird, which she’d picked up from his first sentence when he’d said something about dates.
Was today Friday? Was it the thirteenth already? No, it was a Saturday. That ruled that out. Maybe he was one of those people who believed that horoscopes were actually truthful and that the accident was a result of some weird astrological date that lined up with the fact that he was a Pisces.
Stop thinking about him. You have a disaster of a kitchen that needs saving. Maybe you should focus on that.
The cold hard reality check was exactly what Marie needed. She gave thanks to whatever part of her brain she was still functioning.
“All the food in the room needs to be thrown out,” she said. “Pitch in. Jamie, garbage bags. Now.” Her assistant leapt into action, several others following. “You can bag food and take it out to the dumpster.”
The tower of glistening muscles nodded, but turned and surveyed the hole in the wall again. “I have a better idea.” Then he was gone.
Marie watched him duck out the hole. “What the hell?” But there was no time to contemplate his oddness. She started barking out orders and the kitchen leapt into action again, unifying around her rallying cry, desperate to do whatever they needed to salvage the situation. None of them wanted to be on Marie’s bad side right then, lest they be fired as well.
The sound of stiff metal wheels scraping across pavement grabbed her attention. A moment later the hole in the wall was eclipsed as a giant dumpster was pushed into view. It came to a stop and the giant reappeared.
“This should be faster.”
Marie shook her head. “What are you doing?”
“I went and got the bin, so it’s faster to dump garbage in it.”
“Where did you get it from?”
“Over there? It was near the edge of the road with some others I can grab too. Do we need more?”
Marie’s head drooped. “Those are there for a reason. Those are the full bins.” Her hand rose and pointed to a set of double doors against another wall. “Through there are the empty ones. It’s not any farther than this.”
He looked crestfallen, the lines of his oval face losing all their energy at the knowledge he’d screwed up again, and was now just wasting her time. But just when she thought he might accept his doom, the nostrils of his tall, wide nose flared. Thin lips with a reddish tinge to them curled in on themselves as he set his jaw, determination flaring deep in the pits of his wide set eyes.
Marie stared into those twin orbs, noting the inky blackness to them. They were fascinatingly dark, almost entirely devoid of color. How had she not noticed that before? It gave him a dark, haunted look that was also startlingly beautiful.
“I’ll just stick with hauling the garbage out,” he said, marching over toward the doors she’d indicated and planting himself there.
Marie lifted a hand to protest, but decided against it. He couldn’t possibly screw up any more, could he?
She watched as the first few bags made their way over to him. He ordered her kitchen staff to just place them on the floor by the door and he’d take it the rest of the way. She dodged to the side as someone came by her, picking up bins and dumping their contents into the bags.
Whatever the big man’s name was he was determined to help. Taking two bags in each hand, he lifted them up onto his shoulders and pushed both doors open with one huge booted foot. Then he marched proudly through, spine straight and erect, happy to be of help.
Unfortunately for him, because of his height the bags caught on the hinges of the door as he pushed through, his prodigious strength meaning he didn’t notice the resistance until it was far too late.
All the mixed contents of the bags spilled all over the floor, making a horrific mess of an area that had escaped relatively unscathed until then. He frantically tried to grab the bags by the ripped section, but it didn’t work. They were going to have to clean up the area again.
Marie sagged. How was this happening to her? What had she done to deserve such a disaster?
Eventually the newcomer got the hang of it, and bags started to disappear out the door faster than they came in, but she wasn’t sure that any more of his “help” would be appreciated. So far it had done almost more bad than good. If he was allowed to stay once they began to prep again, then it seemed a foregone conclusion the place would either burn down or explode. Neither options were something she was willing to entertain. Which meant he had to go.
Waving her hands to get his attention, she called him over to the hole again. “Listen. Thank you for your help. We wouldn’t be where we were right now if it weren’t for you.”
“Yeah, we’d have been going home by now,” a voice in the background complained angrily.
Marie ignored it, though she saw the anger in the man’s dark eyes—they were a slate gray now, so dark they looked black unless she peered closely.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was loud enough to carry into the kitchen so that others would hear him. “What else can I do?” he asked her.
“Nothing.”
Sadness and frustration clouded his expression, the thin eyebrows drooping low as he blinked slowly. “You want me out of your hair, don’t you? I’m just making things worse.”
“You aren’t making things worse. Not anymore. Not since you ripped those garbage bags open, or since you gave us a new window hole at least.”
He looked away, embarrassment coloring his pale-skinned cheeks a rather cute shade of rose. Fingers as long as her hand ran through his spiked hair, dried and crusty pasta sauce flaking off as he did. Marie was forced to give him credit; he’d dug right in to the work and hadn’t cared about getting dirty. His clothes were stained and his skin caked from head to toe, probably about as bad as hers.
The only part that seemed clean was his lower jaw. The short-trimmed facial hair that ran along his jawline before stopping just short of the adorable cleft in his chin was devoid of all foodstuff, which was somewhat impressive. As were his muscles. She could see the way they were almost flexing now, engorged with blood from all the lifting he’d been doing.
They were longer, leaner muscles, developed from years of physical activity she felt, not the gym. It gave him a slightly less bulky appearance, and there wasn’t the same vascularity to him as some of the weightlifters on the base, but Marie was perfectly fine with that. Veins popping out had never been her thing anyway.
He
r thing? Adorable chin? Cute cheeks? Listen to yourself!
Oh my God. She was checking him out! Admiring the lines of his wide shoulders, or how his chest filled out the tight T-shirt to perfection. Even his big ears caught her attention, holding it in ways that ears just should never do!
“Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do for you?”
Swallowing an entirely inappropriate response, Marie ordered her head to nod. “Yes, I’m sure. Thank you for what you’ve done, but I’ll handle it from here. I think I can fix it.”
Disappointment in his dismissal was evident, and she could hear the gears turning as he tried to figure out a way to stick around. Despite her apparent curiosity in him, Marie had bigger things to worry about that were occupying the most of her attention. If she couldn’t save things her job was on the line, and she needed the job, needed to be on the base.
“Okay. I’ll, uh, I’ll go.” He paused, and Marie almost left an opening for him to stay, but her iron will clamped down on her unruly emotions in the end and turned her back on him, knowing it to be for the best.
She heard him step over the low remains of the wall, and then metal screeched again as he pushed the full dumpster back to where he’d found it. A few more bricks fell, and for the first time she wondered if the structural integrity of the building had been compromised under the impact.
“Jamie, I’ll be right back,” she called, heading for her office. The base engineer needed to get over there, and stat, to either tell her it was fine or erect a temporary support beam or two. Whatever it was, it needed to be done before they finished cleaning. Food prep could not happen if the engineers were building something inside her kitchen!
She left the recovery efforts in the hands of Jamie and went to go make some phone calls.
The day was not over yet, and there was absolutely nothing that was going to stop her from pulling off a successful event for the brass. Marie was driven, and when she put her mind to it, she got shit done.
Today was going to be no different.
Chapter Four
