Major Lawson shoots him a look; “But Chelsea did.” He turns to me; “There’s a lot of William in you, my dear. Your sister of course as well, but you,” He nods; “You took a lot of him.”
I lean into Reagan’s embrace as she hugs me again.
“So, Javier.” The Major looks pointedly at me, and I blush, embarrassed and ashamed, and I hate that I’m ashamed of my feelings.
“Javier-”
“Is a good man, at heart, I’m willing to believe. Probably better than anyone’s ever given him credit for. He sacrificed himself to save you, which counts for a lot in my book.”
I sniff, and the tears I’ve been desperately and furiously holding back begin to trickle from my eyes.
“It means something in my book and I know it meant something in your father’s.”
The front door to Hudson’s place bangs open again, and a tear-eyed Quinn storms in. She’s crying as she quickly crosses the room and throws her arms around me, and it’s then that I just go to pieces.
“Don’t ever go and get kidnapped again, OK?” She sniffs into my shoulder, making us both choke out laughs through our tears.
“He’s still there, with Blackriver,” I say quietly, wrapping my arms around her.
Quinn looks up at Major Lawson; “Javier; he saved her, didn’t he?” The silver-haired man nods, and she turns to Logan; “We’re not leaving him there to die then.” Logan’s jaw tightens, but I know I’m watching the facade crumble. She looks back at Major Lawson; “We can’t leave him there.”
“No, we certainly can’t.”
I look up sharply, but I’m not the only one. Reagan, Quinn, Peyton, Hudson, Bryce, and even Logan are also jerking their heads up to look at the Major.
“What?”
The Major grins; “I said we certainly can’t.”
“Logan,” Quinn says pointedly; “What if it was me? What if they’d been after me and he stepped in?”
Logan glares at my sister; “But it wasn’t-”
“It might have well been, man.” Hudson says sharply; “They were after her to get to us. It could have been Reagan, and it could have been Quinn, and the only reason she’s not hurt,” He nods at me; “Well, Javier Toro is the only reason.”
Logan closes his eyes, shaking his head for a moment before he opens them; “He called me, you know.”
I jerk my head up and stare at him; “What!? When?”
From before he broke you out, when you were there with Benson and Blackriver.” Logan nods slowly; “He called my old second line and just said that he was settling up with karma, and that he was sorry.”
My heart almost breaks right there, and I find myself clinging to Quinn as if I might shatter and scatter to the winds if I don’t.
Logan turns, and when he does, I can see him drop the rest of whatever he’s holding onto. He looks pointedly at the Major; “How soon could we do this?”
Major Lawson grins and cocks an eyebrow, looking almost excited; “Well the three of you are military trained, you all own planes, and I’ve got a SEAL team on speed dial and pretty much a blank check on matters I deem of interest to national security.”
Logan nods quietly, before he turns and shoots me a hard look; “Let’s go get our man.”
When I was younger, I used to have a lot more machismo, and a lot more bullshit swagger than I do now. When you’re young, and poor, and scrounging from the street, you talk a whole lot of bullshit to get you through each day. I can distinctly remember a gang of us, poking around the shadows of the market looking for pick-pocketing marks and bragging about how we didn’t care about death or dying; like that was some kind of badge of honor to not give a fuck. We’d make jokes about the devil telling us when and how so that we could pull all the shit we wanted to pull before he took us.
We weren’t fearless, we were just fucking idiots.
Because I can say now that knowing when, and how you’re going to die is…well, it doesn’t feel like I ever expected it to feel. I’m not standing there with arms wide open like the jackass kid version of myself who used to brag about it before stealing pocket change from old ladies. I’m not raging, or laughing in the face of it either.
I mean I’m pissed about it, because if this is my time to go, I’d just want one more day with her; one more perfect day with that angel. But I guess we’ll always want one more something when our time comes; one more day, one more drink with friends, one more time with a lover. But fuck it, if the last few days of this fucked up and broken life were the cards I got dealt, then I can call that a good run.
A very good run.
I can see the sun starting to peak over the treetops, through the bared window of the cell I’m in.
One more sunrise.
They’re going to kill me today. Well, Benson’s been promising that for four days now, but there was something about the finality in him saying it last night that got me. And maybe it was that he’s just gotten tired of having me beaten, or electrocuted, or denied sleep, and wants to be done with me; not altogether different than most people I’ve known in my life. At some point, they just get tired of me and my bullshit.
Except for her.
I grit my teeth when I think of her; my one regret and the one thing I’m angry about having to leave. But I know she got out OK, and that’s all that matters. She’s safe, and if I’ve gotta take the hit for that, so fucking be it.
There’s the sound of yelling from outside the door to my cell, and I steel myself; fuck it, let’s get this over with.
But the sounds of yelling are quickly drowned out by gunshots, a crashing sound, and something that sounds like an explosion in the distance.
What the fuck?
I’m wide awake then; well, as wide awake as I can be considering I’ve been tortured, beaten, and deprived of sleep for four days. But my eyes are glued to the door as I hear someone banging on the other side of it. The sound goes silent for a second, but suddenly there’s a horrible sound of wrenching metal as the door explodes inwards, rupturing in two in a cloud of black smoke.
And then suddenly Logan Goddamn Dempsey is standing in front of me, and it all makes sense.
I’m already dead. This is, in fact, death, and this is my afterlife. This is my judgment standing right in front of me, and when he pulls out a large, wicked looking knife, I find myself nodding and setting my jaw; “Let’s do this, devil,” I mutter, my vision swimming in and out of darkness; “Let the purgatory begin, demon!”
The Logan Archangel in front of me frowns and rolls his eyes before hauling back and slapping me hard across the face. The hit jolts me back into the now, and I blink; holy shit, it’s actually Logan.
“You’re not dead, Toro,” He shakes his head as he slips the blade through the ropes tying me to the chair and cuts me loose; “Not yet at least.” He yanks me roughly to my feet, and I groan at the the pain lancing through me from the beatings and from the burn marks of the electric nodes.
“Look, shithead,” Logan growls, hauling me upright, his eyes piercing mine; “I haven’t decided that I like you, or if I forgive you.” I swallow, eyeing the knife in his hands. He nods at me; “But you saved her life, and you showed honor; more than I’d have given you credit for.”
I nod my head, wincing when he yanks me closer; “If you fuckin hurt her, I’ll bury you. You know that, right?”
I grin, raising my hand to clap him on the back; “Irish, if I ever hurt that girl, I’ll dig the hole myself, comprende?
Logan’s face splits into a grin right back at me. He’s nodding as the rest of them come crashing into the room; Bryce and Hudson, and some older guy holding a Goddamn revolver, and-
-And her.
I let myself drop into her as Chelsea shoves Logan out of the way and wraps her arms around me; “I love you.” She whispers, hugging me fiercely and crying into my neck; “You never let me say that at the airfield.”
“I love you too,” I say, for the second time ever, feeling like the world is someho
w aligning right; like somehow God and fate and karma are giving me a second shot.
“Ready to get out of here, princess?”
“You gonna steal me if I say no, criminal?”
I grin at her; “Definitely.”
Change is a funny thing, and it comes in ways and shapes you’ll never see coming.
As it turns out, Javier was a wealth of information on illicit activities in the Americas; in particular, the drugs and weapons traffic routes through the Caribbean and Florida. So much so, in fact, that the State Department was willing to forgo all pending charges in order to put him on task forces with the D.E.A.
Yeah, bad-ass, criminal, smuggler, thief, extortionist Javier Toro is working for the good guys now; who would’ve thought?
“Informant? Fuck that,” He declared during the initial sit-down meeting with D.E.A. Commissioner on the offer; “Informant sounds like a fucking weasel.”
Yep, that’s the man I love; pushing buttons and trying to get cute at a meeting that literally determines his fate for the next twenty-five years to life. But I’ve gotta say, the man knows what he wants, and he won’t stop until he gets it.
And he does, of course. In the end, he even got them to officially grant his title as “Master of Secrets”; I swear I could not make this stuff up if I tried.
Family is family, and after they forgave me for all the secrets surrounding my job stuff, they slowly started to get on board with the Javier thing as well. My sisters - well, I mean come on; those two really don’t have a rock to stand on when it comes to getting involved with men they shouldn’t. It’s worth pointing out that things worked out just fine in those circumstances too, and I think once they realized I knew exactly what I was doing, they took it just fine.
“Will it be hilarious or awful if I get him a neck warmer for Christmas?” Quinn says with wicked grin. Yeah, we’re going to be just fine on that front.
Bryce oddly enough ended up being the first of the guys to warm up to Javier. Apparently, a mutual love of the Barcelona soccer club has a way of mending fences in ways I couldn’t - and honestly still don’t - understand. Hudson moved from standoffish to indifferent, and then eventually to casually friendly with him; Reagan’s helping me out there.
Logan we’re still working on. Life isn’t a cutesy movie ending, and saying that everyone just decided to be best friends after everything that’s happened would be a lie. Logan and Javier have some serious history to work through, though they’re trying. They’re apparently going to start boxing together, which should be, well, interesting.
Thanksgiving is right around the corner too, and we’re actually going to have all of us together under one roof for the first time ever. The mercenaries, the soldiers, the politician, the mother, the doctor, the spy, the philanthropist, the recovering alcoholic, the ex-addict, the long lost sister, the princess, and the criminal. Because sometimes family is who we choose it to be, and I couldn’t have picked a better one.
And Javier and I? There’s supposed to be this big happy sappy ending where we get married and live happily ever after, right? Except that would be this big dumb cliche, right?
Well, then deal with it, because that’s exactly what’s happening. The spy and the criminal who stole her heart; how’s that for a happy ending?
The wedding itself isn’t until spring, but the happy-ever-after part we’ve already started on. I might add that we’re amassing a very colorful collection of straps, handcuffs, ties, and restraints in our bedroom as well.
We’re all capable of change, if we want it bad enough. We just have to try, because if you don’t try, what’s the point? For every shadow, there’s a light somewhere, and for every lost, there’s a found. And none of us is lost, as long as we can hang on to what’s good in this world.
Even if you have to steal it.
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Excerpt from Heat, Book One in the Soldiers of Fortune Series.
Five years ago, that cocky, egotistical a**hole played me like a fool and broke my heart.
Hudson Banks; the dominant, tattooed, womanizing, ex-Marine-turned-billionaire who runs God-knows-what at my late father’s company.
Oh, and he’s sexy as all f**k, and he damn well knows it.
He’s like a gasoline fire; a scorchingly hot disaster, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to get burned.
I’m on track to be the youngest New York State Senator ever elected; the bright, gutsy, good-girl media darling. Except my campaign funding just went dry, and it looks like the only solution is coming from the last person on Earth I’d ever want to take anything from. Oh, and it turns out bad-boy, tough-guy Hudson will be shadowing me 24/7 after he makes it clear that he’s in charge of “protecting the investment.”
Yeah, just perfect; a reckless, irresistible d*ck like Hudson Banks is the last person I need being “in charge” of anything to do with me.
Especially when I still can’t forget the taste of his lips or the feeling of that massive hardness I know he’s packing between his legs. It’s not fair that he’s even hotter now than he was back then. It’s not fair that those smoldering, arrogant eyes and that cocky, panty-melting grin still make me warm in places they shouldn’t. And it’s definitely not fair that five years later, I still can’t get him out of my head.
So it looks like I’ve got two races on my hands: the one for election, and the one against the burning heat threatening to tear us both apart. But on the sprint to the finish line, what happens when the man who has everything comes up against the one thing he can’t have?
*****
“They’re fucking what?!” I almost drop the glass of champagne in my hand as I feel the floor practically drop out from beneath my feet. My campaign manager Donald’s face is impassive and steely - pretty much like it always is even in crisis meltdown situations like this - with his bushy grey eyebrows furrowing slightly like they do when he’s got news for me neither of us want to hear.
“They’re pulling out, Reagan; entirely.” I see him reach out of habit for the phantom pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket that hasn’t been there for five years; the frown in his eyebrows deepening.
“All of it?”
He sticks a pen between his lips instead of his old vice and glowers at me; “Every damn penny.”
I swear fiercely under my breath, clenching my hand tight and digging my nails into my palm as the reality of the situation hits me like a wet blanket; “How fucked are we?”
Donald tenses his face; he hates when I swear, especially in public and especially in public when there are cameras everywhere. “Lower your voice, Reagan” He mutters through the pen in his teeth, looking at me like I’m an ill-behaved child in that way that drives me crazy. In the movie version of my life, Donald is the kind and sagely grandfatherly type who guides me along a path of adorable metaphors and teary-eyed life lessons to victory. In reality, he’s cold, calculating, and robotically efficient at keeping me in line with his battle plans. But then again, kindly grandfatherly types doling out anachronisms like they were candy don’t win elections; robots do.
Scorch: A Soldiers of Fortune Romance (Military Bad Boy Romance) Page 17
