The Titan Series: Military Romance Boxed Set

by Cristin Harber

  She kept her head down, unperturbed and not noticing Baer behind her. Then she leaned into her station wagon and… didn’t get back in. Instead, she emerged with a purse the size of a Humvee and a hat pulled over her hair.

  Is that…? Nah. She looked like Brock’s wife, but that wouldn’t make sense. Either way, she didn’t look like the women who frequented GUNS. Those ladies defined “rowdy.” One of those ladies would crack a beer bottle on a dude’s head if he gave her the wrong pick-up line.

  Volvo lady wasn’t one of those ladies. She was in the wrong place and couldn’t have picked a worse time. But damn if she didn’t look like Sarah Gamble. If only she would look up.

  Baer took another step forward, craning his neck to inspect the woman. Fuck. Buck Baer blowing away a random bystander wasn’t in the game plan, and Jared wasn’t in a position to handle a hostage.

  “Closed?” Volvo lady asked, fiddling in her monster bag. Her voice shook, and Jared had a bad feeling. “I’m here to see Sugar.”

  “She’s not here. Time to go.” Get your ass in the car and leave.

  One hand still lost in her purse and the other on her hip, she glanced up, her face unmistakable. Sarah Gamble.

  “And why are you telling me and not Sugar?”

  “I’m trying to save your life. Go home to Mayberry.” Jared kept eyes on Baer in the periphery while he studied the back of Sarah’s floppy hat. Baer wasn’t stupid. If he hadn’t figured out who she was, he might recognize Sarah’s voice.

  Rocco barked in Jared’s ear. “Brock, hold your position.”

  “Sarah,” Baer’s slick voice slithered across Jared’s skin.

  Her head snapped to look over her shoulder. Her petite frame pivoted, partially obscured from Baer’s line of sight by her station wagon.

  Fuck.

  “Goddamn it, Sugar’s on the move,” Rocco growled. “Winters, get in there and hold her ass down if you have to.”

  If she was watching the security feed, she had surely seen Sarah roll up. Only a titanium will kept Jared’s head trained forward, to avoid alerting Baer before Sugar burst through the front door.

  “Sarah.” Jared took a step forward, his hand on his holstered Glock. “Get in your car and leave. Now’s a bad time, sweetheart.”

  She looked from Jared to Buck, then back again. The woman had been abducted, her kids had been endangered, and only the Lord knew what she thought about Brock. She needed a Xanax far more than she needed to confront two men who were about to duel.

  Jared pressed her. “Everything’s all right. But you have to go.”

  She took off her sunglasses, squinting despite the dull early evening light. “You’re going to kill Brock, my husband, if you haven’t already.”

  “Where the fuck is Sugar?” Winters barked in his earpiece.

  Damn it. I should’ve tied Sugar to the bed at home. He took a breath, controlled his heartbeat, and swallowed his emotion. “Wrong, Sarah. He’s here. Alive. With me. Everything’s all good, except you need to go.”

  Her purse slid down her shoulder and left her tiny hand exposed, wrapped around a .38 special. An instant tightness strangled his lungs. The only thing worse than a woman scorned was a woman hell-bent on revenge.

  “I need to talk to Sugar. She’s the only one I trust.”

  The wrought-iron security door at GUNS’ front entrance slammed open. “Sarah, I’m here.” Sugar sashayed into the parking lot as if the mess unfolding there was just two chicks chatting. “The boys have business, so you have to go. We’ll catch up soon. Promise.”

  “Is Brock alive?”

  “He would’ve been if you’d stayed with me.” Baer cackled. “Now, Sugar, I’ve been looking for you, pretty lady.”

  Sarah spun toward Baer, the .38 held outstretched in an unsteady grip. “I hate you. You’ve ruined our lives.”

  Baer laughed again. Nothing good was unfolding. Sarah didn’t need to be antagonized. She needed a swift kick toward calm-the-hell-down alley.

  “Sugar, get inside. Sarah, get out of—”

  Faster than Jared expected, Baer pulled his sidearm and trained it on Sugar. A half-ton tanker could’ve landed on Jared’s chest, and it would’ve been lighter than the weight crushing him. On instinct, he had his Glock in hand. His heart thumped. His mouth went dry. A lifetime’s worth of training and discipline skittered into the breeze as he watched a sadistic smile pull Baer’s cheeks back and make his eyes shine.

  Sarah was in Jared’s kill-shot line of fire. This was all a game. Maybe Baer didn’t have the balls to take out Sugar. Maybe he wanted Jared to suffer, to know that he could’ve saved his woman if he’d taken out Brock’s wife.

  A shot rang out. Sugar hit the ground as Jared dove toward her. Sarah screamed. Spinning. Falling. Someone cursed. Another shot fired in the background, and he crawled the remaining distance to cover Sugar’s body. There was blood. Lots of it.

  He ran his hands ran through her hair. Checked her face and her skull. Ran down her neck. So much goddamn blood.

  Rocco’s orders carried in his ear. Another scream followed another shot. Jared scooped Sugar against his chest. Her harsh voice didn’t make sense as he hustled across the open space toward the front door of GUNS.

  Out the corner of his eye, he saw Roman swoop in and head toward Sarah. None of that mattered. Jared had to secure Sugar. He wanted the kill shot on Baer, but more than that, he needed Sugar alive and in his arms. His head was spinning. There was just too much blood.

  “Jared!” Sugar took a panicked breath. Her eyes reached past him. “Help me!”

  Maybe the bullet hit her chest? Fuck, not good. Inside GUNS, he lifted her onto a table, searching with his eyes and fingers for the entry wound.

  “Goddamn it, Jared,” she screamed. “Listen to me!”

  Her fists wrapped his collar. Sugar yanked him within inches of her eyes. All that blood on Sugar. It matted her dark hair to her cheeks and painted sickening streaks across her pale skin. He couldn’t handle life without her. It made his body hurt. His mind ache. His world spin.

  And then his world spun.

  He and Sugar fell off the table, the weight of her body pulling him down into a pile of exhaustion. He paused, staring and studying the woman he would sacrifice his life for.

  “I’m not shot.” Again, she was in his face. “You were, goddamn it.”

  White-hot pain seared his neck. Realizing he’d been shot was less shocking than her being uninjured. The blood wasn’t hers. She was okay. Everything was okay. Sugar wasn’t shot. Thank the fucking Lord.

  His terror dissipated, and his adrenaline drained away with it. Pain in his neck and numbness in his extremities hit him at the same time. Getting shot sucked. He’d done it more than he’d liked. But this time… this time… was different.

  “I love you,” he mumbled. His lips tingled. He tasted salt and metal. He smelled the blood. “Lilly Chase.” Her name sounded too pretty to not say it.

  “Stay with me, J-dawg.” Sugar cupped his face. Her fingers were gentle and wet with his blood.

  “Lilly… Chase.” His words were slurred. Such a pretty name. He couldn’t look away. Sugar’d been sexy. She’d been tough. But he never stopped and stared. Listened to her speak. Said her name. “I love you.”

  That was what he wanted to say, especially if they were his last words.

  Tears ran down her face. Still she was so… pretty. That was the only word he could think of. He wasn’t totally sure what she’d said, but if she kept talking just like that, he could close his eyes, and it would all be okay.

  Jared listened, felt, and knew. He’d finally found life, but it was fading.

  Sugar wrapped around him. He just knew it. He couldn’t feel it… and he so badly wanted to feel her. A touch. Her warmth. But… nothing.

  The voices of his team clamored in his earpiece, tickling his eardrum. Their words held no meaning. Somehow, his strength and coordination flickered back, but only long enough to pull the earbud out of
his ear, and then his arm fell limp. He sucked a staggered breath, completely unable to help himself… or to take his eyes off Sugar.

  Horrified, she screamed for help. For him. For…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  All Sugar could do was cry. Her shoulders shook. Her eyes burned. She could barely hold them open because the scene was too horrific to commit to memory. But she couldn’t close them, either. They were too raw, and shutting her eyes did nothing to erase the haunting blood and lifelessness on the ambulance gurney.

  The sirens served only as screeching background music as the ambulance flew down the highway. The EMTs worked around Sugar while she clutched Jared’s limp hand, kneading his lifeless fingers, and let tears fall down her face in stricken silence.

  Bloody gauze and beeping machines kept the technicians busy, but nothing they did offered much hope. A medic in the front seat was on a radio, giving status updates to the emergency room and talking in codes Sugar didn’t understand. But she knew each one transmitted was graver than the last.

  It was in their tone. Their glances. The sympathetic looks sadly said they would be surprised if he pulled through.

  Goddamn Jared. Damn him for loving her. Damn her for ever leaving his side, ever testing the boundaries of how far she could push him. Damn her screwed-up fears of love and relationships. If not for those mental hiccups, she would’ve had that much more time with him. She was prepared to barter with the devil for just long enough to nod yes to Jared’s marriage proposal and declare that her love ran just as deeply and was just as strong as his.

  She was a moron—a pathetic, scared moron.

  Why had she stuttered? Why had she ever questioned… him? Them? Anything? She’d been cowardly and selfish. Self-preservation had been more important than the man who had stood before her, more than once, and told her how it would be. Him and her. Forever.

  However long forever lasted. The slow beeps and the high-pitched alarms sounding around her announced that the grains of sand in the forever hourglass were settling at the bottom.

  The sirens died. The vehicle came to a sudden halt, then the driver floored it in reverse. Before the driver had parked, the back doors flew open, and medical personnel rushed in.

  A man crawled over Jared, unhooking wires and continuing to work on him while others unlatched the gurney and pulled it free. Sugar pulled her hand from Jared’s, and a woman placed it across his chest without looking up.

  Off he went, with his medical team working hard. No one had asked her to follow. Sugar watched his tethered body lie unresponsive, and she remained frozen in the back of the ambulance. She couldn’t swallow the grenade-sized bulge in her throat. Tears came harder and faster, until she dropped to her knees amid discarded bandages and empty sterile package wrappers. Sugar held her shaking hands in front of herself. She squeezed her fingers together tightly and then turned over her dark-crimson-dyed palms. The vivid creases and lines in her skin were sketched by Jared’s dried blood. She remembered years ago watching her mother study her palm.

  A short love line and a long life line. That’s exactly what you want. Long term-love isn’t worth it, Lilly. It doesn’t exist. That’s the lesson I hope you take from me. Fall in love, and one day, you’ll be me. Years drowning in a marriage, wishing to hell you hadn’t done something so stupid. Men never stay true, and neither should you.

  Sugar traced the lines on her palms, crying until her vision blurred and burned again. Her mother was wrong. Jared would’ve stayed by her side. And God help her, she never would have regretted a lifetime of moments with him.

  Don’t ever give your heart away.

  “No,” she moaned, because she already had given it away, and losing her heart to Jared was the best and worst decision of her life.

  Hell, it wasn’t a decision. And he wasn’t dead… yet.

  “Get it together, Sugar.” She jumped to her feet and threw open the ambulance’s cabinets and drawers. Tossing packages and wrappers around her, she searched and searched and searched. Alcohol swabs. She grabbed a handful and tore open the tiny packets. They were of little use, but she scrubbed clean her love line and her life line. The tiny squares dried quickly as they rouged, and she let them hit the floor, opening more packets, repeating the process of ridding her palms of the dark shading.

  It wasn’t working, and she didn’t care if his blood coated her hands. Jared was alive. He would stay alive. Titan had access to the best doctors in the country, and Jared Westin, the master of the universe, wasn’t going to die on an operation table.

  Sugar spun to the ajar ambulance doors, then jumped out to the parking lot. The heels of her boots hit the ground, sending jolts of pain up her calves. For the first time in an hour, she felt something besides despair. Physical pain. And she would take that over the blanket of anguish.

  No one else was around, and the ambulance entrance didn’t offer much in the way of customer service options, just busy people who didn’t notice her. She checked curtained rooms and looked down hallways, but didn’t see Jared. A sign pointed her toward the emergency room lobby, and she pushed through doors until she found the triage desk. She marched to the front of the long line of waiting people.

  “Jared Westin. Where is he?”

  The nurses behind the desk dropped their jaws. She caught her reflection in the Plexiglas dividing wall. The dried blood covering her face was streaked with tears, and her hair was matted against her cheeks. She turned to see the people standing in line shuffle away.

  “Ma’am,” a young nurse stuttered. “Are you okay?”

  Another nurse came from behind the desk. Maybe to check her injuries. Maybe to escape. Sugar looked ready to die or kill.

  A wide-eyed baby-faced security officer approached her, his white-knuckled hand wrapped around a Taser gun. He mumbled into his walkie-talkie and held onto his Taser, unsure of her next move.

  Like that Taser could stop me. “Where is Jared Westin?” She ignored him, placing both hands on the desk, and leaned into the nurse’s space. “Find him for me.”

  “Step back from the nurse,” Baby-face called to her. Sugar turned her head. He spread his legs shoulder-width apart and bent his knees in a classic shooting stance. Someone had taught him well. “Ma’am—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She reached over and tapped the nurse’s computer screen. “Find Jared Westin. Tell me where he is.”

  Baby-face advanced. “Ma’am—”

  A similarly uniformed grandpa-lookalike ran around the corner. “Wait! Wait. It’s okay.”

  Baby-face kept his Taser trained on her and looked over, looked back, and over again. “Not sure about that.”

  Gramps rushed over and whispered to Baby-face. Slowly, the Taser dropped until it pointed to the tile floor. Everyone in the ER watched him. The janitor was holding his mop as though he had planned to fight like a ninja.

  Then, turning a knowing glance to Sugar, Gramps cautiously approached her with his hands in the air. “Jared’s in surgery. I’ll take you to a private waiting room.”

  Other than the televisions hanging in the corners of the emergency room waiting area, the open space was silent.

  “Okay.” Sugar’s tear-soaked voice cracked.

  “Come on.” The man dropped his hands and beckoned. “It’s okay. You’re with Titan. Come with me.”

  She nodded and followed. Her footfalls clacked with each step. Behind her, whispers and murmurs erupted. She didn’t care. Jared was still alive.

  The private waiting room was small and secluded. A few chairs faced a hanging television and a phone. The magazines fanned out on the table looked so foreign, so absurd. She couldn’t contemplate how people could read or care about any issue outside the walls of the hospital when they sat on these couches.

  She looked at the phone and wanted to call someone. Jenny. Titan. Maybe ask about Asal. But they would have questions for her, and she didn’t know if she could string together a coherent sentence.

  The door cracked,
and Roman stuck his head in. “Sugar?”

  She nodded, finding that she really couldn’t string words together.

  He pushed into the room, followed by Rocco. Both of them looked like hell. Worried eyes. Ruffled hair. They wore their tactical pants and black shirts. They carried their weapons, but Rocco wasn’t armed with as many as he had been before. The battle was done. This was just their everyday weapons wear. Tactical chic.

  Rocco nodded. Both men took a seat on the couches and stared at her. Her eyes darted between them, and the air felt heavy, trapped in her lungs. Oh, no. Fuck, no. Please, God… no. “If you have news to share, do it and be done with it.”

  If Jared’s dead…

  Her throat burned with pain. She needed to vomit. Bile coated the back of her tongue, and hot tears seared her eyes all over again. She couldn’t find a breath. Her lungs stopped. Not one breath in or out, until she gasped, sputtering a cough. “Just tell me.”

  “We’re sorry…” Roman shook his head.

  “It shouldn’t have happened like this.” Rocco ran his palms over his knees, crossed his arms, and stared at the floor.

  “No!”

  There it was: the dreaded truth. Denying a fact did no good. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. Her body shook. Her blood-stained hands covered her mouth, her nose, and her eyes. She wanted to slip away and die, right along with Jared.

  Strong arms wrapped around her, hoisting her back onto the seat. She hadn’t realized she’d slid to the floor.

  Rocco or Roman, one of them, hugged her tight. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

  Okay? In what universe? I don’t need the bullshit life-will-go-on speech. She needed something to knock her out, to numb the pain, to erase the past, and rewrite the day. Anything. She needed anything but for someone to tell her things would be okay.

  “Leave me alone.” As hard and as fast as she could, she jabbed an elbow into her hugger’s throat. “Go away.”

  Both men stilled. Neither said a word, which was good, because she didn’t want to hear it.

  Roman rubbed his throat. “Sugar—”