“I’m going back to what I love.”
My heart sinks, although it’s no surprise. I knew all along he’d go back to being a SEAL. It’s one of the reasons I ended things.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” she presses.
He grins, and my heart catches. I’d forgotten how his smile makes my insides wobbly. “You have no idea,” he says. “I also have a few last things to check off of my bucket list.”
“Oh yes,” the news anchor says with a smile. “The bucket list! So was it a map like everyone thought?”
“Yes. Turns out it was the most important map of my life.”
Chapter Eighteen
Charlotte
One Month Later
“Hey Chaz, there’s a client who’s booked the penthouse at the Planters Inn for a proposal but wants us to go by and make sure everything is perfect. Can you do it? I’m meeting Noah at that gala in fifteen minutes, and Gemma says she’s hung up in traffic.” McKenzie’s chased me all the way down to the parking garage, just as I was getting ready to go home.
I sigh. Some things never change.
“Sure,” I say, climbing into my convertible cherry-red Challenger. Well, I think to myself with a smile, some things do. In the month since I’ve been back, I’ve been determined to keep the promise I made to myself that night Liam rescued me. I’m a little heartbroken still—I miss Liam more than I thought I would—but I’m riding the waves and staying afloat, taking it as it comes. I’ve realized I can’t control anything. Well, there are still plenty of things I can control, but Liam isn’t one of them.
“Thank you!” she says. “He’s left a list of what he wants you to do.”
“My kind of guy!” I joke.
It’s almost dark when I get to the inn, and the trademark vintage carriage lights flicker enticingly at the ivy-covered, stone-pillared entrance. McKenzie’s client couldn’t have picked a more romantic place to propose with its soaring ten-feet ceilings, charming fireplaces, and antiques. After telling the front desk who I am and getting the room key, I go upstairs to the room. It’s beautiful, with a sumptuous four poster bed, and pink roses—my favorite—everywhere. This guy is amazing. She’d better say yes.
I look around for the list McKenzie said he’s left, but I can’t find it. What I do find, though, is a sweet, chocolate lab puppy with soft brown eyes and enormous feet in the bathroom.
I bend down to pet him, and he bounds up to me, tail wagging furiously as he licks my face. “How did you get here, little guy?” I say, scratching him behind the ears. I didn’t know the hotel allowed pets.
I hear the door open and close. Shit. I wrangle the puppy back into the bathroom.
“Coming!” I call out. “I haven’t found the list you left, so—”
I stop short as I step back into the room and come face-to-face with Liam. I’ve never seen him in a suit before, and he looks sexy as sin. I, on the other hand, had planned to hit the gym after work and am wearing workout clothes. I inwardly groan, realizing it’s just like the last time. I am destined to continually be humiliated in front of Liam. I stand there, speechless, trying to figure out what he’s doing here. And why is he taking off his coat and unbuttoning his shirt?
“I got a tattoo,” he says.
“Oh,” I say dumbly.
He shrugs out of the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a magnificent phoenix rising on his right bicep.
I smile. “That’s perfect. Have you checked everything off your bucket list now?”
“Well, not quite. There’s one more thing. That’s why I’m here.” Taking a breath, he says, “The bucket list was a map, but it wasn’t a map to the guns. It was a map to you.”
“What?” I stare at him, trying to process what he’s saying. He takes a step closer, but then stops, unusually unsure of himself.
“When we were in Malaysia, the guy at the tattoo shop who made the medallion mentioned that I told him I was waiting for the woman I love when he asked if I wanted a tattoo. That didn’t make much sense to me until I found some drawings I’d made of the tattoo I wanted to get. This.” He gestures at the ink on his arm. “The phoenix.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The phoenix represented everything—where the guns were, and what I had to do to be worthy of the woman I’d fallen in love with. The woman I’d promised to come back for. You, Charlotte.”
I hold my breath, then remember to release it. “You remember what you said at the airport in Playa?”
“I remember everything, sweetheart. Falling in love with you in Playa del Carmen last fall, and then falling in love with you all over again in Mexico. You are my destiny. If I was torn from you a thousand times, I’d find my way back to you every single time. You were always mine, Charlotte. I dreamed of you constantly when I was in India, even before I woke up from the coma. I didn’t remember it, but I was still replaying our love story in my dreams.”
He looks down, shifts his feet. “I also remember seeing you at Kenzie’s a few weeks after Playa del Carmen. I’m sorry for that. I was afraid of putting you in any danger, so I didn’t say anything. I figured I would just carry out the mission and then come back for you and explain it all. It was wrong, and it almost cost me dearly, because then I lost my memory. You taught me the second time around that I don’t have to do it all alone, that I can trust the people I love, and who love me back, to share the burden sometimes. But at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. My whole idea in taking the job Gray offered was to make enough money to quit the team and come back for you. And since I couldn’t claim you until I’d completed the mission, I put things on the bucket list that would lead me back to you. The weekend in Vegas, the salsa lessons, the tattoo, the mile-high club…” He grins. “The kinky sex. They were all things I wanted with you.”
There’s a little yap and I look at him questioningly. “You said you wanted a lab from a shelter. I picked this little guy up this morning.” He opens the bathroom door and the puppy tumbles out, jumping and licking both of us.
“But you travel too much for a dog.”
“I used to travel too much for a dog. Now I’m a celebrity.” His eyes twinkle, and then he becomes serious. “Actually Noah, Walker, and I are starting our own security consulting company. I quit the team. I can’t do it anymore. You know why?”
I shake my head.
“You know my motto—don’t underestimate the power of fuck it.” He grabs my chin, tilting my face up to look at him. “Well, I give a serious fuck about you, Charlotte, and I don’t want to lose you again. I want to wake up next to you every morning and go to sleep next to you every night with your naked body curled against mine. I’m not sweet, accommodating, solid, dependable, or predictable, but I’m the man for you. No one in this world can love you like I do, or distract you when that brain of yours starts overthinking everything, or take that control you hold on to so tightly every once in a while.”
Tears are spilling over onto my cheeks and he wipes them tenderly with his thumb, then hands me a folded piece of paper. “I know how much you like lists, so I made you one outlining my plan.”
I unfold the paper and read number one: Say yes.
I look up, and Liam is on one knee, the ring he bought in Puerto Vallarta that I wore during the happiest week of my life in his hand. “I can’t give you a perfectly ordered life with a picket fence, but I can give you all the love I have. Charlotte, will you marry me? For real this time? It’s the last thing on my bucket list. Marry the girl of my dreams.”
“Yes. Yes!” I launch myself at him and he catches me, burying his face in my hair before he tilts my chin up and kisses me. He was right. When I stopped holding on to everything so tightly, when I gave up trying to control it all, I got everything I always wanted. He pulls back slightly. “I love you, baby. I’ve always loved you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper, my heart so full I think it’s going to burst.
He slides the ring onto my finger, and then says casually, “T
here are a few more things on the list.”
“Oh?” I look down at the list again. “Strip,” I read out loud. I look up at him. He’s rolled his sleeves up, and he’s looking at me with that dark need in his eyes that sets a fire burning inside of me. I quickly kick off my shoes. “You got some music for me?”
He fiddles with the sound system in the room and music begins to play. I turn around and shake my ass a few times before slowly shimmying out of my yoga pants and tossing them at him. He catches them with one hand, his eyes never straying from me. I lift my shirt inch by inch until it’s just past my breasts and then it follows the trajectory of my pants. I unclasp my bra, enjoying the murmurs of approval he makes as my breasts spring free, already heavy and aching for his touch. But I don’t step closer to him. Instead, I tease him a little, starting to pull off my panties and then stopping.
After the fourth time, his eyes narrow. “Girls who play games should know the rules.”
“What?” I say innocently. “There wasn’t a time frame.” He’s next to me now, and he wraps my hair around his hand, using it to tug my head back. He looks like he’s going to say something, but instead he kisses me hungrily. “I love this. I love us. And I love that I get to do this forever with you.” He pauses, then adds, “Now I’d suggest you take those panties off and read the next step before smart-ass becomes red ass.”
I’m smiling as I read the next thing on the list: Put on the blindfold. “There’s a blindfold?”
“On the bed.”
Oh. I walk over to the bed, somehow impossibly aroused by the fact that I’m naked, while he’s fully dressed in a suit, sleeves rolled up. There’s an assortment of things on the bed, kinky things, and my gaze flies to his. His slow smile is my undoing. He doesn’t say anything, just walks over and places the blindfold over my eyes himself, tying it behind my head.
I feel a flash of panic, but then his hands are on me, caressing my skin and I let out the breath I had been holding.
“Now I can’t read anything else on the list,” I say.
His low chuckle is close to my ear. “Lists are overrated. I think I’ll just wing it.”
“But—”
“Shh,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ve got you, baby.”
I smile. “Yes, you do. Always and forever.”
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Chapter One
The quadrant was, for all intents and purposes, a galactic tug of war. Every planet, every moon, every outpost, every waystation, every speck of dust upon which a sentient being could live was claimed by either the Corporation or the Great Family.
Neither was any more desirable than the other.
The Corporation ruled through military force. The iron fist it wielded was fed by the wealthy and elite, those who had much and shared with no one. They stood on the backs of the people who paid taxes and tariffs to support the very military that kept them subdued and subjugated. Yet the same force that kept them in check also protected them. With the Corporation came order and regimen. Some thrived. Others rebelled and set off on their own to lawless moons and waystations of questionable reputation, living beneath the radar of the Corporation’s mighty military. They did not, however, escape notice from the Great Family.
No one was sure how the Family came into power. Rumors swirled, but the Rasmussens were a tight-lipped group. They rewarded loyalty with rich trade routes and bountiful opportunities. The Great Family ruled with a velvet fist, strong but softer than the rigid military of the Corporation.
Simple people who desired a simple existence flocked to the lure of seeming self-rule under the auspices of the Great Family. Remington Hawthorne was far from simple. She had to walk the tightrope in a quadrant where a battle raged every day. Gunnar, her late father, had warned her to steer completely clear of the Great Family, because only their rules existed in their domain.
There was something to be said for taking control of one’s own fate, unless of course it was an illusion. When you floated between the two titans of the galaxy, one lived on the razor’s edge of one power or the other. It was a dangerous place to be.
Remy’s boots pounded down the metal steps from the bridge and into the main hull of the ship. She had thirty minutes to get her ass to the Metalheads Bar on Station Twenty. No time to think over what she was about to do…she had to move, move, move like her life depended on it. A black sphere hovered above the thoroughfare but she tried not to glance at it, knowing it was the Corporation’s way of tracking everyone everywhere.
Station Twenty was a lonely outpost on a small planet that had been terraformed, and a haven for all the ships that frequented the trade routes from one side to the other. The Steel Coyote could have called Twenty home for all the times it had been docked there. This time, they’d barely made it into port using the remaining fuel in the tanks. They needed this job and the money it brought in, or they wouldn’t be able to leave the outpost.
Remy didn’t know Cooper, but she’d agreed to meet him on the space station on the outer rim of the quadrant. He’d insisted on a public place with multiple exits. It meant he wanted to use her to smuggle something, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have that luxury. The Steel Coyote needed cargo, and Remy was desperate enough to not ask questions.
She’d done pretty well for herself at first, and then the last three months all their work had dried up. The usual jobs disappeared like wisps of smoke. Someone was sabotaging her, and she didn’t know who or why.
Her heart beat a steady tattoo as she raced down the loading platform and onto the dock. Gunnar had taught her to smash those softer emotions beneath the surface. No matter what the situation, Remy kept her armor in place—even if she was terrified of failing. This job was too important. She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned right toward Metalheads.
Nighttime was louder than a parade on Twenty. Hookers, hangers, and tweakers were everywhere, looking for whatever they could get. Remy ran past them all. These were the “have nots.” People who lived hand to mouth. The sad fact was the Corporation only helped those who fit into their mold of good citizens and swept out the refuse to the outer planets. The Great Family took ahold of that refuse and controlled it using any means necessary.
It would take thirty minutes at a normal pace, and she wanted to be there at least five minutes early and make sure she got a drink down before the meeting. Hopefully there was some of that good bourbon, because she sure as hell needed a double. With only three of them left on the Steel Coyote, she didn’t want to call herself desperate, but she was. Since Gunnar died, things had gone from bad to worse, and now she was hanging on by her fingernails.
Her father always used to say the universe was made of “haves” and “have nots.” The “haves” were the people who lived within the Corporation’s regime in pretty houses, with servants and anything credits could buy. Work was limited to choosing what to serve for their dinner party or what shoes to wear to the cotillion on a neighboring planet.
The “have nots” lived within the Great Family’s regime, where people would fight, steal, or kill to survive. They didn’t have the luxury ships, interstellar travel, or even electricity the “haves” took for granted. The “have nots” grew their own food, hunted for meat, rode horses, and used wagons. They knew the value of bartering and never left their home world.
Then there were those who drifted between the two. People like Gunnar and his crew of the Steel Coyote. A cargo ship that moved within the quadrant, delivering and picking up goods from the “haves” and “have nots.”
Remy had learned how to maintain the delicate balance of existing between the two halves of the quadrant. She’d watched and discovered what it meant to fly through it all. She’d thought she knew everything she needed to.
When Gunnar died, and Remy took over the ship, she’d assumed the crew would accept her as captain. T
hey’d do what she wanted them to; it would be business as usual.
She’d been wrong.
Lucky for her, she had Katie. The engineer was her best friend, albeit a character in her own right. Then there was Foley, one of her father’s oldest friends who could barely do any chores, but his heart was bigger than the entire ship. They were a team of three against the universe.
As she moved through Station Twenty, most folks let her by without a word. Her ponytail bobbed madly, slapping against her back as she walked the last five minutes to cool down. The near run had heated her up, which meant her face was flushed and sweat glistened on her pale skin. She hated the fact she resembled a tall glass of milk with big boobs and a wide ass, but she’d learned to use the height to her advantage and never back down.
As she passed the handyman’s shed, a woman stepped forward from the shadows. She was tall, elegantly dressed on a station where most people sported layers of dirt. The woman wore a scarf over her head that covered her hair and most of her face. She held up one hand, and Remy spotted the purple crescent tattoo on the woman’s wrist.
The Great Family.
Icy tendrils of fear slid down her back. Her father had told her repeatedly to give the Great Family respect and stay out of their way. He’d known the matriarch, Victoria Rasmussen, when they were younger but never introduced her.
Remy kept moving forward without responding. There would be no reason for them to seek out Remy. And if there was, she didn’t want to know about it—she had to focus on the here and now. Meeting Cooper and getting the job.
She was taking a risk trying to make a sketchy deal with a sketchy man. The good thing about Metalheads was that it was a bar she’d been going into since she could sit on a stool. She knew the layout and the way out, not to mention Royal Chadwick, the crazy ex-pilot who owned the place.
As Remy crossed the threshold into Metalheads, she straightened her shoulders and put her chin up. It was time to be the captain she knew she was.
Resurgent Page 21
