This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author recognizes the trademarks and copyrights of all registered products and works mentioned within this work.
Copyright ©2020 by Megan Matthews. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written person from the author. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the author at [email protected]
Edited by Amanda Brown
Cover Images from: Thinkstock.com
Cover design by: Megan Matthews
Created with Vellum
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Thank You
More Books By Megan Matthews
Prologue
The oversized black beast roars, charging directly at my body. I stumble and waste a precious second staring at the small butterfly caught between its teeth as the beast runs into my side headfirst, knocking me to the ground. The pavement eats away at my skin and I slide a short distance, but I don’t notice the pain in my leg until one of the other forest animals yells.
“Oh my God, look at her leg!”
More words are volleyed in the area surrounding where my body lays on the ground, but it’s difficult making out what they say. A persistent wail fills the area, but not one like I expect. This isn’t the ambulance coming to my rescue. No. It’s worse. My head shakes back and forth, and with an unsteady hand, I reach out to silence the alarm on my phone. The ever present 7 a.m. warning it’s time to start the day’s madness.
Madness is the only way to describe a morning when you’re the mother to a two-year-old.
The sound does more than wake me. It also wakes Emma, and I catch her cries from the other room. Without a second thought, I move my legs from the bed and grab the left one as pain rockets through my body. I flop back on the pillow and suck in large deep breath, doing my best to work through the shooting needles sensation in my ankle.
“There, there, little Emma, I’ve got you,” a man’s voice filters down the hallway in between flashes of pain.
I tense, making the leap from pain to terror, but not able to move. It doesn’t last long as realization of the moment comes fast. No one is trying to kidnap my child, but the reality might be almost as bad.
There’s a big bulky, hunky, former Navy SEAL in my apartment.
The same one who hit me with his truck and severely twisted my favorite ankle bone. Yes, it’s perfectly normal to have a favorite bone. Earlier, the truck driver of doom promised to take care of us until someone from my family could arrive, but I secretly hoped he’d been kidding. I didn’t need the man who almost killed me trying to nurse me back to health. What kind of sicko would that make me?
There are not enough pain pills in existence for me to survive having Nate Bellamy in my space.
1
I’ve used crutches one time in my life. Halfway through seventh grade field day I twisted my other ankle on the long jump. Back then I sucked at using the long pieces of wood to make my way through the school halls, and my skills hadn’t improved with the years. Tired after only a few feet of hobbling my way down the apartment hallway, I lean against the wall pretending to inspect the paint job rather than resting my flabby arms. Emma laughs and darts between her doorway and the hallway, her long blonde hair a wild mess flowing behind her head.
“You’re up,” Nate says, as I pass into the open area of the living room. He’s awake and much too bright-eyed for this early in the morning. Plus, when did he get here and who let him in my apartment?
These important questions will need to wait. I give the super-hot guy a silent nod and concentrate on using the crutches to take my stiff leg to the couch without falling on my ass and doing more damage.
He scrambles behind and pulls a pillow from the side, placing it on the coffee table and helping to adjust my ankle and protective boot on top. It’s so nice… and annoying. He hit me with his truck. He doesn’t get to be kind to me now. I’d be pissy to him, but the truth of the matter is I need all the help I can get.
“You want to make sure and keep your foot propped. Did you take a pain pill?” he asks, each question coming quicker than the last and leaving no time for me to answer any of them.
I let the full weight of my leg fall on the pillow and only wince twice with its progress. I can’t see it because the compression boot hides the affected area, but underneath the black plastic, the bottom of my leg is swollen with a blackish purple bruise marring my pale skin. “No, I haven’t yet.”
His face falls, his brown eyes losing luster as they narrow in my direction with accusations etched in their depths. “You want to stay ahead of the pain, Josie.”
“Yes, I know.” I nod. No one wants to walk around in pain—least of all a wimp like me. “But I want to make sure I’m alert to take care of Emma today.”
His forehead pinches together in question. “I’m here to take care of Emma. You’re supposed to relax.”
Emma darts into the hallway quietly and I’m already aware of where she’s going. To flush something down the toilet. “Where is Emma?” He’s been here less than a day and he’s let his guard down already. He won’t make it an afternoon in my apartment before he passes me off to another victim.
Nate blinks, and his eyes search the living room, but Emma’s not here. He smirks and shrugs a shoulder, but worry and fear grow in his expression. I recognize the expression because I so often wear it myself.
“She’s just waiting for breakfast. I’ll get her,” he lies.
“Uh-huh.”
Nate turns on a heel, a toilet flushes further down the hall, and I wince, hoping it was nothing important lost down the drain this time. Since she became obsessed with the toilet about two months ago, I’ve done my best to lock valuables up or keep them on high shelves, but somehow she always finds something to flush. Thankfully it’s a large building with the pipes to match. Usually.
Nate’s gone longer than I would like and worry builds in my stomach. I still haven’t figured out who let him in my apartment. With slow but sure movements I inch my way o
ff the couch. I’ve never been great at sitting still for long periods. Halfway to the hallway a loud pop and plume of smoke whips out from the small galley kitchen in the apartment.
“Nate?” I call, trying not to panic even as I move my crutches quicker, risking certain death when I fall on my face. I’m only five-foot-five but my nose would not appreciate being squished. “What’s going on in the kitchen?”
“Don’t worry. I making everyone breakfast,” he yells, somewhere down the hallway, and whatever he says afterward is covered by Emma’s laughter. He’s cooking something and chasing my child through the apartment? Those two things do not mesh.
He said not to worry, but I can’t help my growing concern. The ends of my crutches catch on the carpet when I don’t lift them up high enough, but I manage to make it to the kitchen without falling on my face.
My eyes water with the haze billowing out of the small area. I twist the knob, turning the stove off, but a steady stream of smoke continues to rise from a blackened pan with what looks like burned and shriveled eggs. The smoke tenderloins reach up toward the ceiling as if calling for help from whatever torture he’s put them through this morning. A stack of dishes rises over the edge of the sink and there’re bits of scrambled egg squashed to the floor. I’m not sure who made breakfast—Nate or Emma.
How did all this damage happen in the few minutes it took me to turtle walk from my bedroom to the living room? How long has he been here?
The one lesson I learned since becoming a parent is that it’s easier to stay in front of the mess than to come up behind it. If you’re continuously cleaning, you’re not trying to catch up at the end of the day. With one crutch leveled against the counter, I survey the rest of the space while turning on the water in the sink.
Dried food is stuck on most of the dishes along with other unrecognizable bits that won’t make it through my cheap dishwasher. The wash cycle reminds me of my husband’s attempts in the bedroom. Whip the wand around three times, squirt liquid on everything, and then with a dying moan roll over and pass out.
With those results I’d rather do the dishes… and other things… by hand.
I mean, ex-husband.
There isn’t much room, but as the sink fills with water I drizzle soap on top. It’s possible the commercials are correct and it will help me get them clean before they go in the dishwasher.
After I get the dishes washed, my next task is getting Nate out of my apartment. We met yesterday at the hospital, if you don’t count the hour before when he hit me with his truck as a first impression, but I’ve learned very little about the former SEAL. He works for Ridge and helped my neighbor, Winnie when she had problems. That’s it. My entire knowledge base of Nathan Bellamy can be summed up in less than a paragraph.
Maybe not everything.
His eyes are the deepest shade of brown. Light and dark are swirled together, so if you’re not careful you could get lost in them for hours. But regardless of what Cosmo would say, having pretty eyes doesn’t qualify him to be in my apartment taking care of me or Emma. The water bubbles close to the edge of the sink and I shut it off before grabbing the first pan to scrub. Nate’s eyes aren’t what worry me. It’s his ability to create such a mess from a simple scrambled egg.
Dread builds as I scrub the pan. Who is this man? What if I let Winnie bring a serial killer into my life? He hit me with a truck after all. Was it not an accident? My divorce is final so Barry wouldn’t get anything extra by killing me off at this point—besides custody of Emma.
“Have you ever been to jail?” I yell the question from the kitchen, holding the pan out like a weapon. My body stiffens and I’m ready to use the stainless-steel object like a bludgeon depending on his answer.
Nate peeks his head in the small kitchen opening, and I shove the pan under the water so he doesn’t get suspicious. “No.” His expression shows he’s insulted by the question.
But you can’t ever be too safe.
“Emma is in her high chair, but what do I do now?” he asks as he eyes the large grey high chair placed at the round dining room table. Her hair wraps around her face, covering her eyes with the rest of it in her mouth.
Finished with the pan, I place it in the bottom rack of the dishwasher. “Now you give her eggs.” Truthfully, she hasn’t used the high chair in months but with me immobile, having her contained is a good idea.
“I don’t need to feed her?” Nate asks.
“Nope, she’ll just shove it right in her mouth.” And everywhere else in the surrounding area. The floor, the table, the walls, but I leave those scary facts out. Best Nate sees for himself.
“Have you ever been to jail?” he asks while placing a plate of brown eggs in front of Emma.
Now the fun begins.
I tilt my head and roll my eyes. “Of course not.” Although, after I walked in to find my husband screwing our babysitter on our bed in the middle of the day, I came very close. To my benefit, the responding officer didn’t consider the Happy Meal box I chucked at their heads enough of a deadly weapon given the circumstances.
But I don’t plan to tell Nate that story.
“What did you do in the military?”
The first piece of egg goes flailing as Nate and I watch its flight path before it crashes against the wall. Nate’s face falls in shocked horror and he races to pick it off before it dries. “I was a SEAL. It’s special ops.” He walks back into the kitchen with the slimy egg chunk cupped in his hand and his mouth open in disgust searching for a trash can.
“That’s not an answer,” I say, when he stops talking while wiping his hands over the under-sink trash.
“Most of my work is still classified, but we went where we were needed and helped other teams finish a mission in whatever way they needed. I’ve done recon and a little undercover work.”
“Undercover work?”
Nate doesn’t answer my question. Instead he stares at Emma’s egg-covered face like she’s a bomb set to explode. Little does he realize she’s just warming up for the day. The eggs will only give her protein to keep her going. “Why is she eating her hair?”
“Because you didn’t pull it back,” I respond, turning back to my dishes. “There’s a drawer of hair ties in the bathroom.”
The room goes silent except for the happy sounds a feeding child makes as they destroy a parent’s security deposit. When I finish rinsing off the last pan, there’s a gasp and I turn fast ready to jump into mother mode. Gasps are never good.
2
There’s no blood, but Emma has finished her eggs. Most of them found their way to the surrounding areas. “What did you do to her hair?” A large chunk of her hair–by no means all of it–is wrapped around a ponytail on the top of her head. The strands fall limply to one side and pieces stick out in every direction.
“I tied it up,” Nate answers, his face proud.
That’s going to be hell come bath time.
I grab the sponge and with one crutch finagle my way to the dining room table.
“What are you doing?”
The question catches me off guard. “Wiping down the table.” Duh.
Nate steals the sponge from me and waves it around the tabletop, spreading eggs over the surface. “You’re supposed to be resting. I’ll take care of this.”
Eggs fall to the floor and he steps in a clump, smooshing them into the carpet. Definitely not getting my security deposit back. After Barry cheated, I needed a fresh start away from everyone in my past life. I didn’t just lose my husband to his affair. I also lost my best friend.
No, she wasn’t the babysitter, but midway through the divorce, while she was comforting me with a carton of Ben and Jerry’s, she slipped and let the truth out. She’d been aware of his ongoing dalliance for months and never told me. Her betrayal hurt almost as badly as Barry’s. A best friend should always tell.
Nate finishes ruining my carpet and throws the sponge into the sink, landing the shot from a good eight feet away. I’m a little impr
essed. He can’t drive, but with his height he might land a dunk.
Emma claps and pats at the high chair, but rather than get her out, I sit down in the chair next to her. Standing so long has tired me out and a slow ebb of pain has taken up resident in my leg—as if the bones themselves are pissed off I’ve taken such shitty care of them. Nate opens a laptop on his side of the table and taps away at the keys.
“Are you from Pelican Bay?”
He looks up to answer and then right back down again. “No, my aunt and uncle in Las Vegas raised me. They are the only family I have left.”
“Do you go to see them often?”
I pepper him with the second question. “No, we don’t see eye to eye.”
“Oh, that’s sad.”
This time Nate fully lifts his head at my comment. “Not really. They make Harry Potter’s guardians seem like loving parents.”
“Oh.” Well, that is a different situation then. His attention falls back to the screen, done with our conversation, but his answer only creates more questions. Did they lock him in a closet? A room under the stairs? When did Nate read Harry Potter? Did he find the ending was rushed or too drawn out? Would he agree they spent way too much time in the woods?
Nate types a few more seconds, but the ever-expanding list of questions continues to grow until I must ask. “Why did you leave the military?”
He winces and then lifts a shoulder in the air in a shrug. “Wasn’t fun anymore.”
“You left because it wasn’t fun anymore?” Is the military supposed to be fun? “Why did you move to Pelican Bay?” It’s like pulling teeth to get an answer out of the man. You’d think he’d be a little more giving since he almost killed me yesterday with his butterfly-eating truck.
Lifetime Risk (Pelican Bay Security Book 7) Page 1
