by Miley Maine
Worth the Wait
Her Protector Book 2
Miley Maine
Copyright © 2021 by Miley Maine
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Contents
Blurb
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Special Invite from Miley
Blurb
Surprise, surprise!
My baby daddy bailed me out of bankruptcy.
* * *
I never expected James to be back.
It means trouble.
He has no clue that he’s the father of my kid.
How could he?
He abandoned me when I needed him.
And now, he thinks that my whole world belongs to him.
Yeah, right…
It’s a lie he needs to stop telling himself.
Even if he’s the hottest FBI field agent to ever exist.
James is investigating a dangerous threat.
A threat that wasn’t supposed to harm me.
But I’m connected to him, so that must’ve made me eligible.
Danger is right around the corner.
So is heartbreak.
What will strike first?
* * *
“Worth The Wait” is part of “Her Protector” series but can be enjoyed as a complete standalone with a very satisfying HEA and absolutely no-cheating. You don’t need to follow any specific reading order to enjoy this series.
1
Bree
If I set my own mailbox on fire, is that a crime? Or does the federal violation only kick in if I destroy someone else’s mailbox?
Who was I kidding? I was the poster child for fire safety—literally, since I was the lead volunteer firefighter in town. I wasn’t going to be setting anything on fire.
Digging the mail out, I didn’t have to open the envelope to know what was inside. The red letters and the word “overdue” let me know exactly what I’d find when I tore open the paper. For a second, I considered ripping it up and scattering it all over the floor of the horse barn. It would look really good mixed in with the manure.
But that was not a great strategy. Ignoring my problems wasn’t going to make them any better. Gritting my teeth, I popped the envelope open.
My stomach twisted into a knot. The number was way worse than I’d expected. I knew we were behind on the mortgage, but I’d guessed it would be about $2,000. Instead, a bold $5,000 glared at me from the page.
I leaned my back against the rickety mailbox and tried to take a big, calming breath. For a Texas evening, the air was a perfect seventy-five degrees and there was just the tiniest breeze in the air, but the deep breath didn’t work one little bit.
As the sun set over the field where the cows were grazing, I tried to focus on something to slow my rapid breaths. Cows? They needed vaccines. Barn? Needed a new roof. The fence? Nope. Not even the fence was okay. It was a mangled mess in need of total repair.
Damn it. Get it together before your kid sees you.
He might only be four, but he was pretty adept at picking up on emotion.
As if summoned, the screen door on the house banged closed behind me and a little voice cried “Arrr!” right before I was whacked in the back of the head with a foam sword.
“Hello, matey,” I said, bending forward to straighten the costume eye patch that was covering my son’s cheek instead of his eye.
“Momma! I’m a pirate!” My son’s little face scrunched up. “You’re supposed to say ‘Ahoy, matey!’”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Let me try again.” I straightened up and inhaled. The sight of his bright grin always lifted my mood, no matter how shitty it was. “Ahoy, matey!” I exclaimed with a flourish. With my son staring right at me, my heart slowed down a fraction. My stomach stayed coiled, but that was pretty much its constant state these days.
“That was better,” he said with a big nod. He smacked me with the sword again, this time on the arm, and raced off. Sometimes I couldn’t keep up with all his wardrobe changes, but at least I could mostly understand his words these days. He needed more speech therapy, but until I could get ahead on the bills, that wasn’t happening.
Wheels crunched over the gravel driveway as my best friend pulled up. At the sight of her patrol car, Ian was back, flinging himself at her car. “Aunt Lacy!”
“Hey, kiddo!” As soon as she was out of the car, she picked him up and spun him around. He wiggled free.
“I gotta get my police outfit!”
Lacy gestured toward her brown sheriff’s deputy uniform. “So you can match me, right?”
“Yep!” he shouted, and then he was off again, boots pounding against the wooden front porch.
“You sure you don’t mind hanging out with him while I get the cows vaccinated?” I asked. After battling several illnesses with the cows, I was determined to prevent any more.
“You know I love that kid,” Lacy said.
She really did, and I was glad for it. The more loving adults, the better. I’d had one and I figured I turned out okay. If one was passable, then three had to be pretty fantastic.
I wasn’t going to pretend our living situation wasn’t crazy. I lived on a working ranch with an older couple, Walter and Mary, and Walter just happened to be my son’s grandfather, and Mary was his step grandmother. Not that any of us had ever acknowledged that fact.
Walter had to know it though. My kid was a clone of his father at that age.
“I appreciate it,” I said. Ian was beyond hyper—spending all day on the ranch had made him a little stir crazy. Walter was great with him and so was Mary, but they’d had him all day and they deserved a break.
So, now my poor friend—my childless, free-from-obligation friend—had taken pity on me because the cows needed their shots. Yes, even our free-range, grass-fed cows needed a vaccine or two. There were a lot of things Ian could tag along for, but when the cows were all gathered up and getting jabbed with needles, it would be too easy for him to get trampled.
Lucky for me and for the cows, Dr. Casey, the veterinarian I worked for part-time, gave me free samples whenever she could and I’d been trained to do t
he shots myself, so that was free. The only cost was my sanity when I’d already been working sixteen hours that day.
Sunset turned to dusk, and the yellow sky turned into a deep purple that spread over the green fields. I’d only left Texas one time for a school trip back when I was only sixteen years old, but I couldn’t imagine a prettier place. Good thing I liked it, since I was pretty much stuck here for good.
“Okay, Molly,” I said, stopping to pet the last cow once I’d finished. She was a docile brown cow with a sleek hide and she was the most gentle of the group. I absolutely reeked like cattle and my entire body ached, but the cows were good to go.
In the distance, Ian and Lacy traded shouts of glee. Oh, Lord. She let him stay up way past his bedtime. He’d be a beast tomorrow, but it was a small price to pay. I used the inside of my elbow to wipe a stray hair from my face, but a movement on the road caught my eye. I let my arms drop to my sides.
South of the ranch, on the main highway into Laurel Bay, a row of black SUVs drove in a single file line. I counted four of them, all the same size. And on the side of each vehicle, in white letters, read “FBI.”
Before I could get my gloves off to snap a picture, they were gone.
“Lacy.” My friend was sprawled across my porch on her back, covered in fishing net while Ian stood over her.
“Yeah?” She looked up. “I’m a bad guy. This police officer is trapping me.”
“In that case, carry on,” I said, laughing at my son’s antics.
She patted the space beside her. “Come on, sit down. You can be a bad guy with me.”
“No way. I’ll never get up again.” I glanced back to the road, but there was nothing there. “I just saw four big SUVs drive by. They all said ‘FBI’ on the side. Do you know anything about that?”
She sat up, dislodging the netting, which caused Ian to leap on top of her. She caught him easily, wrestling him as he giggled. “No. I don’t know anything about that.” She pulled her phone from her pocket, but the screen was free of messages.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said. “Surely it’s nothing serious.” Laurel Bay was in the middle of nowhere. There was no way the FBI would be here for anything other than a stopover.
2
James
Cyber-attack. Terrorism.
Those were the words I’d been waiting for.
It sounds twisted, but it’s what I’d trained for.
In the three years I’d been at the Houston FBI field office, I’d worked on several cybercrimes. All had been white collar with perps who were looking to steal, blackmail, or bribe their way into having more of someone else’s money than they ought. This was the first time I’d be on an assignment directly related to possible terrorism.
Not that I wanted terrorists to exist. But they did, and my goal was to eliminate them.
In front of me, my boss yanked at his tie. The Houston office was new and it was nice, but he still sweated like we were in one of the old cinder block buildings. “Alright, people. As you all know, the word on the street is that all the cool criminals are attacking the power grids now. We’ve heard chatter that there are some potential threats to the Texas power grid right here at home. Any questions?”
The room stayed quiet, so he kept on going. “The Dallas field office is already maxed out with this, so we’re going to help out in their territory. Now—” My boss paused to clap his hands together “—we all had that briefing last month on power grids, so you ought to be familiar.”
We all nodded and he continued. “This group is affiliated with a South American terrorist cell, but our intel says they’ve been infiltrating rural Texas towns. They’re setting up shops in barns, tents, old farm houses. They’re behavin’ like they own the place. We are not gonna let that stand,” he said.
My boss thought he was really funny. I’d suffered through much drier meetings, so I wasn’t going to complain too much about his attempts at humor.
“Now, you may be wondering why the perps are here when the grids can be hacked remotely, just like any cyber-attack. As we all know, sometimes a perp likes to see his handiwork up close and personal.”
I sat up straighter. I was ready for this.
“Six of you are going to be heading to Laurel Bay, about an hour off on the other side of Dallas,” my supervisor said.
My spine straightened. Laurel Bay was a tiny spot in the middle of fucking nowhere. It was also the place where I’d grown up. I’d never turn down an assignment, but God, I did not want to work in Laurel Bay.
“Wakefield!” my boss barked.
At the sound of my name, my eyes widened. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“You’re from Laurel Bay. You and the rest of your team will go there immediately.”
He must have looked at my file because I never told anyone where I was from. “Yes, sir,” I said. It would be fine. I’d go there, do my job, and catch the perps. There was no reason I should come into contact with anyone I know. Like my father. Or his wife. Or Bree, the only woman I’ve ever loved.
Nope. No big deal. I’d be there to do a job, not catch up. I was the youngest field agent in the Houston office for a reason: I got shit done. And when assignments got hard, I didn’t avoid them. I jumped straight in.
I was going to have to get a grip and quit jumping every time someone said the name Laurel Bay. So far, the rest of the team was peppering me with non-stop questions, like, “Hey, James, are there any good places to eat? Is there a decent hotel? Is there an actual bay, or is that just made up?”
(Answer: the bay was made up, although there was a lake that was decent for fishing but not so much for water skiing.)
I’d survived plenty of difficult assignments before, and the fact that I was going back to my hometown for this mission wouldn’t be hard, just awkward. I could deal with that. Heck, it had been four years since I’d seen Bree. Maybe she’d even be glad to see me. It wasn’t likely, but maybe the distance would have given us both some perspective.
I was the youngest FBI agent on my team. I could handle Laurel Bay, Texas.
3
Bree
Eight am was too early to be hauling chicken feed. The chickens were supposed to feed themselves, but the little devils ate all the insects up, then spent the rest of the day waiting for me to feed them again. If I didn’t show up with feed at least once a day, they followed me around, squawking and pecking.
When I’d pushed the last bag off my shoulder and into the bed of Walter’s truck, I saw the same black SUVs from last night sailing down Main Street. I wiped my hands on my jeans. The chickens would be fine for a few minutes. The SUVs parked at the sheriff’s office. Ah, perfect. They were used to me there because Lacy and I had been friends since we were Ian’s age and I stopped by with eggs for the deputies at least once a week.
This time, I didn’t stop to make small talk, but went straight to Lacy’s office where she gave me a quick hug. “Hey, you. I don’t have time to chat. We’re about to have a meeting.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The FBI showed up.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What are you planning?”
“Nothing! I’ll just wait for you in here.”
She knew well and good that her office was right next to the conference room, if you could call it that. The county’s cheap budget was in my favor as I pressed my ear to the wall. I didn’t feel bad at all. If there was a manhunt for a crazy person, I needed to know. In fact, if you asked me, it was negligent that the FBI hadn’t called ahead to give the sheriff’s office a heads up.
After the introductions and the usual Texas chitchat, the first words spoken were, “Intel says they are a combination of domestic and international terrorists.” My jaw dropped. Terrorists? In Laurel Bay? We didn’t have any factories, mines, or mills, or anything noteworthy at all.
The voices were muffled, but every now and then, I could make out a phrase or two. I heard them say: no power for weeks, disrupt the supply chain, food shortages, lack
of medicine. The voices ceased and I jumped away from the wall. I hopped over to the windows and popped the blinds open so I could watch them walk out. They looked normal enough, one man and one woman, dressed in black suits.
What the Hell was happening?
Across the parking lot—coming out of the courthouse—was another set of agents, another man and another woman. The guy was tall and lean, but muscular with wide shoulders and thick brown hair. From the back, he looked just like James Wakefield. My ex-boyfriend.
And Ian’s father.
The only man I’d ever been with—in any way—despite what I told the nosey old biddies when they asked who Ian’s father was.
Apparently, he’d always wanted to work in law enforcement. He wanted to be in the CIA or the FBI, but he’d wanted an exotic assignment. When he’d talked about the FBI and CIA, I’d blown him off, assuming it was wistful thinking and that he’d eventually grow up, settle down, and take over the ranch.
But he’d insisted. He wanted to work in Hawaii, or New York, or overseas. If he got his way, he’d never settle for working in Texas. And Hell, Walter and I had told him in no uncertain terms never to come back to Laurel Bay. Surely there were enough FBI agents to go around without James volunteering to go where he wasn’t wanted.
No. The guy I knew wouldn’t accept an assignment in Texas if he had any choice at all. I must be sleep deprived. Maybe I was hallucinating, because never in my life had federal agents showed up to our town, and if things were as bad as these people said, it looked like my financial woes were the least of our problems.
