“Learn to look away, brother, because there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to stop touching her or let her venture out of my sight. And speaking of…we’ll meet you guys out at the lake.”
Before Penny could ask what he meant, she found herself thrown over Rafe’s shoulder like an economy-sized bag of potatoes. This time, there were no gag, no handcuffs, and no blindfold. This time, she could see exactly where she was going…or would have if Rafe’s smackable ass weren’t in the way.
And that was straight into the future with the man she loved.
Nurse Elle Monroe never expected to see her one-night stand on the steps of her clinic. But Alpha Security operative Trey Hanson isn’t back for a repeat performance. He’s come to save her from heavily armed guerillas—and maybe to steal her heart…
A preview of Holding Fire follows.
Elle stared, transfixed, on the clock behind the airport’s claims counter. Each twitch of the second hand took about five years off her life. Being a month shy of her birthday, she estimated she had roughly ten and a half seconds until the coroner needed to be called. Twelve max, with a little bit of luck, but luck seemed to be in short supply.
Her normal patience was at an all-time low, sucked into a black hole right along with her personal hygiene and her luggage. Twenty hours in flight time from Thailand to New York was to blame for the first. The latter was entirely the fault of the airline.
“Next.” Behind the counter, the gray-haired hospitality worker never bothered looking up at the next traveler.
One more person. One more step. The closer Elle got to the cracked yellow Formica counter of the claims department, the more that surface looked like a goose-feather pillow. To leave or not to leave.
Jeans. Shorts. Granny panties. All cotton, no sexiness. Everything in her suitcase could be easily replaced by her modest paycheck and the nearest discount store. She could call it a loss and find the nearest hotel, be damned the health department reports.
With a deep sigh, Elle looked around the open room. People littered the airport, bulky suitcases bouncing behind them as they scrambled to their destinations while others coveted blankets and pillows and looked to be settling in for the duration. On the left, two children tackled the legs of a tall, slender woman dressed in desert camouflage.
A smile ghosted over her lips…and froze. That tingle, the one she’d felt the moment she and Shay unloaded from the gate—the one that came with the ardent focus of someone’s attention—took root in the pit of her stomach. When she sensed it earlier, she blamed the paranoia on her long hours of travel and lack of sleep. But the prickle of awareness came back tenfold, turning her head and stopping at the man leaning against the far wall.
Elle did a double take. It wasn’t Trey. It couldn’t be. She’d left him back in Thailand without so much as her last name, much less her travel itinerary, yet every second her gaze stayed narrowed on the stranger across the room, her heart pattered a little faster.
Jeans encased his thighs perfectly. Not tight. Not baggy. No doubt if he turned around, the rear would look as impressive as the front. Both his face and his hair were disappointedly half hidden by a baseball cap and sunglasses, but they had the same strongly chiseled jaw and sexy blond scruff that made her want to throw every razor known to man straight into the garbage.
Even though he never looked away from his paper, his lips twitched almost as if sensing her visual appraisal. That smirk. Those lips. The tight stretch of a long-sleeved T over a chest wide enough to land an airplane. Elle nearly collapsed into an X-rated memory of how lips nearly identical to the stranger’s had pleasurably ripped away all her sensibilities only a scant few days ago.
Standing in the middle of a busy airport definitely wasn’t the time to give in to a never-ending mental replay of her time with Trey. When her turn came up at the counter, she gave them all the information they needed in the hopes of reconnecting with her suitcase, and then with a “Have a nice day” and her single carry-on, Elle bounced off the chest of another traveler.
On reflex, she reached out to steady her victim. “I’m so sorry.”
“Shut it,” a low voice snarled.
Oh, hell no. Exhaustion mixed with an insane need to shower off the last twenty-four hours made her head swivel to Mr. Attitude. Normally she would’ve taken a step back and gone on her merry way, a side effect of her upbringing. But she was eight hours past polite, and people who wore sunglasses indoors annoyed her to no end—unless they were sexily coy and leaning against a wall.
She narrowed her eyes, wishing him to squirm at least the smallest bit, but there wasn’t so much as a flicker of remorse. “It was an accident. I said I was sorry. There’s no need to be a jerk about it.”
“Actually, there is.” Mr. Attitude clamped a hand around her upper arm.
“Ow. Hey, watch it!” She tugged and he tightened his hold.