Protecting Cassie (Special Forces: Operation Alpha) Read online

  “He seemed to be doing okay with you yesterday after the big collision,” Margie observed.

  “Sort of. He was stiff, as if human companionship was not on his everyday agenda. And I got him to have his doctor call me, email me his records, and set him up for regular therapy sessions again.”

  Margie dropped into her desk chair. “And how did that go?”

  “Much better than I expected. Except…”

  “Except what? Come on. Give.”

  Cassie popped another bite of the muffin into+ her mouth and chewed slowly, while she tried to figure out how to say what was bothering her.

  “Well, except then he asked me to lunch.”

  Margie burst out laughing. “Unless you have a strict policy about dating your patients, I can’t see why that’s got your panties in a twist.”

  “Well, yeah. Sort of. But…” More muffin. She busied herself picking up the crumbs on the plate.

  “For god’s sake, Cassie. You’ve been here almost a month, and you haven’t socialized with anyone but me. What the hell’s wrong with having lunch with a good-looking man.”

  Cassie struggled with how to tell Margie without giving her details of the predicament she was in.

  “You’re the only one in town who knows I came up here from Boston,” she said at last. “I left kind of a mess down there, and I don’t want the guy I was with to know where I am.”

  “Like what?” Margie prodded. “Unless you robbed a bank or killed someone, I can’t think of anything that would cause a problem.”

  Or slept with a drug dealer.

  “There are problems just as bad as those, or even worse. Trust me when I tell you that.”

  “And you don’t want Sam to know about whatever this is?”

  “No.” Cassie shook her head. “Absolutely not. He’d be a lot better off if he didn’t get involved with me. Except…”

  “Yes? Except what?”

  “Except I can’t believe how attracted I am to him in less than twenty-four hours. Margie, what am I going to do?”

  Margie pointed to what was left of the muffin. “First, finish that. Do you trust me, Cassie? I know we haven’t known each other that long, but—”

  “Of course I trust you. But I don’t want to put you in any danger.”

  “Maybe the danger is in not knowing. And maybe you need to let your big bad SEAL in on it since this is what he did for a living. I can’t imagine him being afraid of anything.”

  “But don’t you see? It’s not fair to involve him when we hardly know each other. And if I stick to just being his physical therapist, it won’t touch him.”

  Margie leaned forward. “And is that what you want? To break it off personally when it’s obvious that even in such a short time you have real feelings for him?”

  Cassie shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “It isn’t. But then I also have to tell him how stupid I was.”

  Margie flapped a hand. “I think we’ve all been there. You’ll have plenty of company. And, Cassie? If you’re in danger, he needs to know. Trust me on that.”

  She nodded but then was silent while she finished her muffin and latte.

  “Okay. Maybe tomorrow I’ll ask him if he wants to come to the cottage for dinner. This isn’t a conversation I want to have in a public place.” She looked directly at Margie. “You don’t think it’s too soon to tell him something like this?”

  “Holy crap, girl. I don’t even know what ‘this’ is, but if you have feelings for him already, and he must have some for you if he took you to lunch, then no, I think the sooner the better.”

  “Yeah.” Cassie blew out a breath. “You’re right. How did you get so smart?”

  Margie laughed. “Sometimes I think by accident. Tomorrow you ask him for dinner. Then stop by here on the way home. I’ll have a special dessert for you.”

  Cassie stood up and hugged her friend.

  “I’m so damn lucky I met you. Thank you for everything.”

  “Anytime, my friend. Anytime.”

  Patrick Shore clicked off the call on his cell phone with a deliberate press of his finger. What he really wanted to do was throw the damn fucking thing against the wall. How was it possible that with every available resource at his disposal he couldn’t find one fucking woman. He’d even checked state registries to see if she’d transferred her license. He was pretty damn sure she’d have to work. She was far from financially independent. But nothing had shown up on any state registry so after a couple of weeks he gave up on that. It seemed she had just disappeared off the face of the earth, but how?

  Cassie Malone wasn’t a dummy. He knew that. If she was, he would have been bored with her after the first date. No, she was smart and funny, good looking, and not at all like the women most of the men in his business hung out with. Either business. Not too many of them were paired with physical therapists. It gave him a certain cachet to have a woman in the medical profession on his arm.

  He had been very, very careful to keep her away from the shadowy side of his life. The one where he made the real money. Oh, his chain of restaurants did very well indeed, but it was his other business that brought him millions. And now there might be a bump in the road because some idiot had tried skimming and made him lose his temper.

  He could see that scene in the restaurant after it closed as if it was happening right now. His two partners in both businesses had come to him just before Pro Forma closed. Cassie had met him there for a late dinner, and he was hoping the night would end in his condo. He fixed a drink for her and sat her down at one of the booths in the restaurant proper while he hustled the two men into the back room behind the bar. He closed the door very carefully because this was a conversation he didn’t want overheard. They would not have shown up like this except with bad news.

  He had chosen her very carefully, needing to present a certain image. He had been very lucky Cassie Malone also had a brain. Or maybe not so lucky, as it turned out. She had to have heard enough of that conversation to spook her. That was when her brains kicked in. Her excuse that she’ decided not to wait any longer or to interrupt his business meeting was suspicious. Normally, she would have waited. She’d done it before.

  She hadn’t used any credit cards. He’d had his pet hacker check on that. There had been one large cash withdrawal, but that was a few days prior. Probably for their planned Vegas trip, but it meant she had a stash to hold her until she got a job. If she did, that meant she’d have to open an account somewhere. Nobody was going to pay her in cash. But nothing had shown up in the two months since she’d been gone.

  Two months. Two fucking months. And nothing.

  At least she was smart enough to be frightened, even knowing as little about him as she did. It was more than obvious she had overheard enough of the conversation to know it involved a large amount of drugs. She also, from that, could figure out this wasn’t an isolated incident.

  Damn. Fucking damn.

  But why hadn’t she gone to the police? The DEA? Maybe she knew enough about illegal drugs and those who sold them to know that killing people who were dangerous to them was part of their daily routine. But that left him…nowhere.

  Fuck!

  He slammed his fist down on the desk just as there was a knock on his office door and Jason LaValle walked in.

  “I’m guessing from your very cheerful attitude there is nothing on the woman yet?”

  “The woman has a name,” he said in short, clipped words. “Cassie Malone, and we’d do well to remember it if we’re going to find her. And no.” Patrick shook his head. “Not a sniff. I would never have believed she could make herself disappear like this.”

  “What about family?” he persisted. “Parents? Sisters? Brothers?

  “Nada. Parents were killed in a plane crash a few years ago, and she’s an only child.”

  “Holy fuck, Patrick. I’d say you seriously underestimated her. Not very smart. I would have expected better of you. She’s a dangerous loose end out there
.“

  “Stuff it.” He had an overwhelming urge to punch his friend. Jason wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know. “I’ll find her and take care of her.”

  “You’re sure she overheard our conversation?”

  Patrick nodded. “There was no other reason for her to run out the way she did. And the text she sent me was pretty lame.”

  “When you figured out why she ran, didn’t you know this would happen?”

  “No.” Patrick snapped the word out. “I never thought she’d be smart enough to just disappear off the grid.”

  “She overheard too much that night,” Jason repeated. “You need to find her and eliminate her. And I mean ASAP.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” The surge of anger through him was so strong he snapped the pen he was fiddling with in half. “I’m on it.”

  “Well, get on it faster. D-Day is coming up very fast.”

  “What about the roommate?” Jason prodded.

  “Dead end. She says she was as shocked as I am that Cassie just took off like that.”

  “Well, you’d better get it done before D-Day. Delivery Day. Because it’s coming in soon on the new route. With our new contact.”

  And that was what they had been discussing the night Cassie Malone overheard them. “With all the furor and media coverage at the southern border at the moment, we all agreed it was appropriate to shift geography.”

  “And product,” Jason reminded him. “Cocaine is fast being replace by oxy and Fentanyl—especially Fentanyl. This this lab pumps out the fakes by the thousands.”

  “And we’ve got a foolproof way to bring the stuff in.”

  Jason snorted. “That is, we hope so.”

  “Didn’t the dry runs go without a hitch?” With an effort, Patrick pushed Cassie out of his mind to concentrate on business.

  “Yes.” Jason nodded. “I’m just wondering if we made a poor choice of boats. That guy is getting too curious for his good and ours.”

  “Like I said the first time you brought it up, if he becomes too big a problem, we’ll just get rid of him and find someone else. Money can buy anything.”

  “As long as we’re also smart about our choices,” Jason added.

  Chapter 6

  “Can you get to the fucker, Sam?”

  The voice of their team leader, Wildcat Malone, sounded in his earbud.

  “Can do,” Sam whispered back.

  Part of their team was pinned down by tangoes firing at them on the other side of the road. They had finally identified where the bulk of it was coming from. Three men who had his teammates in their sights. But they were all together, which made Sam’s job easier.

  He belly crawled to a new position so he could sight better. When the three men were in his sights, he pulled the trigger. Pop! Pop! Pop! They fell like bowling pins.

  Sliding his arm through the strap of his rifle, he crouched low to reach his teammates. One of them was wounded and he didn’t know what immediate action he’d need to help him. He had just reached the ditch on his side of the road when all hell broke loose. An explosion rocked the ground, the power of the blast tossing him into the air. A sudden burning pain in his arm made him—

  Sam bolted upright in bed, sweating coating his body, the fiery pain still consuming him.

  Beside him, Cassie was instantly awake. Cassie, who three weeks ago he hadn’t known existed and who now shared his bed almost every night. Whose voice soothed his nerves and whose body eased his soul.

  “Sam?” As if from a distance, he felt her gentle touch on his arm. “Wake up, Sam. You were dreaming. Sam?”

  Her voice penetrated through the fog in his brain. He blinked and turned to look at her, letting out a long sigh. He wasn’t back in Afghanistan, he wasn’t crawling along a dirt road to get to his teammates, and there was no IED in the room.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Do not be sorry,” she commanded. “I just hate the fact the nightmares keep happening.”

  How had he gotten so lucky here? One minute she was his physical therapist and the next the sizzling attraction between them that caught them both by surprise exploded. One minute she was rehabbing his arm, the next they’d fallen into bed as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The wildest thing was, neither of them seemed to question it. Maybe because he sensed she, too, was wrestling with some kind of nightmare that he was doing his damndest to discover and help her with.

  She brushed damp hair back from his forehead and stroked his face. Her fingers were so gentle and soothing, he could feel the racing beat of his heart slowing down. Thank god she was here, to haul him out of the nightmare. It hardly seemed possible that a scant three weeks ago he had bumped into her at Rolling in Dough and had an awkward cup of coffee with her. Then he agreed to the physical therapy sessions. Then lunch, many times. And dinner.

  Then, unexpectedly for both of them, the night she came back to the cottage with him and he made very awkward love to her. She hadn’t berated him for any shortcomings in that department. In fact, she’d taught him how to deal with his injuries and still both give and receive pleasure.

  Sex with her turned out to be beyond anything he’d ever experienced. That first orgasm had blown his mind. And what came after it, as his confidence in bed slowly returned, was better than anything he’d ever experienced. Their coming together turned out to be so natural, so emotional, that he wasn’t sure what he’d do if this whole thing disappeared.

  First things first, he told himself. Getting his arm rehabbed and his brain straightened out topped the list. His arm was much improved with Cassie’s treatment program and his brain, he thought, might even be on the way. Next up was finding out what secret she was hiding, that she kept trying to tell him about and then backing down. That was important because it sat like an invisible wall between them.

  Right now, he was glad that his nightmares didn’t scare the shit out of her, and that she’d been spending nights with him, especially last night.

  Time just seemed to fly by. Maybe it was because he wasn’t sitting around feeling sorry for himself anymore. It was harder and harder to do that with Cassie easing her way into his life. Maybe because he was starting to look forward instead of living in the past.

  Scooter had remarked on the change the last few phone calls.

  “Thank god,” he’d said the last time. “I gotta meet this woman.”

  “All in good time,” Sam assured him.

  Now he took the hand that had been stroking his face and placed a kiss on her palm.

  “What would I do without you?” he asked. “You bring so much sunshine into my life.”

  “That works both ways,” she reminded him.

  He nudged her back onto the pillows, cupped her face with his palms, and brushed his mouth lightly over hers. He could still taste the mint in her toothpaste, the flavor teasing his taste buds. He gave her lips a light lick before pressing his tongue against the seam of her mouth and easing inside.

  She tasted like seven kinds of heaven, and he ran his tongue over every inch of the slick surface. She reached up and cradled his head, a light moan vibrating against his tongue. His cock was already hardening and thickening as he thought about sliding it into her wet heat. As if this pattern had been established for ages, she met his tongue with hers, dancing with him, dueling, giving as good as she got. When he dragged the edge of his teeth along the surface of her tongue, she moaned again and sucked hard. When she pressed her body up against his, he felt her firm beasts pushing into his chest, the hard nipples like erotic spikes.

  Leaving her mouth, he trailed his lips along the line of her jaw, nibbling her earlobe and licking the sensitive spot just behind it. Tiny little sounds of pleasure whispered from her lips, vibrating through his body, so he did it again. When she tried to hold his head in place, he wrapped his fingers around her wrists, pressing her hands into the pillow on either side of her head.

  Now he could take his time sucking the hollow of
her throat where her pulse throbbed with pleasure. He allowed himself a tiny bite before trailing his mouth into the valley between her lips and sliding over to capture a beaded nipple. God, she had the most incredible nipples, just the right size, firm, pebbled, hardening even more as he brushed his tongue back and forth over it. He eased one hand down to cup her firm breast, squeezing it in rhythm with his mouth on its hard tip. Beneath him, Cassie grew restless, her body sending him signals that she wanted more, but he wasn’t about to rush. He’d never been with a woman he enjoyed this much. Ever.

  When he’d had his fill of the one luscious nipple, he moved to the other and gave it the same treatment. Cassie pushed up against him, pressing the soft curls of her sex against his aching cock. If he had his druthers he’d spread her wide and fuck her right now, but he wasn’t about to deny either of them pleasure of their foreplay.

  When her nipples were so hard she cried out with the erotic pleasure of it, he licked and nibbled his way down to her navel, where he traced the swirl of flesh with the tip of his tongue. He cradled her hips, stroking the curve of them with his thumbs, reveling in the smooth texture of her skin. Those sexy little noises she was making were driving him nuts, but he was determined not to rush this. He had never enjoyed making love to a woman this much, and he wanted to prolong it. Making love? Fuck. He’d never done that before. It was always sex. Just sex. He could do this for the rest of his life.

  Wait! What?

  His brain jolted for a moment as the thought scared the shit out of him. But then he thought of not being with her after this, and that scared him even more.

  Instead he went back to running the tip of his tongue over every inch of her, reveling in the pleasure of it. She tasted better than any drink he’d ever had and her scent, which had a hint of fresh flowers, was driving him crazy. A month ago he hadn’t been sure he’d ever want to have sex again, with anyone. Now he wanted to lock the two of them in the cottage so they could fuck their brains out. No, more than just fucking. More than scratching an itch. This woman made him want things he’d never thought possible, especially after the explosion.