by Leroux, Lucy
Codename Romeo
Rogues and Rescuers Book One
Lucy Leroux
Disclaimer
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Codename Romeo © 2019 Lucy Leroux
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Titles By Lucy Leroux
Making Her His, A Singular Obsession, Book One
Available Now
Confiscating Charlie, A Free Singular Obsession Novelette
Available Now
Calen’s Captive, A Singular Obsession, Book Two
Available Now
Take Me, A Singular Obsession Prequel Novella
Available Now
Stolen Angel, A Singular Obsession, Book Three
Available Now
The Roman’s Woman, A Singular Obsession, Book Four
Available Now
Save Me, A Singular Obsession Novella, Book 4.5
Available Now
Trick’s Trap, A Singular Obsession, Book Five
Available Now
Peyton’s Price, A Singular Obsession, Book Six
Available Now
Codename Romeo, Rogues and Rescuers, Book One
Available Now
The Mercenary Next Door, Rogues and Rescuers, Book Two
Coming Soon
The Hex, A Free Spellbound Regency Short
Available Now
Cursed, A Spellbound Regency Novel
Available Now
Black Widow, A Spellbound Regency Novel, Book Two
Available Now
Haunted, A Spellbound Regency Novel, Book Three
Coming Soon
***
Writing As L.B. Gilbert
Discordia, A Free Elementals Prequel Short,
Available Now
Fire: The Elementals Book One
Available Now
Air: The Elementals Book Two
Available Now
Water: The Elementals Book Three
Available Now
Earth: The Elementals Book Four
Coming Soon
Kin Selection, Shifter’s Claim, Book One
Available now
Eat You Up, A Shifter’s Claim, Book Two
Available now
Introduction
One FBI agent… one single mother… and a toddler who steals his heart.
All FBI agent Ethan Thomas wants is to come home to his new apartment and enjoy the luxury of his new flat-screen TV and some frozen pizza. Encountering a tiny toddler alone in the hall changes everything for the rough and rugged agent. Relief sets in when the child's mother appears. But when she collapses at his feet just before a blizzard hits Boston, Ethan is in over his head.
Now, Ethan is changing diapers and playing doctor… and loving every minute of it. The mother and child need a place to stay, and Ethan can't possibly turn them away. But this investigator knows people—and the woman he’s falling for is keeping secrets. Can he uncover the truth while protecting them from the dangers of his job?
Contents
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Books by Lucy Leroux
Making Her His
Confiscating Charlie
Calen’s Captive
Stolen Angel
The Roman’s Woman
Save Me
Take Me
Trick’s Trap
Peyton’s Price
Cursed
Black Widow
Codename Romeo
The Mercenary Next Door
Writing as L.B. Gilbert
Discordia
Fire
Air
Water
Earth
Kin Selection
Eat You Up
Tooth and Nail
Chapter One
Ethan resisted the urge to slam his phone against the counter. It was bad enough his so-called best friend had to fly home instead of helping him out, but now he was telling Ethan he hadn’t even dealt with their squatter?
“Are you f-ing kidding me?” he gritted out from behind set teeth. “You’re the one who talked me into buying this damn money pit in the first place. I agreed on one condition—that you clear the girl out. I don’t even know if she can even be here, legally speaking, while we’re renovating.”
He wasn’t sure. Ethan was an FBI agent, not a general contractor.
“I’m sure it’s fine. You’re living there,” Mason pointed out.
“That’s different.” Ethan spun on his heel, taking in the barren expanse that was supposed to be the sunken living room of his new apartment. It was right across from Mason’s unit, or it would be once the idiot came around to finish the new insulation and plumbing on his future place.
“I’m one of the owners. Anything that happens to me doesn’t count,” he continued with a scowl. “But tenants are another story. If anything goes wrong, they can sue the shit out of you. I don’t want to lose my shirt on this. I’m overextended as it is.”
Yes, thanks to his connections, he’d been able to get an excellent term on his loans, but he still needed this venture to succeed if he wanted to be in the clear before the FBI’s mandatory retirement ag
e.
“The woman is not going to sue. She’s not like that.”
Ethan sighed. Despite his profession, Mason could be a sucker sometimes.
Mason worked for a private firm that specialized in overseas mission support and security in high-risk environments. That was how the company’s webpage described it. In laymen’s terms, he was a mercenary and one of Ethan’s closest friends—aside from his partner Jason at the bureau.
Mason Lang had been his best friend since grade school. They grew up tearing up the backroads in Tennessee, and they’d enlisted in the army together. Later—during a brief stint in med school, Ethan had met Donovan Carter, their third investor. Donovan was off in Africa somewhere, saving the world with Doctors Without Borders.
Mason was the bastard who’d talked him and Donovan into buying an entire apartment building. Ethan had gone to visit Mason in L.A. to decompress after Peyton Carson’s not-quite wedding a few months out. The visit had landed Ethan in his current predicament.
Losing his shot at the girl he’d been crushing on for years had been more of a blow than Ethan had anticipated. Not that he blamed her for it or anything. Peyton had been spoken for when he’d met her. But it had taken that dick Liam Tyler a few years to wake up and claim her. It had been a near thing, though. For a little while, Ethan had fooled himself into thinking…well, it worked out for her in the end. He didn’t exactly get Peyton’s new lifestyle, but she was happy. And he liked Peyton enough to be happy for her. Mostly.
Ethan’s grousing about the extravagant island nuptials had moved Mason to suggest it. If guys like them wanted quality women like Peyton, they needed more to offer them. Since Ethan had been rubbing shoulders with a lot of entrepreneurs and hoteliers, he’d proposed a major investment they could go in on together. They were going to be real estate moguls.
It had seemed like a good idea when they’d been drunk on mid-range bourbon. And for some insane reason, all three were still excited about it the next morning. Six months later, surrounded by the crumbling plaster of their ‘investment’, Ethan was starting to realize how truly stupid the whole enterprise was.
Mason sighed across the line. “I’m sorry, man. I wish I could be there, but this thing came up.”
Damn it, Ethan should have known better than get into business with a merc. “I understand if you got called up for a job.”
There was a beat of silence. “It’s not a job. It’s a girl.”
Ethan counted to ten. “Are you telling me you blew off the renovations for a piece of ass?”
Mason wasn’t what one would call a womanizer. As a mercenary, he couldn’t afford to get distracted by a relationship, or so his excuse went.
“It’s not like that. I haven’t—it’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” Ethan was exasperated. “Tell me, because I truly want to know what would make you abandon your best friend to do a massive job like this on his own? Not to mention conveniently forgetting to evict the building’s last tenant.”
That latter was what he was pissed about, and Mason knew it.
“It’s a short delay. Well, I hope it is. I have to check something out for a couple of days, then I’ll be on the next flight out.”
“And the girl downstairs? What the hell am I supposed to do with her?”
More silence. “I sort of told her she could stay until after the renovation.”
“You did what?”
What the hell was Mason thinking? “You know this place isn’t up to code. I barely got my room livable. None of the others are anywhere near ready for occupation.”
“Look, she was the last one to sign a lease with that slumlord before we took over the place. She’s new in town, and she didn’t know where else to go. Cash is obviously an issue, too. Plus, she’s got that little kid…”
Ethan hadn’t seen a kid. Crap, this kept getting better and better. “Since when are you a sucker for a hard-luck story?”
“The girl was renting the basement room—the damp one we were sure had mold. It’s not a story if she was willing to live there.”
Ethan raised a brow. “She’s not in the basement room now.”‘
“I shifted her to the first-floor studio. It needed the least work at the time.”
Perfect. “Why didn’t you give her one of the suites up on the top floor with us? I’m sure Donovan won’t mind arriving home from his mission of mercy to find squatters in his place.”
Actually, knowing Donovan, he’d probably be fine with it.
“She’s paying rent,” Mason offered as if that would convince Ethan. “You should collect that by the way. I told her to put it in your mail slot…although you should know I knocked fifty bucks off what she was paying the slumlord.”
The rent itself was chump change compared to what they’d paid for the building. This wasn’t about the money, but he was still dripping sarcasm like acid when he replied. “Of course you did.”
“She needs the cash for diapers and shit. It’s a baby, man.”
Ethan was going to get a headache from grinding his teeth so hard. He didn’t like dealing with people. Criminals and colleagues—he was great. But families with kids were a big nope. That was why he was an FBI agent and not a doctor like Donovan.
“She can stay until we renovate that floor,” he said after a long silence. Since they were working from the top down, that would give the woman a little time to find a new place.
“Good enough.” Mason was relieved. “Just make sure she has a little warning. Moving with a kid can’t be easy when you hardly know the language.”
Ethan bit his tongue to keep from swearing. “What language does she speak?”
“Spanish, I think. Or at least the accent is Mexican. She knows enough English to get by, or that dive bar on the corner wouldn’t have hired her as a waitress.”
“How do you know where she works?”
“I wanted a beer after fixing the furnace, and I saw her waiting tables there. Listen, I’m sorry about the delay. I can get some professional contractors out there to give you a hand if you want. I’ll pay for it.”
“No.” Ethan had already lost this argument. Guilting Mason into forking over more cash wasn’t going to change that. Besides, this whole project might bankrupt them yet. He wasn’t convinced they weren’t going to have to replace the plumbing on the ground floor the way Mason was. They needed to save wherever they could.
“We agreed to do the rough stuff ourselves, then bring in the pros to polish everything up after,” he continued. “Let’s stick to that until we’re forced to do otherwise.”
“All right. And, Ethan, I am sorry.”
And he was. Ethan knew that, but Mason was still throwing a wrench in their plans, so it was hard for Ethan to be sanguine. “Just finish what you are doing, then hurry back before I get to the first floor. I would much rather you deal with the girl.”
Mason agreed before clicking off. Ethan got back to work, wondering how he had missed the fact the girl downstairs had a baby.
Chapter Two
Two weeks later
The snowy weather was wreaking havoc with the traffic. Ethan got into the apartment much later than he’d intended—well after the blizzard hit.
He stamped his boots to remove the snow before tugging his wool coat off. Thank frigging God I fixed the heaters last week.
Over the past couple of weeks, he and Jason, his partner at the bureau, had ripped out the old dysfunctional radiators in Ethan’s apartment and replaced them with a state-of-the-art central heating system. He was looking forward to spending the night watching an old New Zealand rugby game while eating frozen pizza in his toasty new living room—as long as the power didn’t go out.
I may have to think about a portable generator if these storms get any worse. It could be a wise investment. But at least his food wouldn’t rot if the power failed. All he had to do was store his perishables in the nearest snowbank.
Ethan rested his wool coat across the bani
ster, then took off his gloves. Hunkering down with an old rugby game sounded a lot less lame earlier when he’d turned down an offer from his partner Jason to wait out the storm at the Caislean, a five-star hotel in town. His partner lived there with his wife as she was part owner.
How his geeky partner had managed to land a rich and hot hotel heiress still made his head spin, but there was no accounting for taste. Maggie was cool, though. Not as hot as her best friend Peyton, but still way out of Jason’s league.
If Ethan had gotten snowed in at the Caislean, he could have had his pick of the hotel’s empty rooms to crash in. Gourmet meals served by a courteous staff, his run of the gym—all for free. Most people would give their eyeteeth for a deal like that, but hanging at the hotel seemed too pathetic now that Peyton was off on her honeymoon.
Frozen pizza, it is. Good thing he’d finally convinced the local grocery store to deliver. They had thought the building was condemned—or at least that was what the snide teenager answering the phone had said.