by P. J. Fiala
Her amazement was evident, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t give him pride to see her expression.
Axel parked the Beast and they began exiting the vehicle. Grabbing their bags from the back, Sophie reached in and took out her duffle and suitcase. Walking to an elevator, Hawk scanned his security card and the doors slid open.
“So, we have two levels below ground, Soph. The garage and the next level up is for operations. We're bulletproof in case we're found out, so our lower levels are a bunker should the worst happen and we have to be in lock down for any length of time. Operations is where we’ll meet the rest of the team in a few minutes, but first let’s drop Axel off on that level, which is also where we have a shooting range, our computer systems, workout facility and more. Then, I’ll take you upstairs to drop your bags off before giving you a tour and coming down to meet everyone.”
“Okay.”
He saw her swallow and his heart went out to her. She must be nervous as hell to be the new girl. Actually, new home, new person in an established group, new job, new everything. Taking her hand in his, he squeezed, and she looked up at him. She smiled but it was stiff.
The doors slid open and Axel exited. “See you guys in a bit.”
The doors slid closed and they continued upward. Hawk turned to Sophie and smiled. “You’ll be fine. Everyone here is family. That doesn’t mean we don’t disagree at times, it means that on some level, we love each other. When we go on missions, we protect each other. We kill for each other. We respect each other. Gaige has assembled the best of the best.”
She smiled, “Thanks, Hawk. I’m sure it will be fine. There’s just been so much change for me in the past weeks, and especially this past week. But, I appreciate all you’ve done to help me and Kate. I want you to know that.”
“My pleasure.”
The doors opened and Hawk stepped out first and walked down the hall to the left without another word.
“We’ll follow Hawk until the top of the stairs, Soph.” He led her down the hall and to the grand staircase. She was silent as they ascended the stairs, and a quick glance told him she was looking around and impressed.
“This is simply amazing, Gaige. I’m absolutely speechless as I look around.”
Chuckling he replied, “You’ll get used to it, but yes, the designer did a fantastic job with this place. You can see that it started out as an old mansion, but we had many needs to address. Safety first. I wanted to conceal that it is GHOST headquarters. But then, I wanted a place for all of us to be able to live should team members want to. Everyone lives here now, except Ford and Megan, Lincoln and Skye, and Dodge and Jax. Though Jax still has her room and they do stay periodically when missions get long and they are too tired to drive out of town.”
“Wow. I feel like a child with no vocabulary, but all I can say is wow.”
He stopped before double doors at the end of the hallway. Opening the doors he stepped aside, allowing Sophie to enter the rooms first. She slowly walked in and stopped after a few feet. This first room was a large sitting room, a brown leather sofa and a coffee table sitting in front of it with only a metal bowl on top with decorative balls in various tans and browns inside for decoration. A large, rich brown plush rug lay in front of the table, and across from the sofa on the wall was a television. Below that a fireplace, though it was not burning at this time.
“So, this is our sitting area. Through that doorway to the left is our bedroom and inside the bedroom to the right is our bathroom.” She set her bags on the floor alongside the sofa and walked into the bedroom, her sigh said it all.
“Oh, my! Gaige, this is beautiful.”
He looked at it through her eyes and his pride expanded ten-fold. He’d always been proud of the mansion, but, watching Sophie view it for the first time renewed his love of it. And, honestly, right now, his heart felt close to bursting that she liked what she saw. It was as if all that he had was great, but it didn’t mean as much as it did right now because she loved it. He was speechless thinking about it.
He watched her walk around the room, running her fingers along the smooth surface of the large dresser and the chair in the corner. Turning on the bathroom light, she giggled and he set his bags down on the chair and went to see what she was giggling at.
“Gaige, I’ve never lived in anything this spectacular before. I feel like I’ve been transported in time and I’m a princess or something. This is simply stunning.”
He watched her walk to the double sinks and run her hand along the cool granite, then step over to the claw foot tub and run her fingers along the smooth edge. The glass shower stood next to the tub and her eyes took it all in before landing on his.
“Unbelievable.”
“Glad you approve. I’ll admit I’ve been a little nervous about your reaction.”
She laughed. “I don’t know why. My gawd, this is fantastic.”
She walked into his arms and hugged him tight. He eagerly reciprocated. Pulling her tightly to his body, he inhaled the smell of her hair, and whispered, “I needed this. We’ve been together all day, but we’ve barely touched. Thank you.”
“Thank you. For everything. For so much, my mind is still reeling from all that you’ve done.”
Pulling away he turned her toward the door and walked her out to the bedroom. Gently sitting her on the foot of the bed, he knelt down in front of her and looked into her eyes.
“Sophie, look at me. You don’t have to thank me. I would have moved heaven and earth to make sure you were okay. I’m sorry I haven’t picked up the phone all the times I wanted to. I’m sorry for all the lost time between us. I’m sorry you’ve had to lose Kate and all that happened to you these past weeks. But, part of me believes that was our journey to each other. And now that we’re finally together from our separate paths, we’ll be stronger as we begin our journey on one path together.”
He took her hand in his. “I’m sorry I don’t have a ring to put on your finger, but I will soon. In the meantime, Sophie Turner, love of my life, will you marry me?”
Her gorgeous mouth opened, closed, opened again, but nothing came out. Tears began rolling down her cheeks before she finally responded. “Oh my God, yes. Oh yes, Gaige.”
He stood and pulled her up with him, wrapping her in his arms and lifting her off the floor. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and her lips close to his ear whispered, “I love you so much, Gaige Vickers. I always have.”
His heart would have beaten out of his chest if it could have. His mind tried to grasp everything about this moment. The way she felt in his arms. The way her hair fell around them. Her scent. Her warmth. Her voice. Her.
Sneak Peek
Continue reading for a Sneak Peek at Defending Roxanne, GHOST Book Two, the next novel in the GHOST Series.
"Roxanne, it was weird, he looked like your dad's cousin, Raymond. Do you remember Raymond? He was always a bit - ‘off-kilter’, different and he had so much trouble dealing with people. That's why when I saw this man following me, it completely scared the crap out of me. Then, I saw him again yesterday and I don't know what to do."
Roxanne's eyes flew open. Staring at the ceiling, her heart pounded in her chest as her mother's words came back to her. Throwing back the covers, she sat up and turned so her feet were touching the floor. Her childhood bedroom still had the same furniture, same bookcase across from her bed, same creeks in the floor. The only things that had changed were that her mother had repainted the room to a soft gray last year and had updated the bedding to match.
"I want you to be comfortable when you come home, and you've outgrown the pink floral patterns. This suits you so much better," her mother had said. Oh, how she wished she could speak to her mom now.
Sliding on her slipper socks, she walked out of her room and hesitated. This home seemed too large and ominous somehow now. Glancing down the hall to her right, her parents’ bedroom door was closed now and would be forever if it were up to her. But, only time would tell. Her
brothers, Brendan and Matthew’s, bedrooms were to her left. It had been her paternal grandparents’ home before they passed, then her family's. Now it belonged to her and her brothers.
Descending the enormous dark mahogany staircase with its white painted handrails, which curved to the right of the large foyer in their old Georgetown home, she turned left and entered her parents’ office.
Her mother had remodeled this room twenty years ago, but it still suited the era of the house. Majestic mahogany pillars stood adjacent to the wall behind her father's desk and in between those pillars were towering shelves of books. She loved playing in this room when she was a girl. Her father spent countless hours in here as his military career soared. His final position landed him at the State Department working as the Chief of Protocol, appointed by the President. It's also the position that got him and her mother killed.
Turning to the opposite side of the room, where her mother's identical desk sat, she walked behind the desk and opened the left top drawer. Somewhere in here her mother kept the key to the storage units in the basement. She needed to find a picture of Raymond. Her first order of business tomorrow morning would be to find Raymond and figure out why he was stalking her mother and if he had anything to do with her death. The sheer level of chaos that had enveloped her parents’ deaths and that of Kanan Mammodov, Prime Minister of Azerbaijan at the same time was monumental. Feeling around the papers in the drawer, she also found office supplies, staples, tape, and a ruler but she couldn't feel the key. The moonlight that shone through the tall windows to her right was ample light for moving around the house, but didn't offer enough light to see a small key. Yet, she enjoyed this darkness and the anonymity it offered. There had been at a minimum a handful of reporters on the street outside since her parents died two weeks ago. Turning on the lights would allow them to see in better and use the zoom lenses on their cameras. Fuck that.
Pulling the papers out of the drawer and laying them on top of the clean desk, she felt around a bit more. Nothing.
The top drawer on the right was next. Pulling the multitude of tablets and note pads from the drawer, she felt around the bottom of the drawer and found nothing. Repeating this motion for the five remaining drawers on each side, she had a mess to show for her efforts laying all around her and still no key. Standing with her hands on her hips, she looked across the room to her father's desk, then remembered, he'd hidden things on the underside of drawers from time to time. Pulling out the top right drawer of her mother's desk, she ran her hands underneath and smiled when she felt an envelope taped to the underside of the drawer. Peeling the tape away and pulling the envelope from underneath, she smiled to herself as she removed the key and stepped over her mess to make her way to the basement. Through the foyer and into the living room, she turned right and headed to the back of the house and the kitchen.
The basement door was directly to the right of the entrance to the kitchen. Opening the door, she clicked on the light and descended to the basement. Over the years her parents had reinforced the basement and added lighting and the locked storage units, which her father insisted upon having, since his position meant he had access to and possession of confidential information. Her mother then insisted they have a room in the basement where family heirlooms and pictures were stored, keeping the room at a constant temperature and humidity free.
Opening her mom's storage room, she looked at the shelves, walking down the row until she found the storage boxes marked "Family Photos.” Her mother, ever the organizer, had them stored by year. Trying to recall the last time they'd seen Raymond, she remembered being around ten, which was twenty-nine years ago. Finding this box, and pulling it down from the shelf with both hands, she turned to take it upstairs and lay the photographs out on the dining room table.
At the top of the steps, she nudged the light switch with her right elbow and closed the door with her behind. Turning to her right, she headed into the dining room from the kitchen and set the box on top of the table.
A noise from her parents' office caused her to freeze. Papers softly shuffling, then nothing. Slowly reaching around her back, her heartbeat increased rapidly and dread filled her gut as she realized she'd left her gun upstairs in her nightstand. Shit.
Softly she crept to the door of the dining room which was directly behind the huge staircase she'd come down earlier. Staying close to the wall she listened again. Inhaling she took in a slow deep breath and crept out of the room and around the staircase.
A massive hulk emerged from the office, and she froze for only a moment before turning to run in the opposite direction. The backdoor was in the kitchen; if she could get there, she'd run across the lawn and to the neighbor's home for help.
Three steps from the kitchen she was grabbed from behind, an iron band of arm around her waist and one hand over her mouth. She was pulled into the hardened chest of her attacker and barely able to move. Her left arm was trapped next to her body in the steel grip of the man who now began to drag her deeper into her home.
Panic flooded her brain and her stomach. She struggled to get free, twisting her body as much as she could, hoping to find a weakness to exploit. She began kicking back, but her slippers weren't going to do any damage to this man. A second man appeared in her peripheral vision and chuckled before saying, "Well, Hawk, looks like you found yourself a thief."
This concludes your Sneak Peek at Defending Roxanne, GHOST Book Two. Grab your copy now to continue reading about Hawk and Roxanne.
Available at www.PJFiala.com/Books/DR
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Also by PJ Fiala
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Rolling Thunder Series
Moving to Love, Book 1
Moving to Hope, Book 2
Moving to Forever, Book 3
Moving to Desire, Book 4
Moving to You, Book 5
Moving Home, Book 6
Second Chances Series
Designing Samantha’s Love, Book 1
Securing Kiera’s Love, Book 2
Chandler County
Missing the Spark, Book 1
Missing the Point, Book 2
Missing Desire, Book 3
The Bounty Hunters
Ford, Bounty Hunters Book One
Lincoln, Bounty Hunters Book Two
Dodge , Bounty Hunters Book Three
GHOST
Defending Sophie, GHOST Book One
Defending Roxanne, GHOST Book Two
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