Unexpected Vows

by Paige, Victoria

  To protect my sister, I fell into a coma six times because of those drugs.

  To protect my sister, I woke up that last time sitting in a room with one bright window and four gray walls. I was trapped in my head—the Gray Room. I was told that outwardly I moved, I ate, but I was catatonic. I heard voices, but I couldn’t get up from the figurative chair I was sitting on.

  When I finally escaped the Gray Room of my mind, I had awakened to see all my siblings at the mercy of a psychotic ES. I didn’t think Piper would turn on us and team up with him. I thought, in the end, she’d do the right thing.

  She didn’t. She threatened Cassie and the madman shot her.

  I lost Piper. All my sacrifices for those twelve years were wiped out by a single bullet.

  The Gray Room was an ever-present compartment in my head. I couldn’t afford to break, to feel too much, because it was waiting in the wings to snatch me into its walls again.

  I pulled in front of my apartment building and threw my car into park. My neighborhood was in the run-down portion of Edington that had been a failed commercial complex in the eighties. Now there were nothing but pawn shops and other small businesses between blocks of boarded-up abandoned buildings and graffitied walls. A homeless woman pushed her belongings in a shopping cart along the cross street. The sight reminded me I should have stopped at the supermarket I just passed or driven through a fast-food restaurant somewhere because my pantry was bare. My stomach rumbled and I sighed as I resigned myself to eating another protein bar.

  My eyes narrowed at the navy-blue Ford Raptor parked right in front of the stairwell that led into my building. I’d know that truck anywhere. It was the one I took to New York and it belonged to Colt. He was nowhere in sight, which meant he was in my unit.

  Damn it, Cassie. Did she give him the key again or did he already have one?

  I hopped out of the Suburban and grabbed my two duffel bags. One had my clothes; the other had my bounty hunter gear. The grit, grime, and sweat of the past day clung to my skin and clothes and I needed a shower. I could sleep for a day and my arm needed to be iced. Colt Montgomery was an obstacle to achieving all of those goals, so why was my heart pounding wildly in anticipation of seeing him?

  Because I was still a flesh-and-blood woman capable of appreciating and—if I were honest with myself—lusting after an extremely fine specimen of mankind. I skipped up the steps now, feeling that anticipation grow. My unit was on the third floor, just off the staircase. When I finally reached my destination, I tried the doorknob. Not surprisingly, it was locked. Dropping my right duffel, I reached into my jacket for my keys. Colt always warned me to lock my doors because of my neighborhood’s seedy location.

  Before I was able to notch the key into the keyhole, the door swung open and there stood the owner of Montgomery Ranch. He was wearing a white tee stretched taut across his broad shoulders and faded jeans that hugged his muscular thighs. His dark hair was cut in choppy layers with hints of gray at the temples. With his hand resting on the door, muscles corded his bicep. He was every woman’s homecoming fantasy.

  “Howdy, cowboy,” I drawled.

  “Kate, I expected you two hours ago,” Colt said, whiskey eyes narrowed in concern as he stepped aside to let me pass. He tried to grab the bags from me but I angled my body away from him.

  He sighed.

  Despite my initial appreciation of his presence, his expectation of my arrival spiked my temper and I wanted to snap at him. Since when was I accountable to him?

  I went with sarcasm. “Oh, was I supposed to say ‘Honey, I’m home’?”

  He didn’t comment as I made my way to the lone bedroom in the unit and dropped my things. I turned around to see him leaning against the wall outside my room, arms crossed over his chest and, yep, he was scrutinizing every inch of me. His brows cinched together as he took in my torn sleeve.

  “So,” I said, dragging out the word. “Why are you in my apartment?”

  “Heard you were back. And I seem to remember Cassie mentioning your garbage disposal was shot,” he explained absently. With his eyes still trained on my left arm, he straightened from the wall and closed the distance between us. “What happened?” His fingers brushed the sleeve of my leather jacket.

  “Protection dog,” I muttered as I brushed past him and exited the room.

  “A dog attacked you?” His incredulous voice rumbled from behind me.

  “Comes with the job.” I shrugged. It didn’t take but a couple of steps to move from one room to the next in my postage-stamp-sized apartment. I surveyed the work in the kitchen. His canvas bag tool kit and a flattened box for a garbage disposal sat on the floor. “You didn’t have to do this, Colt. Apartment management would have taken care of it.”

  “With this shithole you live in, you’d probably wait until Christmas.” It was only late September. “And don’t change the topic.” Colt, for all his affable nature, had no problem shifting to intimidation mode as he did then. Towering above me, getting into my space, jaw hardened in determination, he pierced me with a stare that made me squirm. But I squirmed for all the wrong reasons because, damn him, he was only making me too aware of the heat emanating from his body and how it made my nipples hard and my lower belly flutter.

  I needed sleep because I was losing control over the trajectory of my thoughts and my baser cravings.

  He moved quickly and placed his hands on the lapels of my jacket. “May I?”

  “Didn’t anyone teach you about personal space?” I grumbled, lifting my chin to give him permission. I needed to take a look at the damage Sarge did to my arm anyway.

  His warm breath puffed against my hair and I might have imagined a hitch to his breathing. The devil inside me decided to pay him back for intruding into my life and making me want him. As he peeled my leather coat from my shoulders, I deliberately swayed into him, letting my breasts flatten against his torso.

  “Dammit, Kate,” he muttered.

  The smirk on my face quickly died as a hiss of pain escaped my lips when the lining of my jacket brushed against my skin. To his credit, Colt didn’t stop at my discomfort and doffed the rest of my outerwear like he was ripping off a Band-Aid.

  My forearm had swelled to almost double; the skin had an awful ruddy tinge.

  “Doesn’t look too bad,” I quipped, though I knew it was going to hurt like a bitch for the next few days.

  “Didn’t break skin,” Colt observed. He held my hand and lifted the injured limb for his inspection. “You should have this checked out at the ER.”

  I raised a brow and the corner of his mouth lifted. ES hated hospitals. The only way we’d go to one was if we were unconscious or dying.

  “Bone break?”

  “Believe me, I’d know,” I replied. “And yes, I plan to ice it.”

  “This is going to turn purple in the next week.”

  “Or sooner,” I corrected. “You forget, our kind heals faster.” He lowered my arm but continued to hold my hand. “Can I have my hand back?”

  Instead of answering, he brought his other arm around my waist and pulled me flush against him. I tried not to think how our bodies fit so perfectly together.

  He lowered his head, his mouth inches from mine. “Try being a tease now.”

  “Let me go.” I refused to struggle and, instead, glared at him.

  “You can dish it out, but can’t take it?” Colt drawled, his eyes glinted with challenge.

  “I’m at a disadvantage,” I tried to reply as nonchalantly as I could, even as my blood started to respond to how my softness molded to the ridges of his muscles. He was all hard. I didn’t even want to think of what was jutting against me.

  At his raised brow, I continued. “I haven’t showered since yesterday. I rolled in a dust pit with a hound from hell.” I exhaled a puff of frustration. “I’m sorry I teased you earlier, but I need sleep. My brain isn’t firing on all cylinders and I have no control over my body.” At the smug look on Colt’s face, I closed my eyes
briefly before opening them again. “I’m going to shut up now.”

  “You’re attracted to me.”

  “A natural biological reaction,” I explained, trying to salvage the wall I’d built around myself. “You don’t need me to stroke your ego. You have women falling all over themselves to get your attention.”

  “And yet there’s only one woman’s attention I want.” He let me go and took a step back as if giving me time to process that statement. He looked around the kitchen. “When was the last time you ate?”

  It took me a moment to reply, cursing my neediness that cried when I lost the heat of his body. “I had a protein bar six hours ago.”

  “You need to take better care of yourself.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Montgomery, but I’m not a citizen of Misty Grove or your responsibility.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. Colt Montgomery did not deserve my bitchiness. With his looks and his wealth, he could be acting like an asshole and women would still throw themselves at his feet. But here was a big-hearted, selfless man who gave up so much to take care of Lucas and Cassie. I owed him so much. “I’m—”

  “Don’t apologize,” Colt cut in, sliding his phone from his back pocket. “Go take your shower. I’ll call in to Millie’s to get some food.”

  “Colt …”

  “You’re tired and cranky, babe.” He nodded to the bedroom. “Go.”

  At his unbending stare, I knew better than to argue. When I was a few steps past him, he called my name, so I turned around questioningly.

  “No matter how much you try, I’m never going to stop caring about you,” he said firmly before turning away from me to put the phone to his ear. As I made my way into my bedroom, I heard him talk to someone at Millie’s Diner. He didn’t ask what I wanted to eat probably because he could tell, as tired as I was, I didn’t give a damn what I put in my mouth. It was scary how Colt knew me so well.

  3

  Colt

  Stubborn woman.

  Colt got into his pickup but made no move to switch on the engine. He needed to get out of the apartment while Kate was taking a shower. He never fully understood his attachment to her. These past twelve years, when he thought she was dead, Kate became the ghost in his relationships. She became the yardstick he would measure each of his girlfriends against. It boggled his mind because he’d never even so much as kissed her and he knew she never thought of him in the way he’d obsessed about her. A very painful conversation with Cassie made him stop and look deep into himself.

  He’d locked himself away at Montgomery Ranch after witnessing the hookup between Kate and Tony Lucchetti. At that time though, Colt didn’t know it was fake. It killed him to watch the woman who he’d obsessed about for years engage in some torrid make-out session with another guy. If he hadn’t left Brooklyn after the fucker undressed her, he would have murdered the man. He drove away from New York not knowing how to glue his shattered pieces together. After a few weeks of drowning himself in whiskey, barely shaving and showering, the town lost patience that he’d ever crawl out of his own hell. They sent Cassie as their envoy.

  She gave him nothing but tough love, questioning if what he’d felt for Kate was even real.

  “Do you really know what you feel for Kate? Could it be you put her on this pedestal and all these years you thought of her as this hero you were supposed to worship? Have you even spent time with her outside of training for the ops that extracted us? How can you even think you feel this deeply for her?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Colt replied. “You’re saying that I don’t really love Kate and this is some kind of misplaced hero-worship.”

  “Well, yeah. My sister was kickass and gorgeous. She was created to be the ultimate male fantasy, so she can get close enough to men and slit their throats.”

  “You’re saying I’m in love with an illusion?”

  “Something like that,” Cassie said. “How can you love her when you don’t really know her. You spent time with her for three months during training but, from what I understand, there were like twenty guys ‘in love’”—she made the gesture for air quotes around those last two words—“with her. And then she died saving us. That surely took ‘hero’ to a whole new different level.”

  Colt didn’t agree with Cassie, but he couldn’t disagree either.

  “And then when she came back to us, she was catatonic. You took care of her and that certainly sets you up for confusing emotions like transference.”

  He shrugged. “My feelings for Kate are complex.”

  “Ugh.” Cassie threw up her hands in exasperation. “Fine. You’re obsessed with Kate. But please get your head out of your ass and join the land of the living. The town needs you, Colt.”

  After Cassie left, he contemplated her words.

  He took Cassie’s advice further and tried to move on with Mya. That didn’t end well. He was about to have sex with Mya for the first time when he mumbled Kate’s name. There was a lot of screaming and crying afterward and he had to listen to how “fucked up” he was the entire time it took him to drive her home. Colt felt guilty and he was pissed at himself for hurting a woman just to try to get over another.

  His experience with Mya had taught him one thing—moving on with Kate’s doppelgänger didn’t work and only proved that Colt’s attraction to her wasn’t purely physical. Emotions were involved but they were complicated.

  She was his goddess, but he had to remember she was also human. And she’d shown just how human she was earlier when she’d more or less admitted she was attracted to him. It could be a physical connection on her part for now, but he could work with that. It was more than she’d ever given him in all the time he’d known her.

  Colt recalled that day, almost thirteen years before, that changed his life forever.

  They’d just been briefed by their commander on their new mission and were busy shooting the shit in The Cage—their cage-sized lockers that held their gear. Both he and his brother, Eric, were part of the Navy SEAL’s Top Tier. It was rare that siblings were put on the same team for obvious reasons, but Colt and his brother were some of the best to come out of Green Team—the grueling selection process for the most elite unit of the SEALs.

  Eric pulled his combat shirt over his head and hung it in the locker. “What do you think of the new assignment?”

  Colt hitched his shoulders. “Enhanced Soldiers. Sign me up.”

  “Chrysalis dealt with human genetic engineering. That’s messed up.”

  More like fucked up.

  “I mean, seriously, bro, these two Enhanced Soldiers we’re going to be working with? Did I understand the commander correctly when he said they were about to be put down when another unit helped them escape?”

  “That’s what terminated means,” he responded grimly. Colt was pissed for the Foster twins. Apparently, there was an expiration date to their unusual strength. He was glad Chrysalis wasn’t a sanctioned agency project and no one in his chain of command was involved. Otherwise it would be hard—no, impossible—for him to muster respect and follow orders.

  “How could a project this big be under the CIA radar until now? Those twins are twenty-four years old,” Eric muttered.

  “Drug money from what I heard,” Colt said, walking out of his cage and snapping the lock on it. The mission was to rescue the remaining Enhanced Soldiers—the Reed twins, who were eighteen years old, and a twelve-year-old girl whose twin had died a few years before.

  “Explains why the lab is in Colombia,” Eric replied, locking his own cage.

  Colt walked to the exit of their gear room. “Ready to meet the ES subjects?”

  “Man, I hope we don’t have to babysit them,” his brother said.

  He grunted in agreement. As much sympathy as he held for them with the loss of their strength, he wondered if they might have any other skills? If they didn’t, would it be better for Top Tier to do this on their own rather than introduce two new members who had no c
urrent rapport with the team?

  Fifteen SEALs, a logistics expert, and a CIA officer gathered in the situation room. Eric was busy catching up with another teammate. Colt sat back and observed the mood in the room. The chatter in the room was boisterous but tinged with a bit of apprehension. Some of his brothers weren’t on board with letting outsiders train with their team, but final word came from the top, so these guys had to get with the program.

  The door opened and their commander walked in. He was followed by two individuals. Chatter stopped and, for that few seconds before the commander introduced the newcomers, one could hear a pin drop.

  The Foster twins were not what anyone expected.

  At all.

  Colt began to rethink the meaning of “Enhanced Soldiers” because before him stood the most stunning woman God had ever put on this earth.

  “Gentlemen—new members of your team—Matt and Kate Foster,” the commander announced.

  Colt forced his gaze away from Kate to look at her brother. The man’s face was impassive save for the slight smirk on his mouth. Colt knew why. Half the room had fallen in love with his sister. The commander mentioned in their briefing that the twins were genetically engineered to be used as weapons, but he never alluded to physical perfection as part of their arsenal.

  His gaze returned to Kate who was standing angled slightly toward him. Golden-blond hair was held up in a ponytail which highlighted her slender neck and the delicate curve of her chin. High cheekbones and cherry-red pouty lips graced an amazing heart-shaped face. Her eyes were blue-ish, but Colt couldn’t discern the exact shade because of the ghastly fluorescent lighting in the room. But her body.

  Christ.

  Long legs in slim-fitting fatigues and feet encased in military boots that had no business looking sexy as fuck on her. Her tight pert ass and that simple white T-shirt that molded to a set of C-cup tits were enough to send the mercury rising in the room.

  His commander was speaking, but Colt doubted if any of the men were listening. They were probably drooling over the goddess before them. She was the ultimate American pinup girl or the Sports Illustrated model whose main objective was to fulfill every red-blooded male fantasy. Except, he had to use his imagination to picture her in a skimpy swimsuit. And to imagine her naked … fuck.