A Christmas Together

by Tara Quan

  A Christmas Together

  Safe Harbor, Book 2

  Tara Quan

  Published 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-179-5

  Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2014, Tara Quan. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Liquid Silver Books

  http://LSbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Blurb

  Despite Dubai’s oppressive heat, heiress Brennan Caruthers is gearing up to throw a holiday party. She has almost everything a modern woman could want—a tight-knit circle of friends, challenging career, financial independence, and an impressive shoe collection. But when armed men attempt to kidnap her straight off a six-lane highway, she’s forced to revisit her past, and ends up spending the nights leading to Christmas with a man she’d rather forget.

  Major Karl Reed can’t imagine a worse end to his year. Cover blown and mission details leaked, his Delta unit and their families have become targets of a vengeful criminal cell. After receiving news of a failed attack on his estranged wife, he rushes to the Emirates to whisk her into hiding. But when his damsel in distress digs in her stiletto heels and presents him with a better plan, he’s forced to become her unwelcome houseguest. Assuming he keeps them both alive, they might just celebrate their first Christmas together.

  The second book in Tara Quan’s Safe Harbor series, A Christmas Together is an interracial contemporary romance about unexpected attraction, second chances, and a love that crosses all boundaries.

  Dedication

  To the Health Unit Crew, including our ever-present Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish deliveryman.

  Acknowledgements

  This book wouldn’t have come into existence without my beta reader, who told me the hard truth when he first read my manuscript a year ago, knowing he’d have to put up with much moping. A shout-out also goes to Jennifer Hassani and Terri Schaefer. Without their gentle nudges, this story may have forever remained in the “trunked” folder on my laptop.

  Prologue

  Present Day

  Humming White Christmas despite the sandy scape visible through her office’s floor-to-ceiling windows, Brennan Caruthers sliced an antique silver blade through smudged masking tape. Few activities beat opening boxes around the holiday season. An expatriate in the United Arab Emirates, she relied on online shopping for most American goodies. With no way to tell which spur-of-the-moment click had led to its appearance, she treated each battered cardboard box as a surprise gift. Shipping delays meant she often forgot placing the order to begin with, and occasional duplicates allowed for regular contributions to her best-friend’s charity du jour.

  Despite the ever-present sun and occasional inconveniences, she loved her new life in this cosmopolitan Middle Eastern country. She couldn’t help but miss winter, though. Having spent most of her adult years on the U.S. East Coast, snow seemed an integral part of the holidays.

  Not one to let nostalgia fester into melancholy, she reached for her smartphone and keyed in a quick reminder to reserve ski time at Dubai Mall. Though she loathed the sport, sipping hot cocoa in the desert city’s enclosed winter wonderland seemed the perfect cure.

  Potential problem averted, she returned her attention to the package. Her smile widened as she unearthed a flat gold-lettered red box, this year’s addition to her growing White House Ornaments collection. She’d started it her freshmen year at Harvard Law, close to a decade ago. Her first ornament had been a gift from Zahra and Nulli—two Georgetown University exchange students who’d sublet the brownstone next to hers. About the same age, the three had become fast friends, a relationship that later led to Brennan’s initial move to Washington, D.C., and her subsequent one to Dubai two years ago.

  Their first joint Christmas party was scheduled for the end of this week—a media circus in the making. The local press loved sneaking pictures of her, Nulli, and Zahra together. To be fair, they made an eye-catching trio of heiresses. Zahra’s jet-black hair and caramel skin contrasted with Nulli’s wine-red locks and porcelain complexion. Brennan rounded out the color combination with blonde shoulder-length tresses and a Vampiric visage, which, thanks to a slew of popular paranormal films, had recently come back into vogue.

  And then there was the small matter of their families’ combined net worth numbering in the hundreds of millions. In this safe, uneventful town, even their quick jaunts to cafés and beach clubs ended up in Time Out magazine.

  Tossing the ornament box in her purse, Brennan slid her bare feet into the Louboutin Vendomes she’d left under her desk. Buoyed by a sense of accomplishment, she marched out of her office at a brisk pace despite early indications of fatigue. At 5:00 a.m., the mid-sized security consultancy firm she co-owned bustled with activity. She’d spent the night and the wee hours of this morning ironing out a deal via video conference. Safe Harbor would soon be providing protection for a Kazakhstan-based gas company. As soon as she showered, changed, and chugged a few cups of tea, she’d come back to look over the final contract. Once they dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, she’d reward herself with a two-hour foot massage.

  Bidding a quick farewell to her two business partners, Jason Reynolds and Daniel Khan, she rode the shiny chrome elevator down to the Dubai World Trade Center’s posh marble lobby. Having called ahead, she was able to slide into her Porsche Carrera as soon as she exited through the rotating glass doors. Handing the valet a generous tip, she kicked off her high heels and slipped into comfy flip-flops. Truth be told, she preferred looking at designer footwear to wearing them, but she embraced the instruments of torture for the sake of appearances. In this country, wealth served as the key to more wealth, and she had no compunction against using her father’s fortune to her company’s advantage.

  The four hundred horsepower engine purred as she took a sharp right onto the ramp leading to Sheikh Zayed road. November to February was the tiny window when it cooled enough for her to leave the convertible’s hardtop down. Once on the highway, she floored the accelerator.

  The car rocketed forward, the speedometer reaching one hundred and sixty kilometers in under six seconds. Ever since she’d bought Bluebell, she had to factor speeding tickets into her annual expenses. To make life convenient for repeat offenders, the city used cameras to capture charges. Not only did the traffic police accept online payments, the collected fines went straight to charity. Getting to skirt traffic rules for a good cause numbered among the UAE’s many perks.

  With Chanel sunglasses covering most of her face, she could enjoy the gorgeous sunrise silhouetting the Burj Khalifa as Micheal Buble’s recording of Let It Snow blasted over the car’s speakers. Twenty-seven hundred feet high and costing close to 1.6 billion dollars, the near-empty building was the world’s tallest manmade structure for the time being. While it almost bankrupted the city, the spire was a sight to behold, especially when bathed in the dawn’s muted orange glow.

  At half past five, the roads stood empty. The city came to life much later in the day, the desert culture driving both expatriates and locals to stay up long past midnight. Even the most dedicated worker bees seldom reached their white-collar offices before ten. By that time, affluent Emiratis would be taking their first sip of
Arabic coffee.

  She turned off the highway and went down the ramp leading to Jumeira Beach. Uneven development was one of her few gripes with Dubai. Patches of unfinished construction dotted the congested downtown area, with unpaved, narrow roads running alongside six-lane highways. To reach the luxurious multimillion-dollar beachside development housing her penthouse condo, she had to pass dilapidated three-story buildings and urban decay. Designed for continued use after puncture rather than comfort, her run-flat tires did an awesome job transferring the impact of every bump and pothole straight to her glutes, which still suffered from the side effects of yesterday’s squats.

  Glancing at her rearview mirror, she frowned. A black Jeep Wrangler with dark-tinted windows tailgated her. Within the next two seconds, the hairs on the back of her neck and forearms stood on end. Her gut churned. Clammy sweat coated her forehead and nape.

  Her subconscious blaring sirens, she filled her lungs and focused on parsing her unease. Before her father diversified his holdings and embraced legitimate business practices, the type of deals he’d brokered had made security precautions an integral part of family life. She’d understood the concept of situational awareness by the age of ten and muddled through defensive driving classes long before she qualified for a license. She knew better than to ignore her instincts.

  Everything about the car behind her felt off. The SUV of choice in the Emirates were white Toyota Land Cruisers. Tinting beyond thirty percent opacity was illegal for foreigners, and no Emirati would be caught dead in a four-year-old American-made vehicle.

  As a test, she tapped the brakes. She drove on a two-lane street with no other cars in sight. But instead of overtaking, the SUV slowed.

  Recalling the course she’d completed over a decade ago, she shifted her hands to the ten and two o’clock positions on the steering wheel. Willing her fingers to relax, she gently squeezed the accelerator to increase her pursuer’s following distance. In a race, the lumbering behemoth had no hope of catching up.

  As her stomach began to settle, she spied two identical SUVs parked opposite each other on the curbside. When she approached, they turned onto the road, blocking their respective lanes. With less than ten feet between her and the makeshift barrier, she had no choice but to slam the brakes. Ignoring the pain where the seatbelt bit into her chest, she shifted into reverse and glanced up to check the mirror.

  The car at her back pivoted and stopped in the middle of the street, barring her exit. A bead of sweat trickled down her spine as two black-garbed men wearing dark sunglasses emerged from one of the SUVs in front of her. They each held a pistol.

  Whoever planned this attack must have watched too many bad action movies.

  Cheesy or not, the setup proved damn affective. Some cop might be watching this unfold over a security camera feed, but the Dubai Police had a small force and relied heavily on electronic monitoring. Fast response times didn’t number among their claims to fame.

  Twisting her neck around, she braced one hand on the passenger seat and kept the other on the steering wheel. Aiming for the rear axle of the car behind her, she floored the accelerator. The impact reverberated through her seat as the black SUV spun out of her way. Not confident enough to execute a J-turn, she ignored the roaring in her ears, and drove backward at maximum speed.

  Never lifting her foot from the pedal, she maneuvered her car to and up the ramp. She could feel her heartbeat on her fingertips, and it took slight dizziness to remind her to fill her lungs. Once she hit the highway, she swung her head to face forward and shoved the transmission into drive. The small fleet of SUVs crowded her rearview mirror, but the clunky old Jeeps couldn’t match the Porsche’s superior horsepower. Zipping ahead at breakneck speed, she kept going until her pursuers became black dots in the reflected image.

  As adrenaline receded, her mind snapped into focus. The attack didn’t read like a carjacking. She hadn’t any enemies that she knew of, and her estrangement from her father was well-known. Compared to most of this country’s residents, her net worth was chump change.

  Why would any bad guys come after her?

  Chapter 1

  Six Years Ago

  “Mind if I sit?”

  Brennan looked over the top of her book to see denim-clad hips and a pair of large chocolate-colored hands. As she tilted her head up, her reading glasses framed a T-shirt-covered torso and toned forearms. She went on to catalogue a set of impressive pectoral muscles sandwiched between defined biceps.

  Intrigued enough to continue her perusal, she craned her neck all the way back and heaved a disappointed sigh. A military-style haircut complimented the man’s bony face. Ebony sideburns stretched to his jawline, where it blended with the dark shadow covering his cheeks and chin. The combination would have made his appearance too rugged to fit traditional parameters of attractiveness, but long lashes and full lips tempered his apparent ferocity by an effective fraction.

  Faced with a visage of startling symmetry, she could see how some women might consider Captain Karl Reed handsome in a rough and dangerous sort of way. But once someone landed on her naughty list, not even the most drool-inducing mug could return him to her good graces. As an analyst for the Agency, she didn’t hold Department of Defense Captain America types in particularly high esteem. When one had the gall to snore through a classified briefing she’d labored over for, well, at least a couple of hours, he earned a permanent spot on her bad side.

  Nudging her glasses up the bridge of her nose, she glared into eyes so dark they appeared black under the clouded sunlight. She scanned the near-empty outdoor seating area of the popular cafe chain before reverting her gaze to the man in front of her. “Aren’t there plenty of other chairs?”

  The corners of his lips lifted, his grin a heart-stopping flash of white teeth. “I like this one.”

  Years of conflict-avoidance prompted her to remove her bare feet from the vacant seat. He pulled it back, folded onto the narrow chair, and stretched his legs out toward her. Noticing the not so subtle invasion of personal space, she shifted to the left to minimize contact with his long limbs. Of all the people she could run into on a lazy Saturday morning, why did it have to be him?

  He slid his booted feet sideways so they once more hit the side of her calf before placing two steaming paper cups on the table. “It was buy-one-get-one-free, so I snagged you a cup.”

  Straightening, she placed her book on the table. If he thought one hot beverage he hadn’t paid for and a panty-melting smile would buy her forgiveness, he should brace himself for disappointment. “I don’t work weekends, Captain Reed. If you have questions about my presentation, please set up an appointment through the proper channels.”

  He lifted a single eyebrow. She’d always envied people who could pull off that facial expression. Whenever she attempted it, her entire forehead wrinkled and, no matter how hard she concentrated, both her brows quirked up. “No offense, but I’d pay you to never say the words terrorism financing and international law in the same sentence again. And drop the ‘Captain.’ I’m off-duty, and you’re a civilian.”

  “Then why are you talking to me?”

  He scratched the back of his head. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No.” Try as she might, she couldn’t come up with a single reason why this exchange should take place.

  “Erh…Well…Why don’t you drink your coffee before it gets cold?”

  Distracted, she looked down at the cup. “What kind is it?”

  “The regular kind.”

  She looked askance at the dark brown liquid. “As in drip?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve never had one of these here.” She sniffed the murky brown brew. “It’s not on the menu.”

  He pointed at the sign behind them. “This place’s name has coffee in it.”

  She wrinkled her nose at the stale odor rising with the steam. “And they serve lattes, cappuccinos, macchiatos, and,” she pointed at the empty plastic container on the table, “Fra
ppuccinos.”

  “I never understood the point of drinks that cost more than meals. Who’s dumb enough to buy them?”

  She blinked. “Idiots like me, apparently.”

  At least he had the decency to look sheepish. When she allowed the silence to stretch, he took a sip of his beverage—one long enough to make her suspect a delaying tactic. “Why don’t you give this regular cup of joe a try? You might like it.”

  She placed her fingers on the upper rim of the piping hot container. “They have cardboard holders and lids for these, you know.”

  He dismissed her suggestion with flick of his hand. “What’s the point in more waste if you’re not taking it to go?”

  Holding her breath, she tasted the bitter liquid before plunking the cup down. “It’s disgusting.”

  His eyes widened. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his own drink. “Will cream or sugar help?”

  “Nothing can salvage that…” Although this would be the ideal place to end their conversation, what little manners she’d been indoctrinated with forced her to add, “But thank you for thinking of me.”

  She waited for him to leave, but he just sat there and stared. Her cheeks burned. A nebulous warmth filled her stomach. Squirming, she tried to get a handle on her elevated heart rate. Recognizing physical manifestations of attraction, she shifted discovering the purpose for his visit to the top of her priorities list. “Are you here for a reason?”

  Crossing his arms, he leaned back. “I kinda hoped you’d figure this out already. I’m hitting on you.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You think I’m joking?” His forehead wrinkled. “Who jokes about something like this?”

  “Some sort of dare, then?”

  He scoffed, “No dare would make me trek out to the ‘burbs on one of my few days off.”

  She drummed her fingers on the table. “Northern Virginia is hardly a suburb. What’s your angle, Captain…err…Mr. Reed?”