Code Name: Forever & Ever (A Warrior's Challenge series Book 5)

by Natasza Waters

  Pictures of Marg and her sisters, positioned with precision, had been professionally taken instead of framed spontaneous moments from family vacations. That’s because they were only family with the same last name. The surname ‘Foster’ was a respected name in Hollywood, starting with her grandmother who’d married Arnold Foster, but Marg’s father had kept his biological father’s name: Stines and tacked on Foster when his stepfather took him under his wing. It was the only sign that somewhere inside his heart, he loved his biological dad, although he never talked about him.

  Grams hadn’t shared much with them about their biological grandfather, but whenever her Grams mentioned him, there was always a distinct sparkle in her eyes. She cared for Arnold their step-grandfather, the man who brought wealth to their family. He’d taken Marg’s father and treated him like his own son. Her father never looked back once the grandiose lifestyle of L.A. hooked its talons into him.

  “Girls,” her father greeted, giving them a business smile. “I’d like to introduce you to these fine young men.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Marg muttered under her breath.

  They approached their father, and the three young executives standing next to him. The guys’ eyes rounded slightly and small grins appeared on their features. She supposed they meant to portray confidence, but two of them came off cocky. She waited for what came next. Her father, of course, had decided who would be with whom.

  “Margaret, I’d like you to meet Bruce Pepperhill. He’s one of our new assistant executive producers.”

  Marg pinched her lips into a tight smile. “Mr. Pepperhill, nice to meet you.”

  He advanced in his all too expensive suit and shoes. “Margaret, your father told me how lovely you are, but he didn’t do you justice.”

  She felt like saying, Knock off the act, but instead she sighed and tilted her head. “Not too much indulgence,” her mother had warned her daughters. “Just give enough to show polite interest.” Marg had had enough of this posturing. She’d gotten a break while away at college, but she’d graduated six months ago, and every two weeks her father brought home his boot lickers.

  “Aww shucks, that’s so darn sweet of y’all to say,” twisting a deep southern accent into her words.

  Laurene choked down a laugh while their father’s features screwed into anger.

  “I’ll see if dinner is ready.” Yes, she was abandoning Laurene. Victoria nibbled at the well-heeled carrot dangled in the form of the youngest of three men standing beside her father like a stuffed turkey. Bunch of kiss-asses. If a man couldn’t stand up to her father and be a man, then he certainly wouldn’t be of any interest to her.

  Before she could escape, the servers entered with her mother taking the lead.

  “Our guests have arrived,” her mother said with a demure grin.

  Everyone shared their hellos and took their seats. Stiff conversations highlighted the sparkling futures of the three men, and how well-to-do their families were. Sipping on her soup, Marg glanced across the table where Bruce had been seated. He caught her eye and gave her an inquisitive look. His full lips with a handsome bow parted to say something, and then he reconsidered, concentrating on his meal when she offered him a cool glare.

  Without wolfing down her plated dinner consisting of two nugget potatoes, three stems of asparagus and three tiny medallions of tenderloin, she endured the polite conversation without screaming. Settling her napkin on the table beside her silverware, she squared her shoulder. “Mother, Dad, I have some news.”

  Both her parents turned their attention to her.

  “I’ve found a job.”

  Her father’s brows rose.

  That’s right, all by myself without flaunting her hyphenated last name which she fully intended on reducing to only Stines—permanently. “I’ve signed a three year contract this afternoon with American Sweetheart modeling agency.”

  Her mother blinked as if she’d just seen a wild gorilla knuckle its way across the stately dining room table.

  “Margaret,” her father voiced her name with a sharp edge. “I will not allow you to prostitute yourself in magazines.”

  Instead of losing her head, which was easy at the moment, she gripped her patience and fortitude. “I don’t believe prostitution was part of the contract.”

  An honest smile spread across Bruce’s handsome mouth. Sure he was hot, really hot. And maybe if she’d met him through friends, she would have been a little interested, but because he was being prodded down the marriage chute by her father, she ignored him.

  Her mother’s face reddened. “Margaret Celeste. I have had enough of your rebellious attitude. You have a degree and a future in media relations and marketing. Your father was going to tell you tonight that he has a spot for you at the studio. An extremely advantageous position.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said, and turned to look at him. “I respectfully decline.” She rose from the table.

  “Where are you going?” Her father’s voice boomed through the drafty dining hall.

  “To get my bags. I’m sure I’m not welcome anymore since I don’t plan to follow your idea of my future.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Margaret.” Her father straightened his tie with a tug. “We realize you want to prove yourself before marriage. That’s why I’ve found you a position that will allow you to use your degree.”

  “We have your best interests at heart.” Her mother fisted her spoon.

  Good thing the cutlery cost a thousand dollars a setting or it might have liquefied in her mother’s grip.

  “No, Mom.” She used the term knowing her mother thought only the lower class referred to the woman who gave birth to them as ‘mom’. “You want to sell me off as chattel to a guy like Bruce.” She cocked her head at him. “Sorry, pal, but you’re a pawn just as much as I am.”

  “Margaret,” her parents shouted at the same time.

  Victoria let out a big sigh. “Marg, if you’re going—go. The melodramatics aren’t helping my situation, and I like my company,” she said, giving her date a flirtatious smile. The guy blushed and darted a nervous look at her father.

  Brownie points for the young wannabe exec who still had a misting of blemishes.

  Marg pushed the oversized dining chair against the table. “I’m moving out. I’ll send my number when I get it, but the one thing I’m not doing is going to be his wife.”

  She left the room before her parents could change her mind. Stunned into silence, soon her dad would get his shock under control and sit her down for a one hour discussion on who made the decisions in their household.

  Marg reached the stairs and stopped when a hand fell on her shoulder. Turning, Bruce stood there, shaking his head. His smile stretched from one side of his handsome jaw to the other. “That was some speech.”

  “Thanks and goodbye.”

  “Wait a second.” He gripped her arm. “I get it. I do, but your dad showed me a picture of you and well…” He shrugged. “You’re beautiful and obviously intelligent. It’s no wonder a modeling agency wants to hire you.” He paused. “I’m not a bad guy, seriously. Can we try this again? On our terms.”

  His down to earth offer eased her stampeding heart. “If you’re trying to save face for my father’s benefit, don’t worry. You won’t wear any of this.”

  Bruce offered a grin with hottie written all over it, and she liked the rigid line of his jaw. At six foot, she looked down on a lot of guys, but with Bruce, she had to tilt her head upwards. His broad shoulders and athletic build appealed to her. Keep your focus. She didn’t want a relationship. At least not with a guy whelped in the diamond-studded manger of L.A.

  “I’m not staying here, Bruce.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “San Diego.”

  “Working man’s town.”

  “Yes, people work to live. That’s what I plan to do.”

  His green eyes bored into hers. “Need a hand with your bags?”

  Making a grand exit
once would be a better plan. “Yes, actually.” She’d already packed and hid the luggage behind her clothes in the walk-in closet.

  Bruce’s hand fell to the hollow in her back and ushered her upstairs.

  “You know, my parents are the same as yours, but only in the respect that they want the best for me. I can’t begrudge the opportunity to work with your father. He’s a master at what he does. Everyone in the industry knows it.”

  “So do I, but that doesn’t mean he gets to pawn me off like it’s the 1600’s.”

  Bruce stepped into her bedroom and looked around. “You’re sure you want to do this? I get you want to make your mark in life, but maybe you should consider sitting down with your parents and having a conversation.”

  “My parents haven’t graduated to that level. Sitting down means I listen and they talk.”

  “Think they’re listening now.”

  Marg strode into her walk-in closet. “You can come in,” she said over her shoulder. Bruce didn’t venture any farther than the doorway at first. “My clothes don’t bite.”

  “Why don’t you at least check out the position your dad has waiting for you?”

  She straightened and narrowed an eye at him. “Because I didn’t work for it. No application. No interview. Just offered to me on the same silver platter like everything else. How am I supposed to feel good about that?”

  Bruce ventured across the soft, plush carpet of her closet, the size of some people’s bedrooms. “I don’t want you to think I’m working for your dad, trying to convince you otherwise, but regardless of how you get the job, it’s what you do after that makes you a success or a failure.”

  Marg grabbed the handles of two suitcases and rolled them from the corner. “Because I’ll be starting with a handicap. Worse than that, my father runs the production company. No one would tell me if my work is crap, even if it was.”

  “Then get your feet wet and move on.”

  Marg watched as he took charge of her other two bags. She paused beside him. “Sounds like you’re trying to entice me to stay.” Beautiful eyes stared into hers. The kind that shakes a woman to her core.

  “I am.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  Bruce followed her and they chatted amiably as they rolled her bags along the upper walkway. He carried most of them down the stairs while she muscled the heaviest one into her arms.

  Waiting at the bottom, her parents stood shoulder to shoulder. One last hurrah!

  Her father vaulted ahead. “Marg, honey, I don’t want you to feel like I’m pawning you off,” he said as she reached the last step. “That’s not my intent at all. We’re not trying to rush you into anything.”

  She loved her father. Mostly, her mother prompted him to bring home guys from his office. Sometimes Marg wondered whether her mother couldn’t get rid of her and her sisters fast enough. Some women weren’t meant to have children. All of Marg’s hugs, all her cuddles when she’d cried, had come from Grams.

  “Dad, I don’t know what you feel. I never have. You’re a great man. I know that’s what this town thinks, but I don’t know you. You’ve always been busy providing for us, and I’m thankful for that, but I have to try to make my own way.”

  With her arms crossed, her mother sent waves of anger in her direction. “Margaret, you’re being impetuous again. If you want to pretend you’re an adult, then you’ll be treated like one. When you fail, don’t crawl back here.”

  “No, actually, I’ve got a pretty level head on my shoulders, Mom. I’m not short-sighted, and I don’t want to fail either, but thanks for the words of support.”

  Her mother fidgeted and darted a nervous glance at Dad.

  Marg craned a look over her parents’ shoulders to see Laurene leaning against the doorway on the opposite side of the entryway. “If you want the best for me, then wish me luck.” Her mother’s eyes glistened. The last ditch effort. Tears. She leaned over and kissed her parents on their cheeks.

  Surprisingly, her father gripped her in a hug. “Honey, you can always come home. This is your home,” he whispered in her ear.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  They were both stunned into silence as she rolled her suitcases to the door. She turned and surveyed the elegant surroundings she’d been raised in. She probably wouldn’t have this again, but she wouldn’t miss it. An apartment and maybe one day a man who would fall in love with her for who she was, not her last name, lay somewhere in her destiny. “Bye.”

  Bruce placed her bags in the trunk, and then held the door open for her. “Do you have somewhere to go tonight?”

  “I’ve booked a hotel room in San Diego until I can find a place of my own. The advance from the agency will come through in a couple days.”

  He scribbled his number on a match book he pulled from his pocket. “Call me. I like San Diego, and I like you.”

  She gave him a smile and got in her car. “Thanks for your help.” She pulled the seatbelt across her shoulder. His hand fell over hers when she grabbed the door handle.

  “We already had dinner, but not desert. How about I follow you and we grab a coffee downtown?”

  She started the car and considered accepting his offer. “Thanks, maybe if you come by San Diego some time, but right now, I have to put three hours between my past and my future.”

  “Count on it,” he said, his deep green eyes intense with his vow.

  Marg only glimpsed Bruce in her rearview mirror as she steered her car down the long rolling drive and through the ostentatious gates. Palm trees spiraled toward the sky as she drove down the manicured street where she’d grown up. With the convertible’s soft top down and the balmy fall evening air in her hair, she smiled. Heading for the access to the I-5, Marg imagined the chains of her old life clattering to the pavement. A future she had no intention of cluttering with expectations, bloomed with excitement. Though she wanted to prove she could live on her own, she didn’t feel alone.

  The wind played tricks with her. She grinned when a rush of warmth caressed her shoulder like the comforting brush of a hand as if someone was sitting beside her, along for the ride.

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, Mom, coffee on?” Patrick saw the bags under his mother’s eyes and wondered how long she stayed up last night waiting for his father to get home from the bar. Nowadays, it was the only place his father stayed for longer than an hour.

  “There should be a cup left, honey. Help yourself.”

  “How about I make us some breakfast,” he suggested, not waiting for an answer and pulling the fry pan from the cupboard.

  “I’m feeling a little under the weather this morning, Patrick.”

  “Did you take your medication?”

  Karen Cobbs was only forty years old, but she looked sixty. The leukemia, slow but deadly, had been killing her for over a year. They didn’t have money for a better medication. The doc from the clinic gave her a generic pill that did little to help. Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia was slow acting, but enough to make her life uncomfortable.

  She waved him off. “It’s not that bad. A little pain reminds me I’m still alive.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to tough it out. You can complain.” He turned with a concerned smile. “Unless you want to join the SEALs.”

  Pushing to her feet like an old woman, she straightened her cotton dress remnant of the sixties and crossed the kitchen. “You’re the hero in this family, honey. I wouldn’t want to show you up.”

  His grin peeled back and he hugged her. “Love you, Mom.”

  “Hey, can I get one of those?” Thane asked, swinging into the kitchen.

  “Of course you can.” His mom beckoned with an arm. “Come here, ya big brute.”

  Thane didn’t hesitate and picked Karen Cobbs up in a two-armed hug. Pat eyed his best friend and swim buddy. BUD/S had been a grind. On day one they’d met, and Thane kept getting in his face. He returned the favor every time it looked like Thane wanted to give in, which wasn’t often. Mostly, it meant Pa
t had to redirect a pissed off instructor who would take it out on all of them. Thane was all mouth and all action. He’d gotten in shit with the instructors daily for saying something they didn’t like. Thane made sure he fired off a couple verbal rounds just to piss them off which ended up with a lot of overhead carries, many times with ‘Old Glory’ in their wet, sandy palms. Any man who’d failed or succeeded in BUD/S knew the weight of the famous log.

  After they met, Pat didn’t want to bring Thane to his place, well within the worst part of San Diego. Drug dealers. Prostitution. The poorest people of San Diego lived in City Heights. Crime had gotten so bad the community’s own business association papered billboards with a plea: “Welcome to City Heights, Crime Capital of San Diego. Won’t Anybody Help?” A Union Tribune article called City Heights “The rotting core of America’s finest city.”

  Thane came from middle to high income. His father was Navy but his mother worked as a professor of law at the University of San Diego. They didn’t want for much. Thane had kept bugging him to come over and when Pat ran out of excuses, the sonofabitch had followed him home the day after they’d finished their phase one.

  Thane didn’t say a damn word. The guy treated Pat’s mother like she was royalty and showed equal disdain for his old man, who hung out at the bar after work until closing time. If a lowly whore needed a couple extra bucks, his old man dug a little deeper in his pocket, instead of giving it to Mom for groceries.

  Pat didn’t have a lot of choices for an honest income. Before joining up with the Navy, he worked in a local garage. He might not make a huge wage with Uncle Sam, but as a special operator in the SEALs, he’d get bonuses, and he would make sure his mom would always have food and a roof over her head.

  “Dad still in bed?” It wasn’t abnormal for the old man to sleep off his hangover until late Saturday afternoon.

  His mother shot an embarrassed glance toward Thane.