Stranded with the SEAL

by Amy Gamet

Hawk dropped the radio and ran to the precipice. It was too dark to see if the other man was dead or had escaped. Hawk cursed under his breath.

  The voice on the radio asked, “Any sign of our runaway?”

  Trevor hurried back to the snowmobile. “Negative.”

  “Fuck.” The man sighed heavily. “This is not good. I’ll leave the utility gate open for you and Johnson. Park the snowmobiles off-site, sleep in the galley, and try again in the morning.”

  “Copy that.” Trevor moved back to the edge of the cliff, but it was impossible to see how far down it went or what had become of Gallant. At least Hawk had gotten the snowmobile and radio, even if the other man had managed to escape.

  Hawk took off his skis and bungeed them to the snowmobile as his mind repeated the man on the walkie-talkie.

  Utility gate.

  Sleep in the galley.

  Johnson.

  These were Steele’s men, and they were looking for someone.

  Any sign of our runaway?

  One of the women Steele was holding must have managed to escape. A gust of icy wind blew through the trees and he hoped the woman was able to find shelter. Without it, she wouldn’t survive long enough to find freedom or be recaptured.

  The thought reminded him of Olivia.

  If you had a shred of decency, you’d put her on the snowmobile with you and take her back to Denton in the morning, where she belongs.

  The thought made him still.

  He would have enough gas to make it down the mountain, but not enough to make it back up, and refueling now would bring attention to himself. Hell, even finding a place for Olivia to stay would do that, effectively squashing his plans to kill Steele.

  You could take Olivia to Denton, then come back and rescue the women. You just wouldn’t be able to kill Steele.

  Ralph’s killer would go free.

  He ground his teeth and started the engine, carefully winding his way back to the cabin in the moonlight. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t know if that made him a better man or a worse one.

  There had to be payback, had to be revenge. He couldn’t let Ralph die in vain, Ralph’s child grow up without a father while Steele continued on with business as usual.

  17

  Trevor had been gone too long, and it was nearly dark outside. What if he couldn’t find his way back without the chimney smoke to guide him? Olivia paced the living room, questioning whether or not she should go after him. Getting herself lost on this mountain wasn’t going to help anyone, and she was damn sure she didn’t know how to ski.

  She lit a candle and made her way to the bedroom. Opening the closet, she flipped through coats, jackets, and snow pants. Nearly everything here belonged to a man, though she supposed she could wear something too big if she had to.

  Suddenly, she froze, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. She was overwhelmed by the sensation that she was being watched, and wished she’d thought to close the drapes. Forcing her hand to move, she continued to flip hangers.

  What if the snowmobile guy got away from Trevor, and now he’s come back for me?

  Or maybe it is Trevor.

  No. Trevor wouldn’t be peeking in through the window.

  Her heart was racing and a high-pitched hum invaded her hearing. This was fight or flight, with nowhere to go and nothing to fight with.

  Think, Olivia. Think.

  Damn it, where had she put that knife? Her mind flew through the cabin, looking for anything that could help her. Another kitchen knife, but they were too far away. A metal shovel that had caught her eye in the garage, also too far.

  The baseball bat under the bed.

  She closed her eyes, seeing it clearly in her memory. A good ol’ Louisville Slugger that was never intended for sports.

  The slightest noise at the window confirmed her suspicions. Someone was out there, she was certain. Fear made her limbs stiff and difficult to move. If she was going to do this, she had one chance to do it right.

  One, two, three!

  Olivia blew out her candle and spun around, the room thrown into darkness. She dropped to the ground and crawled to the bed, making her way around it by feel and wishing her eyes would adjust so she could see. Sure enough, her hand closed around the barrel of a baseball bat.

  A noise came from the other room and she tiptoed down the hall, bat at the ready. She forced her fear to disconnect from her body. Her eyes adjusted to the lack of light and she rounded the corner into the living room.

  The front door was open several inches, the sound of freezing rain falling outside like white noise. Olivia pulled the bat back over her shoulder and prepared to fight for her life.

  18

  Trevor rounded the corner into the drive, and the cabin came into view. Olivia had done as he asked, letting the fire go out so there was no sign of their presence, and he felt his shoulders relax.

  There was something nice about coming back to her. He liked the way she’d confronted him when she thought he’d drugged her, and the way she’d felt in his arms when they kissed. He wanted to fight with her again and do some more kissing, maybe even at the same time.

  He stashed the snowmobile inside the garage, then looked up at the still-swirling snow. The blizzard would be their cover, erasing their tracks and wiping the slate clean overnight.

  Keeping them safe.

  And alone together.

  He chastised himself for his thoughts about Olivia. Whoever Gallant had been talking to was expecting the henchman back at Steele’s mansion tonight. Whether Gallant returned on foot, injured from his fall off the cliff, or didn’t return at all, that meant Hawk and Olivia had just inched one step closer to Steele’s inner circle.

  That should keep Hawk from thinking about Olivia’s sweet body, but it didn’t. He reached for the handle on the door of the house and found it ajar.

  Hawk instantly went on alert, pulling out his knife as his mind raced to assess the situation. Gallant couldn’t have gotten here before him, if he had survived the fall, which meant someone else was at the cabin.

  He flashed back to the man on the walkie-talkie.

  You and Johnson.

  Johnson!

  Damn it, there was more than one of Steele’s men running around Warsaw Mountain, and Hawk had left Olivia alone.

  He kicked open the door.

  Something solid and heavy crashed into the wall beside him. He reached for it, recognizing the wooden barrel of a baseball bat and sliding down it to find his attacker’s hands, quickly capturing them with his own.

  They struggled, and Trevor recognized Olivia’s all-too familiar scent. He used her hands to pull her toward him. “It’s me.” She continued to fight him. “It’s me, Olivia!”

  She stopped wrestling. “Trevor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, God.” She fell into his arms, wrapping herself tightly around his torso. “I was so scared,” she sobbed. “Someone was outside the window and I didn’t know what was happening and all I could think to do was grab the baseball bat.”

  “Which window?”

  “The back bedroom.”

  He took off along the side of the house, his knife at the ready, and rounded the corner. Sure enough, fresh snowmobile tracks came close to the back bedroom window. His eyes scanned the horizon and the forest that bordered the house on three sides, but he saw nothing unusual.

  He continued around the house. The tracks could very well be Gallant's. Not enough snow had fallen to completely bury anything since then, but they could also be freshly made by someone else.

  Like Johnson.

  He went back inside. “There are no new tracks out there. Just the ones from before.”

  “Oh, gosh. I’m such an idiot.” She hung her head. “I thought I was going to die and you would come back and find my body.”

  “Shh,” he whispered gruffly as she babbled. “It’s okay now.”

  “I’m so glad you’re back. I was scared. I would have sworn there was somebody outsid
e that bedroom window, and then the front door was open…”

  “You didn’t do that?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Maybe those tracks were made more recently, after all.

  She went into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder.

  He rubbed his hand down her silken hair, his lips naturally moving to hers to soothe her with gentle kisses. “I’m sorry you were scared.”

  “I thought I was going to die, and I was so glad that you’d been here with me, Trevor. That I haven’t been alone.”

  He wanted to comfort her, wanted to pull her back into his arms like he had before. They’d already kissed once, which made it easier for him to do it a second time. He pressed kiss after kiss on her lips, each one gentler than the last. “I’m glad, too,” he whispered.

  His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could see hers in the dim light, questions shining in their depths. He took her mouth once more, none too gently this time, in an all-consuming lover’s kiss.

  She responded to him, kissing him back, and he twirled her around so that her back was to the wall, pinioning her there against him. He needed this, needed to feel her body against his and her mouth intimately melding with his mouth.

  His hand reached up to her breast of its own accord, lightly cupping her there before he moved it back to her waist, but she took his hand back to her breast and squeezed it, and he kneaded her full, soft flesh as his hips bucked against hers.

  He lifted his head, panting with the effort of holding back, even as she held his hips tightly to her. She was engaged to another man, a man she loved who — he was sure — she’d never knowingly betray.

  He hated himself in that moment, hated himself for lying to her and wanting her anyway. He couldn’t sleep with her while she didn’t know who she was. He cupped her jaw with his hand and opened his mouth to speak.

  “You’d better not say we shouldn’t do this,” she said, pressing her head against his head, her chest against his chest. “We don’t have to sleep together, Hawk. Just be with me for a little while.”

  Trevor closed his eyes, sensations and temptation pulling him through the darkness. When she touched her lips to his once more, he exploded. His hands moved down, circling her neck and teasing her with his grip before reaching for the hem of her shirt and pulling it up to expose her voluptuous breasts.

  That was the word for her. Voluptuous, with curves like the fierce waves of the ocean that begged to be fitted against him.

  You swore you’d never take advantage of her.

  Damn it, he knew that was a mistake the moment he’d said the words. She sucked lightly on his neck and his muscles clenched as he became overwhelmed with the desire to lower her to the floor and sink into her sweetness, to love her body with a ferociousness born of hot, slick lust.

  He lifted his head from hers, nearly growling with the effort it took to do so. “We should stop.”

  “I don’t want to.” She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him with her full, tantalizing lips.

  Every taste of her made him crazy for more, and he raked the gentle softness of her upper lip with his stubbled face, knowing he was scraping her and loving how she moaned out loud when he did it.

  She would be an amazing lover, able to take his passion in kind, and he squeezed the flesh of her ass hard with both hands. She lifted one leg around his waist, pressing her most intimate spot against the fly of his jeans, and the heat of her sex radiated through his clothing.

  “Tell me to stop, Livy,” he ground out coarsely. “Tell me you want the life you can’t remember more than you want me, or I won’t be able to stop myself from fucking you.”

  She threw her head back. “I don’t care…”

  “Think!” He held her face, one hand on either side as he stared into her eyes in the near-darkness. “Is there someone you care about. Someone you…love?” He swallowed against the strain in his throat, the strain of his cock against his jeans. “Don’t let me ruin your life so easily, damn it.”

  Olivia’s eyes went wide and her leg dropped to the floor. “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t tell you everything I know.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  She crossed her arms. “You’re scaring me.”

  “You fell on your left side when you were thrown during the accident. Your hand was swelling up, and I had to take off your ring.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the diamond engagement ring, holding it out to her.

  She stared at it. “I’m engaged?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Out with it, Hawk.

  He swallowed hard. “Your shirt said Bride.”

  Her head shot up. “You knew I was engaged and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I wanted you to remember on your own.” It sounded indefensible when he said it out loud.

  Hell, it is indefensible.

  She took the ring from his hand. “It didn’t keep you from kissing me.”

  “No. It didn’t, and it should have. I’m sorry.”

  She turned away.

  He forced his feet to be still and his arms to remain at his sides when they wanted to go after her, reach for her. It was better this way. He had no right to this woman, no claim to her body or mind.

  “You promised,” she said quietly. “You promised you’d never take advantage of me.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” He hated himself in that moment. He was the lowest of the low, the bottom of the barrel. “It was inexcusable.”

  “If we’re being completely honest, I suspected,” she said.

  “That you were engaged?”

  “That I wasn’t free to be kissing you, yes.”

  He pursed his lips. He should let it go at that, but his mouth opened of its own accord. “Then why did you?”

  She turned around to face him, her eyes dark. “For the same reason you did.”

  They stared at each other, the tension between them like the tightest wire. He swore he could still feel raw passion between them, as if her knowledge of her life outside of these walls changed nothing about their lives inside of them.

  What would she do if he kissed her again? Would she push him away or pull him in tightly against her? He hated himself for even wondering, but the pull of sexual attraction would not be denied.

  He cleared his throat. “I need to get the furnace working, or we’re going to freeze to death tonight.”

  She nodded. “And I should find us something for dinner.”

  He moved for the basement door, then stopped and turned around. “Are you sorry it happened, Livy?”

  She acted as though she didn’t hear. She was just standing in the middle of the room staring into space, the ugly ring on the tip of her index finger.

  19

  Trevor lit a candle and made his way down a narrow staircase to the basement, the smell of must making his nose twitch. The furnace was in the far corner near the electrical box, and as he moved toward it, a bright red tag on the exhaust pipe caught his eye.

  WARNING: Cracked Heat Exchanger. Carbon Monoxide Hazard.

  It was handwritten in thick black marker, signed with a scribble, and fastened to the furnace with a zip tie. He’d never seen anything like it.

  He pried open the panel on the furnace. It was older, with a cylindrical heat exchanger, and he moved to a small workbench to locate some basic tools. Within minutes he was inspecting it in the candle’s light. Sure enough, there was a crack.

  “Son of a gun,” he whispered. They wouldn’t be getting any heat out of this furnace today. Carbon monoxide from the burning fuel would flow right out of the crack and into the cabin, killing anyone who slept in the house.

  He laid on his back and stared up at the foreboding red tag. Who would leave something like this, instead of fixing the problem? It was potentially deadly and just sitting here waiting for someone to turn the gas back on and adjust the thermostat.

  He ran his finger over the crack while his mind considered
the possibilities, then inhaled quickly when his finger was sliced open by a sharp metal edge.

  What the hell?

  A cracked heat exchanger shouldn’t have a sharp edge like that. No, the “crack” in this cylinder was only made to look like it was naturally occurring. In fact, it had been deliberately punctured with some kind of sharp tool.

  Trevor sucked on his bleeding finger and made his way back upstairs. Olivia was standing in the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.

  “Any luck on the furnace?” she asked.

  “No.” He told her about the sabotaged heat exchanger and explained what it meant. “Someone did this on purpose, to fill this place with carbon monoxide.”

  “Why would someone do that?” she asked.

  “The only reason I can think of is murder.”

  She stared at him several beats too long, the color seeming to drain from her face.

  “Olivia, are you okay?”

  Her eyelids fluttered and he moved to grab her, catching her just as she went limp and passed out.

  20

  Jax Andersson bent his six-foot-four frame and peered into a retinal scanner. A metal door opened to a long, lighted hallway and he entered with the heavy stomp of his military boot.

  He took a sip of his coffee, the hot brew mixing with the acid in his stomach that had begun churning when he called Logan to have him track Hawk’s cell phone.

  He should have known the shit was going to hit the fan when Logan first told HERO Force about the intel that Steele was taking another shipment, more than a month ago. Hawk had gone ballistic, nearly lunging across the conference table. “This is our chance to get that son-of-a-bitch,” he’d said, his eyes shining with eagerness.

  Jax had matched Hawk’s enthusiasm with a level gaze. “No. The intel’s unconfirmed. We can’t dedicate our resources on some half-assed report that Steele’s involved in human trafficking.”

  Hawk had stood up, meeting his stare. “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it, Jax. You know that.”

  Did he ever. He knew it better than anyone. He knew Trevor Hawkins was hurting from the loss of his friend years earlier, but Ralph’s death had been Jax’s responsibility. It was he who made the call to send HERO Force in, and Ralph’s blood was on Jax’s hands.