by Jessie Lane
She’d managed to pull her hair back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, showcasing the almost angelic features of her face. High cheekbones. Her slender neck that I once licked down to her collarbone. Damn, I’d give anything to strip her down right here and now, pull her hair loose, and bend her over the back of a chair while I spread those luscious globes of her ass wide and— “Deputy Miles might have been on to something after all, Agent Roberts.” Jaxon crossed his arms over his chest while considering the young Deputy in question.
Belle nodded her head in agreement. “Looks like tonight wasn’t a complete bust. A couple of crates of M4’s and AK-47’s aren’t quite the load we were told to look for, but it’s a start. My recommendation is to set up shift surveillance on the bar with small teams. That way we can rotate out. Those who aren’t on surveillance duty can help follow any leads we come across. How does that sound to you, Commander Wall?”
Jaxon’s gruff voice answered, “It’s a place to start. We’ll split up into teams tomorrow morning. Everyone should rest up tonight while we can and I’ll expect that call in the morning from you so we can get specifics started.”
Belle shook his hand before sending a general wave to the rest of the occupants in the room. “Everyone sleep tight now. Goodnight.” She left the room with Boyd, Sheriff Jenkins and Deputy Miles right on her heels.
After I finally got back to my own room, I peeled off my black BDUs, weapons and boots, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Wearing nothing but my boxer briefs, I lay in the bed, thinking of Belle. She’d been hard to pin down when we were teenagers, but I’d won her over back then. It had taken a lot of time, a lot of talking in places like our high school cafeteria or in the hallways after class whenever I could track her down. Small moments that had added up, proving to her that she wasn’t some prank I was trying to pull by getting in her pants, or that I thought she was easy. By all means, the girl I’d known back then—and obviously the woman I was coming face to face with now—was the exact opposite of easy.
There were a lot of factors not in my favor this round. I’d hurt her; apparently, much worse than I’d ever dreamed of, and instead of loads of time and plenty of opportunities to wear her guard down, I was working on a short time span. All I could hope was that between the little bit of time I had, a little patience while I sat through what would undoubtedly be one nasty ass-chewing when she finally felt like talking to me again, and laying it all out on the table for her, maybe I could win her back. The first step would be to get her to agree to dinner. I could start off by apologizing. The rest would come after that. Baby steps and careful maneuvering around any emotional landmines I’d left behind when I’d just plain left her. I had no intentions of giving up this time. Belle was my woman. The other half of my soul. An intricate part of me that had felt lost for far too long.
Closing my eyes, my mind drifted back to better days.
Hot afternoons in the Georgia sun where we hid under a gigantic tree in the cooler shade. My larger body pinning her much smaller one beneath me as we lay in the prickly grass. Her soft hands gliding over my body. Fingertips tracing the lines of my chest before traveling down over my abdomen. One of my hands buried in her hair to hold her still for a kiss. My other hand slipping up under her shirt to stroke her breasts over her bra. Warm, sweet breath mingling as tongues entwined. A small extension of the two hearts that constantly sought solace in each other.
My heart constricted painfully at the thought of never getting that back. What would it take to lure the love of my life back into my arms? What were the chances that Belle would forgive me? Also, just what the fuck would I do if she refused to forgive me after all?
God, I hoped I didn’t have to find out.
Chapter Five
Bobby
Four days. How could the woman manage to dodge me for four damn days? If Belle saw me walking towards her, she would turn around and walk away in the other direction. If there was a team meeting, she made like a ghost the second it was over and disappeared before I could say a word to her afterwards. Now, here I stood, ten o’clock at night, in the breezeway outside of my hotel room staring at the cigarette in my hand like it was the question of life.
To light or not to light?
I hadn’t lit up a smoke in over two years. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me, either. I’d started smoking after having Mom and Dad tell me that Belle had disappeared from Sylvania. The stress of not knowing where she was, or if she was safe, had driven me to bumming a cigarette from a buddy in the barracks. The residual pain that centered around my heart the following months after that letter caused me to start buying my own packs of cancer sticks. Every time the phone rang, my hopes rose sky-high that it was my parents telling me she’d come home, but Belle never came home; so the crash of disappointment from those phone calls resulted into trips to the walkway outside of my barrack’s door so I could light one up and puff away some of the pain.
That was fifteen years ago and, since then, I’d quit smoking six times; mainly because Mom would bitch about how it was going to kill me and who would give her grandbabies if I up and croaked from cancer? I’d been free and clear of the little, white sticks of death for the last twenty-seven months, so I’d thought I had the habit kicked for good this time. Yet, here I stood, holding one I’d bummed from Riley in my hand, looking at the damn thing while listening to the internal debate going on in my head on whether I was going to light the son of a bitch or not. All because I couldn’t handle not having her in my life. How lame was that? This lack of control shit made me a pansy of the highest order.
“Don’t do it, Baker,” Jaxon’s gruff voice commanded me. He stepped out of the shadows that blackened out the end of the breezeway on his right. How long had he been standing there? I didn’t know because that motherfucker moved around as if he was made of smoke and shadows, instead of flesh and bone like the rest of us. One minute there, gone the next, without ever making a sound. If I were a lesser man, I would have pissed myself at his sudden appearance. Instead, I chose to lift an inquiring eyebrow in his direction.
“You sound like a negotiator in one of those awful movie scenes where the guy is standing on the ledge of the building, threatening to jump.”
Jaxon grunted in disgust. “It may not be that dire, asshole, but I’d hate to see you throw all your hard work down the drain because you’re letting your emotions get the best of you. You’re a highly trained soldier. It’s a shame you’re not using the brains God gave you and the skills the Army taught you to handle this better.”
My jaw bunched in frustration. “Really? What should I do? Kidnap her and keep her hostage until she agrees to hear me out? I think Uncle Sam would have a problem with that plan because I’d have to go off the grid for a while to do it.”
Shaking his head, he said, “You’re not a pimply-faced, little punk sitting in his boxers at home playing war games on his computer. You spent eleven years in the Army as a Ranger, and you’re telling me they taught you nothing about how to approach a mission? You know nothing about strategy? You have absolutely no understanding of tactics?”
Cocking my head to the side as I considered his words, I thought about what he was trying to say. “You’re telling me to dial down the emotions and analyze Belle as if she’s a target; recon her movements, figure out what makes her tick, then find the best way to break her down so that I can reach my endgame?”
“Isn’t that a better idea than shooting two years of hard work down the shitter by sticking that disgusting thing in your mouth and smoking it?”
Looking back down to the cigarette in my hand, I decided Jaxon was right. Dropping it to the ground, I used the bottom of my boot to crush it to pieces. When I looked back up to Jaxon, it was to see the smallest hint of one side of his mouth tipped up.
That slight grin disappeared, though, when he nodded his head towards the decimated cigarette and then said, “You tell Sullivan that if he gives you another poison stick, I’ll kick h
is ass.”
Then he disappeared back into the shadows, leaving me alone again. Only this time I wasn’t standing there like a jerk with my thumb up my ass, with no idea what to do. No, now I had motivation again. Belle couldn’t avoid me forever. One way or another, I’d find a way to get her alone to talk to me. Even if I had to grab her and tie her up to keep her in one place long enough to listen to what I had to say.
Annabelle
Three days later…
Frustrated. Tired. Seriously pissed off. I was feeling all of that and more as I sat at the piece of crap table in Declan Sullivan’s room, holding a hand of playing cards and drinking cheap beer. This was after yet another pointless information and strategy meeting with the EX Ops team. It was a week after our initial undercover surveillance at the Big Bull Bar, and nothing was happening. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. Not one teeny, tiny movement from the bar involving those crates. No chatter from our snitches or undercover officers concerning our investigation. No word from our informant inside the Mexican cartel. No progress whatsoever. I was starting to feel downright itchy to get this case solved. When I got itchy, things got twitchy, like my left eye and my trigger finger.
Of course, I didn’t know who I wanted to shoot more. The assholes behind this black market problem, or Bobby Baker for being a constant pain in my ass. Every time I turned around, there he was. Asking for a minute of my time. Asking to take me out to dinner. Asking me if we could get naked to have hot, angry sex and then I could go back to hating him again after we were done.
Okay, so he hadn’t exactly asked for the hot, angry sex, but I could dream about it, right? I mean, dag-gum. The man had almost doubled in size from when I’d last seen him. He had all of these delicious muscles now that just silently begged for me to explore them. When they rippled as he moved—even if it was just him walking from one side of the room to the other—it was like they were talking to me. Tempting me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear his crazy ass was doing it on purpose! Was it possible for a wily man and his rippling muscles to seduce a woman to the dark side? As I considered the possibilities to that answer—absentmindedly grabbing my bottle of beer off the table to take a swig—I realized the room was too quiet. Looking up from my cards, I saw that all eyes were on me.
“What?”
Declan cocked an amused eyebrow. “Did you feel like playing that hand of cards you’re holding, or did you want to have us bronze and memorialize them for something?”
Looking back down to my cards, which were shit, I decided to fold. Putting my cards on the table, I waved for the others to continue with the game. There were just four of us in this room. Declan, Riley, myself, and him. I was still ignoring him, though. The three men had an easy camaraderie that made it obvious that they not only got along, but they spent a lot of time together, too. Somehow, Declan had talked me into staying for drinks and a game of poker after the meeting, only to blindside me with Bobby as the cards were being dealt. I’d been set up. Apparently, you could trust these off-the-grid, special ops-type guys about as far as you could throw them. Sneaky jerks.
Since I didn’t want to flounce out of there like some dramatic prom queen, I chose to sit here quietly, start the process of peeling the label off my second beer, and play poker with half of my mind hatching a plausible escape plan. One minute, I was quietly picking at the corner of the bottle’s label, the next I was staring at the whisky bottle and shot glass that had magically appeared in front of me.
Tada! Hello temptation!
Giving a suspicious, squinty eye to the three men watching me, I asked, “What are y’all up to here?” My finger waved around in a circle to encompass what was probably a terrible idea in a bottle in front of me.
Riley shrugged. “We’re not up to anything. You look too tense. Throw back some shots and chill the fuck out. None of us are on call, it’s ten o’clock at night, and you might as well enjoy yourself.”
After a short lived staring contest with Riley, which I lost—dammit—I cracked that bottle open, filled up my shot glass, and threw it back like a seasoned drinking pro. I even managed not to gasp from the burn of the fiery liquid going down my throat; although, it felt like it was lava and not alcohol. I was playing it off brilliantly like I drank shots all the time instead of the once in a blue moon that I actually did. Riley grabbed the bottle and poured out four more shots, one for each of us, and I knew then and there that I was doomed. This had all the ingredients of a recipe for disaster—alcohol, temperamental female emotions and drool worthy muscles.
Well, they always said the road to hell was paved in good intentions. That must mean, with all of my bad intentions, my trip would be bone jarringly bumpy, traveling at the kind of speeds one saw on the Autobahn with a predestined crash at the end and not a seat belt in sight.
Bobby
Men don’t wax poetic on how they feel about other men. It was in the unwritten man rules somewhere that we were allowed to burp, fart and scratch our balls around each other, but there would be no wordy displays of affection. Anyone who violated that rule would have to turn our man card in. Even if the other guy was my best friend and had covered my ass on more missions than I could count. At this moment in time, though, I was willing to make a serious exception to the man rules since Declan had talked Belle into staying for a game of poker and beer.
Now I was on the verge of telling Riley that Belle and I would name our first child after him because he was loading her up with booze. It was a low-down dirty play, but she wasn’t giving me another in. If I could get her drunk, then get her talking, it could be the breakthrough I’d been looking for. In essence, maneuvering her into a drunken corner in order to keep her in one spot long enough for me to talk to her because, God knew, that woman wouldn’t give me the time of day otherwise.
The game continued, and it was easy to see that Belle was quickly slipping into a drunken stupor since she’d been squinting at her cards for the last four hands, trying to figure out in her head what she was holding. As if that wasn’t cute enough, now she had the tip of her tongue peeking out of the side of her mouth like the crap hand of cards she was holding was a three thousand year old treasure map, and she was trying to figure it out to get the treasure. When I looked over to see the amused grins on Declan and Riley’s faces aimed at Belle because she was once again holding up the game, it caused me to shake my head in feigned disgust. It was easy to see that, after all these years, my girl still had no idea that she was a natural at being cute.
Looking back to her, I muttered, “Baby, you going to play that hand or keep staring at it?”
Her head flew up and, for a moment, I braced myself for what was probably going to be a seriously pissed off woman’s rant about how I had no right to call her baby anymore. Instead, she threw her hands up in the air in disgust, and then plopped them down on the table with not a care in the world that she was flashing her cards to everyone. Huffing in annoyance, she exclaimed, “Gimme a second here, Ace! I’m tryin’ to concentrate on what I’m doin’!”
My breath caught in my chest. You could never pay me enough to admit this aloud, hell, I’d never let anyone torture this fact out of me, but hearing her say the name ‘Ace’ for the first time in fifteen years was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Hearing that one, little name again made my chest constrict painfully for a few seconds before slowly turning everything inside me into something warm and good. It was the closest thing I’d felt to being whole in a long damn time.
Not that Belle gave me any time to enjoy that nice warm feeling. Upon realization of what she’d said, all the color drained out of her face, and she was halfway out of the Sullivan’s room before I could blink. Not that I was letting her get away from me this time. Throwing my cards on the table, I hauled ass after her, leaving the smirking Sullivan brothers in my dust. Luckily, the alcohol had slowed her down, so she hadn’t made it very far down the breezeway when I caught sight of her again. By the time I was in arm’s reach of her,
she was unknowingly just four steps short of my hotel room’s door. Opportunity wasn’t knocking, he was telling me to haul my girl, kicking and screaming, into my room and kick the damn door down to get there, if I had to.
Grabbing Belle’s arm to stop her escape, I swung her body around until she was standing sideways in front of me, somewhat hysterical and confused. Before she could try to get away from me again, I scooped her legs out from underneath her, cradling her body in my arms like the precious package that it was. As I opened the door to my room, she started struggling to get away. It was too late for her, though. In my room—with the door closed, locked, and my body standing in front of it—there was no escape for her. Gently setting her feet on the floor, her body wobbled unsteadily from her inebriated state as she tried to slap my hands away from her.
“Gawd, Bobby! What in the hell are you doing? Get out of the way so I can go home!”