by Susan Stoker
Protecting Cheyenne
SEAL of Protection
Book 5
by Susan Stoker
Living in Southern California, Cheyenne was used to seeing hot military men as she went about her daily business. An anonymous encounter at the grocery store cemented her crush on one such man. He was big, built, and incredibly easy on the eyes, but it wasn’t as if he would ever really notice her.
Always in control of any situation, Faulkner “Dude” Cooper knows explosives. As a bomb expert, he's lived through many high pressure situations. Disfigured by a bomb while on a mission, he's used to being looked at with pity. When he's called to a local supermarket to assist the local PD, the last thing he expects to find is a generous act of kindness performed by a beautiful, amazing woman. Enchanted by her selflessness in the face of danger and intrigued by her actions to save civilians she didn't know, Dude’s hooked.
Dude was able to save Cheyenne from the group of thugs trying to take her life, but when the past comes back to haunt them both, sometimes having the knowledge and the desire isn’t enough to beat the countdown of the clock.
**Protecting Cheyenne is the 5th book in the SEAL of Protection Series. It can be read as a stand-alone, but it’s recommended you read the books in order to get maximum enjoyment out of the series.
This book is a word of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Susan Stoker
No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover Design by Chris Mackey, AURA Design Group
Edited by Missy Borucki
Manufactured in the United States
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
About the Author
Discover other titles by Susan Stoker
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my awesome Facebook friends who spent a night brainstorming various ‘jobs’ that Cheyenne could hold. I thought about making her a drywaller, but then decided that wasn’t quite right. Ha! Thanks for keeping it real and helping me out with suggestions and helping to make my characters “real.”
To Phyllis, my inspiration and model for 911 operators everywhere. Thank you for all your do. Thank you for suffering through your own kind of PTSD. While I’ve never been there, anyone who has ever had to call 911 to get help, thanks you and is thankful you were there to help them.
For Cathy, Celeste, Beth, Phyllis, Karen, Wendy, Alicia, Mickey, Chris, Mandy and all my other LGBT friends and readers…keep on keepin’ on.
Chapter One
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Is this the police?”
“Yes, this is 911, what is your emergency?”
“My cable went out and I can’t get my shows.”
“Ma’am, this line is for emergencies only.”
“Yeah, I know. This is an emergency. My DVR isn’t working and I have to see what happens to Toni tonight.”
Cheyenne sighed. Jesus, she hated these calls. “Have you tried calling your cable company?”
“Yeah, but they weren’t answering.”
“What do you want me to do?” Cheyenne was shorter than she probably should’ve been, but this was an emergency line and she was exhausted. She didn’t have the time or patience for this crap.
“Can you see if you can get through to them for me? I need them to fix this now.”
“Okay, hold on. Let me see what I can do.” Cheyenne put the woman on hold and plunked her head on the desk in front of her. She took three deep breaths then sat up straight again and clicked the caller back on. “Okay, I got a hold of them and they said you should call them back. They’ll see what they can do for you.”
“Oh my God, thank you so much! I appreciate it.”
“Have a good night, ma’am, and I hope Toni is all right.”
“Yeah me too! Thanks again. I’ll call them right now.”
Cheyenne clicked off the phone again and sighed deeply. Working as a 911 operator sounded much more glamourous than it was in reality. Most nights she had at least one or two people calling in with the most ridiculous “emergencies.” Technically, she was supposed to report them and give the info to her supervisor, but it was usually just as easy to get the person off the phone, quickly and politely, than try to report them and get them in trouble.
It never made sense to Cheyenne to take up a police officer’s time to go out and give a warning to these types of people when the officer could instead be concentrating on finding bad guys or helping people that honestly needed assistance.
Cheyenne turned back to her laptop sitting next to the other computer and electronic equipment on her desk and clicked back on the movie she’d been watching.
Typically, Cheyenne was the only phone operator on duty for her small section. She worked the second shift, which she loved, but she could go hours with no calls at all. She learned quickly to bring something to do, otherwise she’d die of boredom. She wasn’t typically a “night” person, but working from three in the afternoon to eleven at night suited her. She could sleep in, do errands in the mornings, and still have time to get to work in the afternoons.
The job was much harder than Cheyenne had thought it’d be when she’d first applied. She didn’t mind talking to people. Giving out basic first aid advice was kind of exhilarating; she enjoyed being able to help keep someone alive or even simply calm them down until the paramedics or police officers could get there. Lately, however, Cheyenne had been feeling antsy and discontented. It wasn’t until she read an article online about post-traumatic stress, that she understood her feelings.
Every time she answered the phone was potentially a life and death situation. Cheyenne would spend anywhere from three to twenty minutes on the phone with someone, helping them, working through whatever issue they had…only to hang up once the police or paramedics arrived, not knowing what the final outcome was.
Oh, sometimes she’d see a story on the news and recognize the situation as one she assisted with on the phone, but most of the time she had no idea how things turned out. Was anyone arrested? Did anyone die? Were they okay? By the end of each night Cheyenne was so full of adrenaline, that it’d take quite a while to get to sleep when she got home.
Perhaps even worse than the not knowing, was that Cheyenne was lonely. She spent her time at work talking with others, but she never really got to know them. She spoke with people on what many times was the worst day of their lif
e. Only once in the five years she’d had her job, had someone tracked her down to thank her. Once.
Working second shift made it hard to make and keep friends, never mind finding time for romance. She worked five days on and four days off. She wasn’t really a party girl and usually didn’t go to the bars. She knew people from her station at work, but they typically had opposite schedules than she did, so they couldn’t exactly socialize together outside of work.
Cheyenne recalled a conversation she’d once had with her mom. She’d called to try to get some sympathy after a hard day at work where she’d had to try to console a woman who’d found her husband dead in their home. It had been emotional and Cheyenne had cried at the woman’s grief after she’d hung up. She should’ve known better than to try to get any sympathy from her mother.
“I don’t know why you get so worked up over people you don’t even know, Cheyenne,” her mom had scolded.
“Mom, they call me when they need help. Most of the time they’re freaked out and just need someone to tell them it’ll be okay. That’s me.”
“But, honey, you’re always getting emotional over your job. Why can’t you find a normal job, like your sister?”
Cheyenne had just sighed. She knew most people didn’t understand what she did or why she did it, but she’d always hoped her family would come to understand and support, rather than mock, her.
She wished she was closer to her sister, but ever since they’d been little, Karen had been ultra-competitive with her. Cheyenne never understood it because she couldn’t care less about competing with her sister, but since Cheyenne had been a “surprise” when Karen had been five, she supposed the adjustment of being an only child to being the big sister of a baby, hadn’t been a smooth one.
Karen was a paralegal to a criminal lawyer in town and Cheyenne knew her mom loved to brag to her friends about her “successful” daughter. Cheyenne had learned to keep her hurt about how her mom treated her to herself. There was no use trying to change her now, she’d never understand.
The phone rang, startling Cheyenne out of her reverie, and her heart rate immediately skyrocketed. There was no way to tell what kind of situation she’d be trying to help the caller with. She pushed “pause” on her movie, and picked up the phone.
Chapter Two
Faulkner “Dude” Cooper stared stonily at the woman behind the counter at the gas station. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was paying for the gas he’d just put in his car, as well as a coffee and six pack of doughnuts. Hell, breakfast of champions it wasn’t, but he’d just run ten miles and lifted weights for half an hour. Six measly doughnuts wasn’t going to hurt him. He’d pulled his wallet out of his pocket and reached in to pull out a twenty dollar bill. Dude hadn’t thought about his hand, he’d gotten used to working around the missing parts of his fingers.
He looked up just in time to see the woman looking at his hand in horror. Dude sighed and held out the bill impatiently, waiting for her to take it.
He should be used to the reactions his hand got, and for the most part he was, but every now and then it still caught him by surprise. Dude’s teammates on his Navy SEAL team didn’t give a shit about his hand, and their women were just as easy going about it. Thinking about it, Dude realized that not once had any of them acted like his hand was repulsive. That thought was enough to let him ignore the looks, like the one the cashier was giving him.
Just to be perverse, Dude held out his left hand for his change, forcing the woman to once again look at his mangled hand. He smirked at her with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes and pocketed the change. Shaking his head, Dude grabbed up his snack and coffee cup, and headed back out to his car.
He stuck the doughnuts under his chin, and opened his door with his now-free hand. Dude snagged the sugary snack from its resting place in his throat and sat down in the driver’s seat. He took a sip of the coffee, grimaced at the taste of burnt convenience store sludge that tried to pass itself off as coffee, and started the engine. He drove forward and out of the parking lot.
“I bet she would’ve acted differently if she knew I was a SEAL,” Dude thought bitterly to himself. He shook his head. He was getting more and more maudlin as the days went on. He had to shake himself out of it.
He pulled up outside of Wolf and Ice’s house. Ice never failed to cheer him up. The two had met when the plane they’d been in had been hijacked. Ice had smelled the drug in the ice in the drinks they’d been served, and Wolf, Mozart, and Abe had managed to take out the terrorists. Of course the FBI double agent had figured out Ice had something to do with the plot being foiled, and arranged to have her kidnapped and tortured.
After she’d spent too much time in the hands of the terrorists, the team had been able to rescue her, but it had been touch and go for a while. Ice had been Dude’s introduction into what real love was. His own family hadn’t been the touchy-feely type and he’d always felt as if he’d let them down. His parents wanted him to go to college, but he’d decided to enter the military instead. They’d wanted him to choose the Marines, and he’d gone into the Navy. They’d wanted him to be a doctor, he’d chosen the SEALs. Dude didn’t go home much anymore. He only felt awkward and uncomfortable, knowing he’d disappointed them.
Dude left the crappy cup of coffee in the holder in the car and headed toward the front door. He smiled when it was thrown open before he could even knock.
“Faulkner!”
Dude went back on a foot as a blonde dynamo threw herself into his arms. He smiled, and mock-chastised her. “Jesus, Summer, take it easy on an old man would ya? And how many times do I have to tell you to call me Dude?”
“Whatever! I’m not going to use that ridiculous name. I don’t care if you were a champion surfer in high school. You are not a ‘Dude’ and I won’t call you that! And you’re not old! If you’re old, I’m absolutely ancient.” It was an old joke between the two of them. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a while.”
“How are you?” Dude asked seriously.
“I’m good.”
“No, how are you?” Dude used his “I’m in control voice” knowing Summer wouldn’t be able to resist telling him what he needed to know. Summer had been through hell at the hands of a serial killer. Dude had been just a second too late, or he would’ve been the one to have killed him. Wolf had pulled the trigger before Dude or Benny could get their k-bars out and slit Hurst’s throat.
“I’m okay, Faulkner. I swear,” Summer told him before hugging him again.
“All right, come on, let’s get off the front porch and get inside.”
Summer grabbed Dude’s mangled left hand and towed him into the house. If he hadn’t already been rejected that day, he probably wouldn’t even have noticed. He marveled at the fact Summer didn’t even flinch. She’d never, not once, been disgusted at the sight or feel of his hand. That thought made Dude feel slightly better, and gave him hope that there were other women out there that would feel the same.
They walked into the kitchen where Wolf, Ice, and Mozart were sitting around the table. Summer let go of his hand and immediately went to Mozart. He pulled her into his side and curled his hand around her waist. Mozart kissed the side of her head, and Dude smiled as Summer put one hand around her man’s shoulder, and the other curled around his at her waist.
“Hey, Dude. Glad you could make it.” Mozart greeted his teammate with honest enthusiasm.
“You know I feel like a fifth wheel around you guys.”
“Whatever,” Caroline said, rolling her eyes. “We love when you and Kason hang out with us. Just because you’re single doesn’t mean we don’t want you around.”
“I know, I was teasing.” Dude tried to put sincerity into his words, but was afraid they fell flat when he saw the worried looks in his friends’ eyes.
Dude pulled out a chair and settled into it at the table.
“What’s for dinner, Wolf?” Dude asked, knowing the man was probably grilling up some sort of meat on hi
s new fancy grill in the backyard.
“New York Strip Steaks for us and grilled chicken for the ladies.”
“Awesome, don’t want to waste the meat on the women.”
“Hey!” Summer grumbled, scowling at Dude.
“Kidding!”
Everyone laughed and relaxed. Dude really enjoyed hanging out with his friends. Somehow they made all his other worries and concerns disappear.
The group spent the rest of the evening laughing and talking about nothing in particular. By the time Dude left, he’d forgotten the feelings of rejection he’d momentarily felt earlier that evening.
Chapter Three
“Just another boring day in my life,” thought Cheyenne as she pushed her cart around the grocery store. She was in day two of her four days off in a row. She’d slept in that morning and decided to get the grocery shopping out of the way. She hated to cook and usually ate herself out of house and home before forcing herself to go to the store. She lived on packaged food and easy to make processed food. She had no inclination to learn to cook. Cheyenne figured she was somehow missing the “cooking gene” or whatever it was that made other women want to learn how to make delicious meals.
Besides that, Karen was an excellent cook, it was just one more thing her mom used to measure her against her sister, and Cheyenne always came out the loser. Cheyenne mentally shrugged. It wasn’t as if she had anyone to cook for anyway.
She wished she had a best friend, or even a good friend to hang out with, but after Cheyenne graduated from high school, she lost touch with the few friends she did have. Oh she went out with people from work when they could all get off work at the same time, and she’d honestly call them her friends, but she didn’t have that one special woman to hang out with that a lot of other people had. She’d always wanted a best friend, but she was happy with the casual friends she did have.