by Kate Kinsley
“Vomiting isn’t uncommon for a concussion, but try to give me some warning, okay? I’m not a fan of having anyone lose their cookies in my lap, even my girlfriend.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, careful not to tug too hard. “The ambulance should be here in a few minutes.”
Sasha rested her snout on Chanel’s shoulder.
Max patted her head. “You’ve got yourself a good dog here, even if she did break my fence again.”
“What do you mean?” Chanel asked.
“When Sasha came—”
“No. You said girlfriend. What did you mean by your girlfriend?”
He leaned over and pressed his lips against her mouth. “I should have never let you break up with me to begin with. I’ve been miserable ever since.”
“We were never an item.”
“Yes, we were,” he said, fanning her face. “And I want to get back together, only I want more. I want to take you to the company picnic next week. I want you to spend the night at my house, every night. Hell. I think you and your dog and cats should move in with me. We all belong together.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Milian barked twice.
“I think a woman in my condition shouldn’t be making any rash decisions.”
“I’m not going to let you off the hook that easily,” Max said. “Because I love you, Chanel.”
“Good.” Chanel reached up and palmed his cheek. “I love you too. And I think a concussion is going to need a lifetime supply of baths, at the very least.”
Thank you for taking the time to read Max & Milian. For more information on the Aegis Network, please check out the SARICH BROTHERS series.
Also By Jen Talty
BRAND NEW SERIES!
With Me In Seattle
INVESTIGATE WITH ME
The Monroes
COLOR ME YOURS
COLOR ME SMART
COLOR ME FREE
COLOR ME LUCKY
COLOR ME ICE
It’s all in the Whiskey
JOHNNIE WALKER
GEORGIA MOON
JACK DANIELS
JIM BEAM
WHISKEY SOUR
Search and Rescue
PROTECTING AINSLEY
PROTECTING CLOVER
PROTECTING OLYMPIA
NY State Trooper Series
IN TWO WEEKS
DARK WATER
DEADLY SECRETS
MURDER IN PARADISE BAY
TO PROTECT HIS OWN
DEADLY SEDUCTION
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS
NY State Trooper Novella
HIS DEADLY PAST
THE CORKSCREW KILLER
Brand New Novella for the First Responders series
A spin off from the NY State Troopers series
PLAYING WITH FIRE
PRIVATE CONVERSATION
THE RIGHT GROOM
AFTER THE FIRE
The Men of Thief Lake
REKINDLED
DESTINY’S DREAM
Federal Investigators
JANE DOE’S RETURN
THE BUTTERFLY MURDERS
The Aegis Network
THE LIGHTHOUSE
HER LAST HOPE
THE LAST FLIGHT
THE RETURN HOME
THE MATRIARCH
The Collective Order
THE LOST SISTER
THE LOST SOLDIER
THE LOST SOUL
THE LOST CONNECTION
A Spin-Off Series: Witches Academy Series
THE NEW ORDER
Special Forces Operation Alpha
BURNING DESIRE
BURNING KISS
BURNING SKIES
BURNING LIES
BURNING HEART
BURNING BED
REMEMBER ME ALWAYS
The Brotherhood Protectors
Out of the Wild
ROUGH JUSTICE
ROUGH AROUND THE EDGES
ROUGH RIDE
ROUGH EDGE
ROUGH BEAUTY
The Brotherhood Protectors
The Saving Series
SAVING LOVE
SAVING MAGNOLIA
Holiday Romances
A CHRISTMAS GETAWAY
ALASKAN CHRISTMAS
WHISPERS
Heroes & Heroines on the Field
TAKING A RISK
TEE TIME
The Twilight Crossing Series
THE BLIND DATE
SPRING FLING
SUMMER’S GONE
WINTER WEDDING
Witches and Werewolves
LADY SASS
ALL THAT SASS
About Jen Talty
Welcome to my World! I'm a USA Today Bestseller of Romantic Suspense, Contemporary Romance, and Paranormal Romance.
I first started writing while carting my kids to one hockey rink after the other, averaging 170 games per year between 3 kids in 2 countries and 5 states. My first book, IN TWO WEEKS was originally published in 2007. In 2010 I helped form a publishing company (Cool Gus Publishing) with NY Times Bestselling Author Bob Mayer where I ran the technical side of the business through 2016.
I'm currently enjoying the next phase of my life...the empty NESTER! My husband and I spend our winters in Jupiter, Florida and our summers in Rochester, NY. We have three amazing children who have all gone off to carve out their places in the world, while I continue to craft stories that I hope will make you readers feel good and put a smile on your face.
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Zook
Bastien Long served six years in the Army as a military policeman and has the scars to prove it. After medically retiring, Bastien went back home to Baltimore as his friends and his former working dog, Zook, continued their duties overseas.
With Zook on his last deployment in Afghanistan before retiring to Baltimore with his former handler, Bastien must find a way to navigate his PTSD and depression to not only support his human and four legged friends who are still overseas, but to find his new path in life as well.
Chapter One
Sergeant Bastien Long wasn’t one for decorating. A few band posters here and there on the walls of his childhood home during his wild days in a suburb of Baltimore. Much less than that after his six-year stint in the Army when individuality and outspokenness were replaced with drills, tactical manuals, and call signs. But his Purple Heart, displayed in a beautiful frame alongside the official certificate, did adorn that sparse bedroom wall, the room as impersonal and barren as the rest of the small apartment he had lived in for nearly two years. A photo hung beside the medal he never wanted—a soldier and his German Shepard, both of them smiling.
A cell phone sat on a dusty nightstand, pill bottles and a McDonald’s bag beside it. Bastien wasn’t always so messy. That’s another thing the Army worked out of him, along with the individuality. But he found that when his mind wouldn’t shut up, and the thoughts began to creep to places he’d rather them not go, the trash can was just too far away to care, just as the fast food was so much easier to grab instead of making something himself. Though he didn’t do it often these days, he had gotten pretty good at cooking in the Army, trying out different recipes from Texas and Germany, the places where he’d been stationed. And he even picked up a few things during his time overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He had shaggy hair by that point, three years out from getting hit in the face by a mess of shrapnel. Two years out from his medical retirement and the move back home to Baltimore that left him in such a dark place. His beard was in much need of a trimming. He had a rugged handsomeness though, intensified by the colorf
ul tattoos all over his body. His lean torso, twenty pounds of muscle less than the smiling Staff Sergeant in the photo on the wall beside him, was stretched out across the bed. He worked a hand to the phone, checked the time. 12 pm.
He sighed heavily, eyeing the background of his phone. It was a different photo than the one on his wall, but mostly the same. A dreary desert landscape behind him, his body adorned in uniform and body armor, the military police patch on his left shoulder, a German Shepard beside him.
Zook beside him.
Zook, or Bazooka Joe as he was named when he was a pup going through training on account of him sticking to the handler’s side like gum on a shoe, wasn’t like most of his fellow dogs in training. He was the runt of the litter, and his early projections weren’t good. Fifty percent of the dogs who enter training don’t make it as military working dogs after all, and most of the dogs like Zook—the runts, the easily excitable and distracted—end up as therapy dogs for hospitals and retirement homes. They don’t become Explosive Detector Dogs. But that’s exactly what Zook became, and the reports on his progress show a dog who seemed to excel more with each passing week. The early excitement and distractibility became nonexistent, and though he was smaller than his fellow graduates, he had a nose that surpassed them all.
By the time Bastien received Zook, the beautiful German Shepherd was a lean, mean bomb sniffing machine when he was in working mode, and a lover with a heart of gold and a penchant for vegetables and peanut butter when he was off duty. Bastien worked his first few years as a Patrol Explosive Detector Dog handler—or PEDD as the Army decided they’d call them, something Bastien never used for obvious reasons—without a dog of his own. He worked with many of his superiors’ dogs and fell in love with each and every one of them—he’d always been an animal lover—but getting Zook was the highlight of his career, and even his life at that point. Zook and Bastien bonded immediately as they prepped for their first deployment together, to Baghdad, Iraq in 2007 as part of President Bush’s surge.
Bastien found himself more concerned with Zook’s safety than his own after several close encounters. He found it interesting how one could gradually lose their sense of self-preservation over months of combat, gunfights with ghosts, and bombs buried in every conceivable place. Yet, the preservation of his dog, his companion, never waned, and the anxiety he felt over something happening to Zook become his biggest stressor in the middle of a war zone. He had no family back home, no girlfriend impatiently awaiting his return. He had only Zook, and he couldn’t imagine a world without his best friend.
He and Zook would make it out of that deployment safely, and they would enjoy some well-earned time off for the better part of a year. But by late 2008, his unit was preparing for another deployment, this time to Afghanistan, and in a strange way, Bastien was excited. He had enjoyed his time away from the war but found himself yearning for the adrenaline rush that came with risking your life every moment of every day. He and Zook would be doing what they loved doing, ensuring the safety of their fellow service members, checking cars and people and bases for explosives, of which they found many. But sometimes, threats made it through … and bombs denoted and people were wounded or killed.
Zook was taking a day off on that fateful day when Bastien’s destiny took a jarring turn. Bastien didn’t mind that the dogs got days off when the soldiers did not, but he did find it funny. He and his fellow dog handlers were closely monitored in their handling of the working dogs and mandatory breaks and days off were the norm. Bastien found it humorous that Zook hated the days off and would whine when Bastien prepared for a mission without him.
For this mission, Bastien was helping to man a checkpoint with a few of his fellow squad leaders and his teammate and best friend, Staff Sergeant Gabriel Malcolm, as an infantry company conducted a mass raid of a neighborhood in the Arghandab District, searching for a high-value target. Malcolm’s dog Chewy was with them, as were several other soldiers. The day was quiet as many of the locals stayed indoors, but several cars and people approached, and they were searched by the MPs and sniffed by Chewy before they were told to turn around and go the other way, back home preferably.
As Bastien brushed his teeth and shamefully looked himself over in the mirror, he thought about where his life had gone. He had tried a semester of school—just basic gen ed courses—and felt like an outsider in that place. Older than most of his peers and having lived vastly different experiences, he found himself changing; he called it ‘hermit-crabbing.’ He felt alone in the world, and instead of putting himself out there and changing things, he shut down more. He didn’t like it, but he accepted it.
And with this acceptance came more dangerous things, most of all, a sense of worthlessness. Like he could never again be what he once was.
He grazed the scar that trailed from his forehead to his chin with a rough finger, disgust taking over his features, his jaw clenched and grinding. He splashed water on his wild black hair, exposing the additional scar across his scalp, many tones lighter than his natural color.
In the midst of this thought storm his cell phone rang from the nightstand. He walked to the bathroom doorway and eyed it with concern. His old unit—his friends—had been deployed for six months, and they had six more months to go. And as long as they were over there, a ringing phone posed potential heartbreak.
He rushed from the bathroom to his bedside and grabbed the phone, looking at it.
He could tell from the number it was from the call center where his old unit was stationed. They were always absurdly long, numbers you wouldn’t answer if you didn’t know any better.
He pressed answer and put the phone to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hey, shithead, did I catch you just waking up?”
The tone of his old friend Gabriel’s voice and his use of this particular term of endearment calmed Bastien’s nerves. “No, I’ve been up for a while now,” he lied.
“Uh huh,” Gabriel said, the line crackling. “How’s it going, man? It’s been a little bit.”
Bastien scoffed. “Shit, I’m going. You’re the one in a combat zone. How the hell are you doing?”
“Pffft, it’s a different war than what we’re used to, man. Afghanistan has changed ... a lot. Hey, Zook’s here by the way. Say hi!”
“Hey, Zooker!” Bastien said enthusiastically. “I miss you, dude!”
Gabriel chuckled. “His ears are all perked up and his head is sideways like, ‘What the fuck?! I hear him, but where the hell is he?’ Too funny, man.”
“How is he doing? Ready for retirement with me in Baltimore?”
“He’s getting there, bro. I think this will be his last ride before he hangs ’em up. You already work out all the paperwork for that to happen?” he asked.
Bastien nodded. It was just about the only thing he had accomplished over the past few months. A year was more like it. “All taken care of with Mission K-9 Rescue. Just waiting on the old boy to retire and they’ll take care of everything … you sure you’re alright with it?”
“Of course! Like I told you, I’m shooting for Sergeant Major one day. That means more
field time, more training, more deployments. He’ll be happier with you.” Gabriel chuckled. “Besides, he likes you more.”
Bastien laughed. “That’s because I give him treats.”
“Made him lazy is what you did,” Gabriel responded through a laugh of his own.
“Well, he’ll fit in just fine over here in Maryland with me, then. Lazy is the name of the game in this household.”
“Oh yeah? Still haven’t made it back to school?”
Bastien scoffed. “I don’t know if I ever will, Gabe. I don’t think I have what it takes. It’s a lot different than the army. The kids in my classes are different. They don’t get me. And I sure as fuck don’t get them.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Of course, it’s different, man. It’s college. You just gotta see it through.”
“I probably would if I
had any idea what I wanted to do.”
“You working yet, at least?”
“Hell no,” Bastien responded, his lip curled in disgust. “I’m medically retired, fucker.”
There was a moment of hesitation over the crackling line and then Gabriel replied, “Last time we talked you mentioned taking the corrections officer exam.”
Bastien took a moment. He sat on the edge of his bed and his eyes flitted to the Purple Heart, to the picture of him and Zook. “I don’t know. Just changed my mind.”
“Okay, man. That’s cool. But you know I’m gonna hound you about it every call. You know what happened to Anderson. You know how it started. I don’t want you falling into that shit.”
“I’m not going to kill myself,” Bastien scolded, his brows furrowing, muscles tense. “And I’m no druggie.”
“Hey, I’m not saying you are, man. Not saying that at all,” Gabriel said calmly. “I just worry about you. I worry about all my brothers who are back at that civilian grind. It’s not an easy thing moving on. I bet you a million bucks Anderson didn’t see himself as a druggie when he got out. Probably wasn’t thinking about suicide either.”
Gabriel let those painful words sit between them for a moment, a silence that felt like a knot in Bastien’s throat, and a kick to his gut.
“Just give yourself some time and patience,” Gabriel said, his voice nurturing and warm. “You’ll figure out what’s next when the good Lord means for you to.”
Bastien bit his nails. His breathing intensified, and his teeth clenched.
“You there?” Gabriel asked, concern in his words that made Bastien uncomfortable.
“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, the line cut out,” Bastien responded, and he was proud of his performance.