There were few moments in Helene’s life that could rival how mortifying being offered the sex talk at twenty-six had been. “Please. This is not necessary. I know how it works. I mean, I’ve been watching animals procreate since I was in diapers.” That had sounded strange even to her own ears so she added, “Not that I watch. I just mean that I’ve accidentally come across animals—” She stopped there. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”
Her mother had shot her father a sad look. “Honey, your dad and I think you need to go out into the world for a little while. This rescue was our dream, not yours.”
“I love it here,” Helene had protested.
Her father had shaken his head. “You can’t know that until you’ve compared it to somewhere else. We were selfish. We shouldn’t have let you choose keeping our dream over your dream for college. Your friends have moved on. They travel. Some are married. Nothing has changed for you except your phone rings less and less.”
“I’m happy here.”
“No,” her mother said quietly, “you feel safe here, but Lenny, there’s a whole big world out there you’ve never seen. I’ve spoken to my brother in Aruba, and he said he has a guesthouse you could stay in for a while. You’ve never taken a real vacation, and he knows a lot of people. Worst case, you come back with a beautiful tan and are able to tell me all about how my brother is doing. Best case, you discover your dream.”
“This is my dream,” Helene had insisted. “And you need me.”
“We’re doing well enough to hire a couple people. Go, Lenny. Find yourself.”
“I’m not lost.”
“You’re going,” her father had said.
It had taken a while for her to adjust to the idea of leaving the rescue, but once she had, the trip had begun to feel like an adventure rather than a shove out the door. I am the luckiest daughter in the world to have parents like them. Helene turned away from the mirror and practically skipped down the stairs. I needed this. She couldn’t imagine a lifetime of doing nothing, but her weeks on the island had been good for her. At first she’d missed her parents and the rescue so much she’d been unable to enjoy herself, but that feeling had been replaced with euphoria. I can go back to school and get my degree if I want. I can finally become a veterinarian. My parents were right, it’s time to find myself.
Helene knocked twice on the door of her uncle’s mansion before letting herself in, beating the staff. They smiled at her indulgently.
Her uncle’s home office door opened, and he gave her the same look. “You didn’t call.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, my God, I forgot. I’m so sorry. I was thinking about how grateful I am to be here, and everything else fell right out of my head.”
He gave her a brief hug. “I suppose that’s as good of an excuse as any. Come, let’s eat.”
They sat across from each other at one end of a table long enough to seat twenty people. As it always did, a bounty of food and beverages appeared, delivered discretely by staff who seemed to magically disappear when not needed. Her uncle asked her about her day and listened with a smile as she described the absolute joy of hours on his private beach.
“Stop before you make me feel guilty for asking you for a favor.”
“Are you kidding, Uncle Clarence? If there is some way I can repay you for three of the best weeks of my life, just say it. I’ll do anything.”
He gave her hand a gentle pat. “You’re a good girl, Helene.”
The expression in his eyes had Helene asking, “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing too serious.” He took a sip of his wine. “I’ve been having trouble with something at the clinic.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“It’s a small island and my clinic competes with the main hospital. Competition in a market like this is not always appreciated.”
Helene’s mouth rounded, and she leaned forward to grip his hand. “Count me in for whatever you need.”
His smile returned. “Shouldn’t you wait until you know what I need?”
“Uncle Clarence, you do so much for other people—you’ve done so much for me—it would be my honor to help.”
“Politics, especially here, can be tricky to navigate. Someone is trying to dig up any mistake anyone at my clinic has ever made to try to smear my reputation. They’ve gone as far as to bribe people in my records department. They didn’t find anything.”
“Because there’s nothing to find,” Helene said adamantly.
He pressed his lips together briefly then said, “When someone wants to find dirt, they’ll keep digging until they either find some or find something they can twist into what they want. I need someone in my records office that I trust. Someone who can’t be bought.”
“And that’s what you want me to do? Run your records office?” The idea of clerical work when all of her experience had been manual in nature was daunting, but she knew she was up to the challenge. “What I don’t know how to do, I’m sure I can learn.”
“You would simply be my eyes and ears; how well you file is irrelevant. Do what you can while you’re there, and who knows, maybe you’ll decide you like working in an office.”
She rushed around the table to give him a hug. He could dress it up however he wanted, but she didn’t believe he actually needed her at the clinic. Like her parents, he was nudging her on her way. It wouldn’t hurt to put some time in at the clinic before getting back on the path toward animal medicine. Who knows? I may end up wanting to treat people. Sure I’m starting late, but my uncle’s career took off later in his life. He is living proof that anything is possible.
“When do I start?” she asked, giving him a tight squeeze.
He laughed and gave her shoulder a pat. “How about tomorrow?”
“Perfect,” she said with a huge grin and returned to her seat.
And it was perfect. Not only was she in paradise, but she’d found a way to repay the person who’d made it possible for her to be there. What was better than that?
Chapter Two
Present Day
There was nothing sinister about the bold glass façade of Stiles Clinic. Rather than mimicking the unassuming white and blue architecture of the island’s hospital, the clinic looked as if it could be dropped on Malibu Beach. Dressed in a white collared shirt and tan slacks, Andrew sat on a bench across the street from the clinic and blended in with the combination of tourists and natives meandering past. He held his phone in front of himself as if reading texts, but his attention remained focused on the building before him.
He could have charged into the building and asked to see someone in the records department, but his years as a scout sniper taught him patience and the value of reconnaissance. After watching the place for several days, he was confident that nothing out of the ordinary was happening there, at least not that week. He still wasn’t sold on the benefit of being there at all, but it was better than what he’d been doing a month ago.
Thankfully, Emmitt had acted as a buffer between him and his family since then. The man’s ability to lie convincingly when necessary was impressive. Covert special assignments? Genius. The last month, according to Emmitt, Andrew had gone through a debriefing and then a series of classified training programs that required radio silence on all sides.
Emmitt hadn’t completely lied. Andrew had been in training, but it was not government sponsored. The first week had been a hellish detox in which Andrew had cursed Emmitt daily. What kept Andrew working with him, however, had been Emmitt’s loyalty to not only him but the Marines in general. He’d done enough time in the Corps to understand what Andrew had faced when he left.
“You replaced one addiction with another, Andrew. What we’re going to do is get you your old addiction back,” Emmitt had said after the worst of the detox was over.
“I’m not an addict.”
“Yes, you are. All Marines are to some extent. Before you came home, you ran three to five miles every day. You hit the gym almost
as much. Natural endorphins are a type of high. You feel like shit right now, not only because you’ve got shit up here,” he’d pointed to his own head, “but also your body is missing those endorphins. You’ve got nothing making you feel good. So starting today, we’re running.”
Every cell in Andrew’s body had screamed no, but he’d said, “Bring it.”
“A week from now, you’ll be running again with a fifty-pound rucksack.”
“Sure,” Andrew had said, not completely able to imagine that happening when he still felt like road kill.
“You’ll do it every day until you can’t start your day without that run.”
When Andrew hadn’t immediately answered, Emmitt had added, “And I’ll be right there kicking your ass until that happens.”
That had brought a faint smile to Andrew’s lips. “Someone must be paying you well.”
“They paid me to find you, not do this shit. I could fly home now and still get paid.”
“Then go.”
“I will, as soon as your sorry ass is running a 5K without me.”
His steadfast determination reminded Andrew of what a platoon sergeant had said to him when he was sent on his first deployment. “I know all about your rich family and your fancy upbringing. None of that matters here. Look at the man next to you. You’d better be ready to give your life for him. I don’t give a shit what you came from or who you were before. You’re a Marine now, boy. A fraud can’t hide in combat.” It meant that bullets didn’t play favorites and money couldn’t buy courage, and that had been a challenge Andrew had embraced. Needed. Loyalty and character mattered. Money made people weak, and Andrew had grown up around an abundance of it. He’d turned his back on that life, though, and enlisted in the Marines as soon as he was old enough then spent every day proving he belonged there. His greatest fear in the beginning had been turning out like his father.
Although Dale Barrington was generally liked by all, Andrew had lost respect for him early on. When trouble had come to the family, Dale had chosen to leave politics rather than fight for his career. His infidelity had shaken the family, and Andrew had never forgiven his father for it. His mother, sweet as she’d always been, was fragile and unstable. The Corps was the family Andrew had identified with. He normally kept his visits home to a bare minimum. The less involved he was with his family’s drama, the simpler his life remained.
I didn’t turn out like Dad; I became someone worse.
So why am I here?
Because there is nothing else on my calendar and . . . I did feel lost without a mission. This gives me something to do. After Andrew had surfaced from his “classified operations,” he’d told Lance he was heading to Aruba to get the answers his brothers were looking for. Although Andrew had lacked interest in his deceased aunt’s journal, he’d read it. He’d also read over the file Lance had sent him that included ramblings from a private investigator.
Yes, doctors and nurses who had worked at the clinic twenty-nine years ago were no longer there. Big deal. Wouldn’t the same be true of any clinic nearly thirty years later?
The glass door of the clinic opened and Andrew lowered his phone to indulge in a part of his day he’d started looking forward to. A petite brunette in a conservative blue skirt and blouse strolled to the same picnic table she ate her lunch at each day. She was pretty in a wholesome, someone’s little sister kind of way. Her hair always blew wildly in her face, but that never seemed to bother her. She turned her face upward and closed her eyes briefly as if receiving a kiss from the sun.
Her killer body was chastely concealed from his view, but that didn’t stop him from imagining his hands gripping that perfect little ass of hers as he thrust into her. She had naturally full lips that she chewed while she opened each container of her lunch. It was a move that never failed to bring him to an uncomfortable level of arousal as he pictured exactly how good those lips would feel on him: trailing kisses down his stomach, wrapped around his cock, or parted while she cried out his name in climax.
At any other time in his life he would have acted on his attraction to her, but he wasn’t himself yet. Yes, his body was back in shape. Yes, he’d replaced alcohol with a long run each day, but all it did was take the edge off. His head wasn’t in a better place than it had been a month earlier. If a woman came to him he didn’t turn her away, but he didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. A good fuck could clear the mind temporarily, but he wasn’t looking for conversation before or afterward. Some women were okay with that. He had a feeling that little brunette would not be.
As she always did, she took out her phone and called someone who put a sweet smile on her face. If there’d been a way to sit closer and hear her voice he would have, but instead he read her lips and imagined.
Slowly, he was getting to know her. He would have bet his life the person on the other line wasn’t a man or, if it was, it wasn’t someone she was dating. Nothing about her body language or what he was able to catch of their conversations was flirtatious. She laughed and munched on her lunch, all the while telling the other person about her day. He didn’t understand why learning to use a computer system made her as happy as it seemed to, but he allowed himself this one distraction. He’d been watching the building for several days, and she was the most interesting person he’d seen go in or out of it—and not because she might have anything to do with his brother’s conspiracy theory. She was too young for that.
The door of the building opened again, this time for a tall thin man who scanned the area before spotting the brunette and heading toward her. Andrew’s eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses. He didn’t like the predatory smile on the other man’s face.
The man walked up and said something that surprised the brunette. She jumped and dropped her phone during her scramble to stand. He steadied her by taking hold of one of her arms, and the brunette blushed. Andrew’s hand fisted beside him, and he reminded himself that she was nothing to him.
She asked the man to join her, and Andrew growled when the man did. Without knowing a thing about the tall man, Andrew didn’t like him. He didn’t like the way he leaned in and touched her as he spoke. He didn’t like the shy smile she beamed at him.
Fuck, she’s pretty when she smiles.
Like a shark circling its target, Andrew knew the man sensed her innocence and was moving in to relieve her of it. He was too smooth. Too cocky. That man would suck the life right out of her before moving on to his next conquest.
The tall man made a show of looking at his watch then leaned forward and said something to her that made her eyes widen with surprise before she nodded. She was still smiling after he left, then she looked down at her feet and saw her phone. Her laugh rang out across the distance. He watched her lips closely, willing her to keep facing him so he wouldn’t miss a word.
“Did you hear that? Dr. Gunder just asked me out. Yes, a doctor. I love working here. I’m meeting so many incredible people. We’re going out tonight. I will. I promise. I’m sure we won’t be out late.”
She rolled her eyes skyward before adding, “Don’t worry, Mom. This isn’t my first date.” She made a face. “Wendy’s cousin. I went on a date with him. And then there was—can we not get into this? Let me enjoy the fact that a doctor just asked me out.” He missed a few words when she turned her face away, but she turned back a moment later. “I know what condoms are. Don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
Andrew sat forward in the bench, positive he must have lip read wrong. She sounded years younger than she looked. How innocent was she? No. She can’t be. She’s in her twenties. He shook his head.
“Now I’m sorry I told you, Mom. Don’t say anything to Dad. Of course I’m talking about the date. You didn’t tell him about the other thing, did you? Oh, God. Great. The two of you are giving me a complex. I know you just want me to be happy, but I am. Virginity is not a disease; I’m simply waiting for the right person.”
Andrew sat back on the bench and gave his b
ulging cock a firm lecture. This changes nothing.
It did, though. The recon part of the mission was done. It’d be a cold day in hell before Andrew sat and listened to his brunette describe doing anything with the lanky doctor. The thought made his stomach clench with possessive jealousy. He rose to his feet.
What’s wrong? I think he’s not good enough for her?
Do I think she’d be better with someone like me?
He strode toward the front of the building. She looked up, and her eyes followed him. He shook his head. Oh, honey, stick with your pasty doctor. He’s a much safer option.
With that, he walked into the clinic and asked if he could speak to someone in the records department. It was time to get some answers and move on.
Helene fanned her face with a hand after Mr. Muscles disappeared into the clinic entrance. He carried himself like an adult male animal who’d been born in the wild. To the novice eye, all lions in captivity looked the same, but there was a distinct difference between those who had been bottle-fed by humans and those who had taken down gazelles in the Serengeti. A wild lion not only had battle scars, there was also defiance in his gait. He could be caged or even shackled, but neither made him less dangerous. He’d fought and won against animals ten times his size. He feared nothing.
Mr. Muscles was definitely wild.
By comparison, Gil Gunder reminded her of a flamingo. The thought made Helene chuckle and chastise herself for thinking unkindly of a man she’d just agreed to go on a date with. What’s wrong with a brilliant, tall bird?
What would I have in common with Mr. Take My Breath Away?
At best, I’d be a speed bump on his way to another hunt.
Gil is a doctor, and I want to be a veterinarian. We’ll have a lot to talk about.
I wouldn’t even know what to say to Mr. Muscles.
Hi, you’re beautiful. Can I touch you?
That’s it.
That’s all I’d have.
Placing the uneaten portion of her lunch into her bag, Helene remembered her mother was still on the phone. “Sorry, Mom, I have to get back to work now.”