DARE: A Bad Boy Romance (28 page)

He didn’t get to use them. The shooter dove over the top of the table, landing on Dare. He slammed a knee into Dare’s face, then kept on kicking him in the ribs and the face while he was down. Who the hell
was
this guy?

Desperate to gain his footing, Dare pulled out one of his throwing knives and drove it into the side of the man’s knee. It didn’t topple him, but it made him cry out and clutch his wound. That brief reprieve was all a Marine needed. Dare shot him through the head with a 9mm Beretta round.

The final third of the rec room was fully lit as he approached. A row of punching bags lay flat on the floor. Twin ropes hung down from the ceiling. A dark, wet patch on the floor beneath them suggested something really sadistic had taken place here. Every inch of Dare tensed. Hate and shame and disgust rippled through him. He’d taken too long getting here. The idea of Holly being slung up like a slab of meat and tortured down here for hours almost made him gag.

Jesus, what have these bastards
done
?

Suddenly there she was, curled up in a shivering ball at Silva’s feet. He was crouching over her as he held a blade to her throat. Holly didn’t even look up at Dare. She was staring at the floor near his feet, shaking like he’d never seen anyone shake before.

What have they done?

“Bowden, listen to me, okay. It doesn’t have to end like this.” Big bad Silva, getting ready to plead for his life—something he’d thrown away the second his men had forced her into the sedan outside Jessica’s house. “I don’t want to slice her thro—”

Dare shot him in the shoulder, disabling his knife arm. Then he emptied a full clip into the son of a bitch for everything he’d done to Holly. Whatever it was, it had to have broken her this time. He didn’t want to think that, but it was inevitable. Her body was covered with cuts, her underwear soaked with blood. Christ. After all she’d been through with Trey.
No one
could go through shit like this and ever be the same again.

She winced when he picked her up, then sobbed in his arms. He did his best to comfort her, to reassure her, to tell her that he loved her, but still she couldn’t look at him. Was it fear? Shame? Or was it that she’d lost all hope of ever escaping this torture room?

After checking their exit route was clear, and shooting out
all
the lights on the east side of the compound to cover their retreat, Dare opened the front gates and carried her through. He was tired, but he didn’t care. He’d have carried her a hundred miles if he’d had to. Holly didn’t say a word. And though he knew in his heart she would never be the same after this, and that he’d probably lost her, he was glad, no, proud—prouder than he’d ever been—that he’d been able to keep his word.

This might be the end of their life together, but at least, for the first time in his life, he’d discovered what it was like to love. It was probably more than a man who hurt and killed people for a living deserved, but it was his, and nothing could take that away from him.

***

On their way into the hospital, she finally spoke to him in a hoarse, broken voice. “Don’t go.”

“Never.”

“I think—” Her voice failed her, and she suffered through a racking cough. “I think we should take a trip…to the beach. You know, when I’m better.”

“Done. Which beach did you have in mind?”

She shrugged with her eyes. The rest of her body was in too much pain. “Just one thing.” She laid her palm flat against his chest—right on the bruised spot where his vest had caught the bullet. “You—you’ll have to teach me to swim.”

“You never learned to swim?”

“No. I think it’s about time I did. It’s about time I did lot of things.”

“Well, if you’re not swimming after your first lesson, you can have your money back. Guaranteed.”

She sobbed gently as she nodded at him. “They told me you were dead. I thought I wasn’t going to see you again.”

Dare held her as softly as he could, realizing she’d somehow managed to stay strong despite having nothing left to hope for. Unbelievable. She’d been through hell and had somehow come out more loveable than ever on the other side. Swimming lessons? Thinking ahead to a new challenge before she’d even recovered from this one?

He’d never find another woman like Holly Watkins.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, “until you’re ready to come with me.”

She stroked his cheek and managed a weak, quivering smile. Before they could kiss, the nurses arrived to escort her into the examination room. She looked over her shoulder, though, on the way in, perhaps to make sure he was still there, that he was real, that he really
had
rescued her.

He blew her a kiss. As soon as she was gone, he went outside and started dialing. First Finn, then the police, then Jessica. By the time he’d finished, he was dog-tired. He considered sleeping in the Jeep, but he wanted to be there for Holly when she needed him. So he grabbed a blanket from the trunk and put three chairs together in the hospital waiting room.

Almost as soon as he put his head down, he drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep.

“You know what? You’ve handled yourself like a pro.” Dare stood tall in the water, watching over her. The gentle turquoise swells tickled his waist as Holly swam around him. Her confidence was growing in the water, but hot damn, he wasn’t helping her concentration with his naked upper body glistening in the sun like that. Every woman on Reduit Beach was ogling him right now. A gaggle of teenage hotties in bikinis had even come over to be near him in the shallows. They swooned whenever he glanced their way.

“A pro? You think so?” She swam up to him and wrapped herself around his waist, so he could hoist her up into his arms. It was easily her favorite part of these swimming lessons he’d been giving her for the past three days in St. Lucia. It made her feel special, wanted. And it made every other woman on the island jealous. “It is getting easier,” she added.

“That isn’t what I meant,” he said. “Well, not only that.”

“It isn’t?” She kissed him full on the lips, quickly losing herself in the heat of his passion. He slid a hand inside the back of her bikini bottoms, exposing half of her butt. She pulled it out, readjusted her bottoms, and at the same whipped her head round to see who was watching. Christ, e
veryone.
Dare laughed hard when he saw how red her cheeks had become. Determined to get him back, she climbed up onto his shoulders and toppled him backwards into the sea. She went under too, but at least she’d gotten the mighty Dare Bowden off his feet, something many of the toughest fighters in the world had failed to do. In fact, he completely upended in the water and wound up with his legs sticking up above the waves.

Holly laughed her ass off and clapped when he resurfaced. The gaggle of teens giggled as he said, “Right, my turn,” and stalked her into deeper water. She swam as fast as she could, cutting through waves, but he caught her in just a handful of strokes. “You’re mine.”

She screamed when he dove under and surfaced with her on his shoulder. Dare gently slapped her ass, then cradled her in his arms as he carried her back into the shallows, just like he’d done that night in the Mojave. He’d gotten her out of deep water and taken her to safety.

“I meant you’ve handled everything in these past few months like a pro,” he told her. “The way you recovered, the way you handled yourself in the trial, the way you’ve put your life back together. Seriously…I’m proud of you. It took guts to even make it through all that, but you faced it all down and didn’t even blink. Impressive.”

“Aw, you’re sweet. But do you want to know something? There was no way I’d have ever given in to those bastards. Trey gave in. He was the coward. I know that now. And there was no way I was going to go down that path. It ends with you hating yourself. At least when you stay strong and stick to your principles, you go down knowing you didn’t give in. I think…if I learned anything from Trey…that was it. That there are no shortcuts to being the best you can be. Sometimes the right path is the hardest path, and that’s alright. It gets you there in the end, and the best thing about it is you don’t lose yourself along the way. I think people forget that part. I know Trey did.”

“Amen to that.” He kissed her cheek. “So how does it feel to have buried Delgado and his bloodsuckers like that? Richard reckons it’s going to change the way the whole sport is governed. The financing, the vetting, the medical scrutiny: it’s opened up that can of worms we talked about.”

“We had no idea, did we, that our first coffee shop chat was going to have such an impact.”

“Um, I kinda did,” he admitted. “I was wanting to nail you the whole time. There was never any going back after that.”

“You’re incorrigible!”

“Babe, you have no idea.”

***

That evening, while they were dining in their usual private cabana on the edge of the beach, Dare kept looking out to the ocean. He was fidgety and hadn’t been himself throughout the meal. He had been in and out of the conversation. His wandering mind wasn’t worrying her especially—he’d been through a lot in his life, and there were some things she knew he couldn’t tell her, things from the war—but it was rather killing the romantic vibe he’d gone to all this trouble to create.

“Everything okay?” she asked over dessert—a delicious ice cream sundae.

A strange, almost nervous frown etched onto his gorgeous bronzed face. Nervous—not exactly a word you’d use to describe Dare Bowden. Something was troubling him, something he didn’t want to tell her.

“Is it about us?” As soon as she’d asked the question, Holly wished she hadn’t. Why? Because he nodded like a little boy who was about to admit to doing something very wrong. He chewed his lip, took a big swig of wine, and then sucked in a deep breath. All very odd and puzzling behavior for him. What was with him tonight?

“There’s something I need to say.” He suddenly got up, stepped toward her. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to say this.” He dipped into his pocket. Holly thought he was retrieving his wallet to pay for the meal, so he could say his piece and make a quick getaway. So it couldn’t be good. He hesitated, closed his eyes, nodded to himself.

“What is it?” she asked again.

He pulled a small purple box out of his pocket, then got down on one knee.

“Oh my God!” Holly put a hand to her chest and gaped down at him. This was not only unexpected, it was
surreal—
in the most amazing way imaginable.

Is it really happening?

“I’ve never asked for anything in my life,” he said, “and that’s because I’ve never wanted anything this much. I can’t promise you a quiet life, but I can promise it will always be up to us how we live it. I’ll never ask you to be someone you’re not, the same way I’ll never be anything other than the guy you fell in love with. I promise to always protect you for the rest of my life. I want to spend that life with you, and I want us to have a family of our own.” He opened the box, revealing a blue diamond ring that caught the candlelight and seemed from another world, a magic world, one she’d only imagined until now. “I love you, Holly Watkins. Will you marry me?”

Tearing up, she glimpsed the candle flame flickering in the corner of her eye. A warm, steady breeze blew across the beach; everything in the cabana seemed to react just a fraction, for a split-second. Then all was still again. And the sound of the waves was the sound of a dream fulfilled.

She said yes.

He scooped her up and carried her away her across the sand, far away where there were no lights and no memory. Only each other to look forward to. They made love on the beach, and it was unforgettable.

THE END

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