The Promise of Love (2 page)

“You make it sound so easy,” Paris grumbled.

“It’s not,” Sara agreed. “But you have to give some lucky guy a chance, sweetie. I get it, I do. You take a break and I’ll drive. My toes are dry enough. But think on it. I know you’ve got a drop-dead gorgeous body, Miss Skating Queen. Until you have sex—
real
, hot sex—you’re always going to battle whatever that jerk fed you to keep you with him.”

“Sara, it isn’t that, I just don’t want to have sex—meaningless sex—with some stranger I’ve never even talked with over coffee,” she huffed. “I had that for years, huh?” she added in a whisper.

“Oh, sweetie,” Sara laughed. “You have never,
never
had sex the way I’m talking. If Greg had been able to give you that, he’d never have had to play such a number on you. Believe me, when you have your first orgasm, your first earth-shattering, scream out loud enough to wake the neighbors climax, then we’ll talk. Until then, trust me, it’s not the same.”

My first orgasm
. By the sound of it, Sara’d had more than her fair share of those. Paris couldn’t say the same. But with a stranger? She peeked at Sara’s profile and wondered. Sara was willing to travel from Canada to Wyoming to have sex. Maybe Sara
did
know what she was doing. Or the man did. Either way, she’d talked to Sara because she’d wanted help. Could she the advice?

Can I take it?

Sara set her bag down in the back and tugged on Paris’ hair. “And who says it has to be one night? Or just one man? I read the hottest story about a woman who had fun with two men.
Maybe what you need is a
ménage à trois
. You’d forget about Greg,
and
get a very,
very
hot experience to treasure for the rest of your life.”

Paris laughed. “Oh, really? I thought that was every
guy’s
dream? Having two women? Not a woman’s idea of a great time.”

“Whew.” Sara fanned herself. “You obviously didn’t read
this
book. But, just see, if you find some guy—or
more
than one—and they interest you, see where it goes. Don’t put limits on it before you need to, okay?”

Paris frowned, but turned off at the truck stop.

Meet a man and just…let things happen?
With a stranger
.

Well, she didn’t want to do anything with any of the men she
knew
, so maybe a stranger
was
the only logical option.

But two? No freakin’ way.

“Well, I’ll see,” she offered when Sara nudged her with her bare foot.

“That’s a start. Oh, man, that’s a start.” Sara grinned and clapped her hands together like a kid at a candy shop.

“Uh, that’s not a start,
or
an agreement,” Paris qualified, because Sara seemed way too happy with her. “And one man would be more than enough, thank you.”

“Don’t knock it until you try it, sweetie.”

* * * *

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” David Jansen demanded, facing off with one of the toughest women he’d ever met.

Will Bryson had his six, but he considered whether that was actually true when the man whistled through his teeth at him and backed up with his hands in the innocent, surrender position.

Sonya Petrok tilted her head and her long, red braid slid down her back and to the side as she narrowed her green eyes to slits. Not a look he normally liked to get out of her.

“Ballsy, Jansen. Even Will’s covering his assets over that, but I’ll give you credit for being honest. We’re undercover, you knew that, and now that we have Walters in his hole, we lure in bigger fish than Duke.”

David didn’t like the sound of that. None of it actually was something he wanted to hear. He’d made plans, around warmth, sunshine and sandy beaches. Still, he had a buddy out there, somewhere. “Tazz never showed. What about him? We can’t just leave him—”

“Tazz is fine.” Petrok smiled. “More than set, I think, actually. We’ll see him again before this is through, but by then we need to have the names and numbers of all the players. That means you two have to act like you’re one hundred percent behind this.”

Will grunted. “This meaning taking some drug worse than what we were already put on by the Sentinels?”

David’s stomach nosedived. Chung’s drug had been effective—it’d turned him into an unfeeling killing machine who’d barely felt pain, let alone exhaustion. It’d also screwed with his temper and made him anxious all the time. Will had shared that it had given him a hard-on he couldn’t tame—and by that David knew Will had tried, more than likely with a few of the women they’d met after the last mission.

“Petrok?” he muttered when she didn’t respond quickly enough. There wasn’t a chance he was adding more drugs to his system. He never wanted to take an aspirin again, let alone a vitamin C tablet.

“Not a chance, just dupe them. You were a SEAL, act like it,” Petrok snapped then did the oddest thing. She grimaced and turned away, rubbing her neck hard while she cursed in what he knew was Russian.

Not a good sign. He shared a worried glance with Will.

“You still high, Petrok? Because we thought you were the first one of us to get smart and drop that shit,” David said, maybe with more heat than necessary.

“Jansen—”

“No, it’s okay, Will. No.” She turned back and sighed heavily as she sat down on a bench. They were in a parking garage just outside the compound where they would spend the next few days. The place was deserted, but must have had twenty black SUVs parked in it. They also had equipment to fix the SUVs, complete with a lift and enough tools to maintain all the vehicles. As far as he could see, there wasn’t a mechanic on duty, though.

Both double doors to the snow-packed but plowed yard were open, letting in some of the clear blue sky and a fresh, cold winter breeze. If Duke was worried about security, it didn’t show. There was a gate, but no guard. Anyone could walk up the road and right in the back door.

Petrok took a deep breath and shook out her arms as if they were numb or something. They could be. The Chung drug had done a number on him, making him have headaches that wouldn’t quit no matter how many things he’d tried. He’d had numb fingers and toes, too, which had freaked the hell out of him. A man needed his limbs working on a mission—and in life.

“This mission is getting longer than I wanted. Walters is scum and I need a shower after dealing with him,” Petrok grumbled with feeling.

“Right, he’s a scumbag, you should steer clear of him,” David muttered.

Walters had taken one look at the hot ex-spy and set his sights on her. To David’s knowledge, Petrok never mixed business with pleasure. But Walters could be an ass, more so to women.

Tazz usually reined him in—when he’d been around, which wasn’t often. On this mission, Tazz had kept Walters on a short leash. David would bet his last dollar Tazz knew Walters was rotten through and through. Maybe he’d known from the start and that’s why he’d kept him close.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

“Where is Tazz now?” David asked, folding his arms over his chest. It was cold, but he’d rather stand out here and talk than enter Duke’s compound. The man’s fake soldiers and sick ideas made his stomach roll.

“He’s with a woman. He went there instead of meeting you guys and Walters. I can only assume, before you ask,” she said, holding up a gloved hand, “that he sensed something wasn’t on the up and up with Walters and didn’t trust his own reflexes when he wasn’t at a hundred percent.”

“Why wasn’t he at a hundred percent?” Will asked.

“I shot him.” Nonchalantly, she shrugged her shoulder. “Not a kill shot, just to get him where he needed to be.”

“With a woman?” David guessed, more than a little outraged. His voice went up an octave. “What, are you a matchmaker by gunpoint now?”

Will cracked a laugh and Sonya snorted, stretching her arms over her head like a cat.

“Funny, really,” she muttered. “But I do know what I’m doing. I needed to prove I was on board and he was in the way. I didn’t
hurt him
hurt him, not with Chung’s drug still flooding him.”

He’d heard Tazz hadn’t gotten off the DNA-altering drug like the rest of them, or he had, but he’d gotten back on when some shit had come up with his little sister. All in all, the Sentinel Program was out of business, but since it was a black ops program, it was also going down quietly, and so far, not easily. Duke was proof of that. But even if Duke hadn’t gotten his hands on Chung’s formula and altered it for the black market, someone else would have. Nothing was secret in this world, nothing and no one could really, truly be trusted—outside of a very, very few.

A car pulled in and stopped just shy of the garage. As it did, a man exited a side door in the building across from them as if he’d been waiting on the newcomers. As soon as he reached the blue Honda, the driver’s door opened and a woman with long, auburn hair and a big smile got out. They hugged but pulled apart as the passenger door opened and a blonde girl emerged, ducking her head as if she was shy but shaking the man’s hand when offered it.

David blinked and realized he’d dropped his arms and didn’t even recall doing it.

The blonde was small, slender, and hands down the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. Wholesome. When she smiled he felt a punch to his gut. She reminded him of sunshine and long summer days. Sweet, warm days filled with nothing to do but watch her, he imagined.

“Damn,” he whispered, then glanced over at Will.

His buddy’s attention was on her as well, but focused on the whole scene, not so much on her exclusively. He checked out the blonde’s friend for a long time, then glanced away from all of them. For some reason that pleased the hell out of David in a way he couldn’t quite explain.

“People can just drive in here, huh?” Will asked.

“Duke thinks he’s hidden by being so far out and up a tough road,” Petrok muttered. “Looks like it’s not that tough.”

David agreed. The two girls were driving a Honda, a good car, but he doubted it had any trouble getting up the road and it wasn’t even a front-wheel drive vehicle.

The blonde hugged her friend and pulled away to give an obvious shiver at the cold. The sound of her laughter carried over to them. Another odd turn of his gut had him frowning even harder at her. It wasn’t as if he knew her, but there was something, maybe the way she waved and got in the driver’s seat with a laugh at the chill, that had him out of sorts. It’d been too long since he’d met a nice, normal girl, not some barfly without an agenda for a night’s worth of fun in the sack.

The group talked for only a second more before the door shut, ending his view of the pretty blonde. The guy pulled the dark-haired girl away and together they raced back into the building. A second later the car backed up, turned and left. For some insane reason, David’s heart went crazy, beating as if he was getting ready to jump from a plane, right into a hotspot.

The sound of the car suddenly went oddly louder, then puttered and died.

A slow grin eased over his face, calming the adrenaline rushing him. If that didn’t sound like car trouble, he’d be a monkey’s uncle. A car door opening and shutting filled the wintery silence, guaranteeing he wasn’t closely related to the primates. His heart did a nosedive to his toes. Whoever the blonde was, she had one hell of a handle on his pulse.

Petrok stood, pulling a second of his attention off his plans for helping a damsel in distress.

“I want you two to stay low, keep yourselves under Walters’ radar. Duke will assign him as your direct supervisor, no doubt, but not at first. I want Walters busy with his own thing, with no idea where you two are. This place is big. He’ll never know you’re here if you lay low. Maybe the blonde will help with that,” she added with a laugh.

“But Duke will know,” Will clarified.

“Yeah, of course he’ll know. He wanted the real deal, so now”—she shrugged—“he has it.”

“The real deal?” Will repeated.

“Soldiers,
real
soldiers.”

“And he wants what? Security? Because that girl just drove right in the back door.” Will gestured to the buildings.

“Sure, he needs it, right? But then, he’s not here hiding, remember? He’s that bold,” she muttered. “Just keep a low profile. I’ll be your contact with Duke, unless he calls you in, maybe to meet you before you begin training those Ken dolls, huh?”

Will snorted but David laughed at the reference to Duke’s men. It was accurate in his opinion.

“We get this done, find the leads to who knows about the drug then pull them in. That way Walters won’t have a clue he’s stepped into the trap until it snaps down on him.” Petrok brushed her hands on her thighs, giving them a questioning glance.

“Will do,” David said, but sounded distracted even to himself. He couldn’t seem to stop dancing from foot to foot, either.

Is she outside in this cold working on her car?

“Come on, you want to go save the damsel in distress, huh?” Will slapped him on the back with a grin and headed toward the entrance at a slow jog.

Petrok raised her eyebrow at him as if daring him to deny it. Hell, he not only wanted to go save her, but wanted to do it alone. He couldn’t think of a way to stop Will though, so he didn’t even try.

“Later, Petrok.”

“Right. Later.” She laughed.

The coldness of the wintry air added something to the dash through the snow. He wanted to catch up to Will before he could reach the blonde. Something odd, like a sensation that would stay with him for a long time, crept over his shoulder blades, making him slow as he approached. A shiver raced down his skin when she came into view. She had her back to them, but as they approached, she spun and grabbed her throat with one hand as if they’d frightened her.

The first thing that struck him was the unusual color of her eyes. They were blue, but so pale, they might be called gray. She lowered her hand and sighed in relief when he grinned. She was even prettier close up than she’d been from a distance. Dressed in a light blue snow cap with white snowflakes, matching mittens and a light blue fleece, she reminded him of a snow bunny ready for the slopes, only sweet and kind of timid.