Stranded with the SEAL

“
T
hree minutes
, Miss Barrons.”

Brooke nodded, holding the cell phone to her ear as she massaged her sore upper arm. “Come on, answer the damn phone.”

Hi, I’m busy. Leave me a message!

“Bella, it’s me. I need to see you. It’s really important,” she said, closing her eyes as she exhaled. “I’m…I’m scared. I need you to come out to Colorado. Please. I made you a reservation to fly into Denver Monday afternoon. I sent you an email with the details and…”

A knock at the door and it opened, a tall blonde woman with a clipboard standing there. “Miss Barrons, you need to come to the set now.”

Brooke held up a finger.

“Right now, Miss Barrons. We go live in two minutes.”

Brooke took the phone away from her ear. “I’ll be there in a second.”

The woman shook her head, walked in, and put one hand on her hip, leveling her stare at Brooke.

“Give me some privacy, please,” Brooke said.

The woman just stared at her and raised an eyebrow.

Brooke stood and turned her back to the woman. “I can’t go into details now, but it’s really important. I’ll pick you up at the airport.” She hung up the phone and forced the annoyed expression from her face, replacing it with a smile before she turned back around.

“Let’s go.”

“Don’t forget your veil.”

Her stomach pitched violently. “Right.” She picked it up from her dressing table and slid the comb into her hair.

It’s just a costume. It isn’t the real thing.

You’re not really marrying a monster.

The woman gestured for her to follow, and they began jogging through clusters of people who all seemed to be standing still.

Brooke’s head was throbbing, questions swarming like bees. Maybe none of it was true. Maybe this was a dream and she would wake up engaged to the man she’d thought she was marrying, instead of someone capable of hurting the people she loved.

Her arm ached, the injury to her limb nothing compared to the damage that had been done to her sense of trust. She was in danger. She knew that now, and she had to find a way to escape.

Spotlights came into view, violently bright and focused ahead of her. When the woman stopped in the wings, Brooke continued onto the stage. The band started to play and the title sequence began.

“We’ve got a great show for you tonight,” she yelled over the music. The bee-like buzzing in her head melded with the applause of the crowd, her head spinning. It was too much, every bit of it overwhelming, and she thought her brain might burst with the effort it took to comprehend what had just taken place.

What it meant for her, now that her safety net was gone.

The music stopped and she spun in a circle, the veil flowing around her on the air, gossamer and surreal. She felt nauseated. She would get through this by training and sheer force of will. She would smile and pretend everything was all right — even laugh — then she would run away deep into the night, back to where it all began.

She needed to go there, needed her memories around her now more than ever before, even if it meant going to the edge of hell to get them.

You’ll have to get by Gallant.

Sometimes, she didn’t know if he was her bodyguard or her babysitter. The man rarely let her out of his sight, and asking him to leave her alone would only rouse his suspicions.

She would do it, distract him with a woman, maybe the one with the clipboard. He would get laid, and she would get the head start she needed to survive.

The music crescendoed as her plans fell into place.

Right on cue, she shouted to the crowd, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”

I
t took
considerable speed to climb Warsaw Mountain in six inches of unplowed snow, speed that threatened to overcome the traction of Trevor Hawkins’ tires at every turn. There’d been another set of tracks in the road, the only sign of humanity in this wilderness, and he imagined they were made by a park ranger or a county truck surveying the road conditions before closing this passageway down for the night.

Your average joe had no business driving on a twisting mountain road in these conditions. Besides the snow on the ground, it was falling at an alarming rate he’d only witnessed once or twice in his life. The lightest wind was enough to create near white-out conditions, and these were not the lightest winds.

He took his foot off the gas just enough to negotiate a sharp turn to the left, the right side of the road bordered only by a guardrail and a hundred-foot drop. That should have deterred him from his mission, but in fact it did the opposite. According to his calculations, that particular turn meant he was just under twelve miles from Steele’s mansion, and Hawk would walk through fire if it meant he could get to Steele today.

He thought of his commander, Jax Andersson, and the direct order he’d given Hawk not to pursue this lead. By ignoring Jax, Hawk might lose his position with HERO Force, but if he followed orders, he might lose his mind.

He frowned. He and Jax had damn near started HERO Force together. The Hands-on Engagement and Recognizance Operations team was everything Hawk dreamed of doing with the rest of his life, and losing that would be a hell of a lot worse than just losing a job.

Those were his teammates. His brothers. His family. And when one of them was murdered in cold blood right before his eyes, he knew the day would come when he would find his revenge, even if it meant the end of his time with HERO Force.

Two years he’d been waiting for a chance like this, an opportunity to get Steele. That man had more eyes on him than a housefly, but somehow he always managed to have his hand out of the cookie jar whenever anyone checked.

Through the snow, an image began to appear. Hawk squinted and eased up on the accelerator, then he saw it clearly. Sixty feet ahead, a red sports car was stopped in the road, a woman in a white coat standing with her back to him.

Hawk pressed hard on the brake, the muscles of his thighs going rigid, and the scene seemed to freeze. The haze of snowfall that had been blinding just moments before was now made of individual crystals.

There was a horrible beauty in the slide of his car across the snow-covered roadway, a slick movement that seemed to slice the world into before and after, and he forced his eyes to stay open when they wanted to close.

He was going to hit her.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken a life, but it would be the first time he’d done so accidentally. This woman was innocent, and in that moment he wished ferociously that he could stop his car from moving. He pumped the brake, but his Jeep was little more than a hockey puck sliding across ice, without a nod to his intention.

She turned to face him.

Beautiful.

Her features transformed in fear, her piercing scream reaching him through the glass.

It made it worse that she was pretty, worse that she was young. Worse still that the red car hinted at a spark in her personality. His eyes closed, his will no longer strong enough to keep them open. A guttural cry rose up from his chest just before the impact, the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass overtaking everything.

The force of the accident threw him hard against the airbag, pounding his face like solid wood, but it was her face he imagined, her injuries he worried about as his car crushed the space that had once been between them.

Your hatred brought you here.

If he hadn’t been so determined to get Steele, he’d be sitting on a beach right now like the other members of HERO Force. Cowboy would be talking up chicks while Logan read some scientific journal and Jax surfed the waves.

This woman would be alive.

Forcing himself to move his shocked limbs, he pushed against the airbag and stood on shaking legs. He could smell gasoline and his mind shifted into high gear, years of training taking control of his body.

He had to find her. Now.

The Jeep was embedded in the side of the sports car. There was no sign of the woman. He checked beneath the vehicles, then scanned the area, his eyes instantly watering from the biting wind and the swirls of snow.

“Lady?” he yelled. His voice echoed back from tall pine trees, the road he stood on the only seeming break from their dominion. The smell was thicker now, more noxious, and his eyes searched frantically for any sign of her, finally catching on a trail through the snow on the hood of her car.

Racing to the other side, he was dumbfounded to see only virgin snow, untouched. Where the hell was she?

He looked back at the markings on the hood. It was as if she had scampered across the top just before the impact.

Or during it.

He braced himself against the wind and walked into the blinding snow, following the trajectory formed by his Jeep and the path from the hood. “Lady? Where are you?”

A noise sounded behind him, a gentle whoosh like a bed sheet being snapped through the air over a mattress, and for a moment he couldn’t place it.

Fire!

“Lady!” he was screaming now, moving faster through the snow. He nearly tripped over her, lying in the snow wearing her white coat. “We have to move,” he commanded, stealing a glance at the fire behind him, but even as he spoke he knew she couldn’t hear him. He prayed she was unconscious and not dead as he reached beneath her arms and began to pull her up the hill, with only a moment’s concern that he shouldn’t move her before help arrived.

There was another smell here, the scent of blood, light on the cold winter air. Hawk had smelled enough of it in his life to recognize it easily. He pulled harder, forcing his body to move faster before the inevitable occurred.

Smoke.

Fire.

Gasoline.

As if on cue, the red sports car exploded with a deafening boom, flames and debris shooting outward from the accident, the force of the explosion knocking him backwards into the snow. He stared at a piece of flaming material just ten feet away. They weren’t hit, but it was close. Too close, considering his car was bound to be next, and he was packing a lot more fuel for the fire than gasoline.

With a roar he picked up the woman in his arms and began to run. His footsteps fell heavily into the snow, which sucked at his feet and legs, dragging him down. He had to get enough distance between them and the impending second explosion, had to keep this woman safe from further injury.

Already, she might die.

He ran for what seemed a half mile before turning around. He could smell the blaze, but couldn’t see it through the snowstorm. A second explosion, bigger than the first, echoed across the mountainside, the shockwave hitting him a moment later. This time, Hawk kept his footing.

He thought of the weapons he had lost, the car, and how far he was from Steele’s house, then he looked down at the woman in his arms. A trail of blood ran down one side of her face, and she was eerily still. He wished for somewhere to lay her down and realized there was nowhere, so he sat in the snow and cradled her in his lap. His big hand reached inside her coat, sliding along her slender neck.

She had a pulse, though it was weak and thready. He reached for his cell phone and found it was not in his pocket. He cursed out loud, knowing it was lost in his vehicle, and he checked the pockets of her coat for one, too, finding nothing. He squeezed her tighter to him.

What had he done? They were alone on a deserted mountain in the middle of a snowstorm, with no cars, no phones, and no shelter.

He worked to shrug off his coat, then laid it in the snow next to them and moved her onto it, knowing what he had to do now. “I’ll be back for you as soon as I can, sweetheart.”

S
tanding
up was like unbending metal. Hawk winced as he forced his knees to hold his weight again, realizing he must have sustained an injury in the accident and instantly pushing the thought aside.

It was frigidly cold, and the whipping wind raked his skin like frozen sandpaper. He had about twenty minutes to find or make some kind of shelter and to get that woman the hell into it. He began to jog up the hill, favoring one leg in an awkward hop.

His mind strained to focus on a memory, the map of Warsaw Mountain he’d studied so many times before. But he was eleven miles from his target, and he hadn’t paid special attention to the few houses scattered along this remote mountainside. He only knew they existed, and now he prayed they didn’t belong to any of Steele’s men.

Making his way along the tree line, he looked for any breaks or paths that might indicate a driveway. The road curved to the right in a wide arc and back again, then grew steeper. He thought of the woman and wondered how far he should go before turning around and making his own shelter from the land. He was up to the task, but would she still be alive when he completed it?

Fifty more paces, and he’d go back.

Forty-nine.

Forty-eight.

Forty-seven.

He squinted into the falling snow. There was something up ahead.

A mailbox.

Hawk picked up speed. He ran up the driveway. A cabin appeared, and he was hopeful he’d find someone at home—they’d surely have a vehicle and a way to contact emergency services.

He banged on the door, acutely aware of the passage of time and the freezing temperatures. He banged again and cupped his hands around his eyes, peering through a window.

The cabin was deserted. He turned around in a full circle, taking in the wilderness and seeing nothing that could be of help to him.

He would have to carry her here.

Without missing a beat, he turned back, his mind no longer in the Colorado mountains. He was back in BUD/S training, in Hell Week, the question of whether or not he could carry on long since forgotten.

Once a SEAL, always a SEAL. As long as his heart was beating, he would go back for the woman.

What had she been doing up here all alone, in weather like this? Either she’d made a bad decision to drive in these conditions, or she’d been as desperate as he to get to her destination.

Minutes ticked by, his breath coming hard. He wasn’t used to the altitude and was grateful for his conditioning.

There.

There it was, the biting smell of smoke on the air. He was getting close now, and he sped up faster than he knew he could go. How long had it been since he’d left her side? Fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe more. He could only hope it was soon enough.

The snow was beginning to taper off and he could see her in the distance. She was so still he feared she had died while he was gone. “No,” he whispered. “You have to be all right. You have to be.”

Reaching the woman, he dropped down beside her and scooped her into his arms, fearing his body would rebel if he gave it any break. Lifting her with him, he stood up with a grunt, and his stare took in the empty road in front of them. The snow had all but stopped, and with the increased visibility he could see all the way to that first sharp turn that had caused the accident.

There was debris from the explosions, random pieces of God knows what, and charred marks on the asphalt where the fire had melted snow, but the cars themselves were gone. Only a blackened trail to a blown-out guardrail remained.

“Holy shit,” he whispered under his breath. Both vehicles had been blown over the edge by the second explosion. He looked to the woman. “Maybe I packed a little too much C4.”

She was white as a ghost, and he turned, beginning to move once more.

“I don’t wanna be no Green Beret,” he sang to the rhythm of his footfalls. “They only PT once a day.” It was beginning to snow again, fat flakes catching in the wind. “I don’t wanna be no airborne ranger.” His breath was coming hard, the lining of his lungs burning fiercely from the cold.

He chanted louder. “I wanna live a life of danger.” In his head, he could hear his teammates chanting alongside him. “I don’t wanna be Marine Recon. I wanna stay till the job is done.” Ralph was by his side, the memory of his friend’s voice as clear as day to Hawk’s ears. “I wanna be a SEAL team member.” His teeth began to chatter, but he knew the road to the cabin was not much farther. “I wanna swim the deep blue sea.” Icy bits of freezing rain mixed in with the snow, pelting his face. “I wanna live a life of danger. Pick up your swim fins and run with me.”

He’d just made it to the driveway when his knee gave out, making him stumble and fall. Somehow he managed to keep ahold of the woman, whose eyes opened slightly.

“Hey,” said Hawk quietly. They were clearly confused. They drifted closed again. “There’s a house back there,” he said. “It’s not too far. It’s going to be warm, and I’m going to take good care of you.” He sensed he needed to talk to her, to keep her with him. The alternative was to let her slip further away, and he knew she was fighting her injuries and the cold for her very life.

“Hey,” he said again, lightly shaking her shoulder. “What’s your name?”

Her eyes opened the slightest bit and closed without ever focusing on him. “Olivia Grayson.”

“Nice to meet you, Olivia. I’m Trevor Hawkins.” He gnashed his teeth together as he got up on one knee. “Some people call me Hawk.”

He could just see the cabin up ahead, though the light of day was beginning to wane. He had to make it there, had to get both of them there to keep them alive. He forced his leg to bear weight, clenching his teeth on a groan and pushing himself forward.

He carried her, the muscles of his arms on fire. A punishing gust of wind nearly blew him over, forcing him to stop walking and brace himself against it. His energy was nearly depleted, his determination battered. He snarled at the sky. “Do what you want to me,” he cried out, “but none of this is her fault. You take care of her, no matter how much you hate me.”

The wind slowed and he trudged the remaining distance to the door.

He had to put her down, needed to find a way inside or to break a window. Only when he rested her on the snow did he realize he’d left his jacket back at the accident scene. Looking around, he found a metal watering can to the side of the door and used it to smash one of the sidelights beside it. He reached in and unlocked the door, exhaling a quivering breath, then opened it.

He dragged her inside.

Every part of his body was begging for relief, but he had to see what her injuries were, had to get her warm, had to see if anything could be done to help her. Bending down once more, he picked her up and carried her to a couch, putting her down gently until his knee gave way in protest.

He kicked off his wet shoes and pulled off his socks, desperate to get out of the cold pieces, and knew she must be far colder than he. First things first. He had to call an ambulance. “I’m going to find the phone.” Turning around, he got his first good look at the cabin.

The room was dominated by a large stone fireplace. Snowshoes hung on the wall, along with a winter scene that made Warsaw Mountain look far better than Hawk’s current experience with it. He wandered into a small kitchen, an old-fashioned wall phone hanging there. It had no dial tone, and he swore mightily.

Turning down a dark hallway, he found the thermostat set to forty-five and bumped it up to seventy, then checked the bedrooms for a phone before grabbing two blankets and a pillow and returning to Olivia.

Her pants were wet on her thighs, ice crystals forming in places. “Let’s get you out of these clothes.” He started with her shoes — leather boots meant more for fashion than for snow—then he took off her socks and peeled her wet leggings down and off.

Her skin was blue and he cringed, covering her legs with the blanket.

You did this to her.

“You need to get warm,” he said. He took off her coat and was surprised when he saw her shirt said “Bride” in sparkling gold letters. She barely looked old enough for marriage.

He’d seen shirts like that on women in bars, celebrating their bachelorette parties. He carefully slipped it up and over her head, noting the fresh bruises on the left side of her body where she must have landed. The dark peaks of her nipples were visible in his peripheral vision, but he kept his eyes trained on his hands as he pulled the blanket up to cover her. “I’ll go see if I can find you some clothes.”

Hawk rubbed his hand over his mouth as he made his way down the quickly darkening corridor. If she was wearing a bra, it was damn near see-through. Or she wasn’t wearing one at all. His body twitched to life and he chastised himself for the thought. She was hurt, nearly frozen to death, and she needed his help. Only a pervert would get hard from that.

Or a red-blooded man who hasn’t gotten laid in too long.

He shook his head, forcing his thoughts back in line.

The larger of two bedrooms had two dressers, one with a woman’s wardrobe, one with a man’s. He threw the wet clothes into a corner and pulled out a pair of pink long johns for her to wear before shucking off his own wet clothing with a sigh. His arms were heavy as he pulled on a pair of sweat pants and a hoodie.

He returned to the living room and sat gently on the edge of the couch. He began to examine her head injury.

She recoiled. “Ouch.”

He looked at her face, her eyes still closed, and a wave of protectiveness swept through him. “Can you hear me, sweetie?”

“Mmm hmm.”

She was responding to him. That was good. “How are you feeling?”

“Cold.”

“Is that it?”

“My head hurts.”

“I know. I need to look at that, okay?”

“And my fingers hurt.”

He pulled her hands out from under the covers, finding a diamond engagement ring on her left ring finger. The hand was swelling, and he fingered a dark bruise on her wrist, his brows coming together in concern. Gently, he placed her hand in his, and a tingle ran up his arm when his palm brushed hers.

“Squeeze my hand as hard as you can,” he said.

She grabbed on to him, her grip surprisingly strong.

“Good.” He turned her wrist backwards, his eye catching another bruise, this one high on her arm and the size and color of a purple grape. The hair on the back of his neck went up and he frowned, lifting her arm and looking for the bruise’s telltale companions.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t think your wrist is broken,” he evaded.

There. Three matching grape bruises on the other side of her arm. The accident hadn’t caused them. Someone hurt her before he did, and the knowledge curdled in his stomach as his eyes went back to the rock on her wedding finger. Odds were good the man who’d given it to her was the same one who dug his fingers into the tender flesh of her arm.

It took some doing, but he managed to get the ring off and tucked it inside his pants pocket before focusing his attention on her head.

This time she didn’t pull away as he examined her. “It looks pretty superficial,” he said, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a concussion or worse where he couldn’t see.

“Are you a doctor?” she asked.

“No. Do you remember what happened?”

She made a little sound like a child crying. “I’m so cold.”

“I have warm clothes for you.”

Her eyes opened at that, and she moved to sit up, the blanket beginning to fall before she covered herself. “Where are my clothes?” she asked.

“I took them off. They were wet. It’s okay.” He helped her put on the long johns, not wanting her to feel more vulnerable than she already did. He had two sisters and would just as soon knock any guy silly who took advantage of a woman. Sitting by her feet, he pulled back the covers and helped her put on the matching pants.

“Thank you,” she whispered, averting her eyes. “Do you have any aspirin?”

She thought this was his house. He cocked his eyebrows, unsure if he should correct her and deciding it was easier to let it go. He found some painkillers in the bathroom and turned the water on, but nothing happened.

He cursed under his breath. The pipes were probably frozen.

She was sound asleep when he returned. He popped the painkillers in his own mouth and swallowed them dry.

He found firewood on a covered porch out back and quickly made a fire, then took a candle from the mantel and went to check out the water pipes in the basement. They were wrapped with wires he recognized as heat tape, and plugged into electrical outlets in the ceiling.

He located the electric meter and fingered the wire tag that held the outer ring in place to guard against tampering. He found a pair of wire cutters on a small workbench and cut through the wire. The metal ring around the glass meter needed a little encouragement from a screwdriver, but then it came off, allowing Trevor to remove the entire glass meter from its backing.

Two plastic tabs covered large prongs, and he removed them before plugging the meter back in and replacing the metal ring. The wheel on the meter began to spin, showing electricity was running through it.

Somebody would be facing a large fine from the electric company for breaking the wire seal, but defrosting the pipes was far more important at the moment, and if there was an electric pump on the well, they also needed the electricity to bring water into the house at all.

Back upstairs, Trevor patched the hole in the window with cardboard from a cereal box, then wrapped the second blanket around his shoulders and sat down on the couch opposite Olivia to check his knee. It was badly swollen, with a red and purple contusion from the top of his kneecap to the top of his shin. He put pressure on the kneecap and hissed as he inhaled.

This was not how this day was supposed to have gone. His only consolation was that she seemed to be okay and the snowstorm that had caused their accident would likely prevent Steele from leaving Warsaw Mountain this evening as the intel claimed. According to the weather report Hawk heard before he left Denver, it was supposed to be even worse to the east, which was where Steele needed to drop off the shipment.