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Prologue
Freya
I don’t know about most kids, but I could count the number of times I’d seen my dad cry on two fingers. The first, when he finally came home after a particularly long stint in the Middle East, and second, when I graduated high school. Maybe it was just the military dads that didn't cry? No doubt his Marine buddies would’ve teased him relentlessly if they’d found out.
Needless to say, when Dad took a phone call on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and immediately broke down into tears, I knew something was seriously, majorly wrong.
“Is he going to pull through?” Dad asked in a strangled voice to the person on the other end.
Mom heard it too and came running in from the kitchen.
“I left the stove on, can you finish up the ratatouille?”
It was her nice way of getting me out of the room, and like a coward, I took it.
The call only lasted a couple more minutes as Dad inquired about whatever was going on, then it went deathly still.
“What happened, baby?” Mom asked, shattering the silence with worry-streaked words.
There was a long pause before Dad choked out, “Ash is hurt. I’m his only family, you know? Evidently he was on a mission that went real bad. Three of his guys are dead, and he almost died, too.”
“Ashton? Oh my God,” Mom breathed, and I knew she would wrap him up in her arms and comfort him the way she had me so many times in my life, despite the fact that Dad was about two feet taller than her.
“He’ll be ok? What’s happening? Will he be discharged?”
“From what his friend said, they’re not holding their breath on a full recovery.”
“He’s going to be devastated.”
There was a long pause before Dad asked Mom in a quiet voice, “If he’s discharged, he’ll need a place to go—”
“Of course, baby. He can stay as long as he needs!”
Mom, always the loving and kind woman.
The idea terrified me though. Ashton Kane, or Uncle Ashton as Dad tried to get me to call him, had been Dad’s best friend for years. They’d served together for over a decade before Dad left to be home with us, and they'd kept in close contact after that. I’d only met him twice, and the man was…intimidating. He was huge, muscular, and quiet, but lethal. And this guy was going to be living here? With us?
Holy crap. Maybe I should've gone off to college like most of my high school buddies, after all.
Oh, did I forget to mention? Ashton Kane, my dad’s best friend, was smoking hot.
Chapter 1
Freya
We’d been preparing for this day for months.
Mom and I had even cleaned out Dad’s office to make a room for Ashton when he arrived. Now, Mom and I were staring out the window, waiting for Dad to get home with his best friend in town. He was going to flip our lives upside down.
When my father's BMW pulled into the driveway, I sucked in a long, harsh breath while Mom hurried out the door to meet them. Dad’s door opened first, then the passenger door popped open and I was gasping all over again.
The man was as incredibly beautiful as I remembered. Well, beautiful was the wrong word. He wasn’t attractive in a perfect, artful, Adonis sort of way. Nope, he was sexy in that brutal, massive, seen-too-much warlord kind of way only military men could really tote. Ok, my description sucks, but my brain was a little melted, to be fair. Watching the toughest, take-no-shit man I’d ever met limp on his way toward the front door tore my freaking heart out.
“Come on in and take a seat, I’ll get lunch for everyone,” Mom said, coming in through the door while Ashton shook Dad off for the third time in the short walk from car to door.
Limp or no, he wanted nobody coddling him.
“It’s just until the scars from the surgery heal up,” I heard him say in his deep, overly-stereotyped masculine voice.
