Page 1 of Her Ruthless Protector

1

This was not going to be a cakewalk, that was for damn sure. Kane looked around the back of the sweltering truck and saw that his Night Storm teammates were tense and alert. After hours in the back of this piece of shit vehicle somebody better come up with something more interesting to say than Leo Perez talking about the last decent meal he’d had or Zed Zaragoza talking about the latest home renovations he’d done.

Kane McNamara was second in command of the Navy SEAL team Night Storm, and they had one hell of a mission on their hands. Kane looked down at his SatNav, it showed they had about thirty minutes before they would hit the little town of Ja’ar in Yemen.

He pressed refresh on his comp for the thirty-third thousandth time, and there still wasn’t an update on the satellite images for their target. He glanced up at his lieutenant, who looked up at him. They could always read each other’s minds. Kane gave a slight shake of his head. Still no photos.

Lieutenant Max Hogan looked pissed. Kane refreshed his screen again, still nothing.

It’d been an ass numbing eight-hour trip from the coast of Yemen. The beginning of their trip they’d travelled in style on the aircraft carrier the USS Mason which had even arranged for a Seahawk to fly them to Aden at the start of this little jaunt.

They’d landed well northeast of town and been met with some friendly Marines who were acting as their chauffeurs in this piece-of-shit truck. He took another look around the truck, then glanced back down at his SatNav.

Twenty-eight more minutes until they hit their target.

Kane sighed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his friend, Cullen Lyons, smile and wink.

What did Cullen have up his sleeve?

“Hey, Kane, did I tell you about the blind date I went on last month?” Cullen hollered over the roar of the truck engine.

Oh, thank God, at last, somebody might have something interesting to say.

His friend was a consummate bullshitter, and you always knew that his story was going to be particularly good when he started speaking with a bit of an Irish brogue. Over the years, Kane had gotten pretty good at sniffing out the truth from the fiction—not that it mattered, since both were pretty damn entertaining—and today Kane couldn’t care less.

“No, you didn’t,” he answered. Then he settled back in the truck, and ignored the rough ride over the sand, rocks, and boulders that were considered a road in this part of Yemen, and concentrated on Cullen.

“You let someone set you up on a blind date?” Nicholas Hale asked. He was the youngest member of the Night Storm SEAL team.

“My two little sisters double-teamed me,” Cullen said disgustedly. “Do you have sisters, Nick?”

The kid shook his head.

“Be happy. They can be evil. Especially when they have a bone to pick with you.” Cullen threw a twig into the middle of the transport.

Kane caught Zed’s eye. Both of them had met Cullen’s sisters. They were a year apart and they had a wicked sense of humor. They also didn’t appreciate their big brother’s tendency to meddle in their lives. Kane looked down at his computer. Twenty minutes to go.

“So, you actually showed up on this blind date. Why didn’t you bail?” Leo asked. “For God’s sake Cullen, whenever it comes to a shitty assignment you always figure out a way to weasel. Are you telling me you couldn’t figure a way out of this date?”

“They reminded me of all the times they covered for me with Mom. I was stuck,” Cullen explained.

“So, let me guess. Your date was nice and had a good personality, was that it?” Raiden Sato guessed from the far corner of the truck. Raiden always preferred being in the shadows.

“This girl was an old college friend of Chelle’s,” Cullen said, referring to the older of his two sisters.

“Quit peppering him with questions,” Max commanded. “Cullen tell your story.”

They hit a huge rock, the truck took flight, and everybody bounced. Cullen’s story better be damned good to take Kane’s mind off the hellish heat and his bruised ass.

“Like the lieutenant said, start the damn story already,” Kane growled.

“After a week of Chelle’s and Baily’s bitching, I called the woman up. She sounded nice enough.”

“Told you she was nice,” Raiden chuckled.

“Her name was Brittany, and she had Saturday free, but that was the day I’d promised my Chelle she could borrow my Jeep. Should have known right then and there, that I had been set up,” Cullen said disgustedly. “Brittany said it wasn’t a problem, she’d pick me up, and I, being a dumbass, agreed.”

“She couldn’t drive worth shit, huh?” Raiden commented.