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Grinning, Lauren said, “And he didn’t let you walk out of his life. He came and found you. It was a nice fairytale ending for you two, and no one’s happier than me for both of you. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s you and Cal.”
Patting her shoulder, Sky walked toward the door, realizing almost an hour had flown by. “YOU deserve happiness, Lauren. And don’t you dare give me that narrowed-eyed look and pabulum about how happiness is a crock of bull.”
“Okay,” Lauren said lightly, her grin widening, “I won’t. But look, I’m here for you and Cal. I’ll be at your wedding, whenever you set it, unless I’m called out for an op. I like to see happy people because there’s so few of them in this sucky world.”
“You’re a brutal pessimist,” Sky teased.
“But it keeps me alive,” Lauren sardonically said, giving her a wicked look.
“Yes, and for that,” Sky said, opening the door, “I’m more than grateful.”
“See you tomorrow morning for breakfast,” Lauren said, standing up and putting the chair under the desk.
“I hope you have a good night’s sleep.”
Grimacing, Lauren said, “You know how that goes.”
“Well,” Sky said in a whisper, leaning back in through the narrow gap of the door, “if you need to get up, then go out to the kitchen and make yourself some chamomile tea, sit in the living room and look at the Milky Way up in the sky, do just that.”
“You’re SUCH a dreamer. Good night, Sky. Love you.”
“Love you too, Lauren.”
Lauren didn’t feel she deserved someone as nice, warm and open as Sky. She understood why Cal loved the woman so much. Sky had been an incredible friend to her, as well. Walking to the bed, she sat down and began to undress. There was a huge bathroom at the end of the hall and she loved those two shower heads that behaved as if warm rains were coming down from the sky onto her skin. When Cal had built this cedar home, he’d thoughtfully cobbled it together. Even the glass surrounding the huge shower was frosted, and he’d hand-etched beautiful nature scenes into it. Yes, Sky, the dreamer and Cal, the artist, certainly deserved one another.
She placed her combat boots at the head of her bed, folded up her cargo pants and dark-green t-shirt, laying them over the chair by the desk. Lauren hated bras, never wore them, and chose a silk camisole instead. Shimmying out of her utilitarian cotton panties, she laid them on the bed. Grabbing her small suitcase, she opened it, took out her dark-blue cotton robe that hung to her knees, and pulled it on. She drew out a Ziploc plastic bag that contained her toothbrush and toothpaste and headed out the door.
And ran into Alex Kazak, nearly colliding with him.
Lauren’s nostrils flared and she gasped, not having expected to meet the medic. Her heart leapt and adrenaline poured through her veins. He was so tall, his shoulders so broad that he filled the low-lit hall with his bulk. And, instantly, the past flashed in front of Lauren. She didn’t see Alex. She saw her hulking foster father enter her bedroom, in the dark, tiptoeing softly toward her bed. Walking toward her. And she could feel him wanting her sexually. She knew he was going to lift her out of bed, and that no matter how much she cried or struggled, he’d soothe her, kiss her and hold her gently in his arms, telling her he had candy in the basement for her.
Lauren slammed into the wall, the terror screaming through her. Her breath came in gasps. She gripped her robe closed at her throat, a reaction to protect herself from Kazak’s startled gaze. And then, just as swiftly, Lauren saw him. Saw Alex Kazak, not her sexual predator foster father.
“You scared the HELL out of me!” she nearly yelled. Her voice echoed down the hall.
Alex Kazak tensed. He instantly backed off, seeing the terror in Lauren’s shadowed, narrow gray gaze. “I-I am sorry. I did not know you were coming out at the same time I was…”
Cursing to herself, Lauren launched herself away from the wall, barefoot, the cedar floor cool beneath her soles. “Get the hell away from me!” and she spun around, heading for the bathroom. She saw the instant apology in the medic’s square face, his hazel eyes wide with surprise and then, Lauren thought she saw sadness. Dammit! He’d scared the living hell out of her! She’d thought it was her foster father. A PTSD flashback that had overlayed reality. All she’d seen was her foster father, not Kazak. A fine quiver moved through her as she quickly opened the door to the bathroom, wanting desperately to escape and be away from him. Snipers were super-sensitized to everything. They knew, better than anyone else, that, once they’d acquired their target, they couldn’t follow their movement through the scope or their target would sense them nearby. Lauren could literally feel his gaze on her back.
She shut the door and then leaned against it, breathing unevenly, her heart pounding with the rush of unexpected adrenaline. Pressing her hand against her throat, feeling her chest tighten with the fear vomiting up from her past, holding her prisoner in the present, Lauren fought to get herself under control once more. Kazak was like a bad penny: he showed up at the wrong time with her, every time. She swore to God the man had telepathy and knew exactly when she’d be at every certain place and show up there as well.
Dammit!
CHAPTER 2
Alex Kazak triedto remain a shadow at the kitchen island where Cal Sinclair was fixing them breakfast. It was impossible. There were four red leather stools at the black granite island. The sun was shining brightly through the open-concept kitchen-living room area as Sky worked with Cal to create a breakfast for the four of them. Alex sat at one end, coffee in hand, watching the two very-in-love people work flawlessly together at the counter. Where was Lauren?
Ever since nearly smashing right into her in the hall last night he’d felt frustrated by her reaction toward him. The terror that had been in her eyes as she’d looked at him tore him up. And it was real. Very real. He’d never done anything to her to make Lauren look at him that way. It hurt. He was interested in her personally. Yet, Alex saw nothing but huge, unscalable walls standing between them. She was a good person who was running hard from something in her past. Frowning, he moved the bright red ceramic mug slowly around between his large hands. Farm hands, as his sister, Kira, often said, pride in her voice. Yes, he had grown up in Ukraine, in a farming family that, for generations, had been growing wheat, plowing and harvesting. He’d been like his father, who was six foot five inches tall, a giant in the family, but he’d been one inch less in height than him. And Alex, because of his size and strength, had done the hard jobs around the farm that few others could.
He glanced toward the hall off the left side of the kitchen that led to the guest suites. The smell of bacon frying, the scent of coffee, always made him feel good. It was almost like being back home on his family farm before it was destroyed by Russian terrorists when he was nineteen years old. Wondering if Lauren was purposely avoiding him by not coming to breakfast, he moved uneasily. The horror in her eyes had deeply disturbed him. She was five foot eleven inches tall, he was five inches taller, and she had nearly screamed when she’d barged out of her bedroom, not realizing he was walking down the hall. His chiseled mouth pursed.
Cal had told him not so long ago that Lauren had survived a very bad childhood. That her foster father was a big man, like him. Cal thought that perhaps Lauren’s avoiding him, always being clipped and cold toward him, had something to do with that. Glancing at the hall entrance again, it remained empty. Feeling bad that Lauren was probably avoiding him due to the embarrassment he’d caused her last night, Alex felt sadness. Was Cal right? Was Lauren hating him because he reminded her of her foster father? Could she not separate those two things? See him for who he was? There was so much he wanted to speak to her about, to calm the waters between them because, sooner or later, they would be assigned a mission together. And they’d have to work, out in the field with one another, whether Lauren wanted to or not.
Alex didn’t mind working with Lauren. He’d never forget the day he was sitting in the Mission Planning room, the other contractors, men and women who were all ex-military, filing into the room for a meeting. When Lauren arrived, he’d felt as if someone had struck him in the chest with a sixteen-pound sledge hammer. She was tall, curvy, confidence dripping off her, and beautiful. Her red hair was in a ponytail between her proud shoulders. She wore a form-fitting, black, men’s t-shirt that showed off those proud, full breasts hidden beneath it. The olive-green cargo pants hid nothing from Alex, even though they were bulky and loose-fitting. But then, as a Spetsnaz sniper as well as a medic, he was trained to notice the smallest of details. Lauren had nice, wide hips, the kind a man could hold onto, and wrap his hands around. Her legs went on forever, and Alex had to imagine how firmly curved and long her thighs were, how tight the muscling was in her calves. She walked with feminine grace, but with a solid confidence he rarely saw in other women.
When he’d sat with Gage Hunter, manager of the Sniper Division, a vaunted ex-Marine Force Recon sniper, Alex had been stunned to realize that half of the employees were women operators. These women came from three of the four US military services and had been trained in the field for a year by the Marine Corps and then assigned to different black ops teams. Some were with Special Forces, others were with SEAL units, or Delta Force teams. Even the Army Rangers. All these women had seen combat for three years in a row; six-month deployments in forward positions around the world and six months stateside, continuing to hone their skills.
Alex had asked Gage about Lauren. She had been the first women to break the all-boy ranks of Marine Force Recons, and was the best that Gage had in-house at Shield. Alex had become excited about that because, as he had told Gage, within Spetsnaz women were being trained to be snipers as they were better shots than males. Which was true. He’d worked with one for two years and had great respect for her. Gage had shown him a computer screen that brought up the twenty-five employees who worked for him at Shield. He’d instantly honed in on the red-haired woman with her stubborn chin lifted up slightly, her cool gray eyes staring out at him, unsmiling. When Alex had pointed to her photo on the screen, asking her name, Gage had told him that she was Lauren Parker, their best sniper and instructor. Alex had smiled. He wanted to meet this woman.
