After I have Olive settled at my desk the next morning, I head toward the conference room. There’s an extra spring in my step this morning. It could be the fact that I woke up with a beautiful woman in my bed this morning, one who when I looked over at her my whole body went all warm and tingly. I made love to her twice under the covers of my bed last night, and the second time blew my mind just as thoroughly as the first.

There’ve been other women since Elle. I’m not a monk, and there were a lot of times that all I wanted was a night to forget. But that’s not what’s happening with Olive. At first, I just wanted to look after her for Jeremy. Then, when I realized what was going on with Mick Oakes, I wanted to keep her safe. And I still do. But now, last night I had to admit that there’s feelings there. Feelings I never wanted to have, but I have them all the same. She’s worked her way into my heart, and it’s scary but it’s happening.

I can’t deny it. And I don’t really want to.

I have to come to terms with what that means. Because there wasn’t one time last night that I looked at Olive and wished she was Elle. Not one time. And that’s never happened before. Not since I lost my wife.

So what does it all mean? How can I blend what I’m feeling for Olive with the fact that I still have a responsibility to my wife? I still need to find out who killed her; that need hasn’t died. But is it something I can do with Olive by my side, or am I just risking Olive’s heart in the process?

Walking through the halls of Night Eagle, I note how much busier it is now than when I first started working here. This is the main branch of two locations the security company has, with Jacob traveling between both of them depending on what we’re working on at any given time. He’s been bringing in more personnel as time goes by and we’ve been getting more government contracts and assignments as a whole. So the office is buzzing with support personnel and a few other guys with qualifications similar to mine. It’s different, and hard to get used to.

As I stride into the conference room, I take a seat around the table. Everyone else is already there. Grisham and Dare both give me wide grins.

“What?” I snap as I sit.

Grisham clicks his tongue. “Well, you just walked in here looking like a very satisfied man. That have anything to do with the lovely Olive?”

Rolling my eyes, I stay silent and concentrate my attention on Jacob. He stands at the front of the room. His attention is on the touch screen on the wall, but I can see the twitch of his lips as he tried to hide his smirk.

The wise bastard is laughing at me.

“Something funny, Boss Man?” Narrowing my eyes, I watch Jacob’s reaction.

Dare’s chuckle pulls my attention, and I glance at him. He’s close to outright laughing.

“Don’t forget, Swagger.” He lifts his chin. “We know what it looks like.”

Leaning back in my chair, I study him. “You know what what looks like?”

Placing his hands flat on the table, he leans forward. “Falling for a woman you never saw coming.”

Beside him, Grisham gives a firm nod.

Falling? Shit…that’s not what this is. I’m feeling something, yeah. But falling?

I don’t have time to think it over any further because Jacob calls our meeting to order, even though Sayward never really seems like she’s paying attention to what the rest of us are saying. I know, though, that behind her computer screen she hears every single thing we say at these meetings, and that if she’s called on to answer a question or lend her expertise, she’ll be able to do it without a pause. The woman’s a mystery to me, but she’s damn good at what she does.

“Boss Man,” I start. “I learned something yesterday, and I need to let the team in on it.”

Jacob’s sharp eyes land on me. “What’s that?”

I swallow. I can anticipate their reaction before I say the words. “Last night, after Olive and I got back to my condo, we had a visitor.”

The atmosphere in the room goes thick and heavy. Every single man in the room flexes, without even being aware of it, and I meet Jacob’s intense gaze steady.

“Who?” Dare’s voice is low.

“Mick Oakes.”

Sayward’s gaze jerks up to meet mine, and I can audibly hear Grisham’s teeth snap together.

“And you didn’t call us?” he asks, an underlying tone of pissed-offness in his voice.

“I had it handled. And backup came in last minute.” I smirk, thinking about Bennett rolling up in his big-ass truck.

“Backup?” Jacob’s tone is calm but it has that crazy-alert quality only he can muster.

“Yeah. Guy by the name of Bennett Blacke. He’s a buddy of mine, ex-Special Forces. He runs a bar I go to sometimes, and we’ve gotten to be friendly. Showed up right when I needed him.”

Bennett’s a badass, that’s a fact. I’ve figured that out from the bits and pieces of information I’ve gathered from him in conversation.

“You know we’re going to look him up, so what’s his story?” The curiosity in Dare’s voice is clear.

I shrug. I don’t want to talk about Bennett’s story. Sharing it should be up to him. And I don’t even know everything. What I do know, he’s told me in confidence. But I also don’t want the guys to read it in black-and-white, because it could end up looking worse than if I told them myself. So I relent, with a sigh.

“He served. And did a hell of a job, doing more ops than anyone probably should have. When he retired, he came home to find his wife in bed with some prick. He went off the deep end, lost his shit. Ended up doing time for hurting the dude. Look, Bennett knows what he did was fucked-up, and I can’t fault him. Hell, if I’d been able to get my hands on the man who killed Elle…”

When I trail off, the room goes deadly quiet. They all know what I’m going to say; I don’t have to finish the sentence. I just want to let them know that even though Bennett and my stories are different, there’s a similarity running through them that ties us together. They need to know that I trust him.

“He’s a good dude. He messed up, but who hasn’t? He had my back last night, and that’s enough said.”

The silence stretches, and Dare and Grisham exchange a glance. Sayward keeps her eyes on her laptop screen, and Jacob’s critical stare burns into mine. Finally, he gives a curt nod. “We’ll check him out. But let’s move on. What happened with Oakes?”

As I remember the events of last night, I try really hard not to become infuriated all over again. Really damn hard. “He came for Olive. Thought he could dismiss me, get her to come with him so he could brainwash her or whatever. He wants her, and he wants her bad. I don’t know why. He let her go years ago. Why come back for her now?”

Grisham strokes his chin. “That’s a good question.”

“I have a profiler I can get on it. Figure out what’s making him tick. What else?”

A small bit of reassurance fills me, because Jacob’s connections are solid. If he can get someone to figure out why Oakes is doing what he’s doing, that’s going to make it that much easier for me to protect Red.

“So what happened?” Dare’s the calmest one in the room, which is par for the course. He’s a thinker, and he’s always going to listen to an entire problem, then figure out how best to make it go away.

“What happened…is that Olive was going to offer herself up to him.” The tension in my voice is thick, almost strangling me. That’s something I wish I could forget.

“What the fuck?” Grisham leans forward, his voice full of disbelief.

Nodding, I sigh. “The asshole threated me. Said he’d leave me be or whatever, as long as she came with him. So they could ‘talk.’ It was bullshit, but Olive…she was trying to protect me.”

Something warm and tender flows through me, and it’s such a foreign feeling that it steals my goddamn breath. She wanted to protect me.

Dare sucks in a breath. “Damn.”

Those are my exact sentiments. “That’s when Bennett pulled up. Rolled in like a boss, armed and ready. Oakes was pissed, but he backed off. Not before he revealed a few things.”

Jacob’s in recon mode, all-business. “What’d you find out?” he barks.

Leaning forward, I relay all of the information that Oakes gave me last night. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let us know that he’s working for his uncle, the head of the Margiano crime family.

“There’s no doubt that the Margiano family is the cause of all of the trouble happening here in Wilmington. He’s our way in.” Finished with my story, I settle back in my seat and focus on my boss.

Jacob is silent for a moment, thinking. Then, he starts firing orders. “Sayward, I want you to gather all the information you can find on the Margianos. Especially the patriarch. When we have that info, we’ll figure out how we can send a man in to infiltrate the organization. It obviously can’t be you, Swagger. Looks like you’ve burned that bridge.”

I give him a wry smile. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Jacob dismissed me. “We’ll make it work. You’re all dismissed. Kill your workouts this morning. That’s an order.”

We pretend to groan, but we all love working out as a part of our job in the state-of-the–art gym located at the office. The daily grind of our workout takes a lot of the edge off of what we do, but it also keeps us in the kind of shape we need to stay in so we can perform our jobs to the best of our abilities.

“You working out today, Say?” Grisham aims his question at Sayward as we all stand.

She glances up at him. “Yeah. Women have the ability to build an effective amount of muscle, and are able to use it in both defensive and offensive measures when facing an opponent. I need to work out in order to be a functioning member of this team.”

She says it all in this matter-of-fact tone that pulls a grin from each of us.

“Yeah, I know, sweetheart.” Grisham aims a charming grin at her, but she frowns.

“If you call me sweetheart again, I’m going to use my boxing skills to kick your ass.”

Holding up both hands, Grisham backs away slowly. “Easy, there, killer. It’s just an expression. I’m happily taken, I promise.”

She nods. “Okay, then. See you all upstairs.” Gathering her laptop, she leaves the room.

I turn to Dare and Grisham with wide eyes. “Holy shit. She’s something else.”

Grisham’s expelled breath blows up his cheeks like a puffer fish. “Damn straight she is. I feel sorry for the bastard that falls for those killer curves and innocent look. She’s like a fucking viper.”

I lift my brows. “Viper? Sounds like a good field nickname for a woman like that.”

We all chuckle as we leave the room. I’m not going to be the one to tell Sayward about her new nickname, but I can’t wait to be on the sidelines when someone does.

When the workday is done, I glance up from my desk. I’ve given Olive free rein of the desk throughout the day, since she’s the one who has to use it most often. Glancing up at her, I’m forced to just sit and stare for a minute. She’s busy using the design software on her laptop, shifting things around in one of her projects until everything looks just so. Again, as I watch her, I’m hit with a sense of rightness.

She has her own office, so even if whatever this is between us turns into something real, it’s not like she’ll be sharing my desk on a regular basis. But it still feels like she belongs, and I’m trying hard to figure out why that is.

“Hey.” My voice is softer than usual. “You about ready to quit for the day?”

She glances up at me, and when those big blue eyes lock with mine I realize just how fucked I am. Something in my gut pulls toward her, urging me to get close and stay that way. Rising from my chair, I put my arms on either side of her on the desk and lean over, inhaling as my lips brush the side of her neck.

She leans against me with a soft sigh. “God…why do you smell so good?”

I smile against her skin. I’d taken a shower earlier after my workout. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

I run my nose along the side of her throat, and it hurts how much I want to taste her right now. The fact that anyone walking by could see us, notice how close we are, doesn’t faze me. In fact, I have a strong urge to make sure everyone knows that she belongs to me.

Fuck. What the hell am I doing? She doesn’t belong to me.

But could she? Somehow, the entire time I’d observed Olive in the past, noticed how beautiful she was, I knew she’d never be just another woman for me. And now that I’ve had her in my bed, let my hands roam over every inch of her, tasted her sweetness? I want to repeat it. Again and again.

“I want to get you home.” The words come out before I can stop them.

Tilting her head back, she peers up at me. “What are you going to do with me when we get there?”

My body reacts to her; it’s immediate and intense. My chuckle is dark. “Red…there’s no telling. But it’s probably going to be very, very dirty.” I let my hands slide up her arms.

She swivels the chair, turning to face me. Her tongue darts out to lick her lips, and my eyes tract the movement. “Promise?”

The desire burning in her eyes mixes with the dark playfulness I now know is there, and I suddenly straighten. “Let’s go.”

The Ram eats up the road as I head back to the condo. From time to time, I glance over at Olive, sometimes catching her looking at me while I drive, and all I can do is smile. I’m not even sure where this woman came from, but suddenly she’s all I can think about. It’s scary, but I also kind of like it.

“Let me make you dinner tonight,” she says, her voice carrying over the sound of Eric Church on the radio.

“Yeah?” I glance over at her, a little bit of teasing in my tone. “Can you cook?”

She punches me, and I laugh. Now that we’ve moved past the defenses we both naturally put up, it’s so damn easy with her.

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll eat what I make, and you’ll like it, Swagger.” She sounds sassy, but the teasing tone is there in her voice, too.

I glance over at her as I turn onto the long beach road that will take us across the Intercoastal Waterway and into Carolina Beach. “I’ll definitely love what I eat tonight.”

And there goes her bottom lip into her mouth, making me want to pull it between my teeth and bite down gently. With a sense of straight-up happiness, I realize that tonight, I probably will.

The autumn sun is sinking below the horizon on our right, and the shock of red and gold reminds me of Olive’s coloring. The thought makes me smile. Glancing into my rearview mirror, I frown. There’s a black SUV coming up behind us, moving fast. Too fast, for the road we’re on. I keep my eyes there, letting them flit back to check the road every few seconds while I watch the new vehicle’s approach.

“What is it?” Olive’s tone is alert. She must be reading my mind, because my gut is screaming that something about the car coming up behind us isn’t right.

“Could be nothing,” I mutter as my foot stays steady on the gas. It’s a four-lane road, let them pass me if they think I’m driving too slowly.

The SUV rolls right up on my tail, though, and doesn’t pass. The encroaching darkness outside keeps me from being able to see into the windshield of the vehicle, the bright headlights leaving me nearly blind when I try.

“Hey, Red?” Keeping my voice steady, I reach for her thigh and squeeze gently. “Do me a favor. Reach into the glove box there and grab my pistol. Put in in the console for me.”

Olive doesn’t hesitate. She does as I ask, and when my weapon is sitting within reach I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Someone’s following us?” she asks, her voice lifting slightly higher than its usual range.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” I glance into the mirror again and note that the SUV hasn’t made a move. “Could just be headed to the beach same as us. When I pull off onto the turn for the condo, we’ll see what happens.”

She nods, and I continue driving, about halfway across the low bridge.

“Ronin,” she murmurs, staring out the front windshield.

I see it, too, and my stomach drops to my feet. There’s an identical SUV approaching fast from the front. Moving fast, I tap the phone icon on my dash screen and push the button for Grisham’s phone. His voice comes through the speakers.

“What’s up, Swagger?”

I speak at a clip. “Ghost. Might need some backup. I’m being sandwiched by two SUVs on the ICW bridge. What the fuck?”

I don’t have time to elaborate, nor am I able to concentrate on Grisham’s response. The approaching SUV makes a tight swerve, directly into our lane. I have seconds to act, and there’s a choice between swerving into oncoming traffic to avoid it, or going over the bridge.

My instincts take over, my training kicks in, and I know that with a passenger in the car I can’t run us into traffic at forty-five miles an hour. I jerk the steering wheel, and the metal railing gleams in the glare of my headlights.

“Ronin!” Olive’s scream is the only thing I hear as the truck plunges over the side of the bridge.