Cooper Payne had known these guys a long time. He would trust them with his life. Hell, he had. But could he trust them with this chance to prove himself to his older brothers? He stared across his desk, like he’d watched his brother Logan do a hundred times, at the four guys seated across from him. But this was his desk—his office—his franchise of the Payne Protection Agency.
He suppressed the surge of pride that threatened to swell his chest. He hadn’t earned a right to that pride—not yet. His office had just opened, and he had only one employee. And that employee was his sister. He needed these guys but he sensed the hesitation in them.
Hell, Lars Ecklund, who was probably his closest friend in his Marine Corps unit, wouldn’t even meet his gaze. Usually Lars was so direct, his eerily pale blue eyes stared through a person—making the Marine even more intimidating than his massive size.
Dane Sutton nudged Lars’s shoulder with his. He was a big guy, too—nearly bald his dark hair was so short, with eyes that went from topaz to black depending on his temper.
All four of them were big; that was why Cooper needed them. He wanted the biggest, toughest bodyguards Payne Protection offered to be on his team.
“I’m in,” Jordan “Manny” Mannes told him. And he extended his hand across Cooper’s desk to shake on it. He was dark haired and dark eyed—nearly the direct opposite of Lars’s blond hair and light eyes. But he was just as big.
“Me, too,” Cole Bentler said. He also shook on it. At just a couple inches over six feet, he was probably the smallest of the four guys, but his grasp was strong. He was blond like Lars but his hair was a much darker shade of it.
“You sure?” Cooper felt compelled to ask him. “River City is a long way from your family.”
Cole glanced around at the other guys in the room and shook his head. “No, it’s not.”
They were family. After everything they’d endured together, they were closer than family. No one understood them like each other.
Dane extended his hand across the desk, too. “Thanks, Cooper, for thinking of us.”
He had felt bad—like he’d left them behind when he hadn’t reenlisted when they all had. They had just returned from their last deployment whereas he’d been back over a year. He’d gotten married, had a baby and had never been happier. He wanted that happiness for his friends.
“Always,” he told Dane. He’d thought of them the entire time they’d been gone. He’d worried and prayed and hoped they would all return.
Dane nudged Lars, who finally met Cooper’s gaze. Was his friend okay? Or had he come back like Gage Huxton—another Payne Protection bodyguard—damaged from everything he’d been through?
Lars’s broad shoulders were slumped as if something was weighing on him, and there were dark circles beneath his pale eyes.
What the hell had happened on that last deployment?
“Are you up for this?” Cooper asked, concern and guilt gripping him that he hadn’t been with them—that he didn’t know what dangers they’d faced. “I know you guys haven’t been back long.” Just a couple of weeks.
Maybe he should have given them more time. But then he knew downtime was usually the last thing a Marine wanted; it gave him too much time to think. The other guys didn’t look like Lars, though. They didn’t look rested or relaxed but they also didn’t look like he did, like something was haunting him.
* * *
Nikki Payne refused to be haunted. She would not let that bitch get to her. She wouldn’t see those eyes—with the life slipping from them to leave only hatred—in her sleep. If she could sleep...
But it wasn’t like she had time to sleep anyway. She needed to help Cooper get his franchise of Payne Protection up and running. She had set up all the computers, had security systems ready to install, ads ready to be placed in every publication online and in print.
But that wasn’t what she really wanted to do; she wanted—she needed—to be out in the field. She needed to actually do protection duty, not desk duty. That was why she’d left her oldest brother Logan’s franchise—because he’d been determined to keep her chained to a desk.
But so far Cooper had, too. He claimed it was because they didn’t have any assignments yet. But she knew he’d had inquiries. His wife, Tanya, worked as a social worker, and an adoption lawyer she knew had asked her about Payne Protection. Everyone knew about their family security business. They’d had a hell of a couple of years.
So maybe it was no wonder that Nikki lay awake at night, her eyes open so that she wouldn’t see the gunfire and the explosions and the death...
She shuddered as she remembered how close she had come a few times to death herself. The car crashes, the gunfire...
But she had survived every danger. Hadn’t that proved to her brothers that she could handle the job? That she could handle anything?
She stared at Cooper’s office door. It had been closed since she’d come in, which was strange. His door hadn’t been closed since he’d opened the office six weeks ago. Well, unless Tanya stopped by to visit...
Nikki was glad he closed it then. She’d seen too much romance and love the past couple of years, too. It sickened her nearly as much as the danger and the death. She would never be so stupid as to risk her heart like her brothers and now even her mother had.
She would much rather risk her life.
If Cooper ever gave her the chance...
The knob rattled just before his door opened. She settled onto the edge of the receptionist desk, for the receptionist they had yet to hire, and turned to the door with a smile. Tanya Chesterfield was Nikki’s first sister-in-law and as Cooper’s childhood crush and friend, the woman had been a part of their lives nearly as long as Nikki could remember. She loved her like a sister. But it wasn’t the beautiful blonde who walked out the door.
It was a mammoth blond. The guy was so big he had to turn a little for his shoulders to fit through the doorway, and he had to duck slightly so he didn’t hit his head. When his eyes—an eerily pale blue—focused on Nikki, her pulse quickened. Some other guys filed out with him. They were nearly as big but she barely noticed them or her brother, who stepped out of his office behind them.
“This your secretary, Coop?” the big blond guy asked. “Can’t imagine your wife is too happy having a beauty like this working with you.”
Despite the backhanded compliment, Nikki’s blood heated with anger. “I am not a secretary,” she answered for herself. “I’m a bodyguard.”
The guy’s gaze skimmed down her petite body, and his mouth curved into a slight grin. “Okay...” he remarked, as if humoring her.
“Lars, this is my sister, Nikki.” Cooper introduced them.
The guy’s face flushed slightly. “Oh, sorry...”
Nikki knew the bro code: guys’ sisters were off-limits. Apparently her brother Nick hadn’t gotten that memo when he got his best friend’s sister pregnant. But he and Gage were good now that Annalise and Nick had gotten married, and their son—Woodrow Gage Payne—had been born.
Cooper didn’t need to worry about any of his friends getting that close to her. She had sworn off relationships; they weren’t worth the risk.
Now a fling...
Maybe then she would be able to sleep again. With the dark circles under his eyes, Lars didn’t look like he’d been getting much more rest than she was. Not that she would be interested in any of these guys even for a fling. These were macho males like her brothers who would mistake her size for weakness—like Lars apparently already had.
Cooper introduced the others. “Dane Sutton, Cole Bentler, Manny Mannes...”
She shook hands with each of them, who treated her with more respect than Lars had. But then they now knew she was Cooper’s sister.
Then Cooper announced, “These guys are part of my old unit with the Corps. And now they’re my new team.”
They were his team. But what about her? Was there a place for her on it that wasn’t behind a desk?
She didn’t like this, not at all. And she especially didn’t like Lars Ecklund because she was worried that he might be right. Maybe Cooper hadn’t hired a receptionist because he wanted her for that position.
* * *
Lars had royally pissed off the cute, little brunette. He felt her angry gaze boring a hole in his back as he walked out of the office of the Payne Protection Agency. But minutes later, as he climbed into the pickup beside Dane, he realized she wasn’t the only one he’d pissed off.
Dane had already been irritated that his truck was in a shop for repair of the bullet holes and gate scrape and that he’d had to ride with Lars.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Dane asked from the passenger seat.
“Hey, I didn’t know she was Coop’s sister,” Lars defended himself.
But he was embarrassed. Not that he’d flirted with her but that he’d come across like such a chauvinistic jackass. The way Cooper had been looking at him in the office had made him nervous. His friend had known something was up, so Lars had been struggling to act like his old self. While he hadn’t been the playboy of their unit, he had never let a pretty girl pass him without making a compliment. He hadn’t complimented Nikki, though; he’d insulted her.
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Dane said. “We were all together. Why didn’t you tell anyone else that Emilia’s missing?”
A twinge of pain struck Lars’s heart. “I can’t.”
“You know they would help you,” Dane said. “We’re all there for each other. It’s what we did. It’s what we do.”
It was who they were. Even though Lars had never had much of one—but for Emilia—he knew their unit was family. And not the kind that bickered and fought like Cole Bentler’s but the kind that would do anything for each other. “That’s why I can’t tell them.”
“Because they’ll help you?”
He nodded. Then he turned the key in the ignition to start up the truck. They should have used his vehicle the other night, but Dane had worried that the security guards might have already noticed him casing the estate and following the lawyer.
“You’re losing it, Lars,” Dane said, shaking his head. They’d been friends so long that he knew when not to argue with Lars. So he said nothing more.
But because they’d been friends so long, Lars owed him an explanation. “I have no proof,” he said. “I’m not even sure my sister is still in River City.”
He had told her that if she got in trouble and needed help while he was deployed, that she should come to River City—to Cooper. She hadn’t met with Cooper, though. In her last letter, she’d told him that she’d come here but she was going to meet with a lawyer instead of his friend.
That lawyer wouldn’t even take Lars’s calls. Anger tightened his stomach muscles into knots. He had to have something to do with Emilia’s disappearance. He had to know where she was.
Because he was a lawyer, he knew his rights. Even if Lars called the police, they wouldn’t have enough cause to be granted a search warrant. So Lars wouldn’t be able to legally get inside that estate. That was why he and Dane had resorted to illegal methods.
Methods that could have gotten them in prison or a casket. Cooper had too much going for him right now with his new family and his new business. Lars wouldn’t let his friend risk his life on his hunch.
The same went for Manny and Cole, too. If he told them, they wouldn’t give him a choice—just like Dane hadn’t. He shouldn’t have told Dane, but his friend had caught him in a weak moment, when the fear for Emilia had been overwhelming him.
Not being able to find her...
Not knowing where she was...
He hated it—hated feeling helpless—just like he’d felt when they’d lost their mom to her disease. He hadn’t been able to help her, either, hadn’t been able to save her.
He had to save Emilia.
“You don’t need proof for your friends,” Dane said.
He hadn’t needed proof to offer to help. He had trusted Lars’s instincts that something was wrong. During their deployments, they’d had to trust each other, or they wouldn’t have survived.
“No,” Lars agreed. “But I need proof to keep my friends out of trouble. We can’t go storming in on a hunch.”
Dane grinned. “Again?”
“We barely got out of there alive,” Lars reminded him.
The gates had scraped along the sides of the pickup as Dane had backed out, but he had made it onto the street. And they had escaped the gunfire with only the truck getting hit, not them.
This time.
He had no idea what might happen next time. The lawyer had already taken measures to increase security at the estate. Myron Webber was determined to make sure nobody got in.
Or out?
“We need a better plan before we try again,” Lars said.
And taking the bodyguard job was the biggest part of that plan. Since he’d been following the lawyer, he knew how the guy intended to increase security. He’d overheard a conversation the guy had had with a pretty blonde woman Lars had recognized from the picture Cooper had carried in his wallet since boot camp. And now he knew: Myron Webber intended to hire the Payne Protection Agency.
Lars felt a flash of guilt for taking advantage of his friend. That was why Cooper couldn’t know. This way he had plausible deniability for whatever Lars had to do in order to find his sister.
And Lars would do whatever was necessary for Emilia. He had promised their dying mother that he would always keep his sister safe, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He had to find Emilia; he had to keep that promise.
He didn’t care if he wound up in prison or a casket.
Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Childs