Secret Maneuvers – Released – June 14, 2013
Re-released with new cover on September 23, 2013
PURCHASE LINKS
SYNOPSIS
Some mistakes from the
past haunt us forever… unless fate steps in with a second chance.
One ‘Dear John’ letter haunted
Bobby Baker’s every living moment. It was the letter he’d stupidly written to
his high school sweetheart, Belle, right after he had left to join the Army.
The letter in which he’d told her that he wasn’t so sure they were ready for
forever yet. Before he could let her know that the letter, and his second
thoughts, were nothing more than a mistake, she disappeared from the small
Georgia town they had both been raised in.
Fifteen years after the letter,
Belle unknowingly walked back into Bobby’s life when her job as an ATF Agent
forced her to work with a group of men secretly headed by the CIA to help her
track down whoever was involved in funneling black market weapons to a drug
cartel in Mexico.
Bobby planned to use this mission
to try to soothe Belle’s hurt feelings while proving to her that their love was
meant to be forever. He would use every dirty trick he’d learned since he had
joined the Army to maneuver her back into his life for the long haul. Belle was
not making it easy, though, as she continued to keep him at arm’s length in the
hopes that mistakes of her own would never come to light.
EXCERPT
Men
don’t wax poetic on how they feel about other men. It was in the unwritten man
rules somewhere that we were allowed to burp, fart and scratch our balls around
each other, but there would be no wordy displays of affection. Anyone who
violated that rule would have to turn our man card in. Even if the other guy
was my best friend and had covered my ass on more missions than I could count.
At this moment in time, though, I was willing to make a serious exception to
the man rules since Declan had talked Belle into staying for a game of poker
and beer.
Now
I was on the verge of telling Riley that Belle and I would name our first child
after him because he was loading her up with booze. It was a low-down dirty
play, but she wasn’t giving me another in. If I could get her drunk, then get
her talking, it could be the breakthrough I’d been looking for. In essence,
maneuvering her into a drunken corner in order to keep her in one spot long
enough for me to talk to her because, God knew, that woman wouldn’t give me the
time of day otherwise.
The
game continued, and it was easy to see that Belle was quickly slipping into a
drunken stupor since she’d been squinting at her cards for the last four hands,
trying to figure out in her head what she was holding. As if that wasn’t cute
enough, now she had the tip of her tongue peeking out of the side of her mouth
like the crap hand of cards she was holding was a three thousand year old
treasure map, and she was trying to figure it out to get the treasure. When I
looked over to see the amused grins on Declan and Riley’s faces aimed at Belle
because she was once again holding up the game, it caused me to shake my head
in feigned disgust. It was easy to see that, after all these years, my girl
still had no idea that she was a natural at being cute.
Looking
back to her, I muttered, “Baby, you going to play that hand or keep staring at
it?”
Her
head flew up and, for a moment, I braced myself for what was probably going to
be a seriously pissed off woman’s rant about how I had no right to call her
baby anymore. Instead, she threw her hands up in the air in disgust, and then
plopped them down on the table with not a care in the world that she was
flashing her cards to everyone. Huffing in annoyance, she exclaimed, “Gimme a
second here, Ace! I’m tryin’ to concentrate on what I’m doin’!”
My
breath caught in my chest. You could never pay me enough to admit this aloud,
hell, I’d never let anyone torture this fact out of me, but hearing her say the
name ‘Ace’ for the first time in fifteen years was the most beautiful thing I’d
ever heard. Hearing that one, little name again made my chest constrict
painfully for a few seconds before slowly turning everything inside me into
something warm and good. It was the closest thing I’d felt to being whole in a
long damn time.
Not that Belle gave me any time to
enjoy that nice warm feeling. Upon realization of what she’d said, all the
color drained out of her face, and she was halfway out of the Sullivan’s room
before I could blink. Not that I was letting her get away from me this time.
Throwing my cards on the table, I hauled ass after her, leaving the smirking
Sullivan brothers in my dust. Luckily, the alcohol had slowed her down, so she
hadn’t made it very far down the breezeway when I caught sight of her again. By
the time I was in arm’s reach of her, she was unknowingly just four steps short
of my hotel room’s door. Opportunity wasn’t knocking, he was telling me to haul
my girl, kicking and screaming, into my room and kick the damn door down to get
there, if I had to.
TEASERS
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