Chapter One
He saw her out of the corner of his eye, and he immediately went on point. Yeah, his cock went from zero to stone hard in a breath, but it was more than that. It was a familiar sizzle of recognition…and suspicion.
What the hell was she doing here?
He should have been paying attention to what Steele was saying, but she stole all his attention. Every bit of it. He narrowed his eyes through the murk of Bone Daddy’s, their favorite highway honkytonk outside Dallas—way outside—and focused on her.
Fuck yeah.
That was her.
He hadn’t seen her since…
“Sterling?” Steele rapped. “Are you even listening?”
Nope. Not a word.
His patter had been nothing more than an annoying drone, twined with the rebel yell blasting from the band on the stage. The sight of her had grabbed his mind by the balls…and yanked. Even now, it was hard to drag his attention back to the crew lounging at the table.
The team had decided to ride into town tonight, to kick back and relax. After their recent missions, Sterling had been all for a mindless night drinking beer and chewing the fat. But now… Now a night of chillaxing went out the window.
His fingers curled around his beer until his knuckles went white.
Chrome’s gaze flicked through the shadows. “What is it?” he asked. The boss man always sensed when something was up. Of course, Sterling’s clenched fists were a dead giveaway; if he wasn’t careful he might shatter his beer bottle.
With great care he unclenched his fingers and set the bottle on the table. “Nothing. It’s just… I know her.”
“Her?” Chrome frowned. “The hot new waitress?”
“Mmm hmm.” Either that, or she looked a hell of a lot like someone he’d seen in LA. A helluva lot. Far too much for coincidence. He’d only seen her once, and then only in passing, but he’d felt the impact of that one glance clear down to his gut. Like a fist slamming into him. That he’d never been able to forget her face, never been able to banish her from his mind, didn’t help. That smile, those eyes… Fuck. She’d haunted his dreams for months. “I think she’s a reporter.”
Both Chrome and Steele went still. They exchanged a fierce glance and their jaws clenched in twin annoyance. “A reporter?”
“Yeah. I saw her once. When I was in LA.”
“Shit, Sterling. You did pull the peach, didn’t you?” Copper smirked. With a shake of her head, she tipped back her beer.
“Hardly,” he snorted. “My name was Steve. My cover was advising hipster screenwriters on why their special ops scripts sucked. Trying to school them on why, in fact, your SEAL team can’t jump out of an airplane at high altitudes without a mask.”
Copper gaped at him. “Seriously? Why would they write it that way?”
“Because,” Sterling said in a whiny voice, “we don’t want to cover their pretty faces.”
Snorts around the table. “Brother.”
“Their pretty faces would all be pretty dead at that altitude,” Steele said. Without oxygen? Yeah. Pretty much. But at least they’d still be pretty.
“Tell me about it. Anyway…” He turned his attention back to the waitress, who was rounding the bar with a swish of her hips. His gaze stalled on that until Steele toed him in the shins.
“Anyway…?”
It had been a while back, before the mission where they’d been betrayed by a double agent—one of Red Wolf’s minions—the mission that had killed half their team. It had been a no-brainer, a simple undercover protection gig. “I was working this one job, on the set of an action flick, when the security team found a chick lurking in one of the stars’ trailers.”
Chrome frowned. “Did that happen a lot?”
“Yeah. But this chick insisted she was just a fan and wanted to leave him a photo and love letter. Since she had a photo and a love letter, and since she batted her pretty lashes at them, and since they were dumbasses, they let her go.”
“Did they check her bag?” Copper asked.
“Nope. Did I mention they were dumbasses? Rent-a-cops. Anyway, the next day the story broke in the National Snoop, outing Brace Sidira—”
“Oh my God.” Copper chuckled. “I remember that. Hollywood’s Horndog Hunts Hommes. Shit. You were there?”
“Oh yeah. I was the one who found the cameras and the mics she’d stashed.” He shot Copper a glare. “She was pretty good.”
“Wait.” Copper leaned in, her eyes glittering. “So you know Brace Sidira?”
“We’ve met.”
She made a face. “See. You pulled the peach. Hanging out in Hollywood, rubbing elbows with movie stars…”
“Answering to