stalkerish and was one hundred percent a step over the line.
What was he supposed to do now? Investigation wasn’t his area of expertise, and he couldn’t surveil someone who was hiding.
Fuck.
“Summer, baby. Where are you?”
Twenty-four hours later, when she hadn’t called, he reluctantly returned to New York with a broken heart.
He wasn’t giving up. He was just stepping back to give her space and him some time to figure out what his next move was.
16
Ignoring Dottie’s grumbled threats about the consequences for not getting his ass back to New York tout de suite, Arnie took a Vegas detour after leaving Santa Barbara. It was the one place where no one was going to bother him or give him shit for parking it at a bar and plowing through martinis.
He needed to decompress and told Dottie so in a terse message. Declaring a state of post-assignment psychic whiplash was a cheap ruse, but he didn’t care. Blaming the maniacal right-wing Nazi fucknuts he infiltrated in Germany for his foul mood bought him a little time.
Unfortunately, copious amounts of vodka failed to bring clarity to his love life predicament. The bottom of a drained martini glass didn’t reveal Summer’s whereabouts, explain why she left, or offer a scintilla of hope for fixing the situation.
When he eventually returned to New York, the chill world he expected at NIGHTWIND was transforming into a circus. A lot had changed while he was saving the US from an international incident.
First, King letting Milo tag along on an assignment ended with NIGHTWIND’s tech wizard getting the snot beat out of him.
And that was just the beginning.
King was in charge while Jon Weston was in Europe on assignment. NIGHTWIND’s CEOs were great guys, but what they knew about managing a business wouldn’t make it onto a postage stamp. This left Dottie to fill the vacuum, and what the woman did best—besides run NIGHTWIND like a badass—was make everyone else crazy.
With Dottie’s attention focused elsewhere, she didn’t cross-examine him when he blithely turned up at work without warning and acted like nothing was wrong. Thank god because he was pretty raw at the time and wouldn’t have handled a confrontation in an adult fashion.
Weeks flew by. He let his work life take over.
King shocked everyone by getting romantically involved with a pretty and very cool single mom named Dawn. Overnight, NIGHTWIND became an actual family with a mom and dad.
And Dawn wasn’t the only new face around the office. There was also Jade Morris—another single mom who turned out to be a game changer. Jade was a streetwise gamer pro. Her generation was raised on technology. She was one hell of a smart lady who brought advanced expertise to what had been Milo’s private tech kingdom until her arrival. The stage was set for an epic clash between the two, and for real, Dottie was ready with microwave popcorn for the audience.
In real time, life moved at an incredible clip. NIGHTWIND was his focus morning, noon, and night. There was so much going on that he had no trouble staying off everyone’s radar.
The oven dinger went off. Tossing aside the pencil he was using to fill in a New York Times crossword puzzle, Arnie stood and shook each leg to get the blood flowing. He’d survived a grueling early morning workout with his trainer and felt pretty good about it because nothing said “I’m the man” like besting one’s coach.
His body guy ticked all the right boxes. Big, solid, and straightforward, Stone Madison was a stereotypical Marine Corps veteran. He also didn’t give a rat’s ass about propriety. Calling life as he saw it, the guy had a knack for the creative use of vulgar language. He channeled the physical conditioning he learned in the Corps into a lucrative business. At first, he only took private clients willing to plunk down a hefty sum for his hard-core training regimen. One thing led to another, and a studio called Stone Body followed. Arnie liked him because Stone was also a driven motherfucker. They enjoyed challenging each other and pushing buttons. Theirs was a match made in testosterone overload heaven. Now that he’d survived today’s physical test, he was free to carb load, and there was no better way than with comfort food.
The aroma from a store-bought family-size container of meaty lasagna filled the air. Where his stomach was concerned, practicality and his desire to be left the fuck alone forced a culinary come to the Lord moment. There was only