Nightfire: A Protectors Novel: Marine Force Recon Read online

  From somewhere deep inside her, a place she had no idea existed, lost but not forgotten, came the answer. “Hawwy?”

  Chloe burst into tears.

  Chapter 4

  Holy. Shit.

  Chloe was in Harry’s arms, crying so hard she was having trouble breathing. Harry was bent over her, holding her tightly, crying, too. Mike had never seen Harry cry, ever. Not even when he’d come back from Afghanistan almost dead from terrible wounds and it had hurt him to breathe.

  “I can’t believe this.” Harry pulled away and held Crissy—Chloe—by the shoulders, tears streaming down his face. “Oh my God. Is it you? Is it really you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just pulled her into another bear hug.

  He didn’t need to ask. The resemblance was there, something almost tangible, which was why he’d been so frozen. Harry’s heart had been frantically sending him signals his head couldn’t accept.

  They were brother and sister, all right. When you knew it, you couldn’t miss it. Male and female, yin and yang, but the same stock. It was amazing to Mike that they were clearly siblings and yet Chloe was so feminine and Harry was all male. But there it was—the same coloring, the same color eyes, even the cast of their faces was the same.

  The Keillor kids had been like that. Three young brothers, clearly siblings, looking so much like their dad, but with a bit of their mom in there. A family, visibly bound by blood. His heart gave that familiar kick when he thought of them. He suppressed it, pushed it right back down again.

  Harry and Chloe were making a lot of noise, words coming out so fast they were garbled, hard sobs, sharp laughter.

  Sam stuck his head in, frowning, looking ten years older. Nicole had had a hard time expecting their first child, Merry, and she was having a hard time with the new one, too. Sam’s nights were as sleepless as hers.

  “What’s all this racket—hey!” He gaped at Harry and Chloe, clutching each other, crying their hearts out and laughing, at the same time. It wasn’t every day he saw his brother Harry holding on to a woman and weeping.

  Mike could almost see the gears moving in Sam’s head. Slowly. Sam was having problems processing the scene, unusual for a former SEAL. SEALs aren’t easily surprised and don’t usually have problems processing things. Sam must be really sleep-deprived.

  Harry lifted his head, joy all over his wet face.

  He grinned at Sam. “Sam, meet my sister, Crissy.” He looked down at her. “Or do you want us to call you Chloe, honey?”

  Chloe glowed, like a little sun. “Chloe,” she said softly. “Please.”

  Sam blinked, shook his head, as if the idea were too big for his brain to contain it. “Crissy? But, but isn’t she . . .”

  Dead. He’d been about to say dead. Chloe turned fully toward Sam. Once that idea that Harry and Chloe were brother and sister was in your head, the truth was right there, on their faces. Unmistakable. The truth made flesh.

  “Oh my God,” Sam breathed, eyes wide. Seeing it.

  “Yeah.” Harry swiped at his face. “Yeah. Wait till I tell Ellen. And Grace!” He looked down at Chloe. “Honey, you have a niece. A beautiful little niece. Grace Christine. Named for you.”

  Chloe’s face crumpled again, her shoulders shook. She buried her face in Harry’s now-wet shirt, sobbing quietly.

  Sam walked in warily. Though he’d been married more than two years now, for him a weeping woman was still the equivalent of a block of C4 with the detonator in and the timer counting down. But before he reached them, Marisa rushed into the room.

  A weeping woman. Marisa was hard-wired to react. She came in bristling, shooting filthy glances at Harry, Sam and Mike, men who’d dared make one of her women, one of the Lost Ones, cry. She put her arms around Chloe’s shoulders, glaring ferociously at the three men. Marisa weighed one-twenty dripping wet and was fifty years old. But none of them, highly trained former soldiers that they were, would dare take her on when she was in protective mode.

  “What’s going on here? What did you men do to this poor girl—” she began furiously, getting right up into their faces.

  “She’s my sister, Marisa,” Harry said at the same time. “Come back from the dead.”

  Marisa’s face went utterly blank. They never talked about it, but everyone in the office knew Harry’s story. Knew that the loss of his little sister had been a tragic hole punched through his heart all his life.

  “Mamma mia,” she whispered, reverting back to the language of her childhood. She pulled away to look Chloe in the face, holding her by the shoulders. Eyes flicking from Chloe to Harry and back. “Mamma mia.”

  “Davvero,” Chloe said unexpectedly, smiling, wiping away the tears that were streaming down her face.

  Marisa whooped, kissed Chloe on the cheek and did a little jig. Mike stared. No one had ever seen cool, calm Marisa so excited, so joyful. “Una sorella ritrovata! A lost sister! Found! And she speaks Italian!”

  “Solo un poco, very little.” Chloe smiled, wiped her eyes again. “I studied it only for a year.”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Two beautiful women stuck their heads in the room, looking puzzled. Nicole and Ellen. Ellen had probably been working with Nicole on her accounts. Besides singing for them, Ellen kept the books of Nicole’s translation agency and of RBK. Mike always thought that was a great twofer.

  Ellen rushed over to her husband, seeing the tears running down his face. “Harry!” She sounded more shocked than worried. “What’s wrong, darling? Are you hurt?”

  This last was said slowly, as an afterthought, because though he was crying, Harry clearly wasn’t hurt. He started laughing and wiped away some tears, though more fell.

  Chloe turned to smile at the two women, hope and light in her golden eyes. Mike had never seen anything so luminous. It was as if she had a light source glowing inside her. Her smile was heartbreaking, the smile of someone who wasn’t used to happiness.

  “Come here, honey,” Harry said to Ellen. He opened one arm, the other around Chloe. When Ellen was by his side, in his embrace, he kissed her cheek. Ellen and Nicole were no dummies. Both of them were looking at Chloe, then Harry, then back at Chloe. Understanding that something was up, but what?

  “Honey,” Harry said to his wife, then gave a sort of laughing cough, as if whatever was in his chest was too big to express but had to come out. “I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but this is . . . Crissy. My sister. Back from the dead. Only now she’s Chloe.” He threw his head back and laughed again.

  Both Ellen and Nicole gasped.

  Mike was barely paying attention to them, to Sam and Harry. He moved closer. He couldn’t help it. Chloe was light itself and he was helplessly drawn to it, to her. There was some kind of aura there, something he’d never seen in anyone else before, something that drew him in without any volition on his part. His legs moved without him willing it, his entire body moving toward the light, moving toward something it had never seen before and instantly recognized as something it craved.

  Harry was holding Chloe and Ellen in his arms. Everyone was talking all at once, the noise level amazing. Marisa had drawn away from the group and was wiping her eyes, smiling. Sam bent down to her.

  “Marisa.” With any other woman, Sam would have maybe laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. They were all affected, Marisa as much as anyone. But Marisa didn’t like being touched by a man. She still had scars from her husband’s touch.

  She stood ramrod straight, was back to her prim and proper persona. She nodded her head soberly at Sam. “Mr. Reston.”

  Sam looked at Harry, in a knot of happy women, Chloe, Ellen and Nicole, all of them talking loudly and happily, then met Mike’s eyes.

  Sam had clearly made a decision. He turned to Marisa. “RBK closes for the next two days. Full pay for all employees. Cancel all appointments for today and tomorrow, with apologies. We open again on Monday.” When Sam looked at him, Mike nodded his approval.

  Oh yeah. Finding the sister you thou
ght long dead—yeah, that qualified for a holiday. And when that sister was Chloe Mason . . . hell yes. Celebrations were definitely in order.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Marisa’s voice was bland, but there was a rosy blush under her olive skin. She’d caught the Bolt happiness bug.

  They all had.

  “Well, then Wordsmith closes down, too,” Nicole said, smiling. Her translation agency was across the hallway from RBK. “I’ll subcontract out my own translations for the next couple of days. I can always check on things from home. This calls for a real celebration. And you, Ellen—” She looked sternly at Harry’s wife, a notorious workaholic. Sometimes you had to pry Ellen from the spreadsheets of Wordsmith and RBK with a crowbar. “No accounting. None. I don’t want you near a computer until Monday.”

  Ellen laughed. “Absolutely! Are you kidding? Working when I have a sister to welcome to the family?” Ellen was hugging Chloe. “Oh man,” she said. She had that rosy blush, too. “Wait till you meet Grace, Chloe. Your niece. You’re going to love her. This is so great! Another aunt for her. Nicole can share aunt duty!”

  “I love aunt duty.” Nicole bent down to kiss Chloe’s cheek. She was much taller than Chloe and Ellen, and moved a little awkwardly, her belly starting to get in her way. “But I’ll happily share. And I can’t wait for you to meet our daughter, Meredith. Merry.” Nicole smiled at her husband, then Harry. “This is so great. I have no words.”

  Which for Nicole, a professional translator, whose stock in trade was words, was really something.

  His brother’s wives were great. Mike knew both his brothers realized how blessed they were. Two beautiful women, particularly Nicole, who had a blinding kind of beauty, with that Snow White ivory and ebony thing going on. Though Ellen was a looker, too, and a world-class singer. Sam and Harry were lucky men because their wives were not only gorgeous and smart and talented, but also loving. They’d both created happy homes for his brothers, given them constant, unwavering love and beautiful children. Neither Sam nor Harry had ever had a happy home, and they lapped it up.

  But neither of the women could hold a candle to Chloe. Mike couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He edged closer to see whether he could pick up on whatever it was that surrounded her. There was some kind of force field around Chloe, something he couldn’t in any way define or explain but that was as strong as a tractor beam.

  Nicole had a cell phone to her ear, snapped it closed. She clapped her hands. “Okay, everyone, listen up! Manuela is going to start cooking lunch for us just as soon as she stops crying. So we can take this show down to Coronado Shores. Chloe, where are you staying?”

  “With us,” Harry and Ellen said at the same time. “No question,” Harry added.

  Chloe was looking overwhelmed with joy. Mike had been bowled over by her in the office lobby, this pale, anxious beauty. Now she was glowing with happiness, eyes gleaming with tears of joy, cheeks flushed. Absolutely irresistible.

  “Oh!” Chloe covered her mouth with her hand. “I don’t mean to impose! I booked a room at the Del, you don’t need to put me up, for heaven’s sake. You have a small child and . . .” Her voice trailed off when she saw that Harry and Ellen weren’t even listening to her. Ellen absentmindedly gave her shoulders a squeeze while talking to Harry about beds and space, then turned to give Chloe another kiss on the cheek.

  “This is so exciting! It’s the best Christmas ever!”

  “No, really.” Chloe stepped back, just one tiny step, but it was the first step back anyone had taken. Her hands clasped in front of her and she pulled them apart. A sign of distress.

  Harry glanced at Sam and at him and they drew closer, closer to him and to Chloe.

  It was a look they’d shared all through their adolescence in a brutal foster home, a look they all understood instinctively, down to the bone. Harry wanted Sam and Mike to have his back. It was a call both Sam and Mike were incapable of resisting. They’d have Harry’s back no matter what. Mike would willingly take a bullet for him, and for Sam, too. He loved them.

  He’d walk into the jaws of death for both of them.

  Coming closer to Chloe, something he wanted desperately, was a no-brainer.

  Harry took Chloe’s hands in his, carefully. Harry had big strong hands, they all did. They were all careful not to hurt women or kids with their hands.

  A hot flush of grinding guilt shot through Mike at the memory of holding down the cokehead during the fuckathon last night. Hurting her. She was a whack job, true, but she didn’t deserve even one second of pain from him.

  It was a memory that shamed him, made him feel unclean. Unworthy, of his brothers, of their wives. Of Chloe.

  “Chloe,” Harry said gently, watching her face carefully, “you need to understand something really important. We’re all your family now. Sam and Mike and me, we’re like brothers. More than brothers. We’ll have all the time in the world for me to explain why, but for now—all you need to know is that they are your brothers, too. Together with Nicole and Ellen and Merry and Gracie. We’re all one family. Yours.”

  Chloe burst into tears again. Mike could see that she couldn’t contain her emotions, which made sense. When she’d told her story, he could hear a longing for connection in her voice. Almost feel her yearning. He’d had his family until he was ten. He knew what it was like to yearn. She’d had it harder than he had because she’d never known family except for the first years, when Harry protected her. Years she couldn’t remember.

  Sam bent to gently embrace her. Sam was tall—six-three. He had to bend down low to her. He kissed the top of her head. “I’m your brother, too, Chloe. It’s just like Harry said. Nicole and Merry and me—we’re your family now, too.”

  Chloe smiled up at him and swallowed, the muscles in her long, graceful neck moving. She swiped at her face. “Thank you, Sam,” she whispered.

  Sam stepped away for Mike.

  Mike put his arms around her. Somewhere along the way, she’d shed her coat. She had on some silky thing, a ruffled blouse in a delicate pink—the color of her flushed face.

  She eased into his arms. She fit so perfectly, just slotted right into him.

  The hug with Sam had been clumsy. He was so much taller than she was, and she’d moved stiffly. The embrace had been genuine but awkward.

  But with Mike, she just moved naturally into his embrace and just as naturally his arms closed around her.

  Time stopped, telescoped.

  The room disappeared. Harry and Sam, Nicole and Ellen—gone. No more.

  There was no noise, nothing. Just Mike and Chloe, in his arms.

  Mike was shorter than his brothers and Chloe’s head fit naturally, perfectly, right against his shoulder, at exactly the point where all he had to do was tilt his head to rub his cheek against her soft golden hair. Bend down just a little more to kiss her.

  Mike felt heat all along his front, like being covered with a soft, warm blanket that was silky, too. And smelled like heaven. Something fresh and warm.

  He was supersensitized. He could feel the short gasps of her excited breath against his neck. His hand was so big it covered a good portion of her narrow back and he could feel her rapid heartbeat against the palm of his hand. The quick heartbeat of joy.

  Mike had fucked hundreds of women, but he’d never felt anything even remotely like this. A mild electric shock as he held her raced through him. Everywhere he touched, it felt as if he’d never touched a woman before. Never felt such silkiness, such warmth. Never felt as if she’d moved her body into his like magnets of opposite poles meeting. A force that was unstoppable, natural, utterly right.

  She rested against him and he wanted to keep her there forever, but when he felt himself harden, he moved away subtly, mentally rolling his eyes.

  Goddamn. His dick had never known how to behave itself.

  Oh man, way to turn this moment into something that belonged in the dives he frequented when he got his black moments.

  He couldn’t really blame
his dick, though. His dick was right to move. He felt it wasn’t getting erect so much as trying to get closer to her, close to all that silk and gold.

  His dick would get closer to her eventually. Close to her, in her. Oh yeah. Only not right now.

  Her hand was still in his and it took real willpower not to bring her fingers to his mouth. She had beautiful hands, fingers long and slender. A pianist’s hands though he had no idea if she played or not.

  He could almost feel her fingers against his lips, so strongly he had to drop her hand and step back, muster a smile.

  When he pulled back, Chloe did, too, and smiled back up at him. “A brother,” she whispered.

  Mike didn’t answer, didn’t reassure her that she’d just found another brother.

  Because what he was feeling right then wasn’t brotherly at all.

  Chapter 5

  Chloe received more hugs that morning than in her entire lifetime. It was magical, beyond words. Beyond even her imagining—and she’d done a lot of imagining on sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling, wondering what it would be like to have a family.

  Wonderful, that’s what it was like.

  It took her a second to sort the women out. The small, pretty redhead with the slight southern accent was Ellen, Harry’s wife. And . . . and her sister-in-law. And she had a niece.

  Chloe had never, ever thought she’d have a sister-in-law or a niece. Blood relations. The thought made her shiver.

  And then Nicole, Sam’s wife. Beautiful and warm and welcoming. And since Harry said Sam was like a brother to him, well then, apparently Nicole was a relative, too.

  Then there was Sam, very tall, as tall as her brother Harry, only not as good-looking. He actually looked rough, exactly the kind of man she’d shy away from, instinctively. Tall, strong, rough-looking men automatically spelled danger. This was a message that came to her from some place so deeply embedded in her heart and mind and sinews that she had never even questioned it, until now.

  Notwithstanding his appearance, Sam seemed like a good guy. Though he looked like he could pick you up and smash you against a wall without breaking a sweat, the truth was, he made a real point of being gentle with her. He’d hugged her with almost exaggerated care, the way you’d hug a frail grandmother. There wasn’t anything he could do about his rough voice, but he did seem to try to modulate it for her.