Burn (28 page)

And it’s when I realize that this everything I never knew about my farther that I start to cry.

“This is our past, Quinn,” Logan says quietly from behind me; “It’s the past that I need to remember.”

He touches my arm and I turn as he takes my hands; “I
need
to know the past, because it’s the path I took to get right here to you.”

What’s funny about growing up is watching yourself and those around you change and grow in ways you’d never have imagined. For instance, who would’ve known that my tom-boy of a middle sister who would have just as soon gotten her teeth pulled than wear a “stupid dress’ would’ve been the first one of us to have the romance novel of a happy ending; the one where everyone ends up barefoot and pregnant and getting married? And by the same stroke, if you’d have told a younger, nerdy, never-miss-a-curfew, never-step-outside-the-lines
me
that I’d end up with the swearing, tattooed, bareknuckle boxer of a bad-boy, I’d have thought you were nuts.

But hey, thats love;
totally nuts
.

Logan and I aren’t getting married; not yet anyways. Reagan and Hudson, for all that passion and drama, had their history. Their’s is a story that they started writing five years before they found each other again. But Logan and I are just opening our book up;
ours
is a story we’re still learning to write, and one I might add that seems to get steamier by the page.

We’re also not pregnant; not
yet
anyways. For now, we’re too busy helping the frankly staggering amount of kids out there in the world already that don’t have anyone. There are the hospitals we’re finishing up with the Archer humanitarian program in Cuba, Liberia, and Guatemala, but also the schools in Ghana and Afghanistan that Logan and I are just doing on our own on the side. I mean, just the
traveling
is enough to keep me busy enough that getting knocked up really isn’t an option.

Of course, that’s not to say we aren’t “practicing”, as Logan puts it. And let me tell you, practice makes
perfect
; especially with
that
man.

The world is an imperfect place, and sometimes it’s painful, and full of hurt, shadow, and sorrow. But, it can also be full of light and joy; of peace, of healing, and of love. Sometimes you just have to fight for it, because some of those things are
worth
fighting for.

There are words inked across Logan’s chest that I love to trace my fingers across while I imagine a younger, more lost version of him may have gotten in another time, another life, and with a heart not yet whole.

“Never Back Down”

But I know they mean something new now; something even fiercer than the fighter ceaselessly swinging at the darkness. And they’ve also never been more true.

Because you
never
back down from love.
 

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Excerpt from
Heat
, Book One in the
Soldiers of Fortune
Series.

Five years ago, that cocky, egotistical a**hole played me like a fool and broke my heart.

Hudson Banks; the dominant, tattooed, womanizing, ex-Marine-turned-billionaire who runs God-knows-what at my late father’s company.

Oh, and he’s sexy as all f**k, and he damn well knows it.

He’s like a gasoline fire; a scorchingly hot disaster, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to get burned.
 

I’m on track to be the youngest New York State Senator ever elected; the bright, gutsy, good-girl media darling. Except my campaign funding just went dry, and it looks like the only solution is coming from the last person on Earth I’d ever want to take anything from. Oh, and it turns out bad-boy, tough-guy Hudson will be shadowing me 24/7 after he makes it clear that he’s in charge of “protecting the investment.”

Yeah, just perfect; a reckless, irresistible d*ck like Hudson Banks is the
last
person I need being “in charge” of anything to do with me.
 

Especially when I still can’t forget the taste of his lips or
 
the feeling of that
massive
hardness I know he’s packing between his legs. It’s not fair that he’s even hotter now than he was back then. It’s not fair that those smoldering, arrogant eyes and that cocky, panty-melting grin still make me warm in places they shouldn’t. And it’s definitely not fair that five years later, I still can’t get him out of my head.

So it looks like I’ve got two races on my hands: the one for election, and the one against the burning heat threatening to tear us both apart. But on the sprint to the finish line, what happens when the man who has everything comes up against the one thing he can’t have?
 

*****

“They’re fucking
what?!
” I almost drop the glass of champagne in my hand as I feel the floor practically drop out from beneath my feet. My campaign manager Donald’s face is impassive and steely - pretty much like it always is even in crisis meltdown situations like this - with his bushy grey eyebrows furrowing slightly like they do when he’s got news for me neither of us want to hear.

“They’re pulling out, Reagan; entirely.” I see him reach out of habit for the phantom pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket that hasn’t been there for five years; the frown in his eyebrows deepening.

“
All
of it?”

He sticks a pen between his lips instead of his old vice and glowers at me; “Every damn penny.”

I swear fiercely under my breath, clenching my hand tight and digging my nails into my palm as the reality of the situation hits me like a wet blanket; “How fucked are we?”

Donald tenses his face; he hates when I swear, especially in public and
especially
in public when there are cameras
everywhere
. “Lower your
voice
, Reagan” He mutters through the pen in his teeth, looking at me like I’m an ill-behaved child in that way that drives me
crazy
. In the movie version of my life, Donald is the kind and sagely grandfatherly type who guides me along a path of adorable metaphors and teary-eyed life lessons to victory. In reality, he’s cold, calculating, and robotically efficient at keeping me in line with his battle plans. But then again, kindly grandfatherly types doling out anachronisms like they were candy don’t win elections; robots do.

“They were forty percent of our campaign.”

I can feel the breath leave my lungs as the room spins around me; my lips moving soundlessly as my brain searches for the words to possible use here. This simply
can’t
be happening; not after we’ve worked
so
freaking hard to get to where we are.

Donald glares at me as he furiously chews on his poor pen; “Maybe next time, you’ll
stay on the
damn
speech I give you instead of going off on one of your ‘save the world’ tangents, Reagan. You know they’re going to jump down you throat for that kind of things because-” His phone beeps and he frowns, trailing off as he shakes his head and mutters at whatever’s just popped up, but I can pretty much take my pick of what he was going to say anyways: ‘Because I’m a girl,’ or ‘Because I’m the youngest person to ever run for the State Senate of New York,’ or my favorite, ‘Because I’m the daughter of the late William Archer; billionaire philanthropist-slash-arms-dealer, depending on who’s opinion you ask.’ To most people, I’m either the next great American Dream for politics, or a nut-job, which plays nicely to the split media opinion of eager-eyed media darling or poor little rich girl, depending on which new station you like to watch. I hang my head;
running
was one thing, but dropping out like this is going to be a news anchor joke for
years
.