The Flyboy's Temptation (20 page)

Epilogue

T
HE
FOLLOWING
DAYS
were a blur.

“So tell me again how Deirdre knew Anso?” J.T. asked, linking
his hands through hers as they laid in bed, twined in each other's arms.

“Apparently, Deirdre met Anso at a benefit, and when Anso
learned of her high position within the company and the fact that she oversaw
the virology department, he honeyed up to her. He convinced her that he loved
her and that they were going to ride off into the sunset together in order to
get her to compromise the lab.”

“She must've freaked out when she heard he was supposedly
dead.”

“Anso must've contacted her soon after because she was pretty
calm. She questioned me to see what I knew, and thankfully I heard your voice in
my head cautioning me to remain quiet. It was the best thing I could've
done.”

J.T. grinned. “Glad to hear my voice in your head was a welcome
thing.”

“I missed you terribly,” she admitted, closing her eyes as he
brushed a kiss across her lips. “I never should've pushed you away.”

“I never should've walked.”

She smiled, her heart swelling with love. And yes, it was love.
She knew that now.

“What's going to happen now?” Hope asked. “What if Anso's
lawyers get him off?”

“That's not likely to happen. Now that Anso is in custody,
they've been digging into his background and they've found all sorts of illegal
activity they can prosecute.”

“Good,” Hope said. “I hope he gets sentenced to life in prison
and he gets a bunk mate who makes him his bitch.”

“So vicious,” J.T. said, amused. “But I like it. You know, I
was pretty impressed with that punch you landed on the tarmac and then that
kick—wow. That was hot.”

She snuggled up to him. “Well, I wish I'd found that spurt of
courage when he attacked me in the bedroom. Maybe if I'd put up more of a fight,
he wouldn't have managed to get me to the airport.”

He gently lifted her chin to stare into her eyes. “Listen to
me... You did exactly what you were able to do. Don't beat yourself up. You are
the bravest, smartest and definitely sexiest woman alive, and I'll never let you
forget it.”

Hope warmed under his hungry gaze and sighed, knowing she'd
never tire of this feeling. J.T. made her feel special and beautiful, sexy and
dangerous in all the most wonderful ways.

Somehow she'd lucked out in the love department. She'd managed
to find a man who made her hot and sweaty—in good ways—and was pretty damn
smart, too.

She smiled and hoped Tanya was watching. Er...maybe not
watching
, but definitely smiling, because Hope had
found the man no computer program would ever have been able to find. If only
Tanya were still around to see her now.

Oh! And there was one more thing.

“I forgot to tell you,” Hope said, rising on her elbow.
“Tessara gave me a bonus and a promotion for my part in routing out Deirdre. I
told you Tessara has changed. The company is really trying to change their
image. They've even started a new committee on laboratory protocols so this
never happens again.”

“I'd still feel better if you got another job. I mean, there
has to be a lab out there that would salivate to get someone of your caliber on
their team.”

This time Hope knew he was only looking out for her and instead
of bristling at his suggestion, she smiled at his concern.

“How about you? What are you going to do about Blue
Yonder?”

“Teagan changed his mind and wants to keep it going. I told him
it was okay if we let it go, but he seems to think that I was right and that the
business is going to turn around. The money we got from Tessara is going to keep
us afloat for a while to figure out a new strategy.”

She snuggled up to him. “Good. Because I was thinking... How
long would it take to get to Cabo?”

He did a double take. “You want to go back to Mexico?”

“I figured it might be nice to see as a tourist this time. You
know, instead of running for our lives, we could lie around on the beach and sip
little drinks with umbrellas in them. Mexico was quite pretty when I wasn't
jumping off waterfalls and being shot at.”

J.T. hugged her tightly and she thrilled at how safe she felt
in the cove of his embrace. “We'll go wherever you want,” he promised, and she
fell a little harder for the man she'd never seen coming, but wouldn't trade for
the world.

Because, let's be honest, when a man like J. T. Carmichael came
along, a smart woman held on.

And Hope was a very smart woman—she even had the PhD to prove
it.

* * * * *

Look for Teagan Carmichael's story
coming soon Available
wherever
Harlequin Blaze books and ebooks are sold.

Keep reading for an excerpt from
DARING HER SEAL
by Anne Marsh.

Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin
ebook!
Click here to Join Harlequin My
Rewards
http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010003

Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin ebook!

Do you want to earn
Free Books
and More?
Join
Harlequin My Rewards
points program and earn points every time you shop.

You can redeem your points to get more of what you love:

Free books
Exclusive gifts and contests
Book recommendations tailored to your reading preferences

Earn
2000 points
instantly when you join—getting you closer to redeeming your first free book.

Don't miss out. Reward the book lover in you!

Click
here
to sign up
Or visit us online to sign up at

http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010001

We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Blaze story.

You like it hot!
Harlequin Blaze
stories sizzle with strong heroines and irresistible heroes playing the game of modern love and lust. They're fun, sexy and always steamy.

Enjoy four new stories from Harlequin Blaze every month!

Connect with us on
Harlequin.com
for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

Other ways to keep in touch:

Harlequin.com/newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com

Daring Her SEAL

by Anne Marsh

1

“C
AN
YOU
BE
married without having
sex?”

In all fairness, Levi Brandon needed the answer ASAP. His SEAL
team leader paused, however, in the act of piling into the C-23 Sherpa transport
aircraft as if Levi had farted in front of the President or something equally
crass. The pained look on Gray Jackson's face was the only high point in Levi's
day since he'd rolled out of bed for a dark o'clock training exercise only to
discover that the US postal system and karma had caught up with him.

Gray slapped him on the back, harder than was strictly
necessary. “Little personal, don't you think, Brandon?”

“I'm talking about myself, here,” he said, humping his gear on
board. The plane was a no-nonsense set of wings and wheels, perfect for the
day's HALO training exercise.

While Gray mulled over his answer, the rest of SEAL Team Sigma
loaded up with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Levi wasn't the only guy who felt
jumping out of a plane at thirty thousand feet wasn't the best way to pass the
time. He preferred keeping his feet on the ground or his fins in the water,
thank you very much. On the other hand, at least when he jumped, he felt
something. Even fear was marginally better than the emotional desert in which he
usually existed.

“Last time I checked, you weren't married, planning on getting
married, or even dating the same woman for consecutive nights. The better
question is...can you go without having sex?” Gray dropped onto the bench beside
Levi, buckling up as the door slammed shut and the plane started its taxi down
the runway.

He'd tried dating when he was younger. Hell. The word
younger
made him feel like Methuselah, but the feeling
wasn't inaccurate. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, he'd seen plenty and done more. The
civilian women he'd dated once upon a time didn't understand what his job
entailed. They'd seen the movies or read the books, but they still popped out
perky
How was your day?
s like the words were
Percocet. And too many times he'd been under orders not to discuss what had gone
down.

Or he'd had days that were all training or sitting in a
foxhole, waiting for the action to start. Nothing to talk about there, so he'd
stayed mute and his gal of the moment had gotten upset. And then when shit did
go down? What woman wanted to hear about the kill shot he made at long range or
the building he'd cleared at the end of an M4? Sure as shooting, she hadn't been
planning to help him pack for combat deployment, and he hadn't been packing
socks and briefs, anyhow.

Sex was much simpler. He gave an orgasm; she got an orgasm. Or
three. Everyone walked away happy, and the next time he jumped out of a plane
there were no pesky emotional entanglements messing with his free fall.

He certainly had no plans for celibacy. On the other hand, fate
had just slapped him with the moral equivalent of a chastity belt. Levi pulled
the marriage certificate out of a pocket of his flight suit and waved it in the
air. He needed a second opinion, and sure enough, Sam leaned over and snagged
the paper. As the team medic, Sam Nale had even fewer personal boundaries than
the rest of them, probably because he'd patched them all up on more than one
occasion. Funny how once you'd had your fingers in a guy's bullet holes you felt
like you knew him.

“Levi brought reading material.” Sam unfolded the paper, read
it over and whistled, the sound all but drowned out by the steady drone of the
engines as the pilot took them to altitude. “And trouble. You're married?”

“Not on purpose,” Levi admitted with a scowl.

Mason Black held out a hand for the certificate. “When did this
happen?”

“I'm blaming you.” Levi flipped Mason the bird. His teammate
was a big bear of a SEAL, a damned good sniper, and the second member of their
unit to find
true love
when they'd been undercover
on Fantasy Island three months ago.

Not that Levi understood how two experienced warriors like
Mason and Gray could fall in love while taking down a drug kingpin, but that was
apparently what had happened. Levi had been looking forward to giving both of
them crap about it for years to come—until he'd checked his mail this morning
and discovered he had his own romantic woes to contend with.

“Your girl asked Ashley and I to be the stand-in bride and
groom for a beach ceremony. She didn't tell us we were getting married for
real.”

Mason grinned. “Heads up. Every photo shoot with that woman is
an adventure.”

“Yeah,” he grumbled, “but can you really imagine me married? To
Ashley
?”

Ashley Dixon had been a DEA tagalong on their last two
missions. As far as he could tell she disliked everything about him—she'd been
happy to detail her opinions loudly and at length. Naturally he'd given her
plenty of shit while they'd been in their field together, and she'd
really
hated him calling her Mrs. Brandon after they'd
played bride and groom for Mason's girl.

After they'd parted ways on Fantasy Island he hadn't thought of
her once. Okay. He'd thought of her once. Maybe twice. She was gorgeous, they
had a little history together and he wasn't dead yet although he was fairly
certain he
would
be if he pursued her. She wasn't
the kind of woman who shared her toys, and monogamy didn't work for him. So how
the hell had he ended up married to her?

Mason returned the certificate and Levi jammed it back into his
pocket. “Does Ashley know about this?”

He doubted it. “She hasn't said anything.”

Because if she
had
known, she'd
have found a way to tell him everything he'd done wrong that had led to an
actual wedding—with an email, a phone call, or an RPG with a scathing note
attached to the warhead. He'd butted heads with her every time he turned around
on their past missions.

Well, every time except one. There
had
been that steamy alleyway kiss when they'd been surprised by a
member of the motorcycle club they'd been investigating. He'd pinned Ashley
against the wall and kissed her hard, because at the moment the only good excuse
he could come up with for their presence in the alley was sex.

She'd kissed him back, too, in the interests of not
jeopardizing their cover, but she'd made it clear later and in private that the
next time his tongue got anywhere near her mouth she'd cut it off. His kiss had
pissed her off
that
much, he thought with a smirk,
and now he was gonna rile her up even more with his hey-babe-we're-married bomb.
That was the only silver lining in this whole situation.

“Trickery's the only way Levi's getting our Ashley to say
yes
.” Sam high-fived Mason. “Ten bucks says she'll
skip the annulment and go straight to the
kill you
part of marriage. She gets to be a widow—you get to be dead. Problem
solved.”

Which was no fun at all. Levi would prefer to aggravate her,
get underneath her defiant, snarky surface, if only because she was the one
woman who'd never, ever contemplated saying
yes
to
him.

Mason grinned. “I bet you can't get her to voluntarily say ‘I
do.'”

Levi wasn't Superman. No one could get Ashley to agree to
anything she didn't want to do without wielding some powerful ammo. “Say ‘I
do'
to what?”

“You.” A big, obnoxious grin creased the face of the other
SEAL.

“Are you doubting my powers of persuasion?”

The skeptical look Mason sported said that was an
affirmative.

Gray cursed as if maybe, in some weird parallel universe, a
Levi existed who actually
wanted
to be married to
Ashley Dixon. “Ashley could out-stubborn a mule. She'd take a hell of a lot of
persuading.”

“Just a matter of leverage.”

“Two minutes, ladies.” Gray stood and motioned for the team to
head to the back of the plane. Air tore through the cabin as the National
Guardsmen chauffeuring them to the day's jump lowered the back ramp to reveal
nothing but blue sky, empty air and a long drop to the landing zone. Levi
slapped his hand on Sam's shoulder, taking up his position behind the other SEAL
as he braced against the plane's upward pull.

He had never been wild about heights, but jumping out of a
plane at thirty thousand feet beat the three-hour commute his brother bitched
about, even if he was Navy and frogs weren't meant to fly. The good thing about
HALO jumping, however, was that once he'd gotten his ass out the door, the hard
part was done. Gravity took over, and as long he'd packed his chute correctly
the happy ending was practically guaranteed.

“Ready?” Gray bellowed the words in Levi's ear, fighting to
make himself heard over the slipstream's roar. “Don't make Ashley a widow. She's
gonna want the chance to kill you herself.”

“You betcha.” He touched the knuckles of his free hand to
Gray's. Seconds later, their team leader bellowed the order to jump and Sam flew
out of the open bay. Gravity and the engine wake did their thing, sucking Levi
out of the plane as he whooped, riding Sam's ass as they hung in the air for a
long moment.

Then they plummeted through the air at terminal velocity,
facedown, arms and feet up as strips of road and field swung in crazy circles
beneath them. Seventy seconds of flying—or falling—and he pulled the rip cord at
four thousand feet above ground level, popping his chute. On a mission rather
than a training run, he might wait until as low as a thousand feet to minimize
the amount of time hostiles had to spot him. Today, though, he'd maximize his
chances of getting to the ground intact. If his chute failed, he'd still have
time to deploy the back up. The chute shot out of his back, the canopy catching
air and jerking him sharply upward.
Bingo.

Sure, Ashley would prefer skipping the divorce and aiming
straight for widowhood, but he had no intention of making it easy on her. If she
wanted to get rid of him, she'd have to work for it.

Copyright © 2016 by
Anne Marsh