A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2) Read online

  A Harmless Little Ruse

  Meli Raine

  Contents

  Copyright © 2016 by Meli Raine

  A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  About the Author

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Join my New Releases and Sales newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/beV0gf

  Author’s note: I also write romantic comedy as Julia Kent and paranormal shifter romance as one-half of the writing duo Diana Seere. Check out those books as well. ;)

  A Harmless Little Ruse (Harmless #2)

  She has no idea what she’s doing. Loose cannons never hit their targets.

  And they take out plenty of collateral damage.

  Four years ago Lindsay experienced the unspeakable right before me, and I couldn’t stop them.

  But that’s all changed now.

  When her father, Senator Bosworth, contacted me to ask — demand — that I protect her, it was a second chance. A shot at redemption.

  An opportunity to right an unspeakable wrong.

  Controlling Lindsay as she seeks her revenge on the monsters who hurt her won’t be hard.

  Containing my own out-of-control feelings for Lindsay and keeping up this ruse of cold-blooded distance will be.

  Even harder than admitting to her what really happened that night four years ago.

  It turns out I don’t have to, though.

  Someone else did it for me.

  And I’ll make sure they regret it.

  A Harmless Little Ruse is the second book in this political thriller/romantic suspense trilogy by USA Today bestselling author Meli Raine, and is entirely from Drew’s perspective.

  Chapter 1

  I wake up to an empty bed.

  It’s not mine.

  Lindsay’s gone.

  I can feel a change in the air. I jump to my feet, instantly alert, blood pumping to arms and legs that are battle-ready. Her bedroom room smells like lavender and beeswax, mingled with the hot scent of sex. I swear her heat still lingers on the sheets. The ceiling fan is still, the room crackling with silence.

  I grab my gun belt and --

  What the hell?

  My weapon is missing.

  Gun’s gone.

  Lindsay’s gone.

  Oh, shit.

  She didn’t?

  She did.

  “Gentian,” I bark as I shove my earpiece in. “Where’s Lilac?” Lilac’s her code name.

  “With you,” he responds.

  “Negative.”

  Dead air.

  “Gentian?”

  “I don’t know, sir. No one’s seen her. Last we knew, she was locked in her bedroom with you.”

  No trace of irony. No hint of teasing. If he had even one whiff of either, he’d have his ass handed to him.

  And he knows it.

  “She’s gone, Gentian. Find her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The instant flurry of activity in the house matches my organs. They rearrange themselves inside me as I assess the situation, which is pretty fucking simple.

  Lindsay stole my gun and ran away.

  Doesn’t get much simpler than that.

  Last night was the first time in four damn years that I slept. Actual REM sleep. The night those bastards tortured us was the first night of my new life.

  A life without sleep.

  And last night?

  I slept like someone who had finally come home.

  “Jesus,” I mutter to myself. “Great job, Drew. She totally snowed you.”

  I have to hand it to Lindsay. She fooled me. I believed her act the entire time. She managed to outwit us all.

  Damn smart woman.

  Damn dangerous, too.

  A thousand points of information flood my mind. My job is to sort out the unimportant details, laser in on what’s significant, and create an instant plan from that.

  Only one man is better than me in a situation like this.

  Lucky for me, he’s a phone call away, and on my payroll.

  Speed dial is my friend.

  “ ’lo?” Mark Paulson’s sleepy voice answers the phone, and before I can say a word, he goes into full alert mode. “Paulson here. What do you need, Drew?”

  Now that’s a soldier.

  “My detail stole my weapon and escaped.”

  Silence.

  Yeah, I’m going to pay for this by being mocked for years.

  “She what?”

  “You heard me.”

  More silence.

  “Give me half an hour. I’ll be there.”

  Click.

  A few months ago, Mark called me in on a complicated mission to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend, Carrie. Ex-DEA, ex-Special Ops, and probably ex-secret agencies even Senator Bosworth doesn’t know about, Paulson has the most strategic mind I’ve ever seen. He’s like a chess grandmaster combined with a ruthless mercenary.

  Which makes him my second in command at my private security company.

  He’s second in name only, though. Called in only for extreme missions, Paulson’s trying to lay low and recover from the hell of having his woman nearly chopped into pieces and enjoyed by one of the most perverted drug and sex slave smugglers in U.S. history.

  But enough about that.

  Lindsay just stole my gun and ran away.

  “Fuck.” The truth of it starts to sink in. I anchor myself with facts.

  Fact: that gun is not registered, has no ID number, and cannot be tracked back to me.

  Fact: the three targets who defiled her four years ago are texting and taunting her.

  Fact: the three targets tried to kill her with her own car.

  Fact: she managed to escape a perimeter set up with nine of the best military-trained security guys in the world.

  Fact: I can still taste her on my tongue.

  “Sir?” Gentian walks into the room with a hard, tight face. “We found tracks in the....” His voice drops off as his eyes travel to my throat. He stares.

  I look down.

  The tag of my t-shirt sticks out. I’ve put my shirt on backwards and inside out.

  So much for pretense.

  “Did something happen between you and Lindsay last night, sir?” His eyes go dark.

  “What do you think?” He’s treading on very dangerous territory now.

  “Did she run away because of you, sir?” His point is crystal clear.

  Before I can punch him, impulse control kicks in. I plant my hands on my hips, take in a deep breath, and start to laugh.

  It’s a bitter sound.

  I’ve trained him well. He’s putting the client’s welfare ahead of pleasing his boss.

  Good man.

  “Nothing happened between us that would cause her to steal my weapon and run away.”

  Gentian’s eyes fly wide open. “Y
our weapon?”

  “Yeah.”

  He knows better than to react further. “Is that confidential?”

  “For now.”

  “Is she unstable?”

  He’s really asking whether she’ll shoot anyone on our security detail.

  “No. She has a specific target.”

  “More than one?”

  Damn, he’s smarter than he looks.

  “I suspect she’s going after her attackers from four years ago.”

  “I sure would.”

  That’s the first hint of unprofessionalism out of him.

  “What you would or would not do if you were in the client’s shoes has no bearing on what you’re going to do right now, Gentian.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Expand the perimeter search. Disable all vehicles on the grounds. Check for hitchhikers. Call gun stores and alert them to anyone buying bullets that match my weapon.”

  Someone speaks into his headset. Gentian murmurs back, then tells me, “All vehicles accounted for.”

  Cold steel shoots through my gut. Good news.

  “Then she’s on foot. Get as many guys in the field as you can.” I ignore the shoreline below. No way she got her hands on a boat. She knows how to jet ski and that’s it. Lindsay wouldn’t --

  Wait.

  The Lindsay I knew four years ago wouldn’t.

  The woman I’m dealing with now?

  Who the hell knows.

  “Done.” Gentian speaks into his earpiece, then turns to me and asks, “Do we inform Senator Bosworth and Mrs. Bosworth?”

  That cold steel in my gut turns into hot metal.

  I rake my hand through my hair. My fingers smell like her. Smell like sex and fun and smiles and groans. Like freedom.

  Like reclaiming.

  And she fucking threw it away for revenge.

  “Sir?”

  I shake it off. “No. Not yet. Containment on all levels. Get her roped in, get this situation under control, and we’ll reassess if we can’t locate her quickly. Timeline silence.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I want tails on all three of the targets.”

  “Already done.”

  “Add one more each.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gentian’s mouth sets in a firm line. He knows how bad this is.

  How bad this is for Lindsay.

  How bad this is for me.

  “And check her phone records.”

  He nods. He leaves.

  I breathe. At least, I try.

  And then I let a tiny bit of emotional pressure out. Just a few seconds’ worth. If I don’t, I’ll explode, and you can’t be strategic and emotional at the same time.

  You fail all around.

  “What are you doing, Lindsay?” I mutter to myself, pacing the room like a caged animal. The room is stripped clean, devoid of any real personality. What personal effects she has are from four years ago. Adele posters on the walls, an old iPhone from 2012, and concert tickets littering a bulletin board, stopping nearly four years ago at the month of the attack.

  Lindsay’s used me to get her hands on a gun, so she can kill John, Stellan and Blaine. She’s a loose cannon.

  And loose cannons never hit their targets.

  Chapter 2

  I run through last night over and over. No part of the intimacy stands out as fake. She wasn’t faking those moans, her sighs, her beautiful orgasms, her crying at the end, her acceptance of my comfort and my love.

  “That was not an act,” I hiss under my breath, grabbing a bed pillow and throwing it at the window. It sails through, the thin sheer curtain billowing through the opening. I punch a second pillow so hard it flies across the bed and lands on top of her alarm clock, knocking it off the nightstand.

  “You think you’re fooling me,” I say to no one, arms tense, shoulders tight as rocks, my mind racing. “But you’re not this Lindsay. You’re not. No way you changed that much.”

  The emotional impact of what she’s done feels like the wind’s been knocked out of me. She did this. She really did this. She opened up to me last night and we connected. We more than connected. We reveled and we healed and we --

  “FUCK!” I scream, remembering how much I needed to please her last night, how she healed in my arms. I felt it. I didn’t imagine it.

  We cracked open the door to the future. We pried the nails from that closed-off door. One by one, we did it.

  And she just dumped an entire cement mixer’s load of concrete on top of it.

  Protectiveness pumps through my veins like adrenaline mixed with caffeine and uppers. My pulse is in my cock, my tongue, my throat. She’s out there, alone, thinking she’s smarter than my entire team of guys who were hired to make sure no one ever hurts her again.

  I push aside the question of who she hurts. Let’s not go there.

  Not now.

  “Jesus, Lindsay, are you out of your mind?” I’m talking to myself again.

  Sheer speculation makes my mind fill with worst-case scenarios. The world is dangerous enough. Add three well-connected psychopaths with a penchant for playing Cat and Mouse, and danger seems like a preschool playground.

  Lindsay’s put herself in mortal peril.

  Whether she likes it or not, I have to get her out.

  Those crazy assholes are out for blood.

  And more.

  I peer out the open window and look at the pillow, caught in the tree branches right outside her window. A cat meows. Again. Again.

  I tense.

  Something’s off.

  My body’s half in, half out of the window. A light breeze pushes the leaves toward me, the rustle a familiar sound. When you live this close to the ocean, the wind becomes a second language.

  And it’s telling me something right now.

  Instinct takes over. The amygdala sends rat-brain signals to my body. I stand up on the windowsill, look down, and coil my leg muscles. Too tight and I’ll snap a bone. Too loose and I’ll burst my spleen.

  And...I jump.

  You think the impact from the landing is the worst part of a long fall. It’s actually the seconds where you’re suspended in midair. With nothing to set you in space and time, you float.

  You float like there is no sense of touch. Reaching out yields air. You can’t track time or measure your space. It’s like you don’t exist.

  Until you land.

  I dart to the left, my thighs screaming from quick, sharp movement.

  I tackle the sound before I even hear it. My arms whip around the source of the noise, caging it in, pressing it against the mulch and grass, the carefully edged lawn around the base of the house.

  “Mphhhh! Mmmm! Uh uh!” says the sound.

  The sound is soft and hot, twisty and frantic.

  And then the sound speaks.

  “Fuck you, Drew!”

  I sigh, as much as you can sigh while you’re taking an adrenaline bath as you straddle the woman who stole your gun and escaped from nine members of your security team.

  “I love you, too, Lindsay.”

  “Let me go!”

  “No.”

  “You can’t keep me here.”

  She’s legally right, but operationally wrong.

  I lighten up just enough for her to move from her side onto her back, our mouths inches apart.

  Just like a few hours ago, in her bed.

  A few pesky little details have changed since then.

  “Where’s my gun?”

  She clamps her lips shut.

  Like that’s going to work.

  “Lindsay,” I say in a low, even voice that is designed to scare the shit out of her. “Give me my gun or I’ll have my guys personally escort you back to that fucking island, only this time you’ll arrive by parachute in the ocean a quarter mile offshore.”

  She snorts. “You wouldn’t.”

  The ragged, excited breaths she’s taking make her loose breasts push up against my chest, over and over. Our nipples brush up agai
nst each other.

  Both sets are hard.

  So is something else.

  On me.

  “Try me. You stole my firearm,” I hiss. “What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? And what are you planning to do?” In the moonlight, her eyes should be big as saucers, frightened and agitated.

  But they’re narrow and calculating.

  Like a cat.

  “You think you can escape and go get John, Stellan and Blaine? You stupid little -- ”

  The bite comes out of nowhere as she sits up, her core muscles so fucking powerful she bucks me up an inch or so, and she’s biting my ear.

  I see stars.

  But I’m not getting off her. She’s driven me to this extreme.

  The only way to protect Lindsay is to literally pin her in place with my body.

  And there are two ways we can do this.

  The hard way

  or

  The harder way

  So I headbutt her.

  I see stars again, but she lets go and squeals, then howls in pain.

  “Why did you dooooo that?” she moans, pressing the bridge of her nose with her fingers, rocking in place.

  Ignoring her version of please, I get off her. She won’t bite me like that again. I haul her up and use an arm-twist technique that immobilizes her.

  “Gun.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She juts her chin up, defiant.

  God, she’s so fucking rebellious and hot.

  And a pain in the ass.

  “You can be charged with multiple felonies for stealing a firearm from an active-duty military officer and a federal -- ”

  “Prove it.”

  “Prove you stole my gun?” I snort. “Your fingerprints are all over it.” She’s twisting in my hands but there’s no hope. I’ve held guys three times her size with this technique.

  “Prove the gun exists.”

  Wasn’t expecting that.

  “Prove the what?”

  “It’s not registered. All the metal’s been filed down. Bet it’s untraceable. Which means I can’t steal something that doesn’t exist, Drew,” she says, taunting me.

  Teasing me.

  Blood runs in a small trickle from her left nostril, looking like a black worm in the night.