Home > His to Shelter (The Guard #1)(3)

His to Shelter (The Guard #1)(3)
Author: Em Petrova

At eighteen, she didn’t know what she was getting herself into. Oz was ten years her senior—hardened by the military life. Christ, she was thirty-six now. All these years and he still couldn’t forget.

Of course, he’d kept tabs on Rose from time to time, checking in to make sure she was okay but never getting close enough that their worlds brushed.

Looking around at the stealthy, deadly people in his midst, he thought it was a damn good thing that he’d walked away from her.

* * * * *

 

The words jumbled together into one long block of text before Rose Kilbourn’s eyes, and she sat back in her desk chair. When she rubbed her eyes, she realized how tired she actually was. She’d been sitting in her home office for hours, and a glance out the tall windows of her condo showed a darkened Washington D.C. sky.

Saturday nights people went out and had drinks with friends. Single thirty-six-year-old women hooked up on dates. But Rose felt much older than her years. She was one of the few women officers working in D.C. in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and that meant long hours hunched over her laptop researching cases. In this instance, a very high profile case involving treason.

She stood up and drifted to the wall of windows overlooking the city. Lights in every apartment window stood out like twinkle lights against the deep navy sky. One thing about DC, it was never truly dark like her father’s home in the Virginia countryside.

When her laptop hummed with an incoming conference call, she threw a look at the five clocks hanging above her desk set to varying time zones. New York, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, Melbourne. Who could be calling on a Saturday night?

She rushed to her laptop and pressed a button to accept the Skype call. Two faces loomed into view on her screen, and her heart turned over with happiness and love that blossomed more each time she looked upon her twin sons.

“Told you she’d be home.” Alexander nudged his brother Nicholas.

Nicholas gazed into the camera, leaving her feeling like he was right in front of her, staring into her eyes. “Mom, I thought you said you were going out this weekend.”

“I am. Tomorrow.” She only told a half-truth. Tomorrow she was going out—to the gym and then to the market for her week’s supplies.

“Oh bro, you lose!” Alex jabbed at his twin.

“Wait—am I part of a bet?” Grinning, she leaned in as if getting closer to the screen could bring her boys into her arms. How she ached to embrace each of her tall, strong and handsome young men.

Alex nodded while Nick shook his head to deny the claim. She laughed.

“Nothing ever changes with you two, does it?” She studied their faces for changes since she’d spoken to them three days before, but saw none.

The problem with being in an ambitious military family was raising children who also held ambitious aspirations. When the boys had come to her with demands to attend a prestigious military school in Virginia, they might have roundhouse kicked her in the heart. Having a Navy general for a father helped get them into the school, but she carried enough clout of her own.

In the end, the decision proved right for them—they were thriving.

“I’m glad to see you’re both in your dorm on a Saturday night. Getting some studying in?” She knew very well they weren’t.

Alex burst out laughing, and Nick wasn’t far behind. “Uh, no, Mom. It’s too early for us to go out yet. Parties don’t start until nine.”

“Of course not.” She chuckled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “So which one of you won the bet?”

“I did,” they said in unison.

“Serves you right, betting on your mother’s social life.”

“Or lack of.” Nick ran his fingers through his own blond hair, cut into a high and tight, per school guidelines. In the summers, he let it grow into the golden mop she’d loved on both when they were children.

“Wait until you come home for break and I’m out every night with a different man,” she said.

The boys looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Good one, Mom,” Alex said.

She shook her head, unsure if she should laugh or bristle with irritation that her boys thought her boring old life was a laughing matter.

Suddenly both heads on the screen whipped around, and then Alex walked away. A second later, he returned. “Gotta go, Mom. Our ride’s here.”

“No drinking!” She opened her eyes wide to emphasize her point.

“Not when we have a weekend trail run at O-700. I’m not puking during a ten-mile run. Love you, Mom,” Nick said.

She smiled into his eyes. “Love you.”

“Love you, Mom. We’ll call in a couple days.” Alex shot her that crooked grin that more and more often she saw on his handsome face—the one that reminded her far too much of the man who’d provided an X chromosome to the boys’ DNA chain.

“I love you.” She wrapped her arms around herself to indicate a group hug, and they did the same.

The screen went black, leaving her both joyous and a little deflated.

She drifted back to the windows and looked out over the city. Each time she saw her boys, she saw Oz. They bore the same dark eyes and strong jaws that seemed too big for them their entire lives, but they were now growing into the features.

A sigh trickled from her lips, and she pressed the backs of her knuckles to hold it in. The man who’d stolen her heart away at eighteen also had no knowledge he was a father. If he’d indicated he wanted a family—if he hadn’t been so painfully harsh that he didn’t even want her—then she might have let go of her longest kept secret. Not even her father, who’d seen her through single motherhood, knew Oswald Morgon took her in the garden that night.

She twisted from the window, shaking off the thoughts whirling through her mind like the same fireflies that danced on the night air when Oz sweetly took her virginity.

Quickly, she returned to her laptop. The confidential website she’d been researching for her case had auto-signed her out. She hovered her fingers over the keys to enter her password again, but then sat back in her chair. Her mind wasn’t in legalities and criminal acts right now, even if she had been getting somewhere by uncovering a suspicious name in connection to a foreign bank account.

Tomorrow would be soon enough to do more digging, uncover more stones. Right now, she thought she’d take herself out on a hot date, complete with a bubble bath and a glass of white wine. She just hoped Oz’s memory didn’t follow her.

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

Rose stared at the screen for a long minute. Surely, the name on the bank account in Dubai was a coincidence. Her defendant, Captain Stephen Baynard, a decorated Navy pilot who claimed his innocence in arms trafficking allegations, did not hold any ties to this bank account.

Yet, the name on the account matched that of Baynard’s late father, and a little more research revealed his father’s last will and testament did not mention the secret account at all.

The funds exceeded ten million dollars. Not at all usual for a normal Navy pilot to inherit.

The concerning part was the bank should have frozen the account at the time of death while they searched for an heir—yet funds had been removed and a transfer made to a Singapore bank just three months earlier.

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