Glen’s snort stirred the hair on Cash’s crown and gave Cash hope. It was the first noise he’d made that hadn’t been robotic, his defense mechanisms on full. Glen moved his hand so it rested on Cash’s hip, and a tiny cold sliver in Cash’s heart melted.
This wasn’t hopeless. He’d needed to know that.
“No, he’s genius,” Cash said.
“What makes him so fucking smart?”
“He told me not to give up on you.”
“Kid—”
“I’m not leaving, and I’m not giving up. I think I’ve finally learned my lesson. Men stay.”
Safe Heart
By Amy Lane
Search and Rescue: Book Three
Five months ago boy-band lead singer Cash Harper left Glen Echo in a hospital in Jalisco… and broke his heart.
Glen’s heart is the only home Cash has ever known. He’s spent the past five months trying to find his friend Brielle and make sense of his own instincts. Now he’s ready to be a real partner and lover to Glen—but first they have to finish their original mission.
Glen is ready for Cash to walk through his door needing help, but he is absolutely determined not to let him back into his heart. Men don’t run. Cash did. End of story.
Rescuing Brielle will take the full talents of Glen’s search-and-rescue company, and that means Cash needs to re-earn the team’s trust. Between Bond-villain traps, snakes that shouldn’t be there, and bad guys with guns, they all have plenty to negotiate. If Cash can prove he can stay the course and that he deserves Glen’s faith, they might survive this op whole and ready to love.
Dedicated to real heroes; search and rescue, first responders, and medical personnel. I write fantasy—you do the heavy lifting. Also to Mary, who loves Glen best. And Mate. Always.
Past and Present
GLEN Echo dragged his sorry ass down the hallway of his South San Francisco apartment building, wishing like hell the elevator hadn’t crapped out on the sixth floor of the eight-floor building. Usually the complex was prime—the two-bedroom, two-bath unit was pricey because it was a cat’s spit away from San Francisco itself, but his former roommate had also been his business partner, and the two of them had worked to be as close to the airfield by Napa and as close to the city as possible.
The compromise had been here, and they gladly paid the rent.
Of course Damien now lived in stupid bliss with Glen’s brother, but Glen wasn’t going to hold that against either of them. Much. Sure, he loved Preston—enjoyed his company even—but Damien had been the brother he’d chosen, and he halfway wished Damien had called bullshit when Glen told him to go live in Napa and have a happy life. Sure, they still had lunch together once a week, and at least twice a month, Damien spent the night on the couch of what used to be his apartment, because, well, beer. But in the meantime, Glen was here with a new roommate and a pain in his chest he was doing his damnedest to forget.
And the last two days had been bullshit, pure and utter bullshit.
Glen had actually hit his hour limit in the plane while it had been on the fucking tarmac. It was just a cargo run, but the cargo had been three Alaskan Husky puppies, and finding a place for him and three crates of noisy, vocal, woe-is-me fuckin’ dogs to sleep hadn’t been easy.
He hoped one of those fluffy, happy assholes had gotten some sleep in between debating the weather, the traffic, and the state of the world, since letting Glen sleep had not been any one of the host of things those bitches and one son of a bitch discussed.
And the hotel bed had been a fuckin’ treat too.
His upper back and shoulder had still not recovered—might never recover—from being crushed under a wall nearly six months ago, and Glen thought longingly of the ibuprofen in the flight bag over his shoulder. Soon—soon, he would be in the apartment, on the special mattress Damien had insisted on buying to facilitate his recovery, washing the ibuprofen down with a beer and some shitty TV.
It sounded so heavenly the apartment practically had a halo.
And then Glen saw him.
He’d lost weight, his small frame looking damned near elfin, and his famous cheekbones almost slicing through skin. His dark eyes were large and shadowed and haunted in that peaked face, and Glen got the smell of a guy who hadn’t showered in a while, probably about five steps before the kid got the same thing from Glen.
“Cash?” The name he’d been trying so hard not to say over the last six months sounded strange in his own ears.
“Hey, flyboy,” Cash said weakly, standing in Glen’s doorway on obviously stiff legs. “I’m, uh, so sorry to drop in on you like this. I… I wanted to be all perfect, you know? Take care of my own shit? But I—” He looked away, an agony of embarrassment crossing his features.
“You need my help?” Glen supplied, and he’d meant for it to come out bitterly, but it didn’t.
“Yeah,” Cash said, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I’m so sorry. I… I owe you so much better than—”
But Glen didn’t want to hear it. He wrapped his arms around Cash’s slender shoulders and held him until his shoulder screamed for mercy.
Cash rested his head against Glen’s chest and cried.
Six Months Earlier
CASH hadn’t looked like a handful when Glen had finally caught up with him in a tiny bar in Nayarit. Now, if you were hunting down a boy-band member who was reported to have gone on a bender in Nayarit, Mexico, you would probably find him in one of the resorts. There were some beautiful stretches of sun and sand, with little private bungalows and secluded swimming coves on the beaches of Nayarit, and when Glen had first taken the job from Cash Harper’s manager, that was where he assumed he was going.
He’d signed on enthusiastically—he hadn’t had his knob waxed in forever and figured once he got Harper squared away, he’d have a chance to rectify that situation, because oh my God, he needed to relax.
His best friend was breaking his heart over Glen’s damned brother, and it just hurt to watch. Glen needed to get laid.
Shortly after he arrived, he needed to kill something.
Cash Harper was no party boy on a bender—he was a cunning, sneaky, clever little grifter who had managed to lay down a track of false IDs and goddamned disguises between Nayarit and Jalisco. And worst of all, people loved him.
There was a little town in the hills of Nayarit called Agujero en la Roca—Hole in the Rock for fuck’s sakes—that Glen knew well. For one thing, it had about ten buildings before it got leveled by a goddamned earthquake, and for another, he had knocked on every fucking door asking for “that sweet little American boy singer whose mother was so terribly worried.”
Of course by this time Glen had put together that Cash’s mother could have cared less about her son. Cash’s mother was busy screwing rich doctors in Jalisco and living the ex-pat life there by the lake. The one thing Glen had been able to gather about the kid was that Cash had damned near raised himself.