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  After a few heavy breaths he regained strength enough to pull back and look into her eyes. She still couldn’t believe that he was here. That he was hers.

  But guessing what he was about to say, she stopped him before he could speak. “I’m fine, but if you apologize or say anything about a condom, I’m not going to be.”

  He gave her an apologetic grin. “That didn’t go exactly as I’d planned.”

  She understood what he meant when she looked over his shoulder and saw the bottle of champagne and roses on the kitchen counter.

  She arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t take you for the romantic type.”

  “I’m not,” he admitted, pulling back enough to lower her down gently. He raked his fingers through his hair and redid his jeans.

  Her legs were wobbly as she pulled hers up and did the same. “But as I said before, you bring out all kinds of weird shit in me, and I wanted this to be special.”

  “It already is,” she said softly, staring into his eyes.

  His gaze softened as he wiped a strand of hair from her lashes. “You’re right about that.”

  “Although you did kind of ruin my surprise.” She’d been looking for a way to pay him back for leaving her at the hotel and had the perfect thing. She knew how to hit him where it would hurt.

  “What surprise?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He did—a bottle of champagne and two more times in the living room later—as she was coming out of the bathroom after getting ready for bed.

  He’d already stripped down to his boxer briefs and was stretched out waiting for her with his head propped up under a bent elbow.

  He took one look at her and shot up, every muscle in that impressive body taut. His eyes were slitted, his gaze deadly. “I can tolerate NOW and maybe even a few whale groups, but that? No fucking way. Take it off, Doc.”

  She crossed her arms in front of the jersey, but didn’t block the “Texans” across the top. “No. It’s my favorite team. And don’t try to order me around like one of your men, Senior Chief, or I’ll make you regret it.”

  He stood up and walked toward her in full battle mode. All six feet four inches of ripped, powerfully muscled male.

  Her mouth might have been watering a little and her uterus might have contracted, but she stood her ground.

  “Bigger, stronger. Do I need to spell it out for you?”

  In case she didn’t get it, he was looming over her threateningly, his fists flexing at his side as if he couldn’t wait to rip the damned thing off her.

  Unfazed, she didn’t budge or cower. Instead she lifted her chin and met the furious glare. “If you do anything to this jersey, I will make it my life’s mission to ensure that every one of our children—especially the boys, since I know Mr. Misogynist wouldn’t dream that his daughters with their little girlie heads so full of Barbies could be football fans as well—is a dyed-in-the-wool Texans fan.”

  He thought she was bluffing and called it. That cocky SEAL thing that she knew was lurking came out in full force—with just a touch of smugness. She was going to enjoy wiping that off his too-good-looking face. Yes, revenge was sweet.

  “Good luck. My sons and daughters are all going to be Cowboys fans.”

  He started to reach for the neck of the jersey, probably planning on ripping it down the front. But she put a quick stop to that. Holding his wrists, she said, “It won’t be hard to do when they get to know all the Texans players personally from hanging out in the locker room.”

  He laughed with utter confidence. “Right. Take it off, Bambi, or I’ll do it.”

  Now he wasn’t the only one angry. She glared back at him. He was about to have a nickname he’d like even less than she liked Bambi. “Sugar?” As in no sugar. He frowned. “Have I shown you a picture of my mother and stepfather?” She reached down to grab her purse, retrieving her phone—her new phone—and the recent photo she’d taken of them while she was in Florida.

  He was clearly confused by what he thought was the change of topic. He glanced down at the picture. “Your mom is pretty. She looks like you. Your stepfather . . .” He frowned. “He looks familiar. I’ve seen him before.”

  She hit the screen to go to the next picture—in his office at the stadium—and had the extreme pleasure of watching the blood drain from Dean’s face.

  She grinned as he figured it out. Nope, she hadn’t been bluffing.

  “What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell me your stepfather was Steve Marino?”

  Among the other business interests he had, Steve was one of the owners of the Texans football team.

  She shrugged. “You never asked. Actually I think you told me not to call him.”

  “You said he was a lawyer!”

  “Actually I said he used to be a lawyer. By the way, I didn’t tell him about you, but if you need help—or an army—let me know. I would trust him with my life.”

  This time he knew she was serious. She also knew he was probably considering it. Her stepfather headed one of the biggest defense contractors in the world. He had dozens of former operatives working for him. If Dean needed an army, she could get him one.

  Dean sat—sagged—on the bed, just staring at her. “Shit.”

  She smiled.

  His expression darkened. He knew he’d lost, but he would go down fighting. “My daughters aren’t hanging out in any locker rooms with football players.” He thought a minute, and pulled her down on his lap. “And neither is my wife. I’m not asking right now, but when this is all over, that is what I want.”

  Her throat tightened, and she felt the tears shimmering in her eyes as she wrapped her hands around his neck. She’d suspected as much the moment she saw him swimming toward her near that wreck. He wouldn’t have come back otherwise. But it was still nice to hear it. “I want that, too.”

  “Then I’ll make it happen.”

  Annie didn’t doubt him for a minute. He was a guy she could count on to get things done—always.

  Keep reading for a special preview of the next novel in the Lost Platoon series,

  OFF THE GRID

  Coming from Berkley Jove in summer 2018!

  Prologue

  SUBCAMP OF VORKUTLAG, POLAR URAL MOUNTAINS, KOMI REPUBLIC, RUSSIA

  MAY 26, 0130 HOURS

  • • •

  “Travel the world,” they’d said. “Have an exciting career while doing what you love.”

  The navy recruiters who’d come knocking on John Donovan’s frat house door eight years ago when he was an all-American water polo player at the University of Southern California had promised both. John had been thinking more along the lines of Bora-Bora or Tahiti—not Siberian Russia—but they’d sure as hell undersold the excitement part of the job.

  It was hard to get more exciting than a no-footprint, fail-and-you-die recon mission to a supposedly abandoned gulag in Russia looking for proof of a doomsday weapon, with not only their lives but also war at stake if they were discovered.

  Yeah, definitely undersold. But that was why he was here. Retiarius Platoon, one of the two platoons that made up the top secret SEAL Team Nine, didn’t do vanilla. They did exciting and impossible, and this op sure as shit qualified.

  But so far they’d been giving Murphy’s Law a workout in the “if it can go wrong, it will go wrong” category. They’d lost their unblinking eye in the sky—nicknamed Sauron from the Lord of the Rings—lost all comms, aka gone blind, and now that they were finally at the camp and ready to start looking around, something else was going down.

  They should have been inside the gulag’s command building by now, but they’d stopped in the yard for some reason. From his position at point, John took in the other six members of the squad through the green filter of his NVGs: Miggy, Jim Bob, the senior chief, Dolph, the new kid, and the LC.

  Whatever it was, it wa