Surrendering To Her Sergeant (4 page)

“Beer’s damn tasty,” Garrett
said.

Rhett shook his head. “Hell. I give
up.”

“I do, too.” Ethan frowned. “What the
fuck with the cryptic California tourism commercial?”

Franz cocked up one side of
his mouth. “Because maybe I talked to the high-levels about how my
guys grinded their guts to gravel to uncover a new international
drug shipment stream, then tracked it across the globe in order to
start breaking the assholes’ weakest links. And maybe after that, I
also told them one of my boys was about to score his sergeant’s
stripe. And maybe after
that
, I convinced them that because
of all this, my guys deserve a few days of fucking around in the
land of beaches, babes, bikinis, and,” —he held up his bottle—
“really good beers.”

Rhett shifted forward. “Are you bloody
serious?”

Like they’d choreographed
it, Franzen took a step back to let Zeke move up and continue. “And
maybe
I
talked my
sexy bird of a girlfriend into meeting us in LA so she could
arrange a friendly visit with her cousin…on the set of the TV show
she works on.”

That got a fist pump out of Rhett.
“Oh, yeah! Hollyweird, here we come!”

Zeke chuckled, accepting
Rhett’s happy offer to knock bottle necks. Franzen and Garrett
joined the toast. When the four of them swung expectant stares at
Ethan, he somehow got his muscles to function at returning
the
chink
. The
action validated his new belief in miracles. How he functioned at
all, considering how every blood cell in his body hit a red light
at the same time, had to be divine intervention at work.

“Shit, Runway,” Garrett drawled.
“don’t let all the excitement eat you up at once, okay?”

Zeke released a knowing snort. “Oh,
he’s excited.”

Garrett seconded the laugh. “Figured
your mention of a certain cousin might do it.”

Rhett grinned. “You mean
the one he tackled into a pile of poof before Hawk’s wedding,
thinking she was Hezbollah in heels? Or the one who did a personal
GPS trek in lipstick across his face? Oh, wait. That was the
same
cousin, wasn’t
it?”

“Goddamnit,” Franz snapped. “I missed
all the good shit, didn’t I?”

“Not all of it.” Garrett scowled. “We
finally got the vows in but Sage isn’t settling for the courthouse
thing. Soon as the baby’s born, she swears she’s slimming down for
the big dress and the Hollywood wedding production again. She wants
to go ‘Nouveau Renaissance’ this time.”

“Oh, hell.” Zeke laughed his way
around another swig. “Are goldenrod napkins involved
again?”

“Not sure. But I told her if I’m
wearing pants that button at my knee, I’d better damn well get a
sword, too.”

The banter was background
buzz in Ethan’s mind. For the chance to see Ava again, he’d hop on
a plane to goddamn Antarctica. Okay, Rhett was right; they’d first
met because he’d let paranoia into the party and body-slammed her
into a mound of wedding fabric—but even that had been perfect. No
stupid pretenses. No feigned interest behind a social handshake.
Just their gazes, meshed with honesty, awareness…connection. Every
breath tangled. Every touch a tiny fire. Every second a new
beginning. It was the core of what he craved from being a
Dominant—hell, what he was searching for in
life
—yet seemed his personal
Atlantis, a lost nirvana never to be realized.

Until Ava.

Fuck.

He took a long gulp of his beer,
medicating his frustration. Summoning the memories back only
reconfirmed that everything he’d felt seven months ago was so damn
real. And damn it, those kinds of sensations weren’t possible
without return ammo. Like the way she’d lingered near him even
after he’d pulled her upright from his tackle. The way her eyes
danced like the rarest, darkest sapphires when she’d invited him
into the forest for those flowers. The way she’d followed him
through the trees then begged him to grip her harder when he pinned
her against one of them…

None of it added up to the
way her radio had gone dark on him since. After Garrett and Sage’s
wedding had gone down in a blaze of disaster, including Zeke being
zapped with a neurotoxin and Rayna getting carried off by a
psychopath with a huge ax to grind, Ava stayed long enough to be
sure that Ray was officially out of harm’s way then headed straight
for the airport, telling everyone she’d been summoned back to
Hollywood by her whack-a-diva of a boss. He hadn’t bought the line
for a second. Said diva had only been in the third week of recovery
from an extensive nose and lip job. He doubted Bella Lanza was
conscious enough to dial the phone let alone capable of a text or
email. Ava had fled Seattle for another reason. In the following
weeks, the crickets that greeted
his
calls and texts were ample proof
of that reason.

Would seeing her again explain
anything? Prove anything?

At first, the hollow walls of his beer
bottle were the only response he got. But suddenly, something
replaced that fucking uselessness—something besides the anger, the
exasperation, the loss. Resolve. It started in the core of his
chest but spread out fast, making his extremities flex and his
spine straighten. Once it got to his mind, it met up with a new
friend: the Dom deep inside who now issued a surprising update. He
hadn’t given up on the goddess in the forest. He hadn’t
white-flagged it on a second of the desire in her eyes, the need in
her kiss, the urgency in her voice when she’d begged him to pin her
down harder. He hadn’t let go of the hope that she wanted more from
him…had more to give him in return.

And he wasn’t giving up unless she
told him to. With her own lips. Standing face-to-face with
him.

He grinned. Somehow he found that
harder to envision than their Hummer turning into a
Lamborghini.

And once he had Ava in front of him
again, he’d get to the truth—even the naked version, if she forced
his hand—of why she’d decided to go AWOL on him after what they’d
shared in that Washington forest.

“Serenity.” It was more a
command than a call, bolstered by his first real hope in seven
months. The bar mistress wheeled, cocking brows in a silent
you-did-
not
-just-summon me-like-that, but softened when he twirled a
finger toward the table and said, “Round two, please? The good shit
again. On me.”

Franzen kicked up one side of his
mouth. “You know, Runway, when your morose silences lead to stuff
like this, I’m okay with it.”

“Copy me in on that.” Zeke held his
fresh bottle high. “So what’re we toasting to, Archer?”

Ethan turned to his battalion mates
and leader. His stare was as level as a sniper’s crosshairs. “What
else, man? To California.”

“To California!” the other four men
bellowed.

After they knocked bottles and took
deep drags from their drinks, Franz’s smile grew into a wicked
grin. “This should be an adventure. And I’m sure as hell not
missing it this time.”

Ethan stepped away from their huddle
and paced back out toward the cars. The lights and music of the bar
faded a little. He looked up into the sky, where twilight lingered
in a special strip between the horizon and the stars. It looked
like the universe had scooped the color right out of Ava’s eyes,
then painted it there. The indigo hue, a perfect mix of deep blue
and purple, held his stare long after he should’ve walked
back.

He drilled his gaze hard into that sky
and gave it a small smile of his own.

“Adventure,” he murmured. “That might
be one way of putting it.”

“Ava! Damn it!”

The outburst didn’t just pull Ava
Chestain out of her mental cloud. It yanked her down, slapped her
hard then hurled her around, making sure her self-esteem got
slammed against all four walls of the custom dressing trailer. That
included the sides with the mini-movie theater and the built-in
kitchen.

Fortunately, her self-esteem had
learned to laugh this shit off as the usual.

Un
fortunately, there was nothing usual about today. And not in
any of the best ways.

“Bella,” she mumbled,
“
Ay. Lo siento
.
Let me fix it.”

One of the world’s most famous faces,
a perfect Sicilian oval centered by a newly sculpted nose, aimed
one glaring brown eye at her in the vanity mirror’s reflection. The
other eye was covered by the chunk of hair Ava had just teased,
prepping it for the woman’s normal style, an updated version of
Sophia Loren froth. Trouble was, even Bella’s hair wasn’t the
standard order today, and forgetting it was on the same par with
unleashing locusts over LA. It never escaped Ava’s mind that though
her paycheck was direct deposited from Victory Cat Productions, the
real ruler of her professional world was the petite woman who sat
in the styling chair with posture that suggested a curling iron had
just gotten jammed up her backside.

“Yes. You
will
fix it.” The woman
had carefully picked the burrs from her tone, leaving only the
poison-dipped velvet beneath. “Must I remind you that Raven is in
grief today? She’s likely not even showered for forty-eight hours.
The hair must match.”

The woman shuddered. Ava waited,
knowing she’d do it again. Bella often spoke about her character on
the show as if Raven Ryder sat in the room with them or even like
she was Raven herself. Ava actually liked the acting exercise. It
was a hell of a lot easier to talk to Raven than Bella.

She was pretty sure that’d be the only
time “easy” entered her vocabulary today.

She stole a glance at the
clock. Whew. It was barely eight a.m. Rayna, Zeke, and the guys
weren’t due for their visit to the set for another hour. She had to
shave an additional fifteen minutes off that because they
would
be early. And
though she already had Charlie, work bestie extraordinaire, on
standby for the set tour and introductions duties, she wanted to
make sure her alibi of having to pick up something from Bella’s
house at least looked authentic. That gave her thirty minutes to
make Bella’s lustrous hair look like it hadn’t been washed in two
days.

She turned and started yanking every
tube of product from the hair cabinet. To make sure she wasn’t in
the same room again with Ethan Archer, she’d dump a whole salon on
the woman’s head.

Because if she was in the
same room with him again, she’d want to be in his bed tonight.
Correction. She’d want to be tied up in his bed tonight. Yielding
to him. Giving herself to him.
All
of herself. The On switch the man always tripped
in her would be
on
, and this time, she wouldn’t have the option of hopping on a
plane before turning it off…if she’d even want to.

You’ve come too far, Ava.
Worked too hard to get here. You’re not going to let another cruise
dog in camouflage turn your head inside out and your heart upside
down just for three hours of passion, a couple of orgasms, and
another dead-end hunt for a connection that isn’t possible with a
man. Don’t let him in. You
can’t
let him in.

To water down the panic that
threatened a mutiny on her bloodstream, she decided to try and calm
Bella at the same time. “So tell me what Raven has to deal with
today.”

Bella’s eyes had already
fallen heavy. She blinked up at Ava with matching torpidity, a
signal that she’d clicked into her “method” by “cloaking herself”
inside her character. “The CO has come to tell her that the
insurgents have taken Jace hostage.” Jace, Raven’s fiancé, was
played by hunky Trent Lake, who’d just been named on a
half-dozen
Hot Young Hollywood
lists. He was also in two studio tentpole movies
this summer and was “considering” his renewal offer for the show’s
next season, which translated into
give me
more money or I walk.
Which was why Jace
was currently in a Middle Eastern prison, fate
undecided.