Release

Release
Jo Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Barbara Joel and Barbara Ankrum for being there just when I needed them.

Contents

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

1

SETH TURNER REACHED FOR HIS blanket with a hand that wasn’t there. He’d been half-asleep, but now he was awake and filled with a red heat that burned behind his eyes, in his gut. Every day he had to relearn the raw truth: his left hand was gone, ripped apart by a bullet, tossed aside by the doctor upstairs. Without his consent.

He hated her for it. Hated her touching him even to give him an exam. Hated her voice when she tried to convince him she’d done the right thing—saved his life. Did it ever occur to her that he didn’t want this life?

He pulled the blanket up with his right hand and settled back on the pillow. It was a different kind of torture, knowing she was sleeping upstairs. That he would have to live here, with her, for months yet to come while he learned to use the prosthesis.

It had already been three months since she’d performed the surgery. It had taken this long for the wound to heal, for his skin to form a useless lump three inches up from what used to be his wrist. He’d been in bar fights, he’d been in wars, he’d even survived Delta Force training, but nothing had been harder.

He understood now why men, good men, turned to drugs and alcohol after they’d been mutilated. The pain was the least of it. The part he couldn’t stand, that made him want to die, was the loss of everything that was important about him. Which was the part Dr. Harper Douglas didn’t get.

To make things worse, to add the goddamned cherry on top, there were his dreams. They came every night now. At first he’d shaken them off, but there was no use pretending they were going to stop. He woke in the middle of the night sweating and hard, his erection throbbing as images of her, of goddamn Harper, made him ache until, with his one good hand, he took care of business. Even that didn’t end his torment. Once he’d come, thoughts of her haunted him long into the pale mornings. With luck he’d fall asleep again, but mostly his luck had run out. By the time she came downstairs he hated her again. He tried to be civil, but it didn’t come easy.

Harper, with her no-nonsense attitude and her sharp blue eyes, looked at him as if he were a piece of meat, a patient, not a man. Her in her white robe, tight at the waist and crossing at her breasts. She wore no bra when she came from her bedroom, and though her breasts weren’t large, they moved when she did, swaying just enough to sear a picture in his head.

His hand moved down to his erection, and he thought again that he should feel grateful that he’d lost his left hand. He wrote with his right, threw with his right, beat off with it. But his left, that was his rudder, his stabilizer. Without it, how would he use the sniper rifle? Reload? How could he defend himself, let alone kill a man? Shit, he couldn’t even tie his shoes.

He heated again as he remembered finding the slip-on loafers that had appeared by his bed. Harper had put his boots in a cupboard and replaced them with granddad shoes, something a crip like him could handle.

Shifting again in the hospital bed, he wished for the hundredth time that the bullet had hit him right between the eyes. Not that he’d want to abandon Nate and the others, but Jesus. What was he supposed to do now?

He hadn’t even realized that he’d only ever seen himself as a warrior. Not even that—as a weapon. He’d been good for exactly that and nothing else. And now he was broken, a piece of junk to be thrown in the scrap pile.

He closed his eyes and prayed for sleep. What he got instead was a wave of need and the cursed images of Harper torturing his soul.

THE WALLS OF THEhouse were mostly gone, but the bathroom was still private. Four walls, a ceiling and a door complete with lock. Harper stared at the sink, at the faucet that dripped brown rust instead of water, and all she could think was that she couldn’t treat the child with her hands so filthy. The chance of infection was too great. But the water…the water had stopped. The electricity was off. Everything in the tiny village in the north of Serbia was in shambles.

There was no hospital, no other doctors, and she only had the small bag, barely more than a first-aid kit. The child…he was four, maybe five. He spoke no English, and her Serbian was terrible, so she couldn’t ask him where his mother or father was. Maybe they were out there, with the others in the square. But no. She couldn’t think about that right now. She couldn’t save them, but the child, the boy…Perhaps…

She looked up from the useless sink to see her own image in the cracked mirror. What was she doing here? She could have taken that job at the USC medical center. She could have gone to Africa or Asia, worked with one of the relief agencies or the Red Cross. But she’d gone to the UN. She’d volunteered to go to Kosovo because the war was over, at least officially. She’d never bargained for this. She closed her eyes and breathed as deeply as she could, trying to think of anything but the carnage in the square. There had been so many.

She’d come with Jelka, who’d lived in this village her whole life. Anya, who’d been an excellent aide and a friend. Jelka had come when her mother hadn’t answered her phone. Neither had her aunt, her cousins. They’d driven into the square, and the bodies had been everywhere. Harper had known within minutes what had killed them. A nerve agent. Something bad, worse than anything she’d heard of in medical school or the special training she’d received from the peacekeeping force. The men, women and children had died horribly.

She looked at the boy. It didn’t matter that her hands were dirty. He was dead. Everything once alive in this town was dead. What she didn’t understand was why. No government would sanction this kind of genocide. No independent army she knew of had the technical capabilities. Who had murdered Jelka’s family? Who had brought this nightmare into the world?

Harper woke with a gasp, and for a moment she was back there, in her tiny apartment with its uncomfortable bed, cracked basin and inconsistent heat. But a few deep breaths and a sharp focus on the familiar comforter brought her home to her own bed in her little corner of East Los Angeles. The shaking would take a little longer.

The nightmares had started months ago and were as much a part of her life as being a doctor at the free clinic. She hated them, hated that she woke up sweating and trembling. There’d been a time, as hard as it was to believe, when she’d gotten sweaty from a hot man in her bed. Now the only man in her life was a wounded soldier living in her basement, cursing her with every other breath. That is, when he wasn’t trying to hide his hard-on for her.

Nate, Seth—they all told her the nightmares would end, that she’d have her life back once again, but she didn’t believe it. It was all FUBAR—fucked up beyond all reason. Every part of it. Especially the man living in her basement. Seth was a decent guy and she liked him well enough, she just had no desire to be his den mother.

Okay, so he’d gotten a bum break, but he was alive, wasn’t he? She knew he resented her doing the amputation, but that wasn’t unusual. No matter the circumstances, traumas as severe as amputation required long periods of adjustment. He’d grow accustomed to his limitations and his prosthesis. The sooner, the better, because as he was now he was pretty damn useless.

She’d already decided that gainful employment for Seth was just the ticket. They could always use the money, but more than that, he needed to see that he was still productive. Maybe he couldn’t be soldier of the year, but there was no way he was going back to that life anyway.

Even if by some miracle they could prove their innocence, how would Seth or Nate or any of them believe in the Army ever again? She knew her country wasn’t evil, that it was a small faction of men who believed they were above the law that had caused all the havoc, but her whole world view had been altered irrevocably. That Senator Jackson Raines could publicly call these men, these heroes, traitors to their country…

She shut off that line of thought as she climbed out of bed. There was no use thinking about the mess of a situation. They—Nate, Seth, Boone and Cade, all Delta Force soldiers, along with herself and Kate, the UN accountant who had discovered the dark secret that a Black Ops group from the U.S. had developed a chemical weapon so deadly there was no antidote. They’d escaped with their lives but little else. Bottom line—she couldn’t do anything about it, and it was useless to try.

She was a doctor, not a soldier. If she could have completely disassociated herself from the whole matter, she would have. All she wanted was to do her job. To keep the clinic going and lose herself in work. She didn’t want to babysit Seth, she didn’t want to have to hide, she didn’t want to live in this house or have a trauma room in her basement.

Nothing had been right since that one day. Since she’d stood witness to the slaughter of an entire town. Of course she dreamed of it night after night. That day, she’d walked into hell.

Her bathroom floor was cold on her bare feet, but one of the great things about this old house was the water pressure. She turned on the shower, hung her robe and nightshirt on the hook on the back of the door and eased herself under the spray. She thought of nothing but the heat and comfort for several long minutes, then got down to the business of washing.

The more she thought about bringing Seth to work in the clinic, the more she liked the idea. It would get him out of the house, give him a practical way to get used to his prosthetic. And it would be a safe place. The kind of people who came to the clinic weren’t likely to connect Seth, especially the way he looked now, to the Wanted posters. She’d encouraged him to do more than grow his hair, but he couldn’t stand the mustache or beard. Maybe they could dye his hair, although it would be a shame to change those coppery highlights. Harper smiled, thinking of Seth’s reaction if she should dare say such a thing. He wasn’t exactly open to his feminine side, was he?

She finished washing her hair, then spread some shave gel on her right leg. She was pasty white, which she’d never been, even as a kid, but she didn’t spend much time outdoors anymore. The hiking she loved was a thing of the past, work keeping her a virtual prisoner. It was probably foolish to ignore other aspects of her life, and if it wasn’t quite so chilly out, she’d drive herself up to Angeles National Forest and get lost in the trees. Unfortunately this January was exceptionally cold and wet, and she wanted to hike for pleasure, not punishment.

After finishing her left leg, she rinsed off all the soap, shampoo and gel, wishing she didn’t have to go down to the basement at all. Wishing she didn’t know that Seth was still so angry. Wishing…

Wishing she had a man in her home who wanted her. Wanted to be there. She was lonely. Not because she had no real friends. That was nothing new. She didn’t trust a lot of people, not in that intimate way she saw all around her. That had never been her style. But she wasn’t one to deny herself when it came to men. She liked them, had always liked them. Not for keeps, of course, but for a month or two. If the chemistry was there, why not?

The chemistry hadn’t even been alive in her since that day in Serbia. She didn’t even want to think about how long she’d been without. She’d considered Seth, naturally, but he was so…so pissed. At her. Some women might get off on that whole macho anger thing, but not her. Not yet. But if something didn’t change, she wasn’t guaranteeing a thing.

She grabbed the towel off the rack, and fifteen minutes later she was in jeans and a sweater, her sneakers tied, her hair as neat as it ever got. No makeup, not for work.

Downstairs, the coffeepot had done its job, and she filled two mugs. Black for Seth and light for her. Then she headed down to the basement of doom.

Seth was up and dressed, which he always was, and he was on the floor doing one-armed push-ups. Admirable in any other patient, but Seth took it too far. He wouldn’t stop until he reached one hundred. And then he’d collapse, sometimes on his stump, and he would be shaky and weak for too long. All her talk of moderation went in one ear and out the other. Stubborn ass.

She put his coffee down and waited, watching the muscles in his back, the way his butt clenched. From this angle, he was perfect. You had to know him to see that he was one push-up away from a nervous breakdown.

He did the whole collapse thing and, of course, got up too soon. She ignored his red face and rapid breathing completely as she peeled the sock off his stump.

Seth stared over her shoulder, as always. He never complained about how she touched him, but he didn’t participate either. It was as if she were working on someone else’s body, and that had to stop. Now.

“So how would you like a job?”

He turned sharply. “What?”

“A job. Work. The end of you moping all day.”

“What kind of a job?”

“Don’t get excited. You don’t get to kill anyone. We could use another aide at the clinic.”

“Aide?”

She used her hands to feel his stump. The blood flow was good, the scar was healing beautifully. But there was no callous from his prosthetic, which meant he wasn’t wearing it enough. “Yeah, stocking the exam rooms, cleaning up, filing. That kind of thing.”

He didn’t say anything, but the vein in his jaw spoke volumes.

“It’s not glamorous, but it’ll be good for you. You’ll get better at using the hand. It won’t replace physical therapy, but it’ll accelerate your progress.”

“So I can do what?”

“I don’t know. Get a life maybe?”

He snorted, which was something she’d grown disturbingly used to. She held his arm to the side so she could examine a bruise that was starting to yellow. “Is this still bothering you?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“I’ll call Noah.”

“For that?”

“Making sure the prosthetic fits perfectly is his job. You won’t wear it if it’s uncomfortable.”

“It’s always uncomfortable.”

“You’ll get used to it if you wear it enough. It’s not easy, but you’ve faced harder things, I’m sure. Don’t you want to be able to pick things up? To hold a cup of coffee? Your dick?”

The look he gave her was priceless. She’d only said it to shock him. For a grown man, a man who’d been to war, he sure shocked easily. She probably shouldn’t take so much pleasure in making him blush. But he looked good that way, and…oh, God, she needed to get out more. “Let me see you put it on,” she said, dropping his arm and replacing it with her coffee, which she picked up easily with her left hand, just to be obnoxious.

He noticed, but he didn’t say anything. He just went about putting on the sock, which he did with his right hand and his teeth, then he got the prosthetic out of the top drawer of the small dresser in the corner of the room.

She wondered if it was uncomfortable for him to sleep here every night. It wasn’t so much a cozy basement as a trauma room, complete with portable X-ray, surgical tools, every kind of medicine she could think might be needed and a handy defibrillator. She’d tried to plan for every kind of emergency—and good thing she had or Seth could have died from that gunshot wound.

When Nate had proposed the idea of setting her up like this, she’d been shocked, knowing it would be outrageously expensive. But he’d come up with the money and she’d stocked the basement to the gills. She hadn’t had to use it until three months ago. Now it had become Seth’s home. She’d offered him the spare bedroom, but he’d turned her down. All he did upstairs was shower and make himself ham-and-cheese sandwiches. She’d never met a more stubborn man. She just wished he’d use that trait to get acclimated to his new life.

He grunted as he struggled with the hand. It wasn’t a difficult task, but it was terribly awkward. His left shoulder kept moving, an unconscious response he wouldn’t lose for a long time, if ever. There were a million and one things the nondominant hand is used for, and the brain didn’t take to this kind of change easily. Finally he was set up, and while the manufacturers tried damn hard to make the fake hands look real, they didn’t. They were substitutes, ungainly ones, but in time Seth would find his way.

He looked at her with a surprising lack of satisfaction. “Okay, it’s on.”

“Open and close,” she said, leaning against the long cabinet.

He went through his paces inelegantly, which was to be expected.

“How many hours did you wear it yesterday?”

Seth shrugged. “About five.”

“I want you to wear it for a minimum of eight. Which works out well, since that’s the minimum you’ll be at work.”

“I’m not going to be an aide, Harper, so forget it.”

“No? What, are you planning to sell your body to earn your keep?”

“If I’m that much of a bother, I’ll leave.”

“And go where?”

“I can hook up with Nate.”

“No, you can’t. You’ll just be in his way. He doesn’t have time to babysit you.”

He flushed again, this time with pure anger, but she didn’t care. The man needed a reality check. He had to get on with it, just as they all had to get on with it, whether he liked it or not.

“Fine. When do we leave?”

She checked her watch. “Be ready in forty minutes. I’m making breakfast. If you come up in ten, there’ll be food for you.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Tough. You’re going to need your strength. Deal with it.”

As she headed for the stairs, she heard him curse her under his breath. She didn’t say anything, though. Maybe she was a cold bitch. Hard times called for hard measures.

2

THE FREE CLINIC WAS in a run-down part of Boyle Heights, a sad suburb of Los Angeles where the median income was right at the poverty level, and the people who showed up on the doorstep were a damn sad bunch. They were mostly meth addicts, but there were still the unwanted pregnancies, the search for birth control pills, the folks with the flu and the cough and the red itch “down there.” No one came to the clinic if they had somewhere else, anyone else.

All Seth could think about when he walked in the doors was that he’d seen it before. Maybe not this color and maybe there were different posters on the walls, but the poor people all over the world always ended up in rooms like these. With overworked doctors and nurses with sore feet.

If he had to get a job in the outside world, then he supposed this was the safest place to do it. What were the odds that someone here would recognize him? He looked nothing like the man they’d flashed on television or the Wanted picture in the post office. His hair was the longest it had ever been, and the posters didn’t mention the missing hand, but that wasn’t even it. Since Kosovo, he’d changed. He had lines in his face, around his eyes. He looked tired all the time, and his skin was sallow and pasty. He felt like an old man despite his daily workout.

Now that he was dressed in hospital scrubs, with an old Dodgers baseball cap on his head, no one would pick him out as a soldier or a traitor. He looked at himself in the clinic’s bathroom mirror and pulled his cap down a little farther.

He finally understood what Kate had meant when she’d said she’d been invisible as the room-service lackey at the downtown L.A. hotel.

She’d been a forensic accountant for the UN in Kosovo and she’d been the one who’d gotten the Delta Force team involved. She and Nate had been an item, and when Kate had discovered that something fishy was going on, she’d talked it over with him. She hadn’t known it at the time, but she’d found the first proof that a faction of the CIA, calling themselves Omicron, had created a mighty nasty chemical agent and they were planning to sell it to the highest bidders, who would then use it to kill whomever they chose—mostly civilians. To add to Omicron’s crimes, they’d recruited a Delta Force team, his team—one of the best in the world—to do the dirty work of wiping the evidence off the earth. Their original mission was to go to a secret laboratory in Serbia, collect all the files, kill the scientists working there and destroy the lab. What they hadn’t mentioned was that the scientists in that particular lab weren’t working on the nerve gas—they were developing the antidote.

Some of the team had escaped—Nate, Boone, Cade and himself. They’d convinced Kate and Harper to come along because they clearly knew too much. The one scientist to make it out alive had been Tamara. She’d come back to the States, and Nate had found her a safe place to do her research. She’d had to distill all the notes from her colleagues to try and recover their progress and then she had to make sure the antidote not only worked but could be dispersed to save whole villages.

Last Seth had heard, Nate was trying to get some money together for more of her tests. He did security work, real high-tech stuff, state-of-the-art, for which he charged a pretty penny. No one complained, as his customers were as shady as they come. A lot of bookies, some conspiracy nuts, an arms dealer or two. But ever since his picture had shown up on Wanted posters across the country, Nate couldn’t afford to be picky.

The work had been easier when there’d been two of them. When Seth had been there to cover Nate’s back.

Pounding on the bathroom door made him reach for a weapon he wasn’t carrying. He closed his eyes and tried to chill, but it wasn’t easy.

“You gonna stay in there all day?” It was Harper, of course. “Other people need to use that john.”

He gave himself another look in the mirror, then his gaze moved down to the plastic masquerading as his hand. He had to focus to open and close the thing. None of it felt natural or intuitive. But he couldn’t hide forever.

He opened the door in time to catch Harper walk into the cubbyhole she called her office. After he grabbed his regular clothes, he followed her, the scent of cleaning fluid and rubbing alcohol as bright and intrusive as the overhead fluorescent lights.

Her head was bent over an open file as she sat on the edge of a very messy desk. One foot was up on the seat of a plastic chair, and in addition to the stethoscope around her neck, she had a pencil stuck behind her right ear. The pencil looked as if it’d been used as a teething ring.

He wondered again what it was that made him want her. She took every opportunity to bust his balls, and now this. He’d done his fair share of KP, but dammit, a janitor?

She looked up at him for a moment, giving him a quick smile, which surprised him, then she went back to flipping pages with her long, slim fingers. But the smile lingered in his mind’s eye. She didn’t do it often, at least not when she was with him. But when she did, it made an impact. Maybe it was that one crooked tooth. Everything else about her seemed so perfect, her startling blue eyes, her pale skin and, dammit, even that stupid hair of hers that was not quite blond, too short and always a mess. It all came together to make him want to—

“Seth?”

She was looking at him again. Shit. “Yeah.”

“I talked to Noah. He’s going to be here in about twenty minutes, so why don’t you just lay low until he comes. When he’s done, you won’t have to worry about being recognized.”

“Why not?”

“He’s not your ordinary prosthetist. He used to be with the CIA, disguising agents in the field.”

Seth felt all his muscles tighten. “You do realize that Omicron is CIA.”

“I do. But you don’t have to worry about Noah. There’s a reason he’s not with them anymore.”

“So you want me to wear a disguise to work here?”

She nodded. “It’s going to be subtle, so don’t sweat it.”

“Don’t sweat it,” he said, not understanding her cavalier attitude. “It’s not a costume party, Harper. It’s my life on the line.”

She looked at him with her best doctor-in-charge expression. “I get that. It’s my life, too. So stop worrying about it. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

He believed she was, but he also believed that she had no idea who she was up against. Omicron would kill every person in her precious clinic if that’s what it took.

“Besides,” she said, “no one expects you to have only one hand.”

He swore under his breath, knowing she was trying to bait him.

She closed her file and stood. As she passed him she touched his shoulder, making him flinch. He didn’t think she saw.

“You can do something good here, Seth. You can be useful and get friendly with your new body. Don’t screw it up.”

He started to tell her exactly what she could screw, but what good would it do? Harper was Harper. “Fine. I’m assuming someone will tell me what my actual job is at some point?”

“Get through your session with Noah, then find me. I’ll point you in the right direction.”

He nodded, but she was already out the door, heading down the hall, her sneakers squeaking every third step on the stained linoleum.

He thought about waiting for Noah right there, but Harper might come back. So he headed out, looking for another safe place to hide. He hated being without a weapon. Without his left hand. The vulnerability never left these days, and he wondered if it ever would.

The blue hallway led past four different exam rooms, three of which were occupied, the doors closed. The fourth was empty and Seth walked in. There was one poster about STDs and another about HIV, both with stern warnings about always using a condom. Seth’s hand went automatically to his back pocket where he kept his handy Trojans, two at the ready no matter what. The moment of optimism fizzled as he moved his left arm, the weight of the prosthetic reminding him again that his days as a chick magnet were over. Not that he’d actually been one, but the uniform, when he’d worn one, had helped. Being with Nate helped even more. There were always women around Nate who needed comfort after being passed over.

He looked at the plastic again—five fingers, fingernails, little hairs on the knuckles, veins. No matter how masterfully the plastic was molded, it was still fake. Like a mannequin’s hand, like a G.I. Joe. He fought the urge to smash the damn thing into the wall.

“What can I help you with today?”

Seth spun at the feminine voice to find a doctor standing in the doorway. She was reading an open file and chewing on the end of a pencil. She looked young, as if she’d just gotten out of medical school and her long, curly brown hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. When she looked up at him, he looked down, giving her a good view of his baseball cap but not his face.

“I’m not a patient,” he said, darting a quick glance. She was pretty. Especially her eyes.

Her gaze went right to his fake arm. “No?”

He flushed hotly. “I’m new here. I’m an aide.”

“That’s great,” she said. She put the file back in a pocket on the inside of the door. “I’m Karen. Dr. Eckhardt. I was the new kid, until you.”

“Nice to meet you.”

She moved over to the exam table and leaned against it, trim in her blue scrubs, looking him over from bottom to top.

He needed to get the hell out of here, but he couldn’t just run. Instead he turned his side to her as he feigned interest in the supplies on the shelf. Tongue depressors, cotton balls…Yeah, this was a clever ploy. He should have just stayed in Harper’s office. What the hell was wrong with him?

“I didn’t know we’d found someone new. What brings you to the clinic?”

“I’m just here to lend a hand.”

“No pun intended?”

He wasn’t at all sure how to take that. Another quick glance found her smiling. He didn’t think she was making fun of him, so he smiled as he stepped toward the door. “Right.”

“Well, I think it’s great. We can use all the help we can get.”

Two women in scrubs were heading down the hall, so he stopped. “What about you?”

“Me? I switch-hit—I get paid for working at Kaiser Permanente, at the Sunset Hospital, but I spend a lot of time volunteering here.”

“Why here?”

“Someone needs to do it.”

“That’s it, huh?”

“Well, to be honest, my attending physician looks kindly on those who give back to the community.”

“I see.”

“So what am I supposed to call you?”

“Seth’ll do.”

“Okay, Seth’ll Do. Glad to have you on board.”

The hall was clear, so he headed out, glancing back just as he reached the hallway. Her gaze had moved down to his ass. It surprised him. Maybe he wasn’t a total turnoff. Then again, she did like charity work.

One of the exam room doors opened, so he slipped around the corner. An older Hispanic man and a middle-aged black woman sat behind a Plexiglas barrier in a large room overrun with files. Four phones, all of which were either ringing or blinking, were within arm’s reach, as were two old computers.