Assignment: Deadline on Love [Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 3] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) Read online

  Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 3

  Assignment: Deadline on Love

  Her life is being turned upside down by a stalker. But Piper Davis isn’t the sort to sit around feeling sorry for herself. While the police don’t seem able to do anything, or perhaps they are unwilling, she knows that she can’t ignore what’s going on. Which is where a supremely sexy former service man comes into the picture.

  Aeron Cutter is used to thinking by the seat of his pants. Piper Davis definitely threw him for a loop, though. Gorgeous, smart, and quick on her feet, he knows he’ll have his hands full with her. But when he realizes she’s what he’s been missing in his life since coming home, he’ll do anything and everything necessary to keep her safe.

  Knowing she can rely on Aeron to keep her safe helps put Piper’s mind at ease. The realization of who’s behind the attacks on Piper will test them both, putting a deadline on their love.

  Genre: Contemporary

  Length: 44,588 words

  ASSIGNMENT:

  DEADLINE ON LOVE

  Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 3

  Honor James

  EVERLASTING CLASSIC

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Everlasting Classic

  ASSIGNMENT: DEADLINE ON LOVE

  Copyright © 2015 by Honor James

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-588-2

  First E-book Publication: March 2015

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Assignment: Deadline on Love by Honor James from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Honor James’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Honor James’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

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  DEDICATION

  To Karen D., you are amazing, and I adore you completely. You rock, lady.

  To Moira C., you are truly the best friend ever. Thank you.

  I would like to invite you all to join my reader group on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/moirahonor.readergroup/ This is where you will find all kinds of extra goodies, excerpts, and freebies that I give only to those in my reader group.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About the Author

  ASSIGNMENT:

  DEADLINE ON LOVE

  Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 3

  HONOR JAMES

  Copyright © 2015

  Prologue

  She stood before the memorial and placed her hand on the stone. “I wish that you were here,” she whispered quietly and placed the bouquet of sunflowers on top of the stone. “But you are in a better place.” She moved so that she could start to pull the weeds from the ground and continued to talk.

  “I’m in trouble, Daddy,” she whispered honestly to the only man she ever really loved. Well, not really. She had known love before. Once upon a time. “I know you told me that should I ever need help I should look up your old friend, but he’s moved up in the military, and I don’t think that this is something I should bring to his door.” She sighed and looked up at the skies. The storm was just barely holding off.

  “I’ve still asked to meet him. If he’s willing to help, I will ask.” Her father had died several years earlier in a sand-filled country saving the life of the then-Brigadier general, now she was just hopeful that the four-star general would still have the time of day for an orphan.

  “Mom would have loved it here,” she whispered as she looked around the peaceful cemetery. “They still haven’t found her body, and it just feels wrong to bury an empty coffin.” Her mother, insane but her mother all the same, had died two years earlier in some misguided attack on a nursery of all things. She drove her car off of a cliff, and while the car was found, the body wasn’t. The door of the vehicle had been slightly ajar, and the seat belt had never been used, sadly her mother hated them because they chafed her neck. The tide had risen before the car could be pulled up, and therefore the rescue workers thought that she had been swept out to sea.

  “I just don’t know who else to turn to. The letters were one thing. Easy to ignore, then the vandalism started.” She could so easily talk to her dad while there at the grave site.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it, then, sweetheart?” The masculine voice spoke from behind her.

  When she turned there stood a man she hadn’t seen in ten years. “Uncle Fletch?” she asked and grinned when he nodded. She hugged the man whose life her father had saved, a man that helped to keep Piper out of juvenile hall when she was fifteen. A man that had tried to be there for her when she needed it. “I wasn’t sure if you would make it,” she told him.

  “Well of course I came. You never ask for help. Well, there was the
one time, but I’m blaming that on that idiot boyfriend of yours.” He grunted as he added, “Moronic twit.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t figure that one out for three years. He was my first love and all that.” She rolled her eyes at herself, even now she had to look back and see what an idiot she was.

  “Yeah, him.” He reached out and took her arm, pulling her to the small bench under a tree and settling her into it, standing at parade rest while he watched, waiting.

  “I’m in trouble,” she said softly.

  “I got that from the message you left. Tell me what’s going on so I can help?” he asked as he held his cover in his hands, waiting.

  “It all started about nine months after Mom, well, you know.” She couldn’t really say died because it just felt wrong. There was nothing for her to bury, and that just seemed wrong to say she was dead.

  “Yeah, I know.” He softened a little and nodded. “Continue.”

  “I started to get letters. At first they were just the typical letters that I typically get. Nothing too huge.” She owned a local bar that was in high demand and catered to anyone from bikers to politicians and everyone in between.

  “Yeah, I still say you need to sell.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Anyway.” Same line every time. She didn’t know how his daughter, Gigi, handled him. He so liked to get his way. “They escalated and got worse. Each one was just a bit worse than the last. I turned everything over to the local police department, and they said they would call me. That it was just a teen or something trying to get my panties in a twist.” She snorted. She did not get her panties in a twist, mostly because life was too short to stress the small stuff.

  “Okay. Go on.” He was frowning now. She knew that look. Damn.

  “Then I started getting the pictures. Of me. Sleeping. In my house.” Each word she said was quieter than the last one. It shook her to think someone had been in her home.

  “Not good. Do you still have them?”

  “I do. I took them to the police, but they took copies. Which I didn’t understand. That’s when I made the call to your office. That was six months ago.” She opened her purse and pulled out the small package and passed it to her uncle. Not really her uncle, her father's best friend, a man that her dad had grown up with and gave his life for. “Then this came last week.”

  He opened the small box, and she saw him flinch. When he pulled out her father’s Silver Star and the photo of her with a dagger over her heart while she was sleeping, along with the locks of hair, he frowned. “What the fuck?”

  “My hair.” She pulled off the beanie she was wearing to show him the back of her hair that had been hacked off. “I woke the next morning, and I knew I had been drugged. I felt hungover, and we both know I don’t drink.” Which was odd since she owned a bar, but still.

  “Piper.” He reached out and touched the hair and shook his head. “You are coming with me.” He put the lid back on the box and tugged her close. “I have Gigi’s engagement party to go to, but I’m not leaving you alone. Besides, you and she haven’t talked for too many years.” Guilt, that was what she heard on his voice.

  “Don’t feel guilty. We all have busy lives.”

  “It’s not about that.” He looked at her and sighed. “I didn’t even think about it six months ago when you said you wanted to talk. I kept putting it off and now…” He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Dammit, now you have some psychotic asshole that’s ready to kill you. Not good.”

  “What?” she asked and stumbled. “I mean, yes, the knife over my heart isn’t exactly fun, but kill me?”

  He looked at her, the box, and then her. “Shit.” He looked at her and then the box. “On the back of the star someone inscribed a date. Honey, that date is two weeks from today. Above it your initials and DOA.”

  He waited as the realization kicked in and nodded. “Yeah. Come on. I will make calls while we are on the road and we will see about getting you some help at the bar for a time because I have a feeling you won’t take vacation, will you?” At her look there was a heavy sigh, and he said, “What I thought. You are too damn much like my daughter, Gigi.” There was pure affection in his tone when he spoke of his daughter. “Both of you stubborn as damn mules. We will work around it though. For now,” he added with the clear intention of letting her know that should anything change, that would change as well. He put her into the front seat of the car and pulled out his phone, sending off a text message for a meet ASAP before getting in and driving them away.

  Chapter One

  “Your phone’s buzzing again,” he called out.

  “So look at the damn thing, I’m busy,” was yelled back.

  Rolling his eyes, Cutter picked up the phone to see what was going on. “It’s Gigi’s old man, saying he has an issue he thinks is right up our alley. He’ll talk to you at the dinner.”

  Michael stuck his head around the corner and frowned. “Does he say what it is?”

  “Mr. Burnett, please! We only have one day left to finish this. Your moving around is not expediting this matter,” the tailor whined.

  “No, that’s all he says.” Grinning, Cutter walked into the other room and flopped down into a chair. Michael was herded back onto the platform by the tailor, and repositioned. “You want me to give him a buzz?”

  “Yeah, call him from my phone, though.” Michael shot the tailor a killing look, but did as the man directed.

  Chuckling softly he put in the call. “Sir, it’s Cutter. No, he’s in the midst of being chastised by a little man holding a pair of big scissors and a needle. Negative, sir, we are not secure currently.”

  Listening to what the man had to say, Cutter quickly lost his humor. Leaning forward, he planted his elbows on his knees. “When did this start? Why now, sir?” Grunting at the answers, he sighed. “You know us, sir. We’re more than willing to lend a hand. Not like I have much of anything going on, and I know I could rope Yoshi into assisting, too. He still hasn’t fully forgiven Gigi, so any reason to get out of her way is okay in his book.”

  He could feel Michael staring at him, practically singeing off all the short hairs on his neck. Tipping his chin up to meet his former team lead’s gaze, he shook his head as he darted a look to the tailor. Understanding instantly lit up Michael’s eyes. Yeah, he got it.

  “Yes, sir,” he said when the general asked if he had any experience working a bar. “Tending, waiting, and knocking heads. I have a cousin that owns a biker bar in Kansas out on the highway. I did many a night there helping out during leave, or between tours. Yes, sir, won’t be an issue. My cousin’s a girl, too,” he said with a laugh. The general really thought he’d have issues taking orders from a woman. What the man needed to understand was, Cutter never had issues taking orders from women. Though he did prefer a certain type over all others. Like, get naked now. That was a damn fine order.

  “We’ll see you there, sir. Yeah, I can be there early. I don’t know if Michael will manage it, though. He still has to get through the last tweaks of the tailoring, and then I know he was heading off to pick up Gigi. Yes, sir, you know it, sir.” Grinning, he winked at Michael. The general definitely had the man and his daughter pegged. He knew that if Gigi crooked her finger, Michael would let the world burn.

  “Copy that, general.” Hanging up, he spun the phone between his fingers.

  “So, what’s up?” Michael asked.

  “Sounds like someone the general knows is having a bit of trouble. It’s been escalating, and given how the laws stand, the police can’t do shit until harm has been caused.” Something that pissed Cutter off to no degree. What good did it do the victim of stalking that they couldn’t be protected until it was too late?

  “Nothing to be done there,” Michael said. “They have to work within the laws of the country, state, and city as they are written. The bonus of us going into whatever the hell it is we eventually go into, we can bend things a little more. While we can’t outright break laws, because that puts us o
n the wrong side, we don’t have to walk the same lines they do. We can draw our own lines, work to our own code of morals and ethics.”

  “I know, be a lot easier if we could figure out what we’re doing so we’re different from all the others out there with the same fucking idea,” Cutter said. For months now they’d all been going round and round. Gigi said security, which was all well and good, but it was so overdone already by those coming out of the military that they would be just another company out there amid the hundreds of others. They needed an edge, or a specialty.

  Tipping his head back, he stared up at the ceiling. “What if we only do military?”

  “What do you mean?” Michael asked. “Ow! That’s skin, buddy,” he said with a growl to the tailor.

  “Then quit wiggling around. It will get done sooner if you stay still.”

  Snorting out a laugh, Cutter had to hand it to the tailor, the guy was ballsy. “I mean, we only do work for military families. All work comes through the military grapevine. A family member wants to go overseas to meet up with their loved one for a vacation, they need someone along that speaks the language and knows the area. A family member is traveling through a war-torn country for whatever reason, they again need someone that knows the way things work. We only do work for military families. Whether actively serving, or retired, as long as they had family in the service for a minimum of a full tour, we consider the task. Protection, escort, language skills, whatever is necessary for the situation.”