706 Sugarbush Lane by Penelope Wylde
Chapter 1
Sawyer
Istepped into the Rusty Nail for the first time in three years.
The scent of cold, frothy ale and perfectly grilled burgers from my grill hit my senses and it felt like coming home. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering why I stay away and let someone else operate the one thing that gives me joy in this life.
Mac, the second born of the Becker clan and my brother, swung up from a chair and wrapped a big arm around my neck. “‘Bout time, brother. You’ve been gone too fucking long.”
“I hear ya,” I said gruffly, giving him a one-arm hug.
This time around I wasn’t too sure I’d be making the trip home upright or in a body bag, so to hear his voice brought home a lot of feelings.
Only a few people know what I do besides owning a bar on the side of Wild Ridge Mountain. He’s one of them. Just the way it had to be.
Wearing a smirk, Dyson, our younger brother, elbowed his way past Mac and we repeated the warm greeting.
Damn, it felt good to be home.
Dyson paused and did a scan of the room before heading to a round table in the corner of the bar. Eeli, our childhood friend, pushed to the front and led the pack of us.
I locked a hand over Mac’s shoulder and gave a tight squeeze. “Feels good to be home. Finally.” At the table, we shifted chairs around so none of us had our backs facing the rest of the room.
Military blood ran deep in our veins making some habits never-dying.
I took in the room in a quick glance, running a hand over the scruff along my jaw. Now that I was home maybe I’d grow it out a little. It would be a change. But looking around, not much else had changed which is what I liked. Still the dark polished wood paneling and pristine black leather seats.
Through an arched doorway, I could see the game room in the back with the worn-out pool tables. Looked like some new flat screens were the only change. I’d have to speak with the woman I left in charge about the tables.
“Hot damn! I heard rumors you were back in Wild Ridge!” Birdie, the woman I left in charge of running the place, hurried over to the table. Her thick lashes batting twenty miles an hour.
She threw her arms around the closest one of us to her and I cringed for my friend. She octopused herself around Eeli as if he was her long, lost husband.
Eeli sat rigid in her embrace. Poor man. I couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t big on public displays of affection under the best of circumstances.
And Birdie Holt was far from the best of circumstances. She had a good twenty years on all of us, but that had never stopped her from trying to get one or the other or all of us in her bed. She liked the thought of snagging a Becker by any means. That said, the woman knew two things that served me and well—how to grill a burger and manage money. She was honest too. That wasn’t something to bulk at on the worst of days.
Her skinny frame didn’t do a thing for me. I preferred a woman with some soft curves and meat that could handle my heavy weight.
None of us had ever been tempted to go there with her, not even as randy teenage boys with our raging hormones and constant hardons.
Even now I found my lip curling as her bony hands wrapped themselves around Dyson’s biceps, holding on for dear life as she batted her eyelashes up at him. Dyson quickly pushed her off on Mac, and Mac passed her to me like we were playing a warped game of hot potato.
She reached around my neck and I warred with myself not to growl my irritation right in her face. The pushy woman with the over-styled, over-dyed red hair and pink lipstick on her teeth drew my ire to the surface. A lesser of a man would throw her aside and toss her as far as he could throw her, but I valued her abilities to run this place while I was away. But that didn't mean we wouldn’t be having a good heart-to-heart about her behavior. I wanted people to feel comfortable coming here, not harassed.
I swallowed back the irritation causing the vein in my neck to bulge.
“Birdie, do you mind if we go ahead and order? I’ve been dreaming about our burgers since the second I hit the mountainside.”
“Me too. The hungry part. I’ve wanted one since I woke up.” Mac, ever the diplomat, offered her a grin I’m sure Birdie found charming, though to me all those teeth flashing made him look more like a used car salesman.
But it worked. Birdie hopped out of my arms to get our orders. In no time at all, our table was piled high with hot wings, nachos, bacon cheeseburgers with fries, and a round of ice-cold beers.
“Weird how good the food is here given you hired a person I never see eat.” Mac dragged three French fries through the puddle of ketchup on his plate and shoved them in his mouth. “Picky as she is about her food, I can’t imagine Birdie ever tastes it herself.”
I grunted in response, too busy shoveling food into my own mouth to give any more of my attention to my manager.
Once we’d all eaten enough to take the edge off our hunger, the talk turned to business. I took a heavy pull on my beer and glanced around the table at the men who’d been through the trenches with me and vice versa. My brothers and my closest friend. Eeli practically lived at our house growing up so when I said brothers that meant him, too. Add in our ten-plus years in the marines and another four as special forces, and another three in working private security you could say we were tight for life. And the latter being where we made the bulk of our millions. Now it was time to branch out on our own and put those funds to good use.
“So, we’re doing this, right? You’re not going to leave me hanging?”
Mac raised his mug. “I’m in.”
Dyson and Eeli each gave me a chin tip.
“Kratos Securities?” I asked.
This time I got a round of nods. Really, we’d already worked out the details. I just wanted to see their approval one more time before taking the final plunge.
Outside this group, I hadn’t shared the news with my family yet, but after years of being kept away from everyone in my life I was home to stay and so were they.
About a month ago, I started kicking around the idea of owning my own time. At thirty-five I was done working for others and I had enough in the bank to back up the desire to step away from the private security firm I managed to create my own. All with their blessing.
Naturally, I invited my brothers to join. As men in their late to mid-thirties with prestigious careers in the marines, not many doors were closed to us. If we wanted to go the big city route.
But the second the air of Wilde Ridge hit my lungs I knew my small mountain town was where I would stay. But truth of the matter, this town didn’t have the kind of jobs we were looking for.
So I would create them with the help of my brothers.
None of us had any interest in catering to tourists since all of us had spent the bulk of our adult years as soldiers. But there were plenty of other people who needed men with our special set of skills. Cherry Falls, Kissme Bay, Sin City. All three places were growing and more people in need of security were showing up every day.
Starting this security firm seemed like a no-brainer. Not entirely unique, but there never was enough security in the growing world of social media insta-famers, YouTube stars and politicians. All who seem to love our slice of pie in this world. And there were others looking for investigators in parts of the country they couldn’t get to.
With the skill sets we’d developed, running a security business would be the best way to keep us sharp and the bank accounts fat.
So Kratos Securities was born. Now all we needed to do was set up shop somewhere and take care of all the bureaucratic shit.
I sighed.
“I vote we hire some help. I don’t feel like spending your first days home bogged down in paperwork.” Mac shook his head, disgust pulling the corners of his mouth down.
“You read my mind, brother.” I clapped him on the back. “But maybe we need to find some office space to put all that paperwork in before we hire help.”
I sent a glance toward Dyson and Eeli. Dyson lifted a shoulder in a negligent shrug. Eeli didn’t say a word.
Not much for talking most of the time, I figured if they had a problem with any of our plans, they’d speak up.
Mac flexed his shoulders and got back down to business. “I say we hire an office manager. We can give a local a job, and they can help us find office space and take care of all the red tape involved in getting the business set up. None of us ever liked the paper-pushing angle and we knew that from the day we drew up this plan. I’ve done enough of it in the last couple of years with my parent’s hardware store that every night I go to sleep dreaming of days I never see another piece of paper.”
I looked across the table at Mac. Okay. That was a little more truth than I expected. “I can run by the Cherry Falls Gazette in the morning and place a help wanted ad.”
I loved the idea of having a business without the headache of all the tedious office crap. The less time I had to spend behind a desk, the happier I would be, too.
My mind quickly turned to the next item on my mental agenda. I scratched the back of my neck. The last thing I wanted to do was bring this up with these guys, but I needed their help. “I think I have our first client, too.”
“You’re shitin’ me. Already?” Mac tipped his chair back, balancing it on just two legs.
Dyson reached out and shoved him back down so all four legs hit the hard wood floor with a clatter. “What’s the case?”
I resisted cracking the joke I wanted to about Dyson making a good mother. I was about to get enough grief without poking the bear across from me. “I need your help finding Trinity.”
Three sets of hard yes shot to me with the precision of sniper sights. These guys knew Trinity. More than that, they knew who she was to me. That didn’t make asking for help finding my girl any easier.
My fucking soul mate. Something deep in my gut clenched at just the thought of the curvy beauty with her masses of long brunette hair and enormous green eyes. I fought down the urge to drop everything and take off looking for her. No way she stayed in this small mountainside town. Not for the three long years I’ve been gone that is. Being this close to finally claiming her as mine brought out my fiercest and most primal instincts to the surface.
Mac grinned and slouched back in his chair.
Shit.Here it came.
I was not going to get off easy here.
“So this is like a case? You want us to hunt down the one that got away for you?”
My jaw clenched. But I knew this day would come. After getting my discharge papers, part of the reason I’d decided to join the private sector with another company was that Trinity was way too fucking young and innocent for a man fifteen years her senior. If I’d stayed in town, it would have been hell staying away from her. Plain and simple.
I knew when I left that I had to give her the chance to grow up and to follow her dreams of working for the top fashion designers in Syn City. I had no doubt she’d hightailed it out of Wilde Ridge the second she had the chance.
That meant, as much as it sucked, I needed help to figure out where she’d gone. By now she must have started college and grabbed a great job working alongside big names making jewelry.
No matter how tempted I was to look her up I knew myself too well to trust I’d be able to walk away after the first time, so I stayed away. But that meant she could be anywhere.
“I need you to help me find her.” I leveled a look at each of them, letting all signs of joking leach from my face. “I’m not going to be any good to anyone until I have her with me.” That made me sound like a bastard, but fuck it.
For a long time, this clawing urgency to have her at my side made me one of the deadliest soldiers on my team. But let loose on my small hometown, my need to finally claim Trinity could make me a real threat to anyone who stepped in my path.
Mac, Dyson, and Eeli met my eyes with the cold-eyed stares of the soldiers I knew them to be.
Good. They were beginning to understand the seriousness of the situation.
“Anything you need, brother,” Eeli spoke for the first time in what seemed like fucking days. How he did that, I didn’t have a damn clue.
I nodded my thanks.
“From me, too,” Dyson echoed Eeli’s vow.
Mac stared at me a few beats before his eyes flicked over my shoulder and then back to my face. He eased back in his chair again, kicking his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.
I recognized his shit-eating grin and braced myself.
“So what do we get if we find her?” Mac asked.
I blinked. Not the reaction I was expecting. I narrowed my eyes. It’s not like the fucker needed money. “What do you want?”
“Maybe a kiss from your woman? You know, like a little token of appreciation for my superior tracking skills. A slow dance in the back room?” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
My lips curled back from my teeth. “You might want to ask for something else real quick.”
Mac shrugged, completely unconcerned with the imminent threat I posed to his life. “You know what? No worries. You can owe me one.”
“Cocky bastard. Before I plant my fist in your face, how about you actually do some work and help me find her.”
It was all I could do to keep myself planted in the chair. Everything in me wanted to jump across the table and take him down just because he teased me about putting his lips on my woman.
He grunted. “Mission accomplished, brother. Looks like your girl just walked through the door.”
