SEAL’s Love by Leslie North
1
“Nirvana Luxury Resort and Spa, could you hold a moment, please?”
Before Harper Bell could say anything, the annoying sounds of pan flute and acoustic guitar music drifted over the phone line. Gah! She should’ve been used to it by now, being raised by her hippie mother, but today, everything seemed to rub against her raw nerves.
She took a deep breath for patience and toyed with the small, silver sarcophagi earring dangling from her lobe as she paced the break area at Team Oracle Security. Luckily, she was the only one in the place right now, so no one could witness her agitation.
Harper usually prided herself on being the perfect, bubbly, efficient administrative assistant to the staff of the private security office. But usually, she wasn’t dealing with a family crisis. Her sister, Serenity, hadn’t shown up for their annual beach holiday weekend this year and that wasn’t like her at all. It had been over forty-eight hours now with no word from her sister. The police were being unhelpful, so Harper was now taking matters into her own hands. Thus, she was on the phone trying to book a new room at the resort where her sister worked. Maybe she could finally get some answers once she was there, at the resort’s secluded island location. The hotel was pricey, but it would be worth it to shell out for the room if it meant finally finding Serenity.
But so far, she’d been on the phone with the resort for exactly twenty minutes of her half-hour break and hadn’t talked to a single person. Just looped through their automated reservation hell over and over again. Well, except for that brief “could you hold a moment, please.”
“Dammit.” Harper held the phone away from her and scowled as yet another new-age song came on, this one with chimes and whale song. It was enough to make her lose her ever-loving, tie-dyed shit. She ended the call, then slumped down into a chair at one of the small tables.
At least business was slow today. Normally, as the certified responsible one in her family, she loved putting out fires as they came up, organizing and completing projects. But today, as frazzled as she was, she didn’t even want to guess what kind of mistakes she’d be making if she had to handle her usual flow of nonstop calls.
The security firm was still pretty new at not quite a year old, but their customer satisfaction was so high that they were getting more requests than they could handle. The couple that had started the business, Logan Miller and his wife, Hope—had really taken the Baltimore security scene by storm.
Harper sighed, then stood and walked back to her desk at the front of the agency. The place was nice, hardwood floors and lots of gleaming glass and contemporary furniture, but she could’ve been sitting in a dungeon for all she noticed today. If anything had happened to Serenity…
Her chest squeezed and her eyes stung. Harper blinked hard to keep the tears at bay.
Relax. Don’t go there yet. Maybe she’s just off on another of her spiritual retreats.
Except she always texted or posted on social media about those when they came up. And nothing, nothing ever interfered with their special beach weekends. Not even the special conjunction last year when seven planets were supposed to be in alignment for the first time in two millennia. Serenity had just done her salutation meditations from their hotel room instead of a mountaintop in Machu Picchu.
Oh God.
She picked up her phone again and dialed the resort. Again. Technically, she had five minutes left on her break anyway and no one was around so…
“Nirvana Luxury Resort and Spa. How may I help you?”
A person! A real-live person!
Heart racing, Harper sat forward, tapping her fingers on the desktop to relieve some of her nervous energy. “Yes. Hi. I’d like to book a room for this weekend, please.”
“Of course,” the woman with the posh accent said, the sound of her typing echoing through the phone line. “It appears we have one suite left. Shall I book it for you?”
A suite? Harper gulped. Surely, it wouldn’t be that much more expensive than a regular room…right? “How much is it a night?”
“Five thousand dollars.”
“What?” Harper blinked hard. “I…I was hoping for something more in the range of $1,000 per night.” Which was still absurdly expensive, but she’d seen that price on the hotel’s website and had crunched numbers for her budget until she found a way to make it work. Yeah, she’d be living off of ramen noodles for the next month, but Serenity was worth it.
But that was when she’d been assuming that a weekend’s stay would cost two thousand. How on earth was she supposed to afford to pay ten thousand? That would max out her credit card and then some.
“Yes, ma’am, we do have some rooms in that range, but those are all booked. The only room we have left for this weekend is our royal suite, and it’s $5,000 per night. Shall I book it for you?”
“No.” She sighed and dropped her head into her hand. “Thank you. Uh, can you at least tell me if Serenity Bell is currently available to speak with me, please?”
The clerk hesitated. “I’m sorry. It appears she’s unavailable at this time.”
Shit.
“But she is on the premises, right?” Harper tried another angle.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re not allowed to give out that information.”
Fuck.
Jaw clenched, Harper inhaled deeply. Times like these she wished she had one of those slick TV detectives to help her. The gorgeous ones with all the money and connections to get things done instead of trying to do all of this herself.
She might work for a security agency, but she didn’t really know what the hell she was doing.
“Is there anything else I can do for you today, ma’am?” the clerk asked.
Besides helping me find out what happened to my sister?
The words hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. “No, thanks.”
“Thank you for calling the Nir—”
Harper hung up before the woman finished, just to give her a taste of her own annoying medicine.
Then she sat at her desk, head down, wondering just how big of a mess Serenity had gotten herself into this time, and how the hell Harper would ever find her. Fear clawed inside her, shredding her normally cheerful demeanor. The clerk might not have said much about Serenity, but Harper had not missed the clerk’s hesitation at the name. Which meant something fishy was up there. All Harper’s “Spidey senses” were pinging. Of course, the fact Serenity hadn’t answered any of the million texts and emails Harper had sent her to find out where she was didn’t help either.
It was unmistakably clear to her that something was wrong—even if the police refused to take the idea seriously. They’d all but laughed in her face when she’d admitted that her sister had done this before—gone off the grid for weeks at a time to cleanse her system or whatever. But this was different! Serenity might seem flaky to an outsider’s perspective, but Harper had always been able to count on her when it mattered. Her sister would not miss their beach weekend without telling her, and she definitely wouldn’t ignore all the panicked messages.
With a sigh, she straightened and tried to think of another way to get on that exclusive island without a room and came up empty. Great. What a wonderful day in the neighborhood.
The bells above the front entrance jangled merrily as if to mock her. Harper finished putting her purse away, then sat up to greet the new arrival only to find it was her boss, Logan, along with Greg, one of the team’s security agents, coming back from lunch. A third guy was with them, Colin, if she remembered right from when Logan had introduced him before the trio had headed out. She’d been a bit distracted by everything going on.
“Hey, Harper,” Logan said as he passed her desk, then stopped, frowning. “Everything okay?”
Damn. She’d thought she’d been doing a pretty good job of hiding her inner turmoil and fluster, but apparently not. “I’ve got some personal issues going on. Nothing that will affect my work here, though, don’t worry.”
“I never worry about you, Harper,” Logan said with a smile.
It was something she’d heard over and over growing up. Harper’s the normal one. Harper’s the responsible one. Harper’s the one no one has to worry about. Just once, though, it would be nice not to have to be so self-reliant all the time. Like now.
“Seriously, though,” Greg said, stepping up with a concerned look on his face. “If you need anything, you just have to ask.”
Harper managed a weak smile in return. At six foot four, Greg might seem intimidating at first glance, but the guy was a total sweetheart—especially when he was around his fiancée, Mattie, or his soon-to-be stepdaughter, Liza. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said before turning back to her computer to see if any emails had come in while she’d been wasting her time on the phone. There were a few…but she kept getting distracted from her work by the men in front of her.
Logan and Greg made for nice eye candy, of course, but even if they weren’t both very, very taken, she saw them mostly as honorary big brothers. The guy who was with them, though…yum. Their eyes met for a second, and Harper looked away fast. She had Serenity to worry about. She did not need to be checking out the hot blond guy chatting and laughing with the others.
She focused on thoughts of her sister—how she didn’t know if Serenity was safe, if she needed help, if she was hurt, and almost without being aware of it, the words came blurting out. “I can’t track down my sister.”
“What?” This from Logan, who cut himself off mid-sentence to swivel in her direction and give her his full attention. “Do you mean she’s dodging your calls, or…”
Harper frowned. “I can’t think of any reason why she’d be avoiding me. We don’t see each other all the time, but we’ve always been close. We were supposed to meet up for our annual beach getaway this past weekend, but she never showed up. And now, I can’t get her to answer my calls. Or emails. Or text messages. I’ve tried calling the resort where she works, but they just said she was unavailable.”
“What resort is it?” Greg asked.
“The Nirvana Resort on Crystal Cay.”
Greg sat back and glanced at his friend. “Colin, isn’t that the place your parents own?”
Mr. Tall, Blond, and Beefcake shrugged, staring down at his hands in his lap. “Yeah. They don’t really have anything to do with the running of it, though. Silent partners.”
“Maybe you could talk to them,” Logan continued. “Have them pull some strings and see if her sister’s around, if she’s been showing up for work, that kind of thing?”
Colin frowned, his blue gaze flicking up from the floor to Harper. “I don’t know,” he said, looking uneasy. “Calling would be a little awkward. You know my relationship with them works better when we keep our distance. Not to mention, I’m not sure how much help they’d be. Like I said, they’re hands off. My dad’s pretty busy with his law firm and all, and my mom has all the charity stuff she works on, so…” He shrugged again.
“Anything you could do would help,” Harper said. “I’m getting really worried.”
Colin’s eyes widened in response to the tremble in her voice. “So this isn’t just you and your sister going through some problems—you think something happened to her, don’t you?”
“I do,” she admitted. “This isn’t like her. She wouldn’t ignore me like this. Something must be wrong—but the police won’t look into it, and the resort keeps brushing me off. I need answers, but I have no idea how to find them…other than to go looking for them myself. But I can’t afford the five thousand a night I’d have to pay for a room at the resort. So if you could make a call,” she said, turning pleading eyes on Colin, “maybe you could recommend me for some temporary work at the resort? Silent partners or not, you’re the son of the owners, so I’m sure the management would listen to you. I can tend bar, or be a server at an event, or anything else they have available. I’ll scrub toilets if that’s what it takes—I just need a way to get there so I can find my sister.”
“Now hold on a second,” Logan said. “I don’t like the sound of you going off to investigate this on your own. There’s no telling what your sister has gotten herself into. You’re not trained and if things turn dangerous, you’d have no backup.”
“Dangerous?” The blood drained from Harper’s head and she felt a bit woozy. Deep down, she’d known this was a possibility, but she’d been focusing on the idea that there might be an innocent explanation for it all. Logan’s words ratcheted up her anxiety to a whole new level. Gripping the edge of her desk with trembling hands, she did her best to stay upright. “Do you think something awful has happened to my sister? If she’s in trouble, then she needs me. I have to find her.”
“Not by yourself,” Logan said firmly, and Harper saw Greg nodding in agreement. “We’ll send someone with you.”
“There is no one,” Harper argued. “Everyone’s on assignments—even the two of you.”
“There’s me,” Colin said, his voice quiet but steady.
Logan and Greg were immediately all for the idea, assuring her that Colin was an ex-SEAL like them, not to mention a freelance security consultant, so he’d be able to watch her back and help her find answers.
“But…but I can’t afford to hire you,” Harper stammered. “I can’t even afford to pay for myself to stay at the resort. How would this work?”
“Let me worry about the resort,” Colin assured her. “I’ll take care of getting us a room—you won’t have to tend bar or scrub toilets. And don’t worry about hiring me, either. You can pay me back in trade. These guys here have been singing your praises during lunch. From what they say, you’re a wizard with background checks and tracking down whatever info they need for their cases. Do a few searches for me, and we’ll call it even, okay?”
“I…” For the first time in forever, it seemed someone wanted to help her, and she wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Then Serenity’s face flashed in her mind and made the decision easy. “Let’s do it. Ready when you are.”
