Mercenary's Perfect Mission. Carla Cassidy

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      Sam!

      Thoughts of her youngest son shot her off the bed. She’d slept in the clothes June had graciously provided her, a pair of jeans, and a T-shirt that was a tad too small across her full breasts.

      She knew her hair was probably in wild disarray, but the only thing that mattered at the moment was seeing Sam’s smiling face, assuring herself that he was okay.

      She couldn’t even think about her three-year-old still someplace in Cold Plains. Ethan would probably be scared, needing his mommy and if she dwelled on that thought for too long she’d come completely undone. She had to keep it together, for Sam’s sake … for Ethan’s sake.

      Racing into the room where she’d placed Sam in a crib the night before, she stopped short in the doorway as she saw that the crib was empty. She whirled around, running wildly down a corridor, wondering if perhaps she’d trusted the wrong people after all.

      As she wound around corners and ran into blind passageways, her heart banged discordantly, making her half-breathless as she felt like Alice suddenly falling down a rabbit hole.

      She whirled around one corner and slammed into a brick wall. The wall was Micah Grayson’s hard, muscled chest. “Whoa,” he said and grabbed her firmly by the shoulders.

      “Where’s my son? Where’s Sam?” she asked.

      He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “I just saw him in the kitchen eating some breakfast.”

      A shudder of relief swept through her. “Where’s the kitchen? This place is like a maze.”

      He pointed down the nearest passageway. “Go straight and take the left turn. You’ll be in the kitchen.”

      As her panic ebbed, she once again noticed that Micah Grayson wasn’t just hard and dangerous looking, but also handsome and sexy in a way that might have affected her under different circumstances.

      “Thanks,” she said and started to move past him, but he reached out and grabbed her arm before she could scurry away.

      “I’d like to speak with you later … after you get some breakfast and settle in.” His hand was big … weighty on her forearm.

      She frowned. She couldn’t imagine what he might want to talk to her about and, if she were perfectly honest with herself, she would admit that something about him unsettled her more than a little bit. All she really wanted to do was make sure Sam was safe and then figure out some sort of plan to return to Cold Plains and retrieve Ethan.

      She wasn’t interested in whatever investigation they were conducting in the town. She just wanted to have her children safe and with her and then she’d go from there.

      “Olivia?”

      Her name sounded strange on his lips, reminding her that she knew nothing about this man, these people and the touch of his big hand on her arm felt too warm, oddly intimate.

      She pulled away from him and took a step backward. “Obviously I’m not going anyplace but the kitchen for the time being. You can find me there after breakfast.”

      This time when she turned to walk away he didn’t stop her although she imagined she could feel his piercing green eyes lingering on her back.

      She breathed a sigh of relief as she entered the kitchen where June sat at the table with her coffee and Sam was locked into a high chair happily smooshing scrambled eggs into his mouth.

      “Mama!” he exclaimed with a happy eggy grin as she entered the room.

      “Sammy,” she replied and planted a kiss on the top of his forehead. She offered a tentative smile to June. “I had a moment of panic when I woke up and didn’t find him in his crib.”

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. He woke up earlier and you were still sleeping so soundly, so I figured I’d get him up and change his diaper and see about a little breakfast for him.” June smiled sympathetically. “I knew you were exhausted from your time hiding out so I hated to wake you when he got up.”

      “Thank you for taking care of him,” Olivia said as she sank down at the table. She still felt as if she’d entered some strange subterranean world filled with people in crisis. She was in crisis. There was a simmering anxiety inside her that threatened to burst into fullblown panic, but she used every ounce of her ability in an attempt to hold herself together.

      “Coffee?” June asked as she rose from the table.

      “I can get it,” Olivia replied. “You don’t have to wait on me.”

      “Nonsense,” June replied and waved Olivia back into the chair. “As an official member of the household, you get one day of acclimating yourself before we assign you any duties. Scrambled eggs?”

      “If it’s not too much trouble,” she replied, feeling guilty, but yet oddly relieved that for the moment somebody else was in charge.

      What she wanted more than anything was to eat breakfast, regain her strength and have a chance to formulate some sort of a plan to get Ethan out of Cold Plains. Unfortunately, part of the problem was she wasn’t sure where he would be. The last time she’d seen him had been when she’d left him at the Cold Plains Day Care Center to go to work in the Community Center. But when she hadn’t returned to get him after normal work hours that day, he was simply gone.

      Her stomach cramped with anxiety but she forced a smile of gratitude as June set a cup of steaming coffee in front of her. “How many people are staying here?” she asked as she waited for the coffee to cool a little bit.

      “We have between eight and ten people at any one time,” June said as she broke a couple eggs into a small bowl. “The numbers are constantly in flux, but right now we have Darcy, sometimes here and sometimes at her new boyfriend’s. And then there’s Lacy Matthews and her three-year-old twins and, of course, Micah.”

      “I see,” Olivia said.

      “And also there’s Jesse Grainger.”

      June’s cheeks pinkened slightly as she poured the eggs into an awaiting skillet. “Jesse was beaten and left for dead in the woods a month ago. His brother is one of Samuel’s followers and he’s hoping to be able to get him out of town, but Jesse has to be careful because Samuel assumes he’s dead.” There was something in June’s voice when she said Jesse’s name that indicated to Olivia that he might just be more to her than a man she had rescued from death.

      “I know Lacy,” Olivia said. “She works at the Cold Plains Coffee Shop. I often went in there to get a cup of coffee on my way to work at the Community Center.”

      “She finally decided to take her girls and run. Samuel was pressing to make the coffee shop a place that wouldn’t serve anyone who wasn’t a Devotee and Lacy was determined that anyone who came in was welcome to buy a coffee whether they followed Samuel’s teachings or not,” June explained.

      By this time June was finished making Olivia her eggs and toast and Sam was using his sippy cup to drink a glass of milk. They fell silent for a few minutes and Olivia once again found herself going back in time, terrified by how close she’d come to falling completely and irrevocably beneath Samuel’s spell.

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