Alpha Billionaire Taboo Prison Break: A Contemporary Romance by Veronica Vaughn Page A

immediately turned cold and formal. The
stern disapproval on his face twisted my tummy into knots. I wished I could
sink into the ground, disappearing forever.
    This
reunion was going to be awkward.
    Hesitating
for just a moment, he reached into his pocket and found a pair of dark
sunglasses to shield those blue eyes that had always killed me, ever since I
was a little girl and he and my mom got married.
    Patton had
always been in great shape, and my friends had been voting him the most
handsome dad at sleepovers since junior high. But this was different. War had
chiseled him into even more of a man. With his wide shoulders and tapered waist
Patton’s body perfectly filled his desert fatigues.
    Patton
strode forward. I had always liked the way my stepdad walked, and his gait had
not changed one bit during several months of fighting in Iraq. He marched like
a man with purpose, standing upright, his burly chest thrust forward and his
wide shoulders thrown back, like a proud and highly decorated officer of the
National Guard. He was still the most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on.
    When he was
just a couple of feet away from he, he removed his dark sunglasses. My heart
nearly stopped beating when my eyes met his cold stare.
    “ Evie ,” he said.
    “Hi,
Daddy.”
    He just
stood there, face to face with me, and I felt incredibly small. Like a deer frozen
in the headlights of those icy blues, I did not dare to move a muscle. He
looked me up and down, his eyes raking over the recently developed body that I
was still getting accustomed to. Finally breaking through the tension, my
stepdad reached in and gave me a quick hug.
    I nestled
my cheek against my stepdad’s firm chest and breathed his comforting and
instantly familiar scent. The touch of his hands felt electric as always,
sending tingles from the small of my back that raced up and down my spine.
    “Thank you
for coming to get me,” he said. “Let’s get the hell off this base.”
    For a
second or two, everything felt right again between us. But then he pulled away
from our embrace, and the feelings of disappointment washed over me. That was
the best greeting I would get from the man who was, for all intents and
purposes, my father? We weren’t biologically related, but Patton felt more like
a dad than my real father ever did. When my mom died a few years ago, Patton
had stepped forward and selflessly raised me like his own.
    Then Uncle
Sam called up his detachment and sent them to war, leaving me to fend for
myself during my senior year of high school. Now I was eighteen years old and
all grown up. A little too grown up, it seems.
    Oh, well.
All I knew was that Patton was home for two weeks. He hadn’t told me why the
military had given him leave from the war, but that didn’t matter to me. I
would use our brief time together to try to make things right between us.
    Patton
marched away from the whirring helicopter and the small crowd that had gathered
around it, and I practically ran to keep up with his long, fast gait. We
rounded the corner of the commissary building, and my stepdad’s mouth dropped,
then spread into a wide, silly grin. It was good to see him smile.
    “You
brought my truck,” he said. “You learned to drive a stick? And you drove all
the way from Austin?”
    “A small
sacrifice for my war hero,” I teased, tossing him the keys.
    Patton
grabbed them in one hand and turned his attention back to the old pickup. He tossed
his duffel bag in the truck bed, then ran his fingers down the rough, rusty
paint, savoring the touch of his prized possession. I didn’t know anything
about cars and trucks, but sometimes I wondered whether Patton loved that old
clunker more than he loved me. The engine was completely rebuilt, although he
had refused to update the aged exterior with slick new paint.
    “Talk about
a sight for sore eyes.” Patton clapped his palm against the metal, like a
normal person might pet a good dog. “Good old farm truck. You