His By Sunrise: A Military Erotic Romance (Sexy Siesta Series Book 1) by Talina Perkins Page A
Authors: Talina Perkins
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floor.
He bent to scoop it up, but only got halfway when he saw the second sheet of paper resting beneath the first. He read over the full-page offer already signed and sealed. Gold and black stood out against the stark white paper with the same perfect blue signature at the bottom, sealing her resignation and her fate away from him.
His gut dropped to his knees and rolled for the second time tonight.
He crumpled the paper, stood, and slammed his fist against the panel to his right. White light from the office overheads flared to life, chasing away the evening shadows and highlighting his worst nightmare. Hell, not even his worst fucking dreams could have conjured up this shit.
Angry at himself, the fucking world, he tossed the paper down and straightened. In the Marines his height alone scared the shit out of people. Add to the mix words like Recon and dead shot , people’s natural instincts forced them to give him a wide berth, but Isabella? She loved pushing his buttons every chance she got, and today she meant to draw blood.
How could she do this,—resign from a company, a family—that treated her as their own? How could she just turn her back on him when he needed her most by resigning then signing a new work contract with another company?
Get a grip . He took a deep breath. Calm replaced the anger boiling just beneath the surface.
He tried to smooth the crumpled paper as best as he could. Satisfied, he shoved the papers back in the side pocket of the satchel where he’d found them just moments ago.
Before he lost it and called the beautiful brunette minx back to the office for a bit of explaining, Blake stepped back from the phone, did an about-face toward the back office his father had used, and headed straight for the fully stocked bar.
She’d only stayed long enough to give him the rundown on the business. Hell, he knew it wasn’t the time for jokes or sexy banter, but the dry, hurried tone she greeted him with wasn’t like her. That alone should have been a clue something was up. If not, the way she hauled ass out of here had been the dead giveaway.
Between answering the mountain of sympathy calls from clients and booking the church, he’d dropped the ball somewhere. He should have seen the fire in her emerald eyes and heard the R’s of her native language as she rolled them out with a fiery flare when he managed to rub her the wrong way. Happened too often and not often enough. He loved to see her all fired up. Guess that made him a masochist.
Fuck, could this day get any worse? He couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter at that. Hadn’t he already asked that question? Look what it got him.
He should have left the letters where he’d found them, but damn, after he saw the word resignation splashed across the top of a paper like a sucker-punch to the gut, he couldn’t just leave it alone.
His instincts had kept him safe this long. Why he didn’t listen now when they screamed for him to stay the fuck away from the place was beyond him. He should have stayed home or something—anything—to avoid the hell storm about to break open over his head. Growing up he’d learned the hard way to keep people at a distance. His mother had made sure he understood just how easy it was for a person to walk out on you.
As a man, he learned how to trust the Marine at his Six and the Marine at his Twelve. Now it looked as if history wanted to play a game of fucking repeat, and it burned him alive inside.
It had taken damn near all his life to learn how to trust again and four damn seconds to rip that all away.
Blake scoured over the bottles, bypassed the tumbler, and went straight for the bottle of Johnny. His favorite since he and Adrian had raided his father’s stash the spring before joining up with the Marines. As a last hurrah before heading out they’d done some crazy shit down at the lake that night. Hell, he wondered if their at-the-time girlfriends still thought about them and their wild night
He bent to scoop it up, but only got halfway when he saw the second sheet of paper resting beneath the first. He read over the full-page offer already signed and sealed. Gold and black stood out against the stark white paper with the same perfect blue signature at the bottom, sealing her resignation and her fate away from him.
His gut dropped to his knees and rolled for the second time tonight.
He crumpled the paper, stood, and slammed his fist against the panel to his right. White light from the office overheads flared to life, chasing away the evening shadows and highlighting his worst nightmare. Hell, not even his worst fucking dreams could have conjured up this shit.
Angry at himself, the fucking world, he tossed the paper down and straightened. In the Marines his height alone scared the shit out of people. Add to the mix words like Recon and dead shot , people’s natural instincts forced them to give him a wide berth, but Isabella? She loved pushing his buttons every chance she got, and today she meant to draw blood.
How could she do this,—resign from a company, a family—that treated her as their own? How could she just turn her back on him when he needed her most by resigning then signing a new work contract with another company?
Get a grip . He took a deep breath. Calm replaced the anger boiling just beneath the surface.
He tried to smooth the crumpled paper as best as he could. Satisfied, he shoved the papers back in the side pocket of the satchel where he’d found them just moments ago.
Before he lost it and called the beautiful brunette minx back to the office for a bit of explaining, Blake stepped back from the phone, did an about-face toward the back office his father had used, and headed straight for the fully stocked bar.
She’d only stayed long enough to give him the rundown on the business. Hell, he knew it wasn’t the time for jokes or sexy banter, but the dry, hurried tone she greeted him with wasn’t like her. That alone should have been a clue something was up. If not, the way she hauled ass out of here had been the dead giveaway.
Between answering the mountain of sympathy calls from clients and booking the church, he’d dropped the ball somewhere. He should have seen the fire in her emerald eyes and heard the R’s of her native language as she rolled them out with a fiery flare when he managed to rub her the wrong way. Happened too often and not often enough. He loved to see her all fired up. Guess that made him a masochist.
Fuck, could this day get any worse? He couldn’t hold back the bark of laughter at that. Hadn’t he already asked that question? Look what it got him.
He should have left the letters where he’d found them, but damn, after he saw the word resignation splashed across the top of a paper like a sucker-punch to the gut, he couldn’t just leave it alone.
His instincts had kept him safe this long. Why he didn’t listen now when they screamed for him to stay the fuck away from the place was beyond him. He should have stayed home or something—anything—to avoid the hell storm about to break open over his head. Growing up he’d learned the hard way to keep people at a distance. His mother had made sure he understood just how easy it was for a person to walk out on you.
As a man, he learned how to trust the Marine at his Six and the Marine at his Twelve. Now it looked as if history wanted to play a game of fucking repeat, and it burned him alive inside.
It had taken damn near all his life to learn how to trust again and four damn seconds to rip that all away.
Blake scoured over the bottles, bypassed the tumbler, and went straight for the bottle of Johnny. His favorite since he and Adrian had raided his father’s stash the spring before joining up with the Marines. As a last hurrah before heading out they’d done some crazy shit down at the lake that night. Hell, he wondered if their at-the-time girlfriends still thought about them and their wild night
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