On the Line (Special Ops) by Capri Montgomery

thing, but sport was just a pathetic man’s attempt to dominate everything in his path and she hated it. Why had she gone out with him again? Oh right, her mother had been in town and convinced her to say yes to the man’s constant nagging. After that she just thought she would try to make it work, but the harder she tried the more she saw a man she didn’t want to be with. He wasn’t Alex. He wasn’t even close. Two things were wrong with that admission; the first thing was that it wasn’t fair to Dennis to look at him as a replacement for the man she couldn’t have, and the second was that there just wasn’t another Alex out there to be found. Alex was one of a kind, one hundred percent goodness and she knew no matter how far she searched, no matter how hard she searched, she would never find another like him.
     
    “Did he hurt you?”
     
    “No,” she shook her head. “We should…um…we should go inside; don’t you think?”
     
    He looked her over, those green eyes nearly peering through her. She felt her stomach fluttering like a thousand butterflies were having a party in there. He smiled and shrugged. “Sure. Let’s get some food in you so your stomach can stop growling.”
     
    “What?”
     
    He laughed. “Your stomach has been talking to you since you got in the car.”
     
    She hadn’t heard it. She laughed. She hadn’t eaten much more than fruit and cheese before the show because she was too nervous and she was afraid her nerves wouldn’t keep anything heavier down. Maybe those butterflies weren’t butterflies at all. Maybe she was just reacting to her hunger for food instead of her hunger for the man in front of her.
     
    Once again he placed his hand on the small of her back and ushered her forward. This time when he opened the door she allowed him to hold it for her. She waited on the other side until he had locked the door from the garage into the washroom and then led her deeper into his abode. Every touch of his hand on her body made her want him more. She shouldn’t have felt this, not now, not after all these years, but she did feel it—she still loved him, still wanted him. She couldn’t have him and she needed to find a way to deal with that; to deal with their “just friends” relationship. She didn’t want to lose the friendship, not again. She wouldn’t lose the friendship. So she put on her bold woman face and hid her passion for him from him. Her focus needed to be on getting Ariana back home safely, not on getting Alex to make love to her.
     

Chapter Six
     
    P reston hadn’t been asleep when the door opened. It wasn’t time for the bathroom break they had given him when they saw fit to. Those bathroom breaks had been interesting seeing as though they covered his head with a black cloth before unshackling him, only to remove it once he was by the toilet. He would guess they didn’t want him to get a look at the view outside.
     
    He surveyed the situation. There was only one guard this time so that told him he wasn’t about to be unshackled. What surprised him was when a man walked in carrying a woman with a cloth over her head and he placed her down on the floor gently. Who was she?
     
    “You have company until he comes. You die, she goes with him. Don’t get attached,” the man laughed as he left and closed the door behind him, locking it once again. The woman was clearly unconscious, but she hadn’t stayed that way for long. He would estimate that fifteen minutes passed and then she roused. She pushed up into a seated position and yanked the cloth from over her head. He cleared his throat to try to alert her to his presence. She turned sharply, the look of anger on her face turned to surprise and recognition.
     
    “Ariana?”
     
    “Preston?” She sat there and stared at him in shock. “What’s going on?”
     
    “I don’t know,” and he truly meant that. He didn’t know, but what he did know was that if they were both here that couldn’t be