Her Reluctant Hero: A Romantic Suspense Boxed Set Read online

  Her Reluctant Hero:

  A Romantic Suspense Boxed Set

  MJ Fredrick

  Table of Contents

  Contents

  Breaking Daylight

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Beneath the Surface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Hot Shot

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Breaking Daylight

  MJ Fredrick

  Table of Contents

  Contents

  Breaking Daylight

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Beneath the Surface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Hot Shot

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For Sarah Salazar, who gave me Alex’s backstory, and Eleuterio Gonzales, who turns damaged young people into heroes.

  Chapter One

  “Join the army, see the world,” Master Sergeant Alex Shepard mocked under his breath.

  He hated jungles. Yet here he was, stuck in another one. Central America this time. Why couldn’t he be sent to the Arctic or Siberia? What drew the bad guys to the heat and humidity? Or did the atmosphere make them the bad guys in the first place?

  He wiped sweat from his eyes with a shrug of his shoulder. Almost midnight and hotter than midday back home in Texas.

  He and his team of Rangers joined a group of DEA agents crouched on a hillside, surveilling a sprawling home in a manmade clearing in the middle of the jungle, a compound as out of the way as Santiago Saldana could make it.

  Saldana was the baddest of the bad when it came to drug kingpins. He’d kidnapped, tortured and killed DEA agents, and used the scum-of-the-earth MS-13 gang to get his product over the border. A DEA agent had infiltrated Saldana’s inner circle, but hadn’t been heard from in weeks, so here they were.

  Problem was, they might be too late. They hadn’t been able to confirm Saldana’s presence in the compound. After three days, there was no sight of him, or the American infiltrator who had been their source of information.

  So they waited. In the heat. With the bugs. And the rain.

  “Showtime,” Sergeant Julian Cervantes murmured from Alex’s left, his binoculars trained on the compound.

  A light flickered on in the house below and a goddess stepped into the bathroom, a goddess with dark wavy hair, eyes that tilted up in the corners like a cat’s, and creamy skin that glowed in the soft light. Alex didn’t have to raise his own binoculars to know—they’d managed to be on this side of the compound the past two nights at this time. The side on the hill, with the view of the bathroom which held the luxurious large tub and glassed-in shower.

  The goddess wore a silky white robe tonight and flipped back the sleeves as she reached over to turn on the water. She poured in a pink glob of some stuff she’d had sitting on the side of the tub, no doubt sweet smelling, and it foamed under the stream of water. Then she twisted her shoulder-length hair up and pinned it with a clip, exposing a long, graceful neck.

  Yeah, he was watching through his binoculars now. This job had damn few perks and she was just about the best he’d seen during his twelve years in.

  Then facing the window—she had to think she was alone, with this damn jungle all around—she let the robe slide down her arms in a slow, sensuous movement.

  Beside him, Julian uttered what sounded like a prayer.

  She was a fantasy woman, with full, round dark-tipped breasts, her nipples erect from the friction of the silk. Her skin was flawless. He could almost feel the smoothness of it under his rough palm, and he folded his fingers against the sensation. The curls at the apex of her thighs were dark and neat.

  She stepped into the tub—hell, even her feet were graceful—and slipped beneath the bubbles.

  This time Julian swore.

  She lathered up some fluffy cloth and smoothed it over her arm, leaving tiny bubbles in its wake.

  The sight of a woman indulging in a bubble bath in the middle of the jungle was so incongruous. She poured soap on the thick cloth, lifted her legs from the bubbles to smooth it on, such feminine actions. So out of place in his world.

  Then her hands disappeared under the water. For a while.

  She closed her eyes, scooted lower and her lips parted.

  “Jesus,” Alex breathed.

  “I hate bubbles,” Julian said in a choked voice.

  Alex shouldn’t be watching. He should tear his gaze away as she tilted her head back, offering her throat to
her invisible lover. Who was she imagining over her, touching her? Saldana? The thought almost gave him the strength to turn away before she reached out of the tub and picked up a bright pink object.

  He recognized it from last night, when there had been no bubbles, only the woman, standing with her robe parted, one leg on the edge of the tub and—

  “Is that her—?” Julian didn’t say the word. “Are those things waterproof?”

  She arched her back, revealing soapy breasts. Alex imagined his own touch smoothing away the bubbles to make way for his mouth. Her body undulated with pleasure, sending water and bubbles over the side of the tub.

  He jerked his gaze away with a curse. He had no business watching this woman, Saldana’s lover, not when he had sweet Rebecca waiting for him back home.

  Rebecca, who he’d never seen naked, never touched, never more than kissed. She wasn’t ready for a physical relationship after her bastard of a husband had taken off on her, and Alex treasured her too much to push for it. Rebecca Kelso was his ideal, not the goddess in the tub. Rebecca was the kind of woman who would make him sane again after the things he’d seen and done. She would give him balance.

  He reached over and smacked Julian’s arm. The younger man turned with glazed eyes and inclined his head. The goddess was rising from the tub now, soap bubbles sliding down her flushed body, her movements languid with the aftereffects of her ministrations. The cat eyes were heavy lidded, the look of a satisfied woman.

  Alex hadn’t seen that look in a long time.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he mouthed to Julian.

  “Who is she, do you suppose?” Julian whispered as they slipped through the foliage on their way back to the rudimentary camp. “Saldana’s girlfriend? We don’t have any intel on a girlfriend.”

  “Who cares?” Alex said. “She has to know what kind of person he is, and she doesn’t care. If that’s what floats her boat, she ain’t worth fantasizing about.”

  “Were you not watching the same thing I was? Damn, have you ever seen a woman do that? I’ve never seen a woman do that.”

  Alex didn’t think Julian expected an answer. Thank God. “She’s given up her soul for the lifestyle he offers her.”

  Julian frowned. “Way out here? Not a lot of women would go for that. The question is, why would he leave a woman like that out here alone so long? Something’s wrong with that picture. You don’t think he’s already moved to the States?”

  Alex shook his head. He didn’t know. He had to hope they weren’t too late. “Maybe there’s a leak. The agent who gave us the intel on Saldana also could have given him the heads-up that we were coming. Maybe he tortured it out of him. No matter how, Saldana isn’t here. We’re wasting time and resources waiting for him to come back.”

  He pulled away from Julian, as they entered the camp, already reaching in his rucksack for the spiral he kept there. When the younger man went to make a report to Keith Vasquez, the agent in charge, Alex dropped against a tree and flipped open the battered spiral to write to Rebecca.

  But he couldn’t get his mind off the raven-haired goddess. He had to do something.

  “We’re wasting time.” Alex confronted Vasquez when he couldn’t calm down enough to finish his letter to Rebecca. They weren’t going to complete the mission by waiting Saldana out. The man was long gone. “Saldana isn’t coming back. He’s not stupid enough to just drive past us to get home. We missed him. Time to regroup.”

  “Master Sergeant,” Vasquez said coolly, keeping his voice low to avoid detection. “He left something valuable behind.”

  “What would that be?”

  “The woman. Isabella Canales. She’s an American citizen.”

  “Saldana’s whore,” Alex spat.

  Even Vasquez drew back. “You know her?”

  “We saw her on surveillance. You think she’s worth his freedom? More importantly, does he?”

  “Hell yeah,” Julian murmured.

  Alex shot him a look. “You don’t get it. Women like that are a dime a dozen. It’s not like he loves her for her mind.”

  “Maybe not. But she is an American citizen,” Vasquez said.

  “Who shares her bed with the scum of the earth.”

  Vasquez tightened his jaw. “One more day. We haven’t seen Agent Cortez yet.”

  They wouldn’t. If Saldana was gone, he wouldn’t have left his associates behind. If he’d knocked the agent off as a spy, well, they’d likely stumble over his body in the jungle. But this wasn’t Alex’s call. Vasquez made it clear his opinion didn’t count.

  “Send me back down to watch, then. Let’s make the most of these twenty-four hours.”

  “I already have Lee and Jordan out there.”

  “Another man can give you another angle.”

  “I need you fresh.”

  Alex looked at him pityingly. “I’m a Ranger. I do what needs to be done.” He turned to find Julian.

  “You know she’s asleep, right?” Alex asked Julian a few moments later as they hiked the short distance to the compound.

  “Yeah, but if you think I’m going to be the only Ranger snoozing while the rest of you are on the mission, you got another think coming.”

  “Did it sound to you like Vasquez wants to go in for the girl?”

  “That is what it sounded like.”

  “He better have damn good information on the inside of that place. I do not want to be booby-trapped in the jungle.”

  They moved clockwise around the perimeter, west of where they had been at their earlier post. A spider the size of a tennis ball dropped on Alex’s arm, and even after he flicked it away, he could feel the hairy legs on his skin.

  He hated the jungle.

  “What the hell is that?” Julian muttered, directing Alex’s attention to a corner of the compound and the slight figure emerging from it.

  “A kid?” Alex theorized. “Out for an adventure?”

  “In the jungle?” Julian scoffed. “At night?”

  “They aren’t always smart.” Damned if he didn’t know that from experience.

  “This one is.” Julian motioned to the way the figure glanced over his shoulder. “Doesn’t want to get caught.”

  “Running away from a parent.”

  “You see anyone besides the girl and the guards in there since we’ve been watching?”

  “Christ.” Alex focused his binoculars on the kid, only it wasn’t a kid. Dark hair hidden under a dark cap, pulled back into a ponytail that curled in at the nape of a slim, graceful neck. When she turned to look behind her, he saw the feminine tilt of her nose. “What the hell is she doing?”

  “Who is it?”

  Alex lowered his binoculars and started moving down the hill. “The goddess.”

  “Who?” Julian asked from behind him. “Where are you going?”

  “Vasquez says she’s the only thing Saldana cares about, the only thing that will draw him out. We need to get her.”

  Isabella Canales’s heart pounded. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. How would she find the American soldiers in the jungle at night? Clearly they didn’t want anyone to know they were here. If that was the case, how would she, with no training and no real jungle experience, find them?

  When Eric Reyes had told her soldiers were on their way to take Santiago into custody, she’d hatched her plan. But Santiago had seen the American talking to her, alone, secretively, and he’d gone into a rage. She didn’t want to remember what he’d done to the man.

  She didn’t want to think about what Santiago had done to her. So she’d planned her escape.

  She’d staged her show every night at midnight, luring the guards into an unofficial schedule. They would stop outside her window at that time, then they’d move on, leaving her a window of time to get out of the compound unseen. No one would miss her till the morning.

  If Santiago even dreamed she was thinking about escaping, her life would be so much worse. She couldn’t afford for him to catch her. She couldn’t be
his prisoner anymore.

  Her stolen boots rubbed with every step despite three pair of socks, and the rough fabric chafed her skin after years of wearing only the finest fabrics. She hoped the soldiers had transportation, and that it wasn’t far. She hoped she could charm them into taking her home. She didn’t want to play her trump card yet.

  A stealthy rustling to her left froze her in her tracks. Jaguars were nocturnal, right? But surely they’d be intimidated by her size.

  If she were a hundred pounds heavier.

  Too late, she realized the jungle had gone silent, as if the creatures in the trees froze as well, hoping the predator would ignore their existence.