SASSY IN STILETTOS ARe version (3 page)

“Yeah, yeah, I might have been wrong about him. Jury’s
still out.” Beckett ran a hand through his hair.

“How long is the jury going to deliberate on this
one?”

“Until I’m named godfather of their first kid.” He
gave Caleb a good-natured smile.

“I hate to break it to you, but isn’t it customary
to pick godparents out of the family pool first? I’m a shoe-in for the job.”
Max, Alec’s younger brother, strode over with Jaya’s sister, Tamara.

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Won’t you both feel bad
when he makes you ushers at the wedding?”

Beckett scoffed. “Usher! I’m too good looking to
be an usher.”

Caleb nodded at Max. “You ready to go?”

Max nodded and gave Tamara a hug. Caleb couldn’t
help but notice she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. Maybe she’d finally
dropped the dead weight, otherwise known as douchebag hubby. Jaya and Alec had hooked
up when Jaya needed a date to Tamara’s wedding. For a while, smart money said Tamara
wouldn’t go forward with the wedding, but she had. Now maybe she was having
second thoughts. She smiled cheerily at the two of them and waved her goodbyes.

Caleb clasped palms with Beckett then brought his
shoulder in for a bump. Bro hug completed, he led the way out the door of the
studio. Just like that, he was back on duty. Every Thursday went the same way. Either
he or one of his men would pick Max up from the airport, take him to see Adele
and Alec, then to the dance studio, and deposit him back on the plane for Arizona.

As he and Max walked out to his car, Max said, “Jaya’s
great. She’s the kind of family he needs. Big bro seems really happy.”

“I think he is.” Caleb didn’t want to have to
comment on their family dynamic, so instead, he asked Max vague questions about
his wife and daughter. When Adele Westhorpe, Alec’s and Max’s mother, had hired
him to protect Max whenever the younger Westhorpe was in town, he’d almost said
no. The kid had cost Alec and his mother a good deal of heartache, culminating
in his testifying against a drug cartel.

Max turned to him. “What about you? Wife, kids on
the horizon?”

Caleb shrugged. “Probably one day.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll come around. The dancing didn’t
look so bad.”

“So bad?” Caleb raised an eyebrow.

“Would be eons better if you two could figure out
who was going to lead.”

“That’s what I keep telling her.”

As a rule, Caleb always waited until the client’s
flight had taken off before heading back to the office. Max was no different. It
didn’t matter that this particular client detail was more of a friendly favor
than a job. Two years ago, his best friend, Alec Westhorpe’s, brother found himself
in a hell of a jam with a drug cartel. In exchange for his testimony, Max was
given immunity. While in jail, the Sandoval brothers had met untimely fates,
likely from a rival drug gang. With the Sandovals gone, the Feds hadn’t seen
any need for witness protection. But Adele wanted extra precautions taken with
her son and his family so she’d had them moved. The Westhorpe family money
could buy an extensive relocation package.

Max came up once a week for lessons and for
wedding preparations. Adele insisted that Max had to be part of the ceremony. So
Caleb was called in on babysitting duty for the short stretches Max was in town
as a precaution. Caleb doubted Max would try to give him the slip, but he didn’t
want to be caught off guard. As he waited and watched, his phone buzzed in his
pocket. “Atkins.”

“Hello, lover.”

Dread seized Caleb’s gut. “Sabine, long time. Like
to keep it that way. What do you want?” His hand clenched around his phone.

“Is that any way to talk to your partner?”

“Ex-Partner.” After he’d left the Diplomatic
Security Service, he’d severed all ties to his life. For the most part he’d
locked away all that death and devastation, reserving the nightmares for the
dark of night while he tossed in bed. Hearing the melodic lilt of Sabine’s
voice brought all the horror crashing back to him.

“Whatever. You know the rules—once partners,
always partners. Hell, we were even married.”

Her voice was light and rhythmic and reminded him
of the day he’d first met her. He thought she was sweet then. He hadn’t dared
imagine how treacherous she could be. They’d been married for a mission in Venezuela to adopt the daughter of a former cartel leader before his enemies realized she
was the key to his empire.

In predominantly Catholic South America, Caleb and
Sabine’s bosses had wanted their marriage to be as real as possible. Once they
had the girl, they’d almost died, thanks to Sabine’s recklessness and hot
temper. They’d obtained a divorce the moment they touched foot stateside. “Sabine,
what do you want?”

“Maybe I wanted to hear your voice again.”

“Bullshit.”

Her laugh was feminine and light. “Fair enough. I’m
calling to do you a favor.”

“You don’t do favors for anyone unless there’s
something in it for you.”

“That might be true.” She paused as if considering
what to tell him. “Remember the Sanderson case?”

Caleb’s heart hammered as a thin film of ice
settled over his flesh. His brain stuttered, refusing to believe what she was
asking. The Sanderson case was the reason he’d left the DSS detail.

“No one’s mentioned their names to me in over six
years.” No one in his present life knew of it, except Alec, and the only reason
he knew was because Caleb had been so fucked up after that mission that he’d
spent some quality time at the bottom of a bottle and let it slip one night.

“What would you say if I told you I had a bead on Cabrillo’s
Cartel?”

“I’d tell you that you were full of shit and not
to waste my time,” he ground out.

“Look. I know you have reason to hate me. You
think I sold you out. You think I’m a loose cannon, untrustworthy, and you
blame me in part for that family’s death. But I’m telling you, Cabrillo had an
inside man on our team. He knew the route. He knew we’d be there, and he knew
our security protocols.”

Blood rushed between Caleb’s ears. Everyone on the
team had been vetted. Twice. “This is an old argument, Sabine. You were the one
who broke protocol. You were the one who left that little girl.”

“What was I supposed to do? The whole team was
taking fire. I saved your life. She was safer in the car than out of it.”

Caleb ground his teeth. “Let’s not forget I didn’t
need saving. But you left your post, coming after me when I didn’t need you.
You left that girl in the car on her own. Then you went and got yourself shot,
and someone bombed that car. Annie Sanderson died in that car all alone.”

When they’d been debriefed, she’d thrown Caleb
under the bus, blaming him for the mission gone wrong. Sabine had stayed in the
service for another two years after he’d left. Then she’d gone private sector,
to the kind of people who stayed in the shadows but helped form governments.
Not quite illegal enterprises, but certainly not legal.

“And I think about her every day, Caleb. I do.” She
sniffed. “Listen for two minutes. Cabrillo and Juarez have been in talks to
move against The Monteblanco brothers and take over the coke trade. It’s no
secret that Cabrillo has wanted to move against the Monteblancos for several
years, but he doesn’t have the manpower. With Juarez, he’ll run the biggest
cartel in Mexico.”

Bits of knowledge of the cartels seeped into Caleb’s
conscious mind. Information he’d tried to forget. “Juarez and the Monteblancos
have been allies for generations. Juarez would never move against them.”

“
Unless
they already
moved against him and took something he cared about. Rumor is Edmond Monteblanco’s
son had a thing for younger girls.”

“Fuck. How old is Juarez’s daughter?”

“Twelve, and Monteblanco’s kid is seventeen.”

“This can’t be going anywhere good.” Caleb pinched
the bridge of his nose.

“The Monteblanco kid wanted the girl. Wanted to
marry her. Juarez said no, that his daughter was too young. Next thing he knows
his daughter goes missing. It was made to look like the Monteblanco’s took her.”

Caleb’s head throbbed. “You’re saying they didn’t?”

“No. They didn’t. Cabrillo had her.”

Do not get involved. Do not
get involved.
The last thing he needed was to get dragged into that shit
pile. “Shit. Look, Sabine, That’s a hell of a mess you have there. But I don’t
want any part of it.”

“Listen to me. On a recon mission, I snagged the
girl. I need to keep her out of sight for a couple of weeks while Cabrillo and
Jaurez make their deal. We want the Monteblancos taken out. Once the deal is
made, I’ll take her back to her father, who will then annihilate Cabrillo.”

“Let me guess. Juarez is more amenable to your
boss’s agenda?”

“Something like that.”

“Why are you calling me? You’re as capable of
protecting her as I am.”

There was a beat of silence. “There was a problem
with my coyote getting us out. I had to eliminate him. I might have been seen
with her.”

“Fuck, Sabine. Not my problem.”

“Caleb, I know. I wouldn’t be asking if this kid
didn’t need legitimate protection. My tail is too hot right now. I only need
her covered for a little while. I know I have no right to ask.”

He didn’t need this shit. Sabine back in the
picture was a recipe for disaster, and she’d likely get the girl killed.
She was a kid.
A kid who hadn’t done anything to deserve
any of this. And that was why Sabine had called him. She knew how he felt about
children. Especially after the Sanderson case.

He growled. “You have a week to clean up your
shit, Sabine, then I put the girl in the system. I still have some friends in
the government. She can be given asylum and a new name then you can’t touch
her. You hear me?”

She breathed a long sigh. “You won’t regret it.”

He already did. But if it meant finally getting some
answers for the Sanderson family he’d do it. He’d never forgotten that little
girl. He’d never been able to put it behind him.

“So do you want to tell me why you don’t want the
on-air spot?”

Micha looked up from her monitor to find her boss
in her doorway. “Miranda, it’s not that I don’t want it.”
Liar.
“On-air entertainment shows have never been where I wanted my career to go. I
write features.”

“You’ve done on-air work before. You were great. Give
me the real reason.”

Micha wasn’t in the mood to lay out all her dirty
thongs, boy shorts, and tangas. “I’m not particularly enthusiastic about it. I’m
sorry. But look, clearly the others are. They were literally climbing all over
themselves for the spot.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Let’s you and I both be
honest with each other, yeah? Eileen has a face for radio, Bradley comes across
as insincere, and Rebecca is exactly like every other cutish girl who hosts
anything, and she’ll blend. I started calling her the poor man’s Brook Burke.”

“Hey, remember Brook Burke made the show Wild On a
huge hit.”

“Yeah, back in the nineties. I want you to
consider what I’m offering you here. WST Entertainment has acquired us. We all
will have to take on some new roles. Some of which we don’t particularly like. SDM
is a mid to large circulation, but let’s face it, magazines might join
newspapers and go the way of the Dodo soon. We all need to try to survive.”

Micha hated to admit it, but Miranda had a point. It
wasn’t like she could very well tell her boss no.  Well, she could, but then
she’d be fired and that wasn’t on her list of things to do today. She didn’t
have a billionaire in the family like Jaya did. “I promise to think about it.”
She swallowed hard.

If she took this position, there would be no way
to keep her past quiet. She’d done everything she could to keep the past where
it belonged. She didn’t want the whole world finding out about how she’d fucked
up and chosen the wrong guy. Or worse how his wife had gone off the rails
altogether and tried to kill her. Micha shuddered. The mere thought of Trisha
Jax was enough to have bile churning in her belly.

She dragged in a deep breath and then another. She’d
done everything she could to put distance between her and New York. Not only
would her biggest failure be up for judgment, but going on-air on a national network
made her a sitting duck for paparazzi and gossip mongers, not to mention good
old garden variety cray-cray. She didn’t need that. It was safer to stay behind
the cameras.

“Oh, and how do you like the new guy?”

Micha shrugged. “I’m not going to lie. He’s
organized and on top of it. Though I wish someone had told me so I wasn’t
surprised.”

“I wish you’d been here to tell.”

Micha arched her brow. Miranda still wasn’t a fan
of Micha’s flex schedule, but given her performance, the higher-ups had
approved it for her. Miranda was still pissed she had no say in the decision.

“Don’t forget, I never actually leave work.” Micha
held up her iPhone. “This is always on.”

Miranda’s eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “Was it
work for the magazine?”

Like hell Micha was going to tell her where she
really was. “Not directly, but I might be able to turn it into a feature
article.”

“Good. Oh, and if you can make it romancey, the
readers love that. Your whole
A Year in the Life of a
Single Woman
blog still gets ten thousand hits a day.”

Micha couldn’t believe that. “That’s crazy. We did
that in 2010.”

“Tell me about it.”

Miranda continued to lurk in her office, and Micha
cocked her head. “What gives? You’re pacing.”

“Thing is, you only have until Monday to make a
decision. They want production to start as soon as possible, so I’ll need you
to think about it quickly. There’re screen tests and things to be coordinated.”