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growing. Joining forces with Asher Coleson, who was former Delta Force and still a highly sought after recruit for the CIA, to open Scorpio had been a satisfying endeavor for them both. Sam took care of the domestic assignments while Ash, who preferred to live his life from the outside looking in, took charge of any foreign jobs. Their bond had been created and solidified during their years in the Army, teaming up for countless operations, both black and otherwise. As tight as brothers, it had made sense for that partnership to continue into civilian life. Could he say they were the best of friends? Not really, no. Ash wasn’t the easiest guy to get close to, and while Sam was sure there were deep, dark reasons as to why, he’d yet to hear the guy voice them. A shared bottle of Jack had loosened his lips one night, after an intense mission had gone sideways and two of their teammates had been killed, but all Sam’s drunken memory could recall was snippets about love and hate, and a girl named Olivia.
    Ash never spoke of it—or her—again.
    But for Sam, the next natural step in life loomed large. Fed up to fucking here with high maintenance women, the type with caked on make-up and closets full of designer clothes, he’d been laying low for the last several months, wondering if he could find a woman who wanted him simply for him. Not because of the mythical superman aura that surrounded Special Forces veterans. Not because he could cover their rent when they spent too much money at Neiman Marcus. And sure as shit not because he could make their cheating ex-boyfriend jealous or worse, their overprotective daddy mad.
    Christ, he could hear Ash’s voice in his head now, telling him to grow a pair because he sounded like a fucking girl instead of a man with his pick of immoral women, willing to satisfy his every whim. Maybe Mendoza was dosing his coffee with estrogen. Pretty soon he’d be feeling bloated and a little moody. It would go a long way toward explaining why his usual slap and tickle routine with the ladies wasn’t cutting it anymore.
    “Knock, knock,” he said, stopping at Ali’s open doorway, not wanting to cross the threshold until she invited him in. Pete had no such qualms. “I brought wine. And a dog with no manners.”
    She smiled and waved him in from her spot at the kitchen island, kneeling down to greet the bouncing puppy. “Who needs manners when you’re this adorable, right, Pete?”
    Her living room, which was open to a large, updated kitchen and casual dining room, was shadowed, the only light coming from a cluster of fat, white candles burning on the coffee table in front of an ivory slip-covered sofa and the bright light over her commercial-grade gas cooktop. The atmosphere might have looked staged for seduction, if it wasn’t for the hushed sounds of a popular reality show playing on the huge flat screen TV occupying one wall.
    Obviously a girl who took her television seriously, Ali stood leaning forward against the kitchen island, an opened bottle of white wine and a half empty glass on the counter in front in her. Her gaze never strayed from him as he slowly walked toward her and Sam wondered if she was using the barrier of the large, granite-topped island to keep him at a distance. If so, it wasn’t working. The heat in her eyes as she assessed him from head to toe told a different story. The woman was a hot, blonde contradiction wrapped in a lithe body and she’d piqued his interest like no other had in a long damn time. He knew she’d been watching him every morning, always huddled in her deck chair unabashedly tracking him as he finished his run, but never saying a word. And after her less than subtle dismissal of him last night on the beach, her surprise invitation for coffee this morning was that much more interesting. But if she thought he would play nice, letting her make all the moves while they danced delicately around their attraction to each other, she was