Page 14 of Rescued By the SEAL

“You scumbag.” But as soon as I get the door open, I realize my mistake. He’s red with anger and possibly about to kill me. “Howfucking dare you come back into my life. I got Heather away from you for a reason. Not for you and your family to do this.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Instantly, I put the gun down and raise my hands in a surrendering gesture. “I stopped my dad.”

But he doesn’t really intend to let me defend myself. I don’t know why I thought that he might, to be honest. In one beat of my heart, he pulls his hand back and smacks it so hard into the left hand side of my face that it knocks me from my feet. Not an easy feat, even for a man who’s got me unexpectedly, so I’m stunned. Heather’s father is too full of anger. Shit could go downhill fast here. Ineedto get myself out of this mindset of agony and sort out my thoughts to make this okay.

It’s up to me to keep things steady, to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand, but the white-hot pain makes it a challenge.

“Heather, I know you’re in here.” He steps over me as if I’m just a bit of dirt on the floor. “Get your ass out here.”

Fuck, if he walks into the bedroom and finds her half-naked, then we’re both dead. It’ll be bad enough that we’re back in contact but a million times worse if he realizes that something actually happened between us. I need to scramble to my feet quickly to distract him. Heather might have already figured out that he’s here, but it may not be long enough for her to dress…

“Daddy, no!” He has hold of her arm and is pulling her toward the front door. Shit, this is too much like a horrible blast from the past. I might not have seen Heather being taken away from my life last time around, but I imagine it was a lot like this. “Dad, stop it. You don’t know what you’re doing here. Landon is helping me. He got me away from his father. I need to stay.”

“I hired some guy named Max, not fucking Landon,” he growls back, not calming down for even a second. “And you can’t trust any member of the Ross family. The only one good for anything at the moment is Alice, and that’s because she’s locked away where I can keep an eye on her. I took you away from that family. You arenotto go back near them, ever. Do you hear me?”

“I’m not a child,” she screams, but her words fall on deaf ears. “I can make my own decisions. I know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t think you have a goddamn clue, and all of this only proves that. Going into a criminal’s house alone, getting kidnapped by Bill fucking Ross, letting his pathetic son save you, and being in his house alone. No, you are a child.”

Oh, God, this is a bad dynamic. One that definitely should have changed over the years but hasn’t. I try to stagger over to them to see if I can do anything to make this better, but Officer Buchan shoves me away violently once more.

“You don’tevercome near my family again, do you hear me?” he snaps. “You know who I am and what I can do. I can have you locked up for the rest of your life, don’t even doubt it. I’ll doanythingto protect my daughter, and you won’t get in the way of that. Whoever the fuck you are, you won’t stand in my way. I won’t allow you to put Heather in any kind of danger.”

“Dad, I’m not in danger.” Heather’s words are a little lost now in her tears. She looks helpless, and I’m sad to admit that I feel the same way too. This isn’t the person I’ve been hired to protect Heather from, so there isn’t a lot I can do. “Dad, just let me go. We don’t need to do things this way. We can have a normal conversation like adults. That’s what we all are now.”

“Neither of you two are adults, as you have proven, so shut up, Heather. You are coming with me no matter what.”

I want to act out, to save her again, to do anything, but a small voice at the back of my brain is begging me to stop. It has my whole body frozen with the sheer fear that I’m about to wreck everything in the worst possible way. I’m scared that taking even a step toward Heather will result in the pair of us being hurt. Me, I could handle, but I can’t stand the idea of her being harmed.

We love each other, I’m sure that we still do, but again, we’re trapped in this place where our parents are keeping us apart. Hers because he wants to protect her, and mine because they’re the scum of the earth. It doesn’t matter that I’m nothing like them. I’ll never full be able to shake them off. I’ll always carry their burden. I might as well be a kid again with no control.

“Landon, I’m sorry,” Heather screams as her father finally gets her out the door. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.”

Finally, my body unlocks, but just enough for me to run out the door to see them pull away. The car is stripping her from my life again, making sure I’m all alone, unable to move on. This time is even more agonizing than the first time, if that’s humanly possible, because Iknowthat we’re everything to one another. I know she’s my life.

“Fuck.” I can’t just stand back and allow this to happen. I need to dosomething. But what? First, I have to move. I need to go somewhere because uselessly standing by my front door looking at the dust cloud in which she was whipped away from my life isn’t helping anyone. And actually, there is only one person in the world who can assist me right now. “Max.”

I race back inside and grab my cellphone. I put in a call to Max as I race around the house like a madman, throwing on clothing. It’s only as I step foot in the bedroom that I see Heather’s panties still in the corner of the room. I guess she couldn’t find them in her mad dash to get dressed, so now they will have to stay there as a reminder of the best night of my life. I really don’t think that I’ll ever be able to move them because that will be like saying goodbye to her forever. I’m not ready for that.

“Max!” Finally, he picks up the phone. Can’t he sense my desperation? “Max, I need you. I’m in a state.”

“Yeah, I just had a call from Officer Buchan. It seems that he spoke to someone other than me who dropped you in it. I think the poor employee was intimidated by him, but don’t worry, that will be dealt with. I’m not happy. Confidentiality is one of our key components here. That could have been the kidnappers tracking you down. This could have gone wrong.”

“Ithasgone wrong. Buchan dragged her from my house and threatened all sorts of things. We need to get her back.”

There’s an uncomfortable beat of silence before Max answers me. “I think you'd better come in so we can talk about this.”

“Yeah, I’m coming to the office now. I think Heather could be in even more danger with her father than my own. We need to sort this out before anything terrible happens to her. She might be in her thirties now, but he acts like she’s still a kid.”

Max doesn’t say anything. Nothing that convinces me that he’s on my side, anyway, but it doesn’t matter because I’ll be there soon and I’ll be able to convince Max that I know best. When it comes to Heather and her father, my historical knowledge of them will help us endlessly. I can’t just leave her with him, evenif he’s a police officer. It doesn’t make him any less capable of being a bad guy and putting his daughter in danger. I really don’t feel like Mr. Buchan knows what he’s up against.

Then again, I suppose none of us do right now. But at least I care enough to make sure that my pride doesn’t get her hurt. I don’t know if Heather’s father could say the same thing at the moment. I’m not convinced that anyone could care for her like me.

13

HEATHER

“Dad, what the hell are you doing?” I shriek as he pulls away from Landon’s house at the speed of light, definitely going too fast. This isn’t a rational man who knows what he’s doing. This a crazy person who’s acting like an insane person. I might have seen my father go nuts before, but never quite to this degree. This seems like another level of insanity. “Dad, stop.”

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