Page 6 of Torn in Half

Lifting his chin, Nick peered up at him. “Are you kidding? You’d make a great father, Jake. Besides JD and Mara, I’ve seen how you’ve taken care of Jenn and Alyssa. You’re good with kids, no matter their age, whether you realize it or not.”

Having been one of her many non-biological uncles from the teams, Jake had watched Jenn grow from a toddler to the beautiful young woman she was today. Meanwhile, Alyssa was a teenager he’d rescued, twice, from an abusive father. Now that both her parents were dead, she was living with Boomer’s parents who’d become her legal guardians. Alyssa and Jake spoke over the phone or through texts several times a week. She was a good kid, and Jake was proud of how she was overcoming the horrors of being repeatedly raped by her father at a young age and having her mother killed by men who worked for the bastard. Thanks to Rick and Eileen Michaelson though, she now had her GED and was enrolled in the nursing program at their community college.

“I don’t know about that, but thanks to you, I’m willing to give it a go.”

Nick’s eyes widened. “Seriously? You’re not just saying that to take my mind off Mom, are you?”

A playful frown appeared on his face as he squeezed Nick’s shoulders. “What’s our number one rule, subbie?”

In an instant, Nick willingly and naturally fell into the role of submissive in their relationship. The younger man had never known he was a sub until he’d been topped by the Alpha in Jake. “Honesty, Sir.”

“Exactly. So, I meant what I said. After we get your mom back to the States, and all this chaos is over, we’ll sit down and talk about our options. There’s some stuff we’ll have to change though. We won’t be able to go on the same assignments anymore, among other things.”

It was weird. Now that the subject of having children had been brought up between them, Jake found he was liking the idea a lot more than he had in the past. Maybe it was time to move on to the next chapter in their lives—the one where their family grew a little more.

Chapter Six

Jenn hurried into the studio, shutting the door behind her. “Any news?”

Angie and Kristen had convinced her to go to work at her internship in the Tampa Social Services department for a few hours, since there was nothing any of them could do but wait and worry. The heads of the Sawyer family weren’t her biological grandparents, but she’d been calling them Grandpa and Grandma since she’d been a little girl. Her mother’s and father’s parents had all died before Jenn had reached the age of three, so Chuck and Marie had happily filled that void in her life for all these years.

“Not yet, sweetie,” Fancy answered from her perch on the couch. “Grab a drink and a plate from the kitchen and come have some pizza.” She gestured to two opened boxes sitting on the coffee table between the group of women. From the looks of things though, nobody had been really hungry, except maybe Mara, who was stuffing plain, rotini pasta into her mouth, and JD who had his fist in his mouth.

After a pit stop in the kitchen, Jenn joined everyone gathered in the sitting area, taking a seat next to Harper and sliding a cheese slice onto her plate. “What time are they supposed to land?”

“Not until around 7:30 tonight, our time, which is 7:30 in the morning there. Figuring that out is the easy part—just don’t ask me what day it is over there—that always gets me all confused. Plus a day? Minus a day? Unless I’m making reservations somewhere, it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me.”

Jenn picked at her piece of pizza and glanced across the room to where Kristen was talking on the phone and she didn’t look happy. Her aunt slammed down the cordless receiver and strode toward them. Jenn’s eyes widened. “What’s wrong? What did I miss?”

Flopping into one of the recliners, Kristen grabbed her laptop from a side table. “Someone plagiarized Hearts Ablaze! I have to send Amazon proof that I hold the sole copyright to the book and other stuff. I don’t know why they can’t just look and see that I’ve had it published for years before this . . .” She furtively glanced at Mara. “. . . B-I-T-C-H came along. Shelby, can you use my desktop computer to take screen shots of both my book and the stolen version? I have to send them too—just the first few pages. I have to go through my files for the copyright and then write a Cease & Desist letter. Once I send them everything, and they see I’m telling the truth, they’ll remove the other listing.”

Jenn was appalled anyone would do that, steal someone else’s hard work and pass it off as their own, but it wasn’t the first time she’d heard of it happening. She just felt bad that this time it’d been done to someone she loved—and at the worst possible time. With Marie missing, Kristen didn’t need this right now. “Can I do anything to help?”

Kristen sighed, and her shoulders sagged. “After you eat, would you mind trying to get JD down for a nap?”

“Of course!” She loved the little boy she considered her nephew. His smile and dimples were the highlight of her day, every day.

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.”

Twenty minutes later, Jenn had finished her lunch and JD was in a fresh diaper. Since he was a little fussy, Jenn put him in his stroller and took him for a walk around the compound, hoping the motion would lull him to sleep. Beau, of course, joined them. Ian’s dog took his protective watch seriously. If JD was out and about, so was Beau, watching his six, as Jenn’s uncles would say.

As she rounded the corner of the apartment building, to take a stroll through Ian’s Oasis, the beautiful yard Angie had created for him, Jenn groaned and wished she could turn around, but it was too late. Doug Henderson was heading her way and had already spotted her. It would make her look like the immature woman he thought she was if she turned around and pretended she hadn’t seen him. That was the last thing she wanted. Ever since the one and only kiss she’d shared with the man, who was over seven years her senior, she wanted him more than ever. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel the same way, and she’d embarrassed herself in front of him. Just the thought of how he’d turned her down after that amazing kiss made her blush. It was hot enough, though, so she could blame it on the sun.

Pasting on an expression of indifference, she tried to act like the sight of him wasn’t breaking her heart. “Something wrong, Doug?”

He stopped in front of the stroller and gave the baby a quick smile. “Hey, kiddo.” His gaze then flittered to Jenn. “No, nothing’s wrong, at least not here. I was heading over to the studio to check in with Kristen and Angie. The Steel Corps team landed in the Philippines and met up with Carter and Jordyn.”

T. Carter and his girlfriend, Jordyn Alvarez, were good friends of Jenn’s uncles. While they were introduced to most people as the executives of an import/export company, Jenn knew that wasn’t true. She didn’t know the extent of who they really were, but they were operatives for one of the US agencies. She suspected the CIA or NSA but wasn’t certain. All she did know was that if anyone at Trident needed them, the couple would be there in a heartbeat and vice versa. Carter had even helped rescue Jenn and Angie when they’d been taken hostage a few years ago.

“Do they know where Grandma Marie is yet?”

Doug hesitated, and that made her stomach drop. But then he said, “I don’t have all the details, but they’ve been able to track the signal from her watch to a residential area. We think she and the nurse are okay for now. I wish I could tell you more but . . .”

“That’s okay. I’m used to it.” Her father had been on the same SEAL team as Ian, Devon, Brody, Jake, Marco, and Boomer. Between the seven of them, they had a lot of secrets about their classified missions that they couldn’t tell anyone who didn’t “need to know.” She’d learned a long time ago she wouldn’t get the details of any of their tours or assignments. Her parents had been killed because of one of those secrets during Jenn’s senior year in high school. Since then, she’d been trying to deal with that fact as best she could.

“Well, at least I can give Kristen some good news.” He held up a piece of paper. “With a little help from Nathan, I was able to figure out who her plagiarist is.”

Jenn’s eyes went wide. “Who?”

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