Never Mine: A Base Branch Novella (Titan World) Read online

  “It’s okay, Boom Boom. You’re the only one making any racket today.” She soothed the only family she had since she’d pushed Callum away. The stocky pit bull held his position—sitting just outside the blast radius—but quirked his head. “Give me one minute and we’ll be clear.”

  It was quite astounding that he could hear her through her full-face helmet and specialized bodysuit. Growing up, Jillian hadn’t had a steady house, much less a pet rock. She didn’t get the dog, but she loved him already. Boomer could read her mood in an instant and dealt with her accordingly. If she was excited, he bounced so high he threatened to touch the ceiling of her suite. If she was sad, he curled his massive body as close to her as he could manage, which usually meant on top of her, and settled in for the long haul. The poor thing hadn’t seen her happy, no more than he could make her. He did as well as he could.

  Jared hadn’t said the bomb-detecting love-muffin was a pity gift, but she had her suspicions. The first of which being the timing of Boomer’s appearance. If she’d known two weeks of moping would have gotten her a comrade in the never-ending fight against VO-IEDs, she’d have done it sooner. Moped, not pushed away the man she loved.

  She reached the network with wire cutters and moved forward with the render safe procedure. It only took forty seconds.

  “Clear,” she said into the helmet’s communications system.

  Boomer yipped his approval.

  “That’s got to be a world record,” Danny awed.

  “I know, right?” Jack agreed.

  The fresh-faced, fresh out of school EODs Jared had given her to help out—a.k.a. train—awed and guffawed through the channel.

  “Bringing it your way.” Jillian collected each pack of ammunition one at a time and deposited it into the bomb box for them to destroy.

  “I’ve lost count of how many boxes you’ve filled in the last three days.” Jack closed the lid, shook his head, and sighed.

  “We’re losing sun. Let’s get these last ones destroyed and get back to HQ.” Jillian removed her helmet and turned to Boomer. Despite her aching muscles, she fell to her knees and opened her arms. “Come, boy.”

  Boomer raced across the distance and eased enough before impact that he didn’t knock her completely over. He sniffed her hair and rubbed himself against the front of her suit.

  “You’re a good boy. The best, Boom Boom.” She rubbed his neck and patted his belly. “Are you hungry?” His ears perked. “Want to go home?” It wasn’t exactly her home, but it was as close as she’d get to one. Boomer bounced off her. “Load up.” He nearly spun out in his haste to get to her Jeep.

  “Hey, Coop?” Danny called. When she turned around, his hand was extended and in it a comms link. “Boss Man.”

  They weren’t officially Titan, though they lived in Titan’s Eastern HQ, used Titan toys, and were paid by Titan money. They weren’t the team, but they’d play with the team anytime the need arose. Until then, they cleared the streets and communities of deadly explosives.

  Jillian pressed the wireless piece into her ear and started peeling off her suit. “Cooper here.”

  “Let the boys demo and head in,” Jared ordered. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Absolutely not. The last two times you’ve had surprises my entourage has grown. I didn’t take this job to train an army of EODs for you.”

  “Why did you take the job, Jillian?”

  Jared didn’t often use her first name, but when he did, it was always a well-placed blow.

  “To simplify my life, and here you are trying to make it more complicated,” she snapped.

  “Life, by definition, isn’t simple. Are you going to live it or have a bomb take you to the next place to be with your friend, whose shadow you exist under?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not—”

  “Right. You’re fine, which is why you spent the last three days—the days on either side of and the day of your best friend’s one-year anniversary—digging up IEDs from dawn till dust, carelessly surpassing reg limits with your K-9 and comrades,” Jared snarled over the line. “Get back here and figure out your answer to the question on the way.”

  Jillian tossed the comms link back to Danny.

  Surprisingly, he caught the link and tipped his imaginary hat to her with it. “We’ll take care of things here.”

  “Thanks,” she growled as she tore off the rest of her ABS and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Boomer danced in the passenger seat, amazing her yet again that his big ass could move around so much and not fall out the window.

  “Hey, Boom.” She retrieved his water bottle and turned it up for him. The fella guzzled like a beer pong champion. “Good, huh?” His long pink tongue lolled out and slathered the excess water off his jaws in affirmation.

  The car rumbled to life, and she turned to look at her dog. She’d signed papers for him and everything, saying that he’d retire to her and move and live with her unless she died. “Callum’s your protector if I die.” Jillian pressed her face into Boomer’s neck. “I don’t want to die. I want to live.” He licked a wide path over her shoulder. His little thanks for not giving up.

  Why had she given up on her and Callum without a fight? He was right not to let her talk to the girls and not beg her—more than he had in that kitchen—to give them a chance. She was the one who could have said what she wanted, and he’d have happily given it to her.

  “In the back, Boom.” She shifted into gear and stared at the wide, sweet face staring back at her. “Now. Rules are rules.”

  He scooted into the backseat and hunkered down, out of sight. To the right or, in this case, very wrong people, the bounty of Boomer’s head was greater than the one on hers.

  The Jeep shimmied and bumped over the straight line back to the road. She hooked a right and drove. The wind blew through her ponytail, drying the sweat from her skin and slicked back hair. Boomer bit it as it streamed from the front seat for a couple of minutes before he sacked out.

  They kicked up dust as far as the rearview could see until they hit the first village. Jillian slowed to accommodate the people on foot walking to and from the market at the center of town. As she neared the outskirts, a little boy caught her eye.

  He was no more than six. A smile stretched his mouth, and his feet beat against the dirt with impressive speed as he chased after a paper ball the size of his head. The ball rolled and rolled to the far side of the rubble lot. When the boy caught up to it, he turned, levered back his foot, and kicked it back the other way.

  Weeks ago, the town had been a scampering whisper of what it was today. Weeks ago, she, Boomer, Danny, and Jack had come through, clearing eight bomb boxes worth of IEDs as they went from a war long forgotten by the world but not the people of the UAE and Oman border town.

  This place needed her more than the States ever had, but she needed Callum and the girls more than she’d needed anything in her entire life. Amery and fear be damned.

  She’d made the right decision to stay but had been too afraid of his rejection, of the stress she’d put on the girls, to ask him to stay and raise his family away from everything they knew.

  Boomer snored in the backseat, while Jillian formed the finer details of a plan for the two-hour ride back to Titan HQ. By the time she’d pulled into the secure parking at the rear entrance, she knew exactly what she had to do and finally had the courage to do it. All it had taken was time away, a love that refused to fade, and a well-placed question.

  The moment she killed the engine, Boomer yawned and stretched his way to standing. “You ready for the negotiation of a lifetime, Boom?” He yipped. “Me too. Let’s go.”

  Jillian secured her gear and bags in the basement locker room, grimaced at her reflection—sweat-slicked hair and dirt rimmed everything. She paused long enough to splash water on her face and wipe the desert off before she continued on to the elevator and hit the button for the war room. Her loyal companion parked his butt at her heel. He stared up with p
anted breaths and a hanging tongue.

  “We can do this.” The fur of the tip of his ear soothed the pads of her fingers and her jittery nerves. She had no reason to be jittery. Either Jared would agree, or she’d quit and move back to the States.

  Gosh, she didn’t want to move back. She just wanted her family here, with her.

  The doors opened onto the floor that housed Titan’s war room, Parker’s tech lair away from his tech lair, and some other rooms she’d hadn’t been inside. She braced herself, nodded at Boomer, and pressed forward. The closer she walked to the door of choice, the smaller the hall became.

  “What the hell?” Jillian shook out her fingers, which trembled at her side. Boomer pressed his head into her palm and gave her the strength to choose the future she wanted. “You’re the best, Boom. Here we go.”

  She pushed through the door with a full breath ready to tell Jared what was what but stalled in the doorway. Her jaw hit the floor. Every ounce of I’m-going-to-tell-Jared-what’s-what cascaded onto the short carpet with it.

  “Jillian.” A woman with perfect breasts strapped so high into a tank top they nearly grazed her chin propped a hip on the conference table. Not weird at all, considering the men Titan employed were rumored to have smokin’ hot women in their lives. But this one cradled a baby against her shoulder and a pistol on her hip. The two ends of the spectrum didn’t compute.

  Her bright red lips stretched into a devious smile. “What, am I supposed to be at home barefoot and pregnant with the next one?”

  Jillian screwed her jaw back into place. “No, I—”

  “Oh, come on. I’m not going to bite unless you try to kidnap my baby.” She smoothed a hand down one thigh of her leather pants. “Even then I wouldn’t bite. I’d shoot.”

  “Sugar?”

  “Of course.” She nodded at her baby. “I think it’s safe to say, I’m not the Virgin Mary.”

  A soft, rich chuckle rumbled through Sugar’s lips. Her gaze dropped to her baby’s face. The tone of her laughter immediately shifted to an easy cooing sigh. She leaned in close to the bundle’s face and inhaled deeply. The jokes and sarcasm melted away, revealing a hint of the adoring mother she was when she wasn’t busting balls.

  Boomer looked up at Jillian and shifted on his feet, as though to say, ‘It isn’t polite to stand in doorways.’ She walked to the nearest corner of the table and stopped with her life support at her heel. Not since Callum left had she ever been so confused. Agitation shot a wave of gooseflesh across her arms. She had things to do, and already they weren’t going to plan.

  “The pretty doggy!” A sweet, high-pitched voice that didn’t belong to her girls knocked her between the eyes with desperate need, the need to be with Aria and Ashlyn.

  Jared waltzed—as much as she’d ever seen him—into the room hand in hand with his stepdaughter, Asal.

  “Can I go pet the pretty doggy, Daddy?” Asal offered up the widest smile meant for melting hearts.

  “You almost got me with those big brown eyes.” He chucked her chin and blew her a kiss. “But we have to wait, just a minute.”

  Boss Man—and Asal by default, though her eyes were locked on Boomer—stopped at his wife’s side, caressed her hair and slipped his gaze to his baby. The total badassness of Jared Westin didn’t fall away; if anything, it grew with ferocity next to his woman and children—children that weren’t all biologically his. As though he loved so much it bolstered him as a leader and man.

  Their family offered Jillian a glimpse—in perfect clarity—of the insignificance of maternity and paternity. A family wasn’t always made up of DNA. Those details were inconsequential. Her foster fuck-ups along the way hadn’t shown her that, but Amery and Callum had.

  She never wanted to claim her family as much as she did at that moment, and a surprise she didn’t understand stood between her and that petition. “Your family is lovely, but I don’t understand the relevance of the surprise?”

  Reluctantly, or maybe mischievously, Jared’s gaze left his wife’s naughty grin and assessed her. “Have you thought about what I—”

  “Yes, I really need to talk to you about a few things.” Jillian usually didn’t talk over her superiors, but now that she’d made a decision, she couldn’t wait around. The need to move crawled all over her. “First, I need some leave, maybe two weeks, and then I need to find a house here or in a nearby village, a safe one. The hotel is nice, but it’s not the place for a dog, much less—”

  “Jillian.” Jared held up his hand. His tone and the gesture combined rocketed her heart into her throat, which was fine. He didn’t want her to speak anyway.

  Boomer chose that moment to break his hold and abandon her side. Everything was going to shit.

  “She’s my surprise, not yours,” Jared said.

  “Yep, I hitched a ride.” Sugar hooked a finger in Jared’s blue jeans and pulled him back to her side.

  “I…” Jillian’s head shook. She didn’t understand, but she’d already said that. Maybe she should just grab a chair and watch as her plans were cut into ribbons, and then hold them high over her head and announce her resignation.

  Boomer whined, drawing her gaze to the door Jared and Asal had walked through. He pawed at the threshold and whined again. Even though it wasn’t his alert for explosives, Jillian’s heartbeat thundered in her esophagus. Just like he fed off her energy, she fed off his, read and reacted. It kept them alive.

  She swallowed her heart and glared at Jared. “What’s going on?”

  “It looks like he found your surprise, which is also his.” A satisfied smile stretched his mouth.

  14

  Callum kicked back and watched the drama unfold on a screen in front of him. Sure, spying on Jillian while Sugar and Jared toyed with her emotions was devious and not at all the frontal attacks he’d always dealt her. He was a SEAL. SEALs got shit done covertly. With his little girls’ hearts and happiness on the line, he dealt the woman he loved a little subterfuge to even the playing field.

  He leaned forward and bumped the volume in his earbuds. Aria and Ashlyn sat on the floor beside him and placed multicolored beads on a thin cord, pandering to their newfound jewelry obsession. No way would he miss Jillian’s answer to the question. If only Jared would stop making googly eyes at his wife and baby long enough to pose it.

  Finally, the guy eased off them and looked at Jillian. “Have you thought about what I—”

  “Yes,” she cut him off.

  Oh, shit. This was either a really good sign or really fucking horrible one. Callum’s asshole puckered so much he nearly sucked up the chair.

  Jillian charged on without a breath, but the world seemed to leave her lips in slow motion. “I really need to talk to you about a few things.” She lifted a finger. “First, I need some leave, maybe two weeks, and then I need to find a house here or in a nearby village, a safe one. The hotel is nice, but it’s not the place for a dog, much less—”

  Why the fuck did Jared stop her? Callum’s nose was inches from the screen begging the words to fall off Jillian’s lips as though he were a deranged soap opera fanatic. He couldn’t give two fucks right now that Sugar hitched a ride across the ocean with them. She was a great woman and all, but he needed Jillian to finish that thought, now.

  His palms braced either side of the monitor.

  “Dude, hands off,” Parker chided him as though he were a toddler with sticky fingers.

  “I’m not going to crush it.” Callum released the computer. He didn’t offer the guy an apology, but he did give him a very manly eye roll.

  His girls were rubbing off on him.

  “I’m not so sure.” Parker pointed at the door.

  The girls had abandoned their craft post and breached the front line without orders or even permission. His stomach hit the button for the ground floor, and his palms slicked with sweat.

  Christ, he’d stormed battlefields and infiltrated enemy camps with no more than a handful of men. Jillian shouldn’t scare him
this much. He stood and hurried to the door but stopped.

  “Boomy!” Ashlyn launched herself at the dog they’d visited almost weekly since he was born but hadn’t seen in two months.

  “I’ve missed you so much.” Aria wrapped her arms around the dog and her sister and squeezed tight enough to render anyone else unconscious.

  Laughs and giggles spirited the air and Callum held his breath. Jared’s eyes shifted from the girls to Jillian at the other end of the room and back too many times.

  “Girls.” Jillian’s emotion-soaked voice didn’t question their appearance. It reveled in their presence.

  “Jilly! Oh, my gosh, Jilly!” Aria abandoned her sister and Boomer as quickly as she’d attacked them and sprinted out of sight. “I’ve missed you more.”

  “Jilly?” Ashlyn looked from Boomer to Jillian and covered her tiny mouth. Tears flowed over her cheeks, and a joyful sob rocked her.

  It broke his heart into a thousand pieces.

  “Ashlyn, baby. Oh, please don’t cry.” Jillian stormed into view with Aria wrapped protectively in her arms. She collapsed to her knees and collected Ashlyn to her chest. “My girls. Oh, my God, my girls.”

  Jillian had ordered the ban on tears, but they seeped from her tired eyes.

  “I’m so happy,” Ashlyn wailed, sounding the exact opposite.

  “Me too.” Jillian held the girls to her chest, pressed their heads onto either shoulder, and rocked them as she’d done since they were infants.

  Just like that, his heart welded together stronger than it had ever been. No matter what came out of Jillian’s mouth, she loved him and his girls. Everything else would fall into place.

  Sugar sniffled, but when he looked up, she blinked furiously and hugged her girls tight, while Jared did the same to all three.

  Minutes passed with the girls hugging and rocking until Aria wiped her tears away and sat back in Jillian’s arms. “Don’t go away from us again. A little trip is all right, I guess, but never move away. Always be where we are, no matter where in the world we are.”