After being injured during the raid of a drug/sex house, Officer Sara Hawke talks her way out of the hospital, planning to spend the incoming blizzard at home alone. She is a strong woman who hates to ask for help. From anyone.
Detective Mack Kuper did everything he could to build a wall between them. Which held up until she was injured assisting with the raid he’d arranged. Kidnapping her and taking her home with him so he can care for her during the blizzard was his only option.
Can Sara and Mack come to an understanding during the blizzard? Will Mack convince her that they belong together? Will Sara’s strength keep her from admitting her feelings for Mack?
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Sara Hawke peeked through the open bathroom window, and nodded to the man standing two feet away. The room was clear, and the pounding heavy metal they could hear a block away would cover any noise she might make getting inside. She just had to make it to the locked back door without being seen.
“Give me a boost,” she said softly, looking at the detective who had accompanied her this far.
Detective Mack Kuper looked at her as if he wanted to argue, but bent forward and held out his hands with his fingers laced together without a word. He’d made his disapproval of her participation in the raid known during the team’s planning session, claiming she was too small, too delicate for such an important assignment. But she was the only one on the team, or in the department, for that matter, who would fit through the small window.
Setting her tactical boot into his hands, she jumped as he lifted. Grabbing the windowsill, she somersaulted over it into the bathroom, landing on her feet with a soft sound. She didn’t bother to look around the room, but hurried to the open doorway. Pausing, she listened as she peeked up and down the hall. She didn’t hear anything over the music, and there was no one in sight. Taking a deep breath, Sara hurried down the hall to the kitchen. Reaching the thick metal door, which was the only new addition to the old, rundown, abandoned house, she flipped the three deadbolt locks open.
She was so focused on the door and its locks that she didn’t look around the rest of the room until it was too late. Twisting the knob, she heard a roar and a whoosh of something cutting through the air. She got just a glimpse of a big, bald man swinging a baseball bat at her just before it connected with her lower right leg. With a scream, she managed to pull the door open just as her leg gave out. The first officer stepped into the room just as she collapsed to the floor.
“What the fuck?” he yelled before tackling the asshole with the bat. Sara watched through her tears as the officer rolled him onto his belly before using a zip-tie to cuff his wrists.
Sara tried to regain her footing, but screamed when her pain spiked off the chart. She collapsed to the floor once again, and worked on staying conscious and breathing.
“Hawke, what the fuck happened?” Detective Kuper asked as he knelt down beside her.
“Baseball bat to the right lower leg,” she panted as tears filled her eyes despite her trying to keep them hidden. When the detective reached out and wiped her cheek, she turned her face away, humiliated that she was crying.
“Help me up,” she whispered, looking into the man’s pale blue-gray eyes that always reminded her of her favorite pair of jeans that should have been thrown out already.
His frown deepened as he shook his head. “I don’t think so, Princess.”
Before she understood what was happening, he slipped one arm around her back and the other under her knees, and lifted her. She wrapped her left arm around his shoulder and fought down the scream that was pressing for release as her right leg moved. Closing her eyes, she swallowed repeatedly to keep her dinner down as he rose to his feet and carried her back out the door he’d just come in.
Though she wasn’t sure she could trust the man who was nearly twice her size, Sara focused on breathing and staying conscious instead of fighting him. If he wanted to strain his back carrying her, it was his own fault.
“Hang on, Princess,” he murmured in her ear as he carried her across the back yard of the house they were raiding, and the yard behind it to where an ambulance waited on the next street over.
A moment later, she swore he brushed a kiss on her temple as they passed through the darkest shadows, but that couldn’t be. Detective Kuper had done nothing but voice his disapproval of her joining the department as a 30-year-old rookie. She’d been with the department nearly a year, and he still seemed to have something negative to say about her every time they crossed paths.
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