Armoured Attraction

Liam knew them all, flirted shamelessly with them all. He’d spent so much time in the office with those women that Steve had threatened to fire him several times.

Not that Liam dated any of them—he knew better than to date anyone who might have his life in her hands—but at any given moment he’d be leaning on their desks chatting, and keeping them from their work.

Liam smiled. Steve’s main office was one of his favorite places in the world to be.

But not today. Not right now. He could not go in there and flirt with those beautiful women with Vanessa’s voice still filling his head.

Steve’s door opened.

“Hey, Liam. Come on in.” Steve said, still reading from a file in his hand as he returned to his desk. “I didn’t even think you knew this door existed. Hell, I wasn’t really sure you knew any offices existed outside those belonging to my assistants.”

Derek Waterman and Joe Matarazzo—both Liam’s colleagues and good friends—were sitting in chairs across from Steve’s desk. They held similar files.

“Hey, Goetz,” Derek murmured. Joe muttered something unintelligible without looking up from the file in his hand.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, Steve,” Liam said.

“It’s no problem. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m going to need a few personal days.”

Now the guys looked up from their files. Liam was pretty sure he’d never taken personal days except to go on actual vacations planned well ahead of time.

“Everything okay?” Steve’s concern was also evident.

“Yeah.” Liam shrugged. “Everything’s fine. I just have a friend who called needing some help back in the Outer Banks. My friend said this might be a little sticky with the locals so wanted some outside help.”

“You grew up there, right? You haven’t been home in a long time.”

“Yeah, not since my grandmother died. Not much there for me.”

Steve nodded. “Is your friend’s trouble serious? Do we need to send in a team?”

“Nah. I’m sure I can handle it.”

“What sort of trouble?”

Liam sighed. “To be honest, I’m not exactly sure. My friend called my old DEA contact number. They forwarded it to me.”

“Has anybody else noticed Goetz’s complete lack of pronoun usage?” Joe said, leaning back in his chair.

Damn it. This was about to become a thing.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Derek responded, grinning. “So are we to assume this friend is of the female variety?”

Liam realized he should’ve just mentioned that from the beginning. “Yes, she is.”

“Um, Joe, do you ever recall Liam being shy about mentioning a female friend to us before?” Derek quipped.

Liam knew his reputation. He’d worked pretty hard at making sure everyone knew he was a ladies’ man. Girl in every port. Shameless flirt.

At times he almost believed his own press. Because it was a hell of a lot easier to believe that he was some sort of modern-day Casanova than that he still pined over a woman who’d left him cold eight years ago.

“A female from his hometown, no less,” Joe responded. “I’ve never heard him mention any such creature before.”

“Very curious, indeed.” Derek waggled his eyebrows.

“All right, enough, you two,” Steve cut in. He turned to Liam. “Like I said, is there anything we need to know about your friend or her situation?”

“Not as far as I know,” Liam said. “She didn’t provide much detail. If it looks like something I can’t handle, I’ll let you know.”

“You’re not going to call her first? Get more details?”

“No, I’m just going to go.”

Thankfully none of the three men in the room pointed out what Liam already knew: dropping everything and traveling from Omega headquarters in Colorado Springs to the Outer Banks of North Carolina because of a vague phone call from someone he hadn’t talked to in nearly a decade was overkill.

But from the first moment he had heard Vanessa’s voice, figured out she was asking for help, Liam knew he would be doing just that.

“Okay, I think one of the Omega jets is heading out to DC in the next few hours if you want to catch a ride there,” Steve responded. “Be safe and keep me posted as to when you’ll be back.”

Joe and Derek didn’t say anything, although they were both staring at Liam with mouths slightly agape. Liam ignored them.

“Okay. Thanks, Steve.”

Liam just left. He didn’t want to explain himself to his friends, especially when he could hardly understand what he was doing himself. All he knew was that he had to see Vanessa.

He wasn’t really surprised that she was still living in the Outer Banks. The two-hundred-mile stretch of land, a string of barrier islands running along the northeast coast of North Carolina, held a great deal of prime property and the Eppersons owned a good chunk of it.

And Vanessa was princess of it all. She had been her whole life.

Liam had found out the hard way that her love for her pampered way of life outweighed any promises she might make to any poor sap fool enough to fall in love with her. Fool enough to believe her when she said she loved him, too.

Did she think of him when she felt the sand of the Roanoke Sound on her feet? On her back? Think of all the many hours they’d spent there together?

Did she ever think about him asking her to run away and marry him right there in that sand? About saying yes?

About not showing up where they were supposed to meet? About refusing to talk to him at all when he’d come by to see why she had changed her mind?

Probably not.

The address she had given him in the message was not her family mansion in Duck, which was slightly north of Nags Head and the preferred location for million-dollar mansions. It was some hotel he didn’t recognize at Mile Marker 13, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

Liam drove to his apartment and packed his things. He’d try to catch a ride with the team going to DC as Steve suggested. If not, he’d drive to Fort Carson, the army base in Colorado Springs. Omega worked pretty closely with the military when needed, and Liam had lots of contacts there from his days in Special Forces.

The commanding officers might lock their daughters away when Liam was in sight, but they would gladly welcome him on board an aircraft to give him a lift wherever he was going.

The thought brought a quick smile to Liam’s face. His playboy reputation was well deserved. He’d certainly earned it since he’d been in Colorado.