Relentless Pursuit
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Authors: Kathleen Brooks
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #General, #Romantic Comedy
Relentless Pursuit
Kathleen Brooks
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
An original work of Kathleen Brooks.
Relentless Pursuit
copyright Kindle Edition @ 2013 by Kathleen Brooks
Cover art provided by Calista Taylor.
http://www.calistataylor.com
Books by Kathleen Brooks
Bluegrass Series
Bluegrass State of Mind
Risky Shot
Dead Heat
Bluegrass Brothers
Bluegrass Undercover
Rising Storm
Secret Santa: A Bluegrass Series Novella
Acquiring Trouble
Relentless Pursuit
Acknowledgment
A special thank you to Yasmin Gonzalez of Vohne Liche Kennels for her professional insight into police and military K-9 handling. I was so impressed with Yasmin’s experience and all that Vohne Liche does to help protect our police officers and military through the positive training of their dogs.
Table of Contents
OTHER BOOKS BY KATHLEEN BROOKS
EXCERPT OF
SURRENDER
BY MELODY ANNE
Two Years Ago…
Pierce Davies sat back in the chair and held his breath. He looked down at what he had just finished and then at his professor. Dr. Howard Oldham was staring similarly at the object sitting on the tile floor of lab 107 in the University of Kentucky Agricultural Building. The silence of the early morning was thundering in his ears as he pulled out his smartphone.
“Okay, here it goes.” Pierce pressed in a series of commands and waited. The object on the floor turned on. The red light turned to green as the object started to move across the floor.
“You did it, Pierce!” Dr. Oldham shouted as they followed the object down the darkened hall.
Pierce worried as the object stopped by a ficus tree to test it. “I don’t know yet. I still think it’s too soon to celebrate.” Pierce paused and flashed a smile to Dr. Oldham. “But I sure as hell am excited.”
“We need to test it out in the environment first,” Dr. Oldham said, more to himself as he nodded his gray head and pushed his black-rimmed glasses back up his rounded nose.
Pierce put his hand on his hips and narrowed his hazel eyes as the object started moving again. “I know the perfect place, Dr. Oldham. There’s an abandoned farm in Keeneston. The owner died and a family member who owns it lives out of state. I’ve had my eye on it since I was eighteen. Now I just need a loan.”
“That I can help with. I know a guy.” Dr. Oldham winked as his bushy eyebrows bounced. His smile slipped and his lips tightened. “You know what this means if this works?”
Pierce nodded. He may be the baby of the family, but he also might have just invented something that would change the farming community forever. His brothers never seemed to realize that he was an adult after they came home from the Special Forces, showing off their talents. Pierce was always paying attention, even if being the youngest somehow made him invisible.
He had learned hand-to-hand combat from his oldest brother, Miles, during their workouts together. He had paid close attention to Marshall when he interned at his old security company and learned all kinds of neat tricks from assessing risk to lock picking. Then he learned the computer skills it took to hack into nearly any system in the world from Cade, the youngest of the three brothers who were deployed. From that knowledge, Pierce worked backwards and became somewhat of an excellent programmer. Cade had never thought twice in pulling out the computer to hack into some database for the U.S. government when they called, even though Pierce was sitting there on the couch watching football.
He loved his brothers, all five of them, and his sister, who was probably the only one who saw his potential. But for some reason he wanted to keep this discovery from them. It was his and he wasn’t ready to share it with anyone until it was so perfect that Cade couldn’t hack it, Marshall couldn’t disable it, and Miles couldn’t find any fault in its design.
Pierce tapped a button on his cell phone and the object turned around and rolled back into the classroom and shut itself off. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll test it, make adjustments, and then test it again. It’ll take a little while longer, but when it’s perfect…” Pierce looked up at his professor. “We can’t tell
anyone
. Not your wife, not Aiden, no one. Not even my family.”
Dr. Oldham nodded his head and held out his hand. Pierce shook it and the two men slapped each other on the back. “I just can’t believe we did it! If this works…”
“I know. I can’t really believe it myself.” Pierce pulled out the flash drive from his computer with all his notes and programming code and placed it in his pocket. He gathered the six notebooks in front of him and shoved them into his backpack. “Now all I need is the deed to that land.”
Present day...
Tammy slid the hanger across the old metal rail in the closet and sighed. Too teenage-y. Too old. Too boring. Ugh! She knew she had the perfect dress to debut the new Tammy Fields to the world tonight at the social event of the year. Miles and Morgan were getting married in the most talked about wedding Keeneston had ever seen since Dani married Mo, a real life prince, and she just needed to find that special dress in her closet.
Tammy pushed aside the sweater she had worn when Cy Davies kissed her and changed her life on Christmas Eve. She was just about to give up hope of ever finding love when the sexy Santa grabbed her and planted one on her right in front of the whole town—and right in front of his brother Pierce. It was then she realized that she was tired of being “cute little Tammy.” So she had marched all five-foot-one inches of herself into paralegal classes the following week with a new attitude. It took some convincing but she repeated it enough that she started to believe it. She was smart. She was sexy. And she could do anything if she put her mind to it.
She improved her grades so much that she graduated earlier this month with honors. As a reward, her boss, Henry Rooney, gave her a promotion. Tammy was now no longer just a secretary at his defense law firm, but his new paralegal. With the promotion came a much-needed raise from both Henry and McKenna Mason Ashton, the other attorney who shared office space with them. McKenna, or Kenna to all her friends, had even taken her out for a celebratory dinner at a fancy restaurant in Lexington.
With her first increased paycheck, Tammy hit the stores in Lexington. Instead of jeans or a miniskirt, Tammy was now wearing sexy pencil skirts and fitted blouses to work. Once known for her ever-changing hair color, Tammy started growing her hair out into a sleek ear-length bob with edgy sweeping bangs. Gone were her pink highlights and, in return, her naturally light-blonde hair shined.
As she stepped out of the salon, she ran smack into the Greek god who ran the restaurant near her paralegal school. She had flattened her hands against a ripped abdomen and looked up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. His wavy, long black hair was shoved behind his ears and he wore a smile that caused her to blink twice. When he said, “Excuse me,” Tammy felt herself starting to melt. His smooth accented voice enveloped her and she almost leapt into his arms until she remembered she was the new Tammy.
“Pardon me, it was entirely my fault,” she had said with a glint in her misty blue eyes.
“Don’t you go to school near my restaurant? I seem to remember you studying while you ate lunch.”
“Yes, I did. But I graduated and I'm now a paralegal at a law firm in Keeneston,” Tammy had said rather proudly.
“Well then, we must celebrate your success. Let me take you out to lunch.” He had grinned and Pierce’s sexy smile became a distant memory for Tammy.
Demetri bought her lunch and she had never felt so empowered as to be sitting there having an adult discussion about careers and interests. She only faltered when he asked where she lived. Tammy had never been embarrassed about her upbringing in Keeneston Park, the local mobile home community, but she no longer felt as if it defined her. Instead she felt as if she finally had the courage to embark on something new.
She finished lunch with Demetri and left with his phone number in hand and a new mission. Tammy headed straight to the Blossom Café in downtown Keeneston. Not only was it the center of the town and the place to eat with a generous side of gossip, it also held the key to her future.
Tammy could feel her stronger, more confident self rising to the surface and she was ready to embrace it. She was no longer the overly perky, sex-crazed girl of her past. However, in her defense, the only man she had literally tried to jump was Ahmed, and who wouldn’t want to jump dark, dangerous, and drop-dead gorgeous Ahmed?
Tammy marched into the Blossom Café with her shoulders back and promptly begged Miss Daisy and Miss Violet to let her rent the apartment upstairs. In just one day, she moved all of her things from her rented mobile home and into the apartment above the café. She decorated the place with pride and hung her diploma on the wall. With her hands on her hips, she decided then and there that Pierce Davies had missed out on a good thing.
She had been pining over him for two years and that was two too many. So what if he was a sweet, sexy cowboy? So what if he was tall with brown hair streaked with blonde highlights, the kind that made you want to run your hands through? And so what if he had hazel eyes you could get lost staring into? If he didn’t—rather couldn’t—see her for the woman she was, then out with the old and in with the Demetri! Tammy had picked up the phone and called Demetri right then. The last couple of weeks had been wonderful. Real dates with a man who saw her for the woman she was and not the kid she had been. There was only one problem with Demetri that she had discovered… he wasn’t Pierce.
Tammy shoved the hanger down the rod and smiled when she finally found the dress she was looking for. Tonight was Miles and Morgan’s wedding and she was going to bring this whole strange love triangle to a head. One way or another, at the end of the night she’d either have Pierce or move on from him once and for all.
Pierce Davies stood at the front of Saint Frances Church and smiled as all of his family’s friends took their seats in the pews. He gave a wink to his date, Jasmine, and also sent a killer smile to Summer, the part-time waitress at the café. They had gotten the five-minute warning from Father James and paraded out to the front of the church to await Morgan’s arrival. Miles was standing tall and proud, waiting to be brought to his knees by the sultry Morgan.
Quite honestly, Pierce was disappointed in his brothers. There was nothing wrong with marriage, but they had all fallen hard and fast into the husband role. Thanks, but no thanks. He was twenty-seven, not thirty-six like Miles. Now it was just he and Cy as the remaining Davies bachelors. He looked at Jasmine, the president of the Keeneston Belles, and smiled when she blew him a kiss. It did have its rewards being the last man standing, which he was since Cy was nowhere to be found since Christmas.
