Hot Winter Nights

Molly had never told anyone about the training he gave her, because she’d started working out to regain her strength after her last surgery and it’d become almost a religion for her. A very private one. Keeping strong physically kept her strong mentally. No one could touch her.

Or so she liked to tell herself.

Stepping into the ring with Caleb, she smiled.

He went brows up. “You look like you’re looking forward to kicking my ass today.”

“I am.”

He laughed low in his throat and planted his weight when she came at him. She swept his legs out from beneath him, but at the last second he snagged an arm around her calf and took her down with him.

“Damn,” she said breathlessly from flat on her back.

“You had a good move,” he told her, immediately taking his weight off her and reaching a hand down to pull her up. “But you led with your eyes, so I saw you coming.”

Holding his gaze in hers, she nodded and . . . went for him again.

This time he went down like a sack and lay there, grimacing.

“Oh shit,” she breathed and dropped to his side, putting a hand on his chest. “Are you okay—”

The rest of her sentence vanished with an “oomph” from her as he rolled and flattened her.

“That’s just mean,” she said on a laugh.

“That’s real life,” he said seriously. “Don’t get taken advantage of because you’re soft.”

“Hey!”

“I mean that in the best way possible,” he said and did one of those moves only really fit people could do; he popped up to his feet without using his hands.

A low whistle had them both turning. Sadie stood ringside. “Thanks for recommending this gym. Just bought a day pass.” She then looked at Caleb, her eyes going hooded and unreadable.

He looked right back but didn’t say a word, which was impressive in its own right. As far as Molly knew, the two hadn’t had much, if any, interaction, which made this interaction all the more fascinating.

“Sadie,” Caleb said lightly in greeting.

“Suits,” Sadie said back, not nearly so lightly.

At the moment, Caleb was wearing basketball shorts and a tight long-sleeved performance t-shirt over his extremely well-honed body, but it was true that, away from the gym, he was rarely seen in anything but a suit.

“That insult’s getting old,” he told Sadie.

Sadie lifted a shoulder. “Just making sure you realize that one of your suits would probably feed the entire homeless population in San Francisco for a year.”

Caleb’s eyes went a little hot, and not in a good way. “Making assumptions about me?” he asked quietly.

Sadie shrugged.

Caleb studied her for a long beat. “Maybe we could start this little game over. What are the chances of that?”

“I’d say a pretty solid zip,” she said and moved to the weights.

“Wow,” Molly said, watching her go. “She’s usually got a really long fuse. What did you do to piss her off?”

“Breathe air.”

She didn’t believe that for one second. Clearly there was something in their past. No one got that better than Molly. Her own past had affected her in a very large way, which she thought about as she showered and headed to work.

She’d grown up with two bossy males, so she was naturally pushy and always willing to fight back. In fact, not knowing when to back down had been a lesson she’d learned the hard way at age fourteen.

Joe had gotten himself in with a bad-news group of guys, one of whom was Molly’s first crush. Darius had been charming and way too old for her at age eighteen but he’d flirted with her and she’d been ridiculously smitten. What she hadn’t known was that Darius’s buddies had wanted Joe to steal a car for them and when he’d refused, they’d decided to force his hand.

By kidnapping Molly.

Initially, she’d misunderstood the severity of her situation. They’d snatched her right off the street on her way home from school, Darius among them. She could still feel the terror, taste the blood from where she’d bitten her lip, refusing to cry or show her fear. They’d shoved her into a van and brought her to an abandoned house, ordering her to sit the hell down and keep her trap shut.

Something she hadn’t been capable of doing.

She just hadn’t been coded for passive. She’d been a sassy teen who literally hadn’t been able to shut up to save her own life. She’d had to fight back.

Which hadn’t worked out so well for her; all memories she shoved deep. But here it was nearly fifteen years later and she was still pushing back.

Half an hour later she was at the Pacific Pier Building, letting herself into the offices of Hunt Investigations to open up for the day.

Not three minutes later, the door opened and testosterone personified entered in the form of Archer and his entire alpha pack, all dressed in SWAT black and loaded with enough weapons to protect a developing nation.

They’d been investigating another insurance scam, this one a complex fraud scheme regarding the manufacture and distribution of compounded medications. The fraud had involved material misrepresentations to health insurance providers, and illegal payments to coconspirators and medical professionals—generating in excess of five million dollars in criminal proceeds.

Molly took a moment to take in the impressive sight of a bunch of really hot, really fit guys wearing their gear like they’d been born to it, every one of them dangerous and dangerously sexy in their own right.

Even if only one stuck out to her.

“Solid intel,” Archer told her when she looked at him. “Good job.”

Wow. Two compliments in one week, and Molly felt the pride fill her. “You have a problem finding your way around in Hunters Point?”

Hunters Point was San Francisco’s radioactive basement. The decommissioned Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard and the surrounding area was not exactly the sort of place you wanted to go in without knowing every nook and cranny and dark spot.

Something that both Joe and Molly knew all too well, having grown up there. The warehouse they’d been looking for had been in a literal maze of warehouses, each on a more dangerous corner than the next.

“No real problems,” Archer said.

Which wasn’t much of an answer but whatever had happened out there, they’d apparently gotten past it. Still, she knew she’d have been valuable on the ground. “If you’d let me come along, you’d have had an extra set of eyes other than Joe who knows that place like the back of his hand.”

“Maybe next time,” he said.

“Liar.”

This got her another rare smile. “We’ll find you the right case.”

She returned the smile. She’d already found the right case . . . She slapped a stack of mail against his chest as he walked by.

Behind him was Lucas and he slowed at her desk to look her over.

She looked right back. Black knit cap, black long-sleeved T-shirt snugged over his broad chest, black cargoes on his long legs, kickass boots. Body loose, not tense, his dark eyes sharp and maybe slightly wary. He looked tall, dark and edgy, and just about the opposite of everything she might want in a man—if she’d wanted one—which didn’t stop her heart from skipping a beat or two.

Or three . . .

The corner of his sexy mouth curved and she felt heat flicker through her veins.

Joe was behind Lucas, and on his phone. Without looking up, he gave his partner a shove. Lucas didn’t budge, holding his ground for another beat, most likely being a male through and through and therefore making it clear that he wouldn’t move until he was good and ready. When his point was apparently made, he shifted out of Joe’s way.