Frayed- Trent & Daniella Read online

  Frayed

  (Trent & Daniella: A Savage Trust Romance)

  C.M. Wick

  Christa Wick

  Contents

  Book Description

  Prologue

  1. Daniella

  2. Trent

  3. Daniella

  4. Trent

  5. Daniella

  6. Trent

  7. Daniella

  8. Trent

  9. Daniella

  10. Daniella

  11. Trent

  12. Daniella

  13. Daniella

  14. Reed Henley

  15. Trent

  16. Daniella

  17. Trent

  18. Trent

  19. Trent

  20. Daniella

  21. Daniella

  Epilogue

  Thank You For Reading & Reviewing!!

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  Also by C.M. Wick

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Christa Wick

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this book and any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, reverse-engineered, decompiled, transferred, or distributed in any print or electronic form without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Participation in any aspect of piracy of copyrighted materials, inclusive of the downloading and obtainment of this book through non-retail or other unauthorized means, is in actionable violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, media, brands, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and registered trademark owners of all branded names referenced without TM, SM, or (R) symbols due to formatting constraints, and is not claiming ownership of or collaboration with said trademark brands. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Evergreen Books Publishing

  Copy edits and line edits by GBI Author Services

  Proofreading by Rosa Sharon

  Cover design by Violet Duke

  Previously published as Kane by Christa Wick (c) 2016.

  Book Description

  Daniella Marquardt has one stop to make before she can flee the state with her newborn niece—a baby with a price tag on her life and no one to protect her. Along with money and hope, time is something Daniella doesn’t have a lot of. Still, she needs to find the last man to see her sister alive. To thank him.

  Trent Kane doesn’t know what to make of the woman standing in his office preparing to go face certain death armed only with a plan that has no chance in hell of working. When he learns her connection to the infant he recently saved, the solution is simple; she’s getting his help, whether she wants it or not.

  As far as Daniella’s concerned, trusting this bossy, hardened, brutally protective stranger is never going to happen. He may be the big, bad Chief Operating Officer of a private military firm with unlimited resources, but he’s also the coldest—albeit, intensely compelling—man she’s ever met.

  The way Trent sees it, this woman effectively turning his life upside down is a risk to herself, and him as well. Despite everything, she still believes in love, which tells him she has no place in his world. Precisely why he needs to ignore their dangerous chemistry and quit being so damn attracted to her.

  But, as hell begins to rain down all around them, one thing becomes evident very quickly.

  They’re both going to fail at their well-laid plans.

  The SAVAGE TRUST Series

  Wrecked (Luke & Marie)

  Scarred (Mikhael & Alina)

  Frayed (Kane & Daniella)

  Previously published as Kane (c) 2016, revised throughout with newly added content, and a different extended ending.

  Prologue

  Trent

  Two Months Ago

  "Incoming!” Sergeant Trent Kane warned with a barking cough. His arms jerked up, shielding his head at the first rumbling drone of another mortar shell.

  He was in Baghdad’s Green Zone, trapped in a piece of shit office building repurposed as temporary housing for Americans traveling on government business. With its central location within the Zone, the building was supposed to be safe.

  The Iraqi insurgents hadn’t received the memo and the first three shells quickly turned the structure into a pile of collapsing rubble. More chunks of wall and ceiling fell with each round fired.

  Trent’s balls shriveled in anticipation when the droning tone turned to a clear whistle. The shell hit a second later, throwing his body against a broken chair. Splinters as thick as fingers stabbed at his clothes and flesh.

  A woman’s scream pierced the dust-filled air.

  Dropping his arms, he looked left to see Collin Stark, his team leader, recovering from the blast. Stark lurched forward as the woman screamed again, his blood-caked hands lifting one of the broken pieces of wall crushing Reed Henley and his pregnant wife, Katherine.

  Fingers numb, Trent resumed clearing the rubble, a silent thanks offered up that the last shell hadn’t added to the sharp blocks of debris covering the woman.

  After the first shell, Reed had covered Katherine, his bigger, more resilient body shielding her torso and head. The next shell collapsed the ceiling. Katherine's screams of terror turned to cries of agony from the weight of her husband and the concrete blocks pressing down on her stomach.

  Every last sound from the woman tore through Trent like shrapnel from a mortar shell. Finishing up his second tour in Iraq, he had experienced combat situations that would shake anyone all the way down to their core. But combat happened too fast to process in the moment. There was no time to be afraid, to smell the fear of everyone around you.

  This—this was different. Different in a way that might haunt him for the rest of his life.

  “Got a leg!” Stark yelled.

  Trent scrambled over, relief flooding through him that the limb, clearly belonging to Katherine, was still attached.

  But there was blood, a lot of blood. Some of it dried, some of it fresh.

  She screamed again. Fresh blood flowed like a spring rising out of the earth.

  Five and a half months pregnant, Katherine Henley was going into labor as the building crushed down on her and Reed. There was no doctor, not even a first aid kit. No assistance would arrive anytime soon. The shelling had to stop first.

  All he could do to help was keep digging.

  Trent jerked awake in his home office. A glance at his watch indicated it was a quarter to nine. He stretched and cracked fingers cramped with the memory of the recurring dream, of the endless blocks of debris that he tried over and over to clear in time to make a difference, his sleeping mind locked in one of Psyche’s impossible tasks with no divine intervention offering a resolution.

  He cleared his throat and took a deep breath, the smell of Katherine's blood mixed with the chemical residue of the mortar shells still clinging to his nose nearly a decade later.

  Picking up his cellphone, he tapped the screen and opened a secure messaging app, quickly thumbing a text then hitting send.

  Gray’s Hotel, one hour.

  Make her sporty.

  1

  Daniella

  Present Day

  A blistering August sun beat down on Daniella Marquardt as she climbed three flights of unforgiving steps to reach the entrance of Stark International. Sweat gathered between her breasts and thighs. One hand clutched occasionally at the handrail that ran up the center of the grani
te steps as small, recurring waves of dizziness threatened to send her toppling back down to the circular drive.

  It wasn’t the heat or the voluptuous size of her sweaty breasts and thighs that made her wobbly. She hadn’t been looking after herself the last few days, not since she had arrived home to find a very unpleasant letter from an even more unpleasant man taped to her front door.

  Then came another visitor, one she luckily wasn't there to receive. She could no longer go home and had formulated a backup plan to leave the state if necessary, even though she would be committing a felony if she left.

  Before Daniella fled Virginia, she was making a final attempt at observing social graces—tracking down the man who had saved her niece’s life. She was pretty sure he worked in the massive granite building looming above her that looked like a cross between a courthouse and a prison with its fancy stone blocks and too few windows and doors.

  The company was the only address or witness contact information listed on the police report for her sister’s death. Calling the company didn’t get Daniella any helpful response. If Trent Kane was an employee, the front desk didn’t care if he received his messages. She had checked LinkedIn and any number of other sites, but the man and his employer were some kind of black box.

  This sweltering Friday afternoon would be her last attempt to reach Mr. Kane. She had far more important things to focus her dwindling energy on.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, her purse snagged on the end of the handrail. Daniella jerked to a halt and gave an ineffectual tug, angling her head to see where the strap had caught. As she stared at the puzzle, twisting her purse, a strong, masculine hand entered her field of vision to unhook the strap from where a bolt protruded at the end pole.

  “Thank you.”

  Discovering her first smile of a very challenging day, she lifted her gaze. The man didn’t stop, didn’t so much as look back as she voiced her appreciation. He just kept walking, his stride possessing all the irritating confidence of a star athlete or corporate shark.

  Daniella's smile dissolved into a scowl.

  She continued toward the black glass doors the man had disappeared through, her steps restricted by the knee-length pencil skirt she wore. The day had started with her wearing sensible dress slacks, the material and a coordinating blouse much lighter in weight than what she perspired in as she pushed the doors inward.

  The earlier outfit had died a sudden and gory death when she pulled Christine from the carseat at the sitter’s and was rewarded with fifteen pounds of puke from a twelve-pound baby. Daniella made a quick change into the only other businesslike outfit she had with her—a heavy dress jacket with a too tight skirt hugging curves that had gotten curvier since she had purchased the ensemble.

  Scowl deepening, she stepped into the air conditioned interior and almost turned around and walked straight out.

  No wonder her web searches had come up empty. What kind of business had an x-ray machine and walk-through metal detector in the lobby?

  She looked around for some kind of reception desk, but a velvet rope on each side of the glass doors herded her toward a female guard in charge of the machines. Beyond the rope, there were only two other people in the lobby, the male who had unhooked her purse and an older man with whom he was engaged in earnest, whispered conversation.

  At the exact moment her attention landed on the men, her rude rescuer looked over. His gaze locked on hers just long enough to make contact before flicking away in complete disinterest.

  The man had the face of a dark and brooding angel—the kind of creature that detested mere mortals like Daniella with her excess flesh and boob sweat threatening to turn into a river and soak through her blouse.

  Forget about men, she admonished herself with a sigh as she approached the woman at the metal detector. For the next eighteen years, her life was devoted to Christine, her two-month old niece.

  Placing her purse on the conveyor belt, she waited for the machine to start. When it didn’t, she looked at the woman.

  “What is your business at Stark International?” the guard asked with a tone that bordered on the kind actors used in movies when they were a cop with a suspect in the interrogation room.

  “I…” her hands smoothed nervously at her skirt. Telling the woman she was here to talk to Colonel Mustard about a lead pipe he’d left in her conservatory was probably a terrible idea.

  Leaving her car and taking the first step up the stairs was probably a terrible idea. It was an imposing building, with an imposing lobby and imposing staff. She didn’t have an appointment and didn’t know if the man she was searching for even existed. The police officer’s handwriting in the report hadn’t been the cleanest.

  The guard’s hand moved toward her utility belt. With a glance, Daniella saw the woman’s fingers curl around a canister that she guessed was mace or pepper spray.

  “I need to speak with Mr. Trent Kane,” Daniella blurted, her cheeks immediately warming from her panicked outburst.

  “You’re not on the list,” the guard stated.

  Daniella quirked an eyebrow. What list? There was no clipboard nearby, no computer or anything else that might display a visitor’s list. Did the woman memorize it before each shift?

  “If you’re not—”

  Whatever the guard was going to add was cut off by a buzzing elsewhere along her utility belt. Her hand shifted from the canister to what looked like a beeper to the right of her buckle. She angled the device, staring impassively at its display for a few seconds before her mouth flattened into a stern line.

  She slapped at a button on the X-ray machine and the belt began to carry Daniella’s purse past the rubbery curtain. Daniella moved toward the metal detector.

  “Envelope,” the woman grunted, a flick of her finger indicating the nine-by-fourteen packet Daniella held.

  “Oh…it’s only…” she trailed off, reading the guard’s expression.

  The woman really wanted to use that pepper spray!

  Letting the guard take the envelope, Daniella passed through the metal detector and waited patiently at the other end of the X-ray machine for her purse and envelope to emerge. Seeing the guard approach with a wand that looked identical to what was used at airports, Daniella allowed a faint gasp to escape over how much security was in place at Stark International.

  With a brisk, detached professionalism, the guard moved the wand near the perimeter of Daniella’s body—above her shoulders, along her arms, over the curves and dips of her torso then all the way down to her knees where the skirt ended.

  Putting away the wand, she extended her hand.

  “You’ll need to leave your cell phone with me.”

  Daniella offered the woman a blank stare for a few seconds before asking, “I can’t go up if I don’t?”

  The guard’s brows knitted into one uncompromising line that could have used a pair of tweezers and a little plucking.

  “Exactly.”

  Shoulders sagging, Daniella reached into the purse, but hesitated.

  “What if I have an emergency call?” Despite all the precautions she had taken yesterday, such a call wasn’t out of the question.

  Cold silence stared her in the face.

  The company was daunting. If she had showed up at a pickle factory and received this treatment, she would have deemed keeping her phone more important than her unannounced business with Mr. Kane. But maybe all this cloak and dagger behavior meant that he was the kind of man who could help her—again.

  Still wishing on shooting stars, Daniella.

  Right, she thought, dejectedly removing the phone and handing it over. She wouldn’t get her hopes up. The man probably worked in accounting.

  The guard put the device in a drawer then pulled out a visitor’s card with a clip attached, swiped the card’s stripe through a device at the end of the X-ray machine then swiveled the device in Daniella’s direction.

  “Press your right thumb against the screen and hold until the green li
ght appears.”

  Turning to comply, Daniella heard the elevator doors open. Holding her thumb to the scanner, she glanced over her shoulder, expecting that the doors were opening for one or both of the men.

  The two males had already slipped away. Instead, a fifty-something female emerged from the elevator with a polite smile on her face and a digital tablet in her hand.

  “Miss Marquardt, if you’ll come with me.”

  Daniella took one step forward then froze.

  She hadn’t said her name, had she?

  Certain she hadn’t, Daniella looked at the thumb scanner.

  “Oh, no,” the older woman laughed pleasantly, taking the visitor’s card and clipping it to Daniella’s lapel. “Thumb prints take at least several minutes to process with all the permission protocols we have to navigate. Facial recognition using open identity sources is so much faster.”

  “I’m Lindsey,” the woman said, stepping back and sweeping her hand toward the elevator doors. “Mr. Kane’s secretary. I do expect a wait before he’ll be able to see you.”

  “A wait?” Daniella frowned, her displeasure directed inward. Not getting to see the man should have occurred to her, but the last two months had her running on empty.