Small Town Temptations Ebook Bundle

Chapter 1 - One Fine Night

Sentinel: Is it done?

I stared at the text message for a long moment before thumbing back a reply.

Me: Aye. It’s done.

Actually telling someone who knew me, knew my situation—or most of it—made the weight of this new reality settle on my shoulders. I couldn’t say it was comfortable. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be.

Sentinel: How do you feel?

As if I had a ready answer for that? My thumbs hovered over the screen for a long moment as I struggled to find something to say. My skin felt too tight. Every inch prickled with awareness of the droves of people moving about King’s Cross, boarding and debarking from trains. I’d tucked myself into a corner, out of the flow of pedestrian traffic, with two points of egress and a clear view of the board listing train platforms and statuses. Not that I thought I’d need an escape route. Probably. But my training was too hard to break.

I automatically assessed the people walking past me. The thirty-something career woman with the confident strut and a mobile phone at her ear. The blokes in rugby kit on their way to a match in Manchester, gear bags thrown over their shoulders. The guy with a watchful gaze I pegged as off-duty law enforcement. The harried mum with a toddler on her hip racing for the train to Cardiff. The middle-aged businessman escorting his aging mum and frustrated with it. 

It was instinct to categorize their potential threat level. Habit to make note of every exit and potential source of weapons. Not that I needed any. I’d been trained to be plenty deadly with nothing but my bare hands.

A massive BOOM shook the building.

Instantly, I dropped behind a nearby rubbish bin for cover as startled pedestrians screamed. 

What the bloody hell?

I scanned the station, searching for smoke and flames and carnage. 

Finding none, my pulse ratcheted up further as I frantically tried to assess the threat without sufficient data.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

I spotted a hubbub around one of the platforms further down. It had been cordoned off for construction. I realized a cable had snapped, and a steel girder had fallen from the arm of a crane. Not too far, thankfully, and it seemed no one had been injured.

There was no bomb. No threat. At least, not the sort I was accustomed to handling.

The dozens of curious glances sent my way proved I’d taken longer to clue into that than the other travelers in the station. More than a little self-conscious, I rose to my feet, not meeting anyone’s gaze, lest the eye contact invite conversation. 

At least I had an answer for my former section leader now.

Picking up the phone I’d dropped, I tapped out a reply.

Me: Ill equipped to be a civilian.

My heart rate had slowed by the time the three dots began to bounce, signaling a response.

Sentinel: It gets better. Give it time.

Time. Aye. Right. I had plenty of that now that I was done with the Royal Marines. I knew what I was supposed to do—find new connections to replace the community and family I’d had in the military. Work. A purpose. A safety net. And ultimately, relationships that would help make up for the loss of my section. 

Not that I could imagine anything taking the place of that brotherhood. We’d fought and bled together. Seen things that would cow lesser men. Things that made my reaction entirely reasonable instead of outsized.

Maybe when I wasn’t devoting all this energy to threat assessment, those tasks wouldn’t feel so bloody overwhelming. 

How long would that take?

For the hundredth time since I’d signed the last of the paperwork, I questioned my decision. This was years earlier than I’d planned to retire. But under the circumstances, it had seemed the best course of action.

Glancing back up at the departure board, I saw my train was finally boarding. Shoving my phone into a pocket, I shouldered my pack and made my way to the proper platform. By tonight, I’d be back in the Highlands, spending some time with my section leader, who’d made this transition himself two years ago. I hoped the trip would give me clarity and a better foundation for how the hell to navigate this unfamiliar civilian world.

Most of the passengers from the previous service had disembarked by the time I slipped onto the train, so I had my choice of seats. Choosing one at the front of the car, I dumped my bag into the seat beside the window and sat on the aisle, facing the rest of the car. I stretched out my long legs without apology, hoping no one would attempt to sit in the row across from me. I didn’t want to be that close to anyone I didn’t know. Didn’t want to be forced to make casual conversation.

Evidently the don’t-mess-with-me vibes I was projecting worked because no one tried to encroach upon my space as the train car began to fill. My fingers drummed restlessly against my leg, an unpardonable tell. I wished for my laptop and all the technological bells and whistles that would’ve enabled me to put together dossiers on every single person in this car. It was the sort of thing I’d do for mission prep. 

But civilians didn’t live their life with that kind of intel. So I twitched and tried to ignore the tightening of my chest as more and more people boarded.

“—och, no. You wouldn’t believe the crap the organizers passed on to me.”

At the Scots accent that reminded me of home, my fingers stopped tapping, and I zeroed in on the woman who’d just walked past my seat. Long, dark brown hair fell past her shoulders. I pegged her as maybe 5’ 7” or 8”, with willowy legs carrying her down the aisle. A backpack was slung over one shoulder, and she pushed one of those four-wheeled rolling suitcases in front of her, holding her mobile to her ear with one hitched shoulder.

“Aye, I should be back by then. Drinks at T and B? Say around seven?”

The person on the other end of the phone replied, and a peal of female laughter carried back to where I sat. The sound of that laugh struck me in the chest, loosening the band that had progressively tightened with each person who’d entered the space. 

The woman chose a seat several rows back. 

“Hey, I need to go. I’m on the train, and I don’t want to be one of those people. But I’ll see you tonight, aye? Right. See you there.” She tucked the phone into the back pocket of dark jeans that cupped her very fine arse, then lifted the suitcase to the rack above the seats. She had to stretch to do it, showing off long, lean limbs and a swatch of creamy skin where her shirt rode up. 

I had the most absurd urge to touch that skin, to see if it was as soft as it looked.

She settled into a seat facing the front, and I got my first look at her face.

Utterly gorgeous. 

Younger than I’d realized, too. Early twenties, with an oval face, high cheekbones, and bright blue eyes that I could see even from where I sat several rows away. Eyes that weren’t laughing as she had been on the phone call, but instead held worry. With a deep sigh, her shoulders slumped and her head bowed, her hair swinging forward to hide those eyes. Everything in her posture said she’d just been putting on a show for whoever had been on the phone. 

I wanted to know what was wrong and how I could help fix it.

Which was utterly ridiculous. I didn’t know this woman. She was a stranger on a train. The likelihood that anything going on with her was within my ability to help seemed slim. But it didn’t change the itch to do… something.

Was she traveling alone? So far as I could tell, no one was sitting with her. She’d barely done more than glance and smile at the woman in the seat opposite her. Was Inverness her final destination, as mine was? Or would she be getting off at one of the stops along the way?

It didn’t matter. The fleeting sort of connection I might make here wasn’t what I needed to focus on. There was the matter of what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life. 

The conductor announced the doors were closing, and I settled back into my seat.

At least I’d have something lovely to look at for part of the trip.