Page 80 of Hard Pursuit
Now she was alone in a motel room aching for the man who had just walked away. He’d given her all the pretty promises—that he’d call, that this wasn’t over.
But wanting a man and belonging in his world were not the same thing. She fit perfectly in Archer’s arms. She wasn’t sure she fit anywhere inside his life of rules, danger and deployments.
She thought of the jagged script on his forearm.Sierra.He’d told her he got it before he ever stepped foot onto the mountain, like he needed the promise of belonging before he’d earned it.
Jolie stared at her phone for a full ten minutes before forcing herself to pick it up.
Her thumb shook over the screen as she started the group call.
Jake answered first. “Jolie?”
Tanner came on right after him. “Jesus Christ, Jolie.”
Then Lara’s voice crashed into the line, high and tight and already halfway to tears. “Where were you all this time?”
Jolie plunked down hard on the edge of the bed, the floral cover scratchy beneath her hands. “I’m okay,” she said because that was what they needed most. “I’m okay, guys.”
“But where were you?” Lara pressed.
Jolie closed her eyes, picturing a place no one would ever believe if she told them about it.
She could not tell them the truth. Could not explain military bases buried under abandoned resorts and ghost ops teams.
She could never explain the man who’d just left her with promises too fragile to trust and too precious not to.
“I climbed to the top of a tower to get a photo and ended up stuck in a blizzard. I had to be rescued and then I got snowed in at the lodge they took me back to.”
Silence throbbed in her ears.
Jack’s response came first, suspicion ringing in his tone. “That sounds fake.”
“It’s not fake.”
Tanner cut in. “What lodge?”
Jolie scrambled for answers. “One up in the mountains. Remote. The roads were impassable and phone towers were down. It’s why I had to get word through the authorities that I was okay.”
Lara made a skeptical sound that only baby sisters could perfect. “You’re lying.”
Jolie let out a weak laugh. “Simplifying.”
“That means you’re lying.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose and gave them enough truth to sound believable. “It turned into a bigger ordeal than it should have, and I needed help getting back out.”
I left part of myself there.
“What kind of help?” Lara asked.
Jolie stared at the wallpaper and thought of Archer’s face when he said this didn’t feel over.
“The kind involving a hot guy.”
That would give her siblings a bone to chew over and distract them from the rest. It worked.
Lara gasped. “Did you get his number?”
Jolie issued a short laugh that broke on the edges. “He got mine.”
