Chapter Fourteen
SEDONA CLAPPED HER hands. “Come on. You’re going to love this.
” Okay, maybe they wouldn’t love this, but she would.
These guys were all doom-and-gloom all the time.
She understood where Cam’s team was coming from.
She couldn’t be around the Montgomery brothers without having a good dose of reality right in front of her face.
“I don’t know about this.” Rhys scowled. “This isn’t in my wheelhouse, Sedona. I’m telling you, this is a big mistake.”
“We could burn the house down,” Isaac added. “We’re all thumbs in the kitchen. Now, if you wanted a pipe replaced or a drippy faucet fixed, we’re your people. But baking cookies?” He shook his head. “You are asking for trouble, lady.”
She planted her fists on her hips. Did he really think that would scare her out of this plan? Ha! Not a chance. The Thunderhawks needed some fun, and kindergarten teachers could do fun. “Are you trying to back out of our deal, Isaac?”
Dario narrowed his eyes. “There was no deal. Tell her, Cam. I would have remembered a deal that dealt with baking.”
“You said you could cook.” She inched closer to stand toe-to-toe with him. “Did you lie to me?”
“No, ma’am. But there’s a world of difference between cooking, which I can do, and baking, which I can’t.”
“You’re EOD. You can build bombs. Why can’t you bake cookies?”
He shrugged. “Give me a bomb manual, not Grandma’s cookie recipes.”
“I think you can bake cookies. Let’s find out which one of us is right.”
Dario sighed heavily. “If you insist, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Three hours later, the members of Thunderhawk wolfed down the piping hot chocolate cookies as fast as they could.
Amused at their childlikeness, she set down her tray and distributed a glass of cold milk to each man. When they stared wide-eyed at the milk without moving, Sedona couldn’t help but laugh. How could men as dangerous as this team be so innocent? “It’s just milk. Honest.”
“What are we supposed to do with it?” Spencer asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
He was joking, right? She studied his face and realized, nope, he wasn’t joking. “You dunk the cookie into the milk before you eat it.”
The medic looked skeptical.
“Try it,” she urged.
He squared his shoulder as though he was a soldier heading into battle, picked up a cookie, and dunked it in the white liquid.
He popped it into his mouth. A second later, his eyes closed, and he groaned.
“Oh, man, this is amazing,” Spencer said around a mouthful of cookie and milk.
“Try it, you guys. You’ll see what I mean. ”
Isaac shook his head while staring at his friend. “I can’t believe he likes it. He hates anything new.”
“He just wants to make a good impression on the lady,” Rhys said.
Cam stiffened.
Spencer held up his hand to hold off on a response from Cam. “No. It just tastes amazing. Come on. You can’t tell me Delta Force soldiers are too chicken to eat a chocolate chip cookie. We have reputations to protect. So do it, soldiers. Dunk and eat.”
With obvious reluctance, the other four members of The Thunderhawks grabbed a cookie and dunked the treat into their milk. With a last glance at each other, they shoved the dripping cookie into their mouths with the enthusiasm of someone taking medicine.
One by one, their eyes widened. Dario groaned. “He’s right.”
“Yeah,” Isaac said. “Who knew cookies and milk were a thing?”
Sedona smiled and did a happy dance inside. Yes! She brought some fun into the lives of soldiers who had seen almost nothing but blood and death for over a decade. She mentally checked off the fun activity for today. Her goal was to do something fun with these men every day that they were together.
Although she hoped The Collector was caught and would turn on his employer soon, Sedona planned to take advantage of each hour she had with The Thunderhawks. Still, she needed to get back to her classroom and her students. No substitute teacher could do for them what she could. Love them.
Fifteen minutes later, six dozen cookies were in The Thunderhawks’ stomachs along with a gallon of milk.
Incredible. She had to admit, about halfway through the process of making cookies, Sedona was afraid her first fun project would be a bust. Dario wasn’t kidding when he said he couldn’t bake.
They worked around it and now had empty serving platters with only a few crumbs left to prove the experiment succeeded.
Now she could set her mind on figuring out the next fun thing for this challenging group of men. Never mind telling them to go play a round of golf. Sedona had a feeling they didn’t know what to do with golf balls and clubs.
“Now that we’re stuffed with cookies and milk, we need to talk about our principal,” Cam said.
Sedona frowned. Their principal? “Who is that?”
“You.”
She blinked and said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I don’t want to be your principal.”
Cam’s face lost all color.
Spencer held up his hand to prevent The Thunderhawks from commenting. “Why don’t you want to be Cam’s principal? Is there a problem you haven’t told him about?”
“I’ve told him as much of the problem as I remember. I can’t help what I don’t have in my memory.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
“I don’t want to be Cam’s principal. I just want to be his.”
Slowly, the members of The Thunderhawks grinned and turned to stare at their leader.
Cam couldn’t take his eyes off Sedona. That was good, right?
She realized that she’d hurt him with her statement and hadn’t been fast enough to fix the damage immediately.
Thank goodness Spencer was quick on the uptake.
“What do you say, Cam?” Spencer asked. “Think you can work with that?”
“Oh, yeah. I can handle it.”
“What about you?” Dario asked. “Don’t you have something to say to the lady?”
“What I want to say doesn’t need an audience.”
“Oh, no.” The EOD man shook his head. “That won’t do. We’ve had to put up with you mooning about her for weeks during our weekly meetings. We deserve to see the payoff.”
Cam scowled at his grinning teammates. He pointed at them. “I’m making a note of this. Every one of you, remember that your time is coming. I will gladly make you pay up.”
He turned his back on his teammates. Focusing solely on Sedona, he held out his hand to her, thrilled when she placed her hand in his without hesitation.
“We call you our principal because we’re tasked with protecting you from the men who want to harm you, including The Collector.
” Cam drew Sedona close to him. “About the other. Tiger, you have been mine since the day I met you. I just didn’t have the courage to pursue a relationship with you. ”
“And now?”
“Now, you’re everything. You are mine, and I’m yours. I don’t know how to put what I feel deep inside any plainer than that.”
“Sedona?” Spencer winked at her. “Put him out of his misery, please. He’s pitiful right now.”
Pitiful? The medic was blind as a bat. Cam Sims was magnificent. “If I’m yours, then you are mine. All the way mine. No give backs. No takeaways. Mine. Female encroachers will be dealt with swiftly.”
Cam laughed and hugged her tightly. “Same. No encroachers allowed near you, either.”
“Deal.”
He dropped a light kiss on her mouth and led her to a cushioned loveseat.
Once she was settled, he turned to his teammates.
“So, here’s what we know. Three men waited for Sedona near the faculty parking lot behind her elementary school.
She stayed late that night to put together her lesson plans and catch up on grading homework. ”
“I had my lesson-planning notebook in my bag.” She scowled. “I wonder what happened to that bag? My computer was in it, too.”
“I’ll check on that,” Rhys said. “Shouldn’t take me long to do some exploring.”
Cam flinched. “Dude, you have to quit telling me things like that. I keep reminding you I’m a cop. I don’t want to arrest one of my teammates.”
“You need proof, Sims, and you won’t find any.” His friend grinned.
“In this case, you don’t have to break the law. Sedona’s book bag, purse, and computer are at the sheriff’s department. They’re evidence in an ongoing investigation.”
Isaac held up his hand. “Let’s rein it in, boys. Cam, might be best to let us ask Sedona questions. If we push too hard, you can tell us to back off.”
Cam turned his head. “What about it, Sedona? Are you okay with that plan?”
“Let’s do it. We have to figure out why they want me so much that they willingly put one of my students in danger just to get to me. I don’t want that to ever happen again.”
He gave a curt nod. “All right. Go easy on her. She’s been through the wringer in the past two days.”
“We’ll remember,” Spencer said. “We just want answers to our questions, and maybe us asking them instead of you will spark a memory for her.” He pointed at Isaac. “You’re up, my man. You heard the boss. Don’t push too hard.”
“Copy that.” The sniper sat on the floor in front of the couch and leaned back against it, his posture relaxed. “Cam, Sedona doesn’t trust us yet. Sit beside her and put your arms around her. Help her feel safe.”
When Cam did as he suggested, Isaac said, “Close your eyes, Sedona. Feel Cam holding you. Take a deep breath. Take another. And another. Good. I want you to start at the bottom of your feet and consciously relax every muscle and tendon in your feet. Now your ankles. Your calves are next. Relax every muscle.”
On and on Isaac went, his low, soothing voice lulling Sedona into a state of utter relaxation. A little more time, and she would fall asleep against Cam. Although he wouldn’t mind, the point of the exercise was to tease more information from her.
“Go back to the day you were taken from the school. Recount your day from the time you woke until Cam found you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You’d be surprised what we might discover. So, your alarm went off at what time?”
Sedona wrinkled her nose, but began her recitation of her day. When she reached the point where she arrived at school, Isaac asked, “Did you notice a vehicle you didn’t recognize in the area or near the faculty parking lot?”
After a few seconds, she gasped and her eyes popped open. “Yes, I did. How did you know to ask that question?”
“It just made logical sense to me. If they planned to take you anyway, they’d be wise to case the area to see what kind of traffic, vehicles, and people for which they’d have to plan contingencies in order to pull off the kidnapping.”
When Sedona shuddered, Cam tightened his hold on her. “I should have told someone about the unauthorized vehicle on school property.”
“Why didn’t you?” Cam asked.
“I was running late that morning. I had so much to do to get the kids ready for our field trip the next day that it slipped my mind as soon as I walked into my classroom. I just dove into the work and didn’t come up for air until later that night.
By then I was so exhausted that I planned to crawl into bed and drop off to sleep after I finished making my lesson plans. ”
“You said earlier that you stayed late to grade. You went outside the school building alone, and there it was. What happened when you saw the vehicle?”
She froze.
“Sedona?” Isaac asked. “What is it?”
“I wasn’t alone.”