Page 4 of Fighting for Scarlett

8:38 A.M.

“What the hell?” Tate Laurier exclaimed as he and his Navy SEAL team walked in for a mission briefing.

Taped up to the board was a picture of a woman he knew.

Not just knew, had slept with.

Not just had sex with, but been unable to forget about afterward.

That wasn’t normal for him.

At all.

While he was hardly a playboy, he had a strict one-and-done policy when he was with a woman. Easier to avoid heartbreak that way. Watching his dad grieve long and hard after his mom had died, he had sworn off the whole idea of relationships and forever.

Not even love guaranteed forever.

No way was he going to willingly invite that kind of pain into his life. Losing his mom had been hard enough, he wasn’t going to risk falling in love and possibly losing a partner as well.

The woman on the board was the only woman he’d ever slept with and thought about afterward. For months. Almost three of them. That’s how long it had been since he’d had sex with Scarlett Madden, and he still wasn’t over it.

Couldn’t get the damn woman out of his head.

And he didn't like it one bit.

But he didn't want her out of his head bad enough that he wanted her to be the focus of an op because that meant something had happened to her. Something that needed his kind of skill set.

Looking from him to the photo pinned to the board and back again, his CO asked, “You know her?”

“Yeah. I know her,” Tate replied as he took a seat at the table. And now he might never get a chance to know more about her. Months of doing his best to forget her sweet giggle and shy smile, her warm milk chocolate brown eyes, and long silky black locks. The woman had made an impression on him because she was the opposite of who he usually slept with. She had white picket fence and happy ever afters written all over.

Everything he didn't want.

Everything he couldn’t give her.

So, he’d ignored her calls and texts. Even went so far as to pretend he didn't remember her when they’d accidentally bumped into one another at the supermarket one day.

Humiliating her by pretending he hadn't even remembered her name or that they’d met hadn't felt good.

In fact, it was one of the things he felt the most guilty about.

Sleazy, slimy, dirty.

Problem was, he should never have touched her in the first place, but there were no do-overs in life. Tate had known from the moment he laid eyes on the giggling woman dressed up as Little Bo Peep at a Halloween party at a local bar he frequented that she wasn’t for him. Too sweet, too good, too pure. The kind of woman he had no business taking into his bed when he was neither sweet, good, or pure.

“This going to be a problem?” his CO asked.

“No.” The word came out automatically, but if Tate were to think about it, maybe it could be a problem. Unlike with any other woman, he wasn’t completely clearheaded when it came to Scarlett. Despite knowing that he absolutely did not want to fall in love and get married, he couldn’t seem to rid the woman from his thoughts.

If it was just getting himself off replaying that night in his mind it would be one thing. But it was more. The woman intrigued him, brought out a protective side of him, worse, a softer side.

He could do this though.

Treat her as though she were any other op he and his team were sent on.

Before his CO could press him on it, and he knew the man well enough to tell that he wasn’t convinced, the door to the room opened, and a group of men followed by three women walked in.

What was going on?

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