Surrendering To Her Sergeant Read Online Free Page A

you
for the thoughtfulness.”
    It escaped nobody, especially
Serenity, that Rhett looked ready to punch their CO for the move.
The redhead giggled before turning to load up the tabs on more of
the bar’s customers, which seemed to be a friendly mix of locals
and American ex-pats.
    “Shit.” Garrett examined the label on
his bottle. “Never thought I’d say this, but some of these
California beers are good.”
    Rhett huffed. Parts of the man would
never acclimate to the rest of the world and his booze preference
was one of them. “Whatever.”
    “Hmm.” Franz suddenly found the lip of
his own bottle fascinating, though his tone was too contemplative
for a place where an inflatable Batman in an evening gown was tied
to the rafters over the bar. “I hear there’s a lot of good things
about California.”
    Without missing a beat, Zeke added, “I
hear the same thing.”
    “Beer’s damn tasty,” Garrett
said.
    Rhett shook his head. “Hell. I give
up.”
    “I do, too.” Ethan frowned. “What the
fuck with the cryptic California tourism commercial?”
    Franz cocked up one side of
his mouth. “Because maybe I talked to the high-levels about how my
guys grinded their guts to gravel to uncover a new international
drug shipment stream, then tracked it across the globe in order to
start breaking the assholes’ weakest links. And maybe after that, I
also told them one of my boys was about to score his sergeant’s
stripe. And maybe after that , I convinced them that because
of all this, my guys deserve a few days of fucking around in the
land of beaches, babes, bikinis, and,” —he held up his bottle—
“really good beers.”
    Rhett shifted forward. “Are you bloody
serious?”
    Like they’d choreographed
it, Franzen took a step back to let Zeke move up and continue. “And
maybe I talked my
sexy bird of a girlfriend into meeting us in LA so she could
arrange a friendly visit with her cousin…on the set of the TV show
she works on.”
    That got a fist pump out of Rhett.
“Oh, yeah! Hollyweird, here we come!”
    Zeke chuckled, accepting
Rhett’s happy offer to knock bottle necks. Franzen and Garrett
joined the toast. When the four of them swung expectant stares at
Ethan, he somehow got his muscles to function at returning
the chink . The
action validated his new belief in miracles. How he functioned at
all, considering how every blood cell in his body hit a red light
at the same time, had to be divine intervention at work.
    “Shit, Runway,” Garrett drawled.
“don’t let all the excitement eat you up at once, okay?”
    Zeke released a knowing snort. “Oh,
he’s excited.”
    Garrett seconded the laugh. “Figured
your mention of a certain cousin might do it.”
    Rhett grinned. “You mean
the one he tackled into a pile of poof before Hawk’s wedding,
thinking she was Hezbollah in heels? Or the one who did a personal
GPS trek in lipstick across his face? Oh, wait. That was the same cousin, wasn’t
it?”
    “Goddamnit,” Franz snapped. “I missed
all the good shit, didn’t I?”
    “Not all of it.” Garrett scowled. “We
finally got the vows in but Sage isn’t settling for the courthouse
thing. Soon as the baby’s born, she swears she’s slimming down for
the big dress and the Hollywood wedding production again. She wants
to go ‘Nouveau Renaissance’ this time.”
    “Oh, hell.” Zeke laughed his way
around another swig. “Are goldenrod napkins involved
again?”
    “Not sure. But I told her if I’m
wearing pants that button at my knee, I’d better damn well get a
sword, too.”
    The banter was background
buzz in Ethan’s mind. For the chance to see Ava again, he’d hop on
a plane to goddamn Antarctica. Okay, Rhett was right; they’d first
met because he’d let paranoia into the party and body-slammed her
into a mound of wedding fabric—but even that had been perfect. No
stupid pretenses. No feigned interest behind a social handshake.
Just their gazes, meshed with honesty,