Goodnight
By Susie Tate
Release Date: April 28, 2016
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Life is pain.
That is the reality
Goodie has had to accept since she was nine years old. Even before the night
her childhood shattered she was never normal: her mind can process people and
situations at lightning speed, she has the ability to recall anything she sees or
hears with perfect clarity, she can separate from herself if she needs to –
making her difficult to torture, difficult to intimidate. In summary, she is
the perfect mercenary. A life in the shadows where she can stay in darkness is
fine by her. That is until he tries to pull her into the light.
Powerful, arrogant,
filthy-rich men are, quite frankly, a pain in Goodie’s arse. She’d much rather
take an extraction job in the depths of a Colombian jungle than have to deal
with their bullshit. But sometimes the money is just too good to turn down, and
this time someone important, who is actually doing something Goodie believes
in, needs to be kept safe. Luckily, Goodie is an expert at maintaining an
invisible presence, enabling her to keep any interaction with the egomaniacs
she protects to a minimum … until she meets Nick Chambers.
Nick doesn’t seem
to understand invisible presence, appropriate employer–employee protocol,
security precautions, following instructions, or in fact just leaving her the
fuck alone. Everything about him, from his ability to laugh at their situation
to the perpetual smile on his gorgeous face complete with goddamn dimple,
drives Goodie insane, and for some reason makes her feel threatened. Fear is
weakness, and if Goodie’s life has taught her anything it’s that you never,
ever show weakness.
But Nick is
determined, and he’s used to getting what he wants. He’s been effortlessly
charming the women in his life since he was five years old, so he knows it
won’t be long before he has Goodie right where he wants her. Only some things
are so dark, so horrific, they can’t be dragged into the light. Some people are
beyond redemption, and Goodnight may be one of them.
This book is a
full-length contemporary romance of approximately 85,000 words with no
cliffhanger and its own HEA.
Warning
This story involves
both swearing and violence from the outset.
Nick watched as Goodie’s eyes opened again, and
searched for the panic he could have sworn was there before she closed them,
but her ice-blue gaze was now blank, all emotion wiped from her expression. She
moved quickly, her mouth crashing down on his and her hands going up into his
T-shirt.
‘I want you,’ she told him, her voice husky and
unbearably sexy as her hands traced over his abs and the muscles of his chest.
He sucked in a sharp breath – he could tell something was off, there was an
unnatural desperation about her; but with the woman he had been obsessing over
finally touching him, he became incapable of rational thought.
‘Christ,’ he rasped as one of her hands moved
down to his crotch and all his ability to think was obliterated. He drove both
his hands into her soft hair and took control of the kiss, pushing her back to
lie on the duvet he had dumped on the floor. He pulled her hands from him and
unzipped her hoody, revealing the black bra beneath. Her body was more amazing
than he had imagined (and he had a good imagination and had invested a fair
amount of time on this endeavour when it came to her, so that was saying
something): she was all defined, toned muscle, combined with softer curves. She
was magnificent. She rocked against him and her hands went to his belt, frantically
pulling at the buckle. Something about her movements jolted Nick out of his
lust-induced haze. He dragged his eyes from her breasts and stomach to her face
and he almost flinched. Her expression was blank and her jaw was clenched.
‘Goodie?’ he whispered, and her gaze flew from
his belt to his face briefly before focusing just over his shoulder. ‘Hey …
hey,’ he muttered, grabbing her hands to still them in her frantic attempts to
undo his belt.
‘What is problem?’ she asked sharply, her Russian
accent thicker than normal and a frown marring her beautiful face.
‘Where did you go?’ Nick asked, his eyes roving
her face. He gathered both her small hands in one of his and reached up to cup
her cheek, stroking across her cheekbone and up to her crescent scar with his
thumb.
‘I am here,’ she said, jerking her head to the
side, away from his touch.
‘No,’ Nick told her, ‘no you’re not here. Where
have you gone? Why are you so scared?’
‘Scared?’ Goodie spat, wrenching away from him,
and then scuttling back against the units next to Salem, who raised his head in
surprise.
*****
Goodie was breathing hard, her exposed chest
rising and falling. She desperately wanted to zip her top, but knew that would
show yet more weakness. She had perfected the type of meditation that took her
out of her own body many years ago. The fact was that there were times in her
life that she needed to be able to separate from herself; torture situations
being one example, any form of intimacy being another. But nobody, nobody had
ever called her on it. Nick made a move forward and she flinched – fucking
flinched. What was wrong with her? Salem could feel her tension and flattened
his ears against his head, letting out a low growl. She stroked his head and
muttered to him that everything was okay in Russian – Salem could smell fear
and the only other times Goodie had been as tense as this was when they had
been in mortal danger, so she didn’t exactly blame him for his reaction. Nick
continued to move towards her, his palms up like he was approaching a terrified
wild animal. When he was inches away he reached down to her zipper and
surprised her by hooking it together and pulling it up, covering her to just
under her chin.
‘Are … are you okay?’ he asked softly, and for
the first time since Goodie was eight years old she felt her eyes sting with
tears. She blinked rapidly and gritted her teeth. What the fuck was going on?
Nick turned and sat next to her on the floor up against the units leaving just
a little more space than before, which she was grateful for. They sat in
silence for a few minutes.
‘Um, Goodie?’ he asked.
‘Yes?’
‘Look, I don’t want to pry or anything –’ Goodie
sucked in a breath preparing to have to explain her reaction to him ‘– but …
well, you don’t seem to have the full complement of toes.’
Goodie blinked, letting out a short bark of
laughter in her relief (but unusually for her not noticing Nick’s body jolt at
that rarity) and staring sightlessly down at her bare feet. Yes, she was two
toes down – both her little toes were missing and part of her third toe on her
left foot; ugly scars marked where they had once been.
‘I have never noticed this before,’ she
deadpanned, curling the few toes she did have into Salem’s fur so that he would
settle back down to go to sleep.
Nick sighed. ‘You won’t give anything away, will
you. You are the most closed person I’ve ever met. It makes me crazy – do you
know that?’ Goodie shrugged. ‘Can’t you just tell me this one small thing? Give
me that at least – you know everything about me.’ Goodie rubbed her temple and
closed her eyes slowly. After a few silent moments Nick puffed out a frustrated
breath and she felt him start to push up to stand.
‘Frostbite,’ she blurted out. She had no idea
why, as his questions annoyed her to death, but the idea that he would give up
asking them made her stomach clench with actual pain. He eased back down and
turned his body towards her. She could feel him watching her face closely.
‘How did you get frostbite badly enough to lose
actual bloody toes?’ He sounded incredulous, and weirdly furious, about
something Goodie considered relatively trivial. She had been lucky to come out
of what happened that winter alive, leave alone largely intact.
‘I lay in the snow for a long time,’ she told
him.
‘Why did you do that for God’s sake?’
‘I had to be still, and I had to wait.’
‘Well, that’s just goddamn ridiculous. Whoever
ordered you to –’
‘Nobody orders me to do anything,’ she told him.
‘I had a job and I was going to complete it. I knew the risks.’ And she’d
finished the job too. The cold had driven her nearly insane and she’d thought
she would go blind if she had to stare down the sight of her rifle any longer.
Even now she could still feel the surge of excitement as her target finally
came into view after so many hours waiting, and the internal battle she had to
fight to remain in control of her heartbeat and breathing. She’d resisted the
urge to just fire immediately, taken three deep breaths, and on the respiratory
pause at the end of the last breath she’d taken her shot. Adrenaline was
pumping through her system but she still had to make sure that even after the
shot had broken she maintained a slow steady squeeze on the trigger; follow
through is everything. So despite the cold and the pain, when she did get her
shot she took it; she finished it.
Just like she always did.
Just like she was trained to do.
Susie Tate is a
general practitioner and when she's not working she's looking after her four
yummy boys under six (okay one is actually over thirty-six but it's the mental
age that counts!). This is the first of her books to be set totally outside the
medical world and is a little darker than the others, but hopefully still funny
at times.
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