Hot Shot (A Hostile Operations Team Novel)(#5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

waiting for rescue, sharing food and water—and body heat. God, had they shared body heat.
    It shamed him every time he thought about it. It was like he’d betrayed Hayley when he’d had sex with Gina. But, goddamn, it had been a long three days and they’d talked about every fucking thing under the sun. She seemed like such a normal person under all the glamour and wealth. A lost, frightened soul you just wanted to take care of even though she wrapped herself in toughness like a turtle encased in a shell.
    He’d told her after that last day when his body was sated and the guilt was eating him alive that it couldn’t go anywhere. That he loved Hayley and always would.  
    But Gina had lifted her chin and said, “Don’t get all excited, Jack. I was lonely and bored and you were here.”
    Her answer had stunned him in a way, though maybe it shouldn’t have. She’d used him for comfort—hell, they’d used each other—but it was nothing more than a bit of hot sex between two people who weren’t certain they would make it out alive. There’d been no deeper meaning, no bond. It was sex, pure and simple, and it was done.  
    When HOT had finally arrived, she’d taken Big Mac’s hand when he’d tugged her onto the boat, and then she’d huddled against the wall until they’d reached their transport farther out to sea. There, she’d been debriefed and taken to the nearest island where they’d arranged for her to be flown back to the States anonymously.
    Jack hadn’t talked to her again. Hadn’t seen her, other than on television or staring back at him from magazine covers in the checkout line. He hadn’t wanted to see her, though every once in a while he caught himself thinking of that last day together on the island. Was she really the wounded soul she’d seemed or was the truth more nebulous than that?
    He would never know. A few months after the island, she’d disappeared. Gone to a private retreat in Europe, according to her manager, where she was writing new songs and resting. Jack had thought she probably had PTSD after her ordeal, and he’d hated that it had happened to her. That he’d been at least a partial cause of it by shooting those men in her presence.
    A year later, she’d emerged again, armed with new songs and ready to take on the world. She’d seemed healthy and happy, and he’d been glad for it. Six months after her comeback tour, she’d adopted a baby and gone into seclusion again. She performed when she wanted to perform, and when she didn’t, she usually lived in a house somewhere in Europe and vigorously maintained her privacy.
    Jack took a right onto the parkway and headed into the setting sun. He’d had her for a few hours once, and he could still remember how she felt when he slid inside her body that first time. He remembered the way her breath hitched in and how she cried his name when she came.
    He’d violated way too many principles that day, and he’d lived with the guilt ever since. Worse, he’d dreamed of her when he should have only dreamed about Hayley.
    Hayley was slowly fading now. It was normal, according to the psychologist, but it still felt wrong somehow. He would never forget Hayley, never forget how much he loved her. But he didn’t wake up wondering where she was anymore. And he wasn’t celibate either. After Gina, he’d remembered how good it felt to get lost in the physical and he’d rejoined that bandwagon a few weeks later when the urge had gotten too great to ignore.
    His cell phone rang and he picked it up without taking his eyes off the road. Not many people had his number, and they were all people he wanted to talk to anyway.
    “Hunter,” he said.
    “Jack.” Her voice was soft and shaky, but he recognized it anyway.  
    “Gina? How did you get this number?” Anger shot through him that someone in his circle had betrayed his privacy. And then there was the curiosity. What could she possibly want? To see him? To reminisce about old