Chapter Two
When I first met Senator ShaeLynn Samuels, I had no clue what direction my life would take, or the doors she’d open for me.
I had no idea I’d fall in love with her after helping her concoct what I thought was, at first, a crazy, reckless scheme to get her elected. But I was close to the end of my first career in the Secret Service, so as long as I could hold on forthat, I was willing to give this a shot. For shits and giggles, if nothing else.
Find her a campaign manager and chief of staff, and then marry her once I hit retirement and help get her elected?
A lot ofifsin that plan.
Honestly? Before I really got to know Shae in campaign mode, I thought she’d lose the election. Even after Kevin joined us. I was actually lookingforwardto her losing,meaning the three of us would withdraw from the public eye, she would professionally regroup, and then we’d do…whatever.
I’d have Kevin, give Shae whatever she wanted for as long as she needed me to, and we’d all be happy. Everyone’s a winner.
I lied in multiple ways to Kevin about the plan that day we showed up at his house in Tallahassee. I didn’t tell him I would be marrying her. I didn’ttell him I thought she’d lose.
Hell, I didn’t tellherI thought she’d lose.
I was afraid if I told him that, he might not agree to this.
I needed him to think I was all-in.
I thought the senator was giving me the perfect opportunity to march in there and reclaim my boy and build the foundation of my happily ever-after with him. I was willing to let her spin whatever web she wanted to helpme secure Kev’s agreement to this plan.
It worked in my favor, after all.
I didn’t honestly expect her to fall in love with Kev.
I didn’t think Kevin would come to love her, either.
In some ways, this thing we have is far easier than I ever dreamed possible. We each need something and can get it from the others.
Weloveeach other.
More importantly, wetrusteach other. She knows that, ofanyone in the world, we are the two people she can trust in every single way.
We’re also a family, even if we have to keep some details secret.
The kids love their “Uncle Kev,” though. They’re my kids now, and since Shae and I will never have a baby, they’re the only kids we’ll have. I wish the price hadn’t been so high, but I won’t let my brother down.
I can see me and my brother in theireyes, my sister-in-law in their hair and skin and beautiful faces.
We are what we are—a family. And I’ll kill or die to protect them, Shae, and Kev.
* * * *
Before that fateful afternoon in Tallahassee, if you asked me if I would ever jump at a second chance with Kevin Markos, I wouldn’t have dignified your question with a response. Not that anyone knew we’d even met, because he was a secretI kept close all those years. The bastard never got back to me after that week we spent together, stomping my heart in the process, and I was forced to watch from afar as he continued on with his life as if my world had never shifted on its axis.
Like I hadn’t mattered to him after all.
Like what we did was meaningless, and I was a stupid asshole for not being able to get him out of my heart.
Watch him get fuckingmarried.
Even while I hated that, I still looked at the pictures I’d taken of him that week, pictures I told him I deleted from my phone.
Pictures I still jerked off to and cried over even as I hated myself for the weakness.
Meanwhile, I was left with a broken heart and a simmering resentment. Resentment that only grew worse with every freaking failed relationship I hadwith men or women. Relationships that failed, inevitably, because I couldn’t stop comparing them to Kevin, although at the time I tried to blame them on my back-breaking work schedule and the stress of being a Secret Service agent in the PPD. After the third woman, and about the tenth man, I gave up on relationships and focused on my career and channeling my intensity into my physical and mentaltraining.
