Free Unchained by Suzanne Halliday, Jenny Sims

can happen.”
    Drae leaned against a counter and scrubbed a hand through his hair with a heavy sigh. “The world’s a fucked-up place, honey. Anything can happen right here too.”
    She said what she thought when her husband told her he’d be gone for a few weeks. “It’ll kill him if he misses his son’s birthday.”
    Substitute Big Daddy puffed up like he was entrusted with a sacred burden and told her gravely, “Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Cameron. I know what Cam wants for Dylan’s big day. He’ll be here, honey. But just in case he parachutes in at the last moment, I’m on top of things.”
    Remembering what Tori told her about the comical Dad-inspired rivalry springing up between the two close friends, she grinned and pretended to fan herself.
    “Oh, thank sweet baby Jesus. Po’ lil ol’ me couldn’t possibly plan a one-year-old’s party without professional help.”
    Drae roared at her dead-on impersonation of his Southern Belle mother-in-law.
    “Oh, and by the way, shugah? I think the ladies need to challenge you boys to a pole dance-off. Time to find out how deep that alpha nonsense goes.”

S OMETHING ABOUT AN East Coast sunset hypnotized Alex. Maybe it was because of the city they were in and the centuries of history all around or maybe it was as simple as just knowing they were back on U.S. soil and heading home soon.
    Leaning against the balcony doors, he levered off and shut them to prevent the air conditioning from escaping. Where the summer weather was concerned, D.C. was one brutal city. Hot, muggy, and still—the place always reminded him of a sauna. He never understood how Parker put up with it for so many years. For Alex, give him the dry and sometimes brutally hot heat of the desert and he was good.
    Pouring two shorties, one Glenfiddich and one Jameson, he took them to the piano and set them aside. Meghan was still on the phone with her folks, and he didn’t want to rush their good-byes, so he whiled away his wait by giving his fingers a keyboard workout.
    Obsessed with a piano composition called “When We Met,” he worked out the fingering to the Ryan Stewart song whenever he had a moment. Knowing his wife’s predilection for a good piano tune, he fixated on this one after finding her one afternoon, lazing in a hammock at their Spanish finca, staring dreamily at nothing while this song came up on a playlist.
    There was something about the look on her face. Meghan didn’t just listen to music. She absorbed it. Seeing her far-off expression, he knew in his gut she remembered how they met and all the twists and turns they took along the way to get them where they were. Losing himself in the melody, Alex’s spirit filled as his fingers moved across the keys.
    He became the man he always wanted to be during their extended honeymoon. She’d changed him. No doubt about it.
    Didn’t matter how much pain and suffering he’d overcome after the bomb blast that nearly ended his life. Or how successful he was. None of it made a difference because he was little more than an empty husk of a man. Not even halfway living, mind-numbing data streams and a level of technology that would make anyone else’s face melt filled his days.
    That was his life. He was everyone’s favorite nerd king, yeah. But he rattled around the Villa with no particular enthusiasm or with any sort of a future in mind. He was among the living, but he hadn’t been … living. Not for a very long time.
    And then a vivacious redhead with a dreamy ass and a set of bodacious knockers that rendered him stupid came to his door and showed him just what he was missing.
    As the last remnant of that thought faded from his mind, he felt a soft, warm hand caress his neck and slide back and forth across his shoulder. Tranquility spread through his body. This was what he meant by her changing him. Alex never knew what serenity was. He was a trained warrior. As a wartime commanding officer, he’d sent good men into