Baby: A Linear Tactical Romantic Suspense Standalone Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Mittie Jane Crouch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design.

  A Calamittie Jane Publishing Book

  BABY: LINEAR TACTICAL

  To my Bat Signal crew.

  They say:

  “Find your tribe. Love them hard.”

  I did.

  I do.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Extended Bonus Epilogue

  Other Linear Tactical Books

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Janie Crouch

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Welcome to Oak Creek, Wyoming.

  Quinn Harrison-Pritchard stared at the words meticulously burned into a large, wooden, mountain-shaped sign on the side of the road as she slowly drove past it.

  This was so not Boston.

  It was quite possibly the farthest away from Boston she could be. Maybe not geographically, but certainly in every other way that was important to her.

  There were no skyscrapers. No harbor. No traffic where someone would cut you off and flip you the bird in the same second.

  There was no challenging yet fulfilling job at an Ivy League school for her here in Wyoming.

  Of course, there wasn’t one for her back East, either. Not anymore.

  Her phone’s GPS led her down the main street of the town—not that there seemed to be too many other streets—until she reached her destination, a bar called the Eagle’s Nest.

  According to the bar’s simple website, they’d recently started opening at lunch and were looking for a part-time, lunch-shift waitress. It was a job Quinn had never had any desire to hold, but she’d submitted her info anyway.

  After all, the run-down house she was renting by the week on the outskirts of town wasn’t going to pay for itself. And unless she wanted to explain to her younger brother what an utter failure her life had become and beg him for money, she was going to have to take whatever job she could get.

  Honestly, she hadn’t been sure anything would come of it, at least not for a couple of weeks. Then she’d gotten a voicemail yesterday to come in and start today. Evidently, checking references and qualifications wasn’t as important for lunch-shift waitresses as it had been in the academic world.

  This was a different world all the way around.

  She cracked her window the slightest bit to let in the cool, but not quite cold, November air, hoping it would help ease the vise around her heart which made breathing feel difficult. The vise that had made breathing feel difficult for the past two months since she had been fired and blacklisted.

  It didn’t ease the vise. All it did was make the inside of her used Ford Fiesta cold.

  She glanced at the vast Teton mountains surrounding the small town. She could see the appeal—one would have to be blind not to. She could also see the appeal of the town itself—quaint and quirky, small but not tiny, people waving to each other at the traffic lights and from the front of the stores lining Main Street.

  She knew for a fact that Oak Creek was big enough to merit a county hospital and a state college campus about ten miles outside of town. There were restaurants, a well-known bakery, and it was the home of Linear Tactical.

  Not that she knew exactly what Linear Tactical was beyond some sort of self-defense and survival training company or school or something. All she knew was her brother Riley talked about the guys who worked there every time she spoke with him.

  She hadn’t been here very long, but she could see why Riley was enamored with this place. And if a town could capture the heart of the famous extreme-sport sensation, Phoenix, surely it could be enough for his plain older sister. She wasn’t looking for stunts and adventures like he was. She was looking for a place to lick her wounds and figure out exactly what the hell had happened.

  This was not where she wanted to be, geographically or metaphorically. It wasn’t where she thought she would be as she turned thirty-nine.

  Not just the town of Oak Creek. All of it.

  Alone, without a career, in a state she’d visited once, driving a junker car she’d bought after she’d sold her BMW to help cover the expenses from her divorce.

  To have taught at an Ivy League university for the past dozen years, she felt pretty damned stupid to be in this situation now, pulling into a bar parking lot about to become a waitress.

  Of course, recognizing her own stupidity wasn’t going to change anything, so she put the car in park and got out.

  She tucked an escaped tendril of hair back into the tight bun where it belonged and strode purposefully toward the entrance. Her eyes were still adjusting to the lighting change when a female voice rang out from farther back.

  “Sorry, we’re not open for lunch for another hour. Maybe longer if the new waitress I hired doesn’t show.”

  Quinn took a deep, affirming breath. She could do this. “Well, you don’t have to worry about the latter, at least. I’m here.”

  Her remark was met with silence although the woman stood and walked toward her. “You’re Quinn Pritchard?”

  Quinn forced a smile. She’d deliberately left her maiden name off the online application so no one would associate her with Riley. “Reporting for duty.”

  Quinn could finally see her potential boss as the woman came the rest of the way around the bar, her blonde hair cut in a sharp, attractive bob. Quinn’s eyes narrowed. Why did she look so familiar? “I’m sorry, do I know you? Have we met before?”

  The woman’s hair fell half over her face as she tilted her head to the side to study Quinn. “I doubt it. I moved to Oak Creek a little bit ago and took over running the bar. I’m Lexi.”

  Quinn reached out to shake Lexi’s outstretched hand. “I moved to Oak Creek a couple of days ago myself, so we definitely wouldn’t know each other from here.”

  And the chances that a bar manager from Wyoming ran in the same academic circles as Quinn had in Massachusetts were slim to none.

  “No worries, I have one of those faces that looks like a million other faces,” Lexi said. “I get the ‘do I know you?’ question all the time.” She gave a small smile.

  Quinn nodded. It was better if Lexi didn’t kno
w her anyway.

  Lexi grabbed a cup of coffee off the bar and took a sip. “You’re not exactly what I was expecting.”

  Quinn touched her painstakingly straightened hair to make sure it hadn’t escaped the bun as she met the other woman’s appraising eyes. She needed this job. “I’m not sure what a weekday lunch-shift waitress looks like, but I can assure you I’m a hard worker.”

  Lexi raised a beautifully arched eyebrow. “When you filled out the online form, you said you had experience waiting tables.”

  Quinn nodded. “Three years.”

  That was the truth. But she’d left out the fact that it had been twenty years ago while she’d been working her way through undergrad.

  Lexi continued to study her. “I see. It’s just...you’re not really dressed to work here. You look more like some of the hospital staff who stop by for lunch than someone who would wait tables.”

  Quinn looked down at her outfit—khaki pants, navy-blue blouse, low, sensible heels. It was probably the most casual outfit she owned—one Peter had scoffed at as being too casual to wear to a faculty meeting last year. But looking around the bar now, taking in Lexi’s jeans and lightweight sweater...yeah, her ensemble was probably a little too dressy.

  She hadn’t thought about that. It had been a long time since a blouse and khakis seemed anywhere near too formal for something.

  But it didn’t change the fact that Quinn needed this job.

  She blew out a light breath. “Just give me a chance. Like I said, I’m a hard worker. My clothes are still packed, and this was all I had easily available.”

  For a second, Quinn was sure Lexi wasn’t going to hire her, but finally, the younger woman nodded, grabbed an apron off the bar, and tossed it in Quinn’s direction.

  Quinn missed the catch, and the apron fell to the floor. She’d never had any sort of athletic ability whatsoever, which was part of the reason academia had appealed to her in the first place. She gave a forced laugh and muttered about being a klutz as she bent over to pick it up and tie it around her waist.

  “There’s no computer system.” Lexi turned back toward the bar, motioning for Quinn to follow. “You come back here to the kitchen and call out the orders so Mac or I can make them. We don’t have a very big menu yet, and since we just started opening for lunch this week, the crowds haven’t been unbearable. It’s pretty standard stuff. I’ll check customers out at the register. If you last the week, then maybe we can train you on that too.”

  “I’ll last a week. Don’t worry.”

  She didn’t have any other choice.

  Chapter Two

  Two hours later, Quinn was sure she wasn’t going to last the day, much less the week.

  She’d just delivered the wrong plate to the wrong table. Again.

  She had three university degrees—a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a doctorate. She had taught for more than ten years at what was arguably the most prestigious university in the country, and yet somehow, she couldn’t manage to get relatively simple lunch orders out to the correct tables.

  She didn’t remember it being this hard when she’d waited tables at eighteen. Why was it so hard now?

  After four messed-up orders in a row, she realized she couldn’t keep it all in her head and started writing everything down. That had helped some, at least her academically wired brain responded well to lists. But everybody asked her questions and changed their orders and wanted adjustments to how things were cooked...and that was the opposite of how Quinn normally worked in her quiet, windowless office—focusing on one task at a time with Debussy playing gently in the background.

  Not to mention her feet were killing her.

  Lexi had been right about her clothing. Quinn’s khakis and blouse were a little restrictive, but not too bad. It was her shoes, her sensible heels, that did not make one bit of sense in this situation. She almost fell every time she went back into the kitchen. The attractive crop of the shoe around the toes would be perfect to hear a PhD thesis defense; however, the pointy cut was quite a bit less than perfect for nearly running between tables for hours.

  The first thing she was going to do when she got out of here was purchase the flattest, most comfortable, who-the-heck-cares-if-they’re-attractive shoes she could find for tomorrow.

  If she still had a job here tomorrow.

  “Look, it’s not complicated.” The gorgeous blonde in nurse’s scrubs raised a perfectly styled eyebrow at Quinn. “Two vegetable Paninis. The one with onions was for me now and the one without onions was to-go.” She pointed at Quinn’s tray with a perfectly manicured nail to match her perfect eyebrows.

  This was the third time this particular woman had sent her order back. The first time she’d said Quinn had gotten the bread wrong. The second time she’d changed her mind and decided she wanted sweet potato fries rather than regular fries right before the order was ready. And now this.

  Quinn could not have screwed it up again. She looked down at her notepad. “I’m pretty sure you said no onions for you and yes onions on the one to-go. I wrote it right here.”

  “And yet here I am telling you that you got it wrong. Again. You know what? Let’s forget the whole thing. I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

  Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Lexi was definitely going to fire Quinn if she screwed this up and somebody left because of it.

  Quinn glanced around, heat burning up her cheeks as she realized pretty much every customer in the place was staring at her. The composure she’d fought so hard to perfect for the past dozen years was slipping faster than she could get her mask back into place.

  Why was she not capable of getting something so simple right?

  Why was she not capable of getting anything in her life right lately?

  What you’ve turned out to be is such a disappointment, Quinn.

  Peter’s words floated through her mind as she gripped the tray so tightly her fingers went numb. She tried to swallow down the lump moving up her throat. She couldn’t lose her composure in front of the restaurant full of strangers.

  She’d thought what had happened at Harvard was as low as she could go, but she was afraid she might be about to find out otherwise.

  The blonde was still staring at Quinn with her eyebrow raised, waiting. The tray shook in Quinn’s clenched hands.

  Say something.

  “I—I—”

  “Mia, there’s not a person who’s lived in Oak Creek longer than five minutes who doesn’t know about your aversion to onions. Don’t act like you’re going to eat that sandwich.”

  The words came from a deep voice in the booth behind the pretty nurse. Quinn was afraid to turn and look. She hadn’t been aware someone was sitting there. No telling how long he’d been there waiting for service.

  Mia glared at the man. “You stay out of it, Baby. Maybe my eating habits have changed recently.”

  Baby? Were they a couple? Quinn spun around to look at the man.

  ...and nearly swallowed her tongue. This man definitely was not a baby.

  Mid- to late-twenties and gorgeous? Yes. Head full of dark hair and a closely trimmed beard that emphasized his strong jaw and uplifted cheekbones? Yes. Green eyes that made her think of a forest she wanted to get lost in? Yes.

  But baby? No.

  He lounged back in the booth which did nothing to take away from the way his white T-shirt stretched over his chest and broad shoulders, testing the seams.

  His rugged, blue-collared handsomeness was in direct juxtaposition with the suave, academic men she’d been surrounded by most of her adult life.

  She shouldn’t be attracted to that sort of gruff allure. It shouldn’t be appealing to her. But Quinn found she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  At least the lump in her throat was gone. Even if it had been replaced by inappropriate thoughts for a man probably fifteen years her junior.

  Quinn swallowed. She was probably making a bigger fool of herself ogling him than she had been with the messed-up orders. She
cleared her throat so her voice wouldn’t come out hoarse. “I probably wrote it down wrong. Again.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you didn’t.” The gorgeous man narrowed his green eyes at the nurse. “Everyone in town is well aware that Mia Stevenson doesn’t eat onions.”

  “You’ve always been a pain in the ass, Baby.” Mia stood, grabbing both the to-go carton and the plate from Quinn’s tray. “I’ll take both sandwiches to-go.”

  She stormed toward the register, glaring at Baby as she passed. At least she was going to pay.

  “Thanks,” Quinn muttered.

  “Just ignore her.” He gave her a grin that did nothing to soften the hard lines of his jaw. “She takes an unnaturally perverse delight in making other people miserable. She’s been that way since middle school.”

  “I really might’ve written down the wrong thing,” Quinn admitted. “It’s my first day.”

  His engaging smile grew wider as he stretched one arm along the booth. “You don’t say.”

  Oh God, was he flirting with her?

  Nobody flirted with her. She was Dr. Harrison-Pritchard, comparative and world literature professor.

  Or had been. Right now, she was just a terrible waitress.

  “I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting a long time. Can I get you something to drink?”

  He leaned back in the booth again. “Sure. A Coke is fine.”

  “With or without onions?”

  His deep chuckle did things to parts of her body she hadn’t thought about in years, much less used.

  “I’ll go with no onions.”