Page 1 of Mine to Possess (Veteran K9 Team #3)

Chapter One

Barron

“ Y ou ready?” I raise my brow as Linc walks in from his first training session with Nanook, a two-year-old Husky. The dog’s owner, a PTSD counselor named Jamie, wants to use her fur demon as an emotional support animal well-behaved enough to take to the VA center.

Apparently, his first visit resulted in them being kicked out after he stole a cheeseburger from a patient.

Hence why we call him a demon, but we’ll get him set right in no time.

“Yeah.” Linc grabs his backpack from his chair. “I’m excited about this job, man. First day of the ski season.”

“Technically, this is their soft opening. Thanksgiving is always the opening weekend, but we’ve had decent early snowfall, so here we go.”

“I can’t thank you enough for getting me this side hustle. I need the cash, and I can’t think of anything better than this cush position.”

“Is it cush?” I stand and grab my keys, knowing damn well it is a sweet gig. Payment, overnight lodging, and all the skiing we can fit in when we’re not working—the job is cake. I grab my small go pack, my overnight bag and skis already in my truck along with Linc’s.

He’ll leave his car here for the weekend.

No reason for both of us to drive.

Karden walks into the office with a younger guy who still has that active duty military veneer to him. Clean shaven, tapered haircut, almost rigid posture. “Hey guys. This is Logan, but you might hear me slip up and call him Hollywood from time to time.”

Linc drops his bag and offers the guy his hand. “Holy shit, man. What the fuck are you doing here?”

The young guy, who does have movie star good looks, smiles widely and shakes his hand. “I’m here to check out the facility.”

“You’re the investor?” Linc’s jaw drops. “Goddamn. I guess the rumors were true.”

Hollywood shrugs, but neither man elaborates for my curious mind.

There’s been talk around the office that Janey found an investor for the center, one who could help us turn this place into the vision we have for the future.

And when I say we, I mean all of us, because Janey promised when we signed on for peanuts that we’d all get stock in the company when the time came.

I guess that time is coming sooner than expected.

For someone like me with a full military retirement, the barely minimum wage we make here doesn’t affect my living standards like it does Linc, who only did a little under eight years in the Army.

While he is a disabled veteran like the rest of us, his monthly VA check isn’t enough to keep him fat in cash.

I think he has enough saved up from all the deployments to let him ride for a couple years, but if things don’t change in that time, I don’t know if he’ll be able to stay on without finding a better paying job.

Hence why I got him the gig on the mountain. He ETS’d nine months after me and I knew he didn’t want to go back to Arkansas anymore than I wanted to go back to Missouri.

Logan rubs his smooth jaw. “I thought you wanted to be a paratrooper, not K9.”

Linc shakes his head. “That’s a long story. One I don’t have time to tell.”

“Yeah, we’ve got to get up to the mountain and get clocked in,” I interject and offer Logan my hand. “Barron Theroux.”

“Sergeant Major Theroux? Damn, I’ve heard of you.”

Before I can ask what that means, Linc hauls his backpack up on his shoulder and nods. “We work search and rescue at Silver Mountain Ski Resort two weekends a month. Occasionally we take on ski instruction, but only if the lodge bunny is super hot.”

Hollywood snorts. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

“Hell, no. Why mess with perfection?” Linc flashes his cocky smile, the one that has gotten him into more trouble than out of.

I roll my eyes and make a move for the door with my old German Shepherd, Sarge, following behind me. With her advanced age and arthritis, she no longer works, but stays by my side whenever possible. “We’ll see you guys Monday.”

I pass Kemp and Janey on the way to my truck, mock saluting them with two fingers without saying a word. Neither Kemp nor I are big talkers, and Janey is walking with intent, which I guess means she’s rushing inside to meet with the investor.

Jesus. A mid-twenty-year-old investor?

I have to hear the backstory of this guy, because I don’t know of any enlisted Army guys that can afford to buy a house, much less invest in a business like ours. Last I heard, Janey was looking for a couple million—a sum that none of us can come close to covering.

Linc meets me at my truck a few minutes later and settles his Husky Li-Lou in the back on her bed next to Sarge before plopping his ass into the passenger seat.

Without speaking a word, I hit the northbound highway to skirt around Spring City, taking the back roads to merge onto I-70 east of the tunnels.

“So, what’s the rumor?” I finally ask.

“Huh?” Linc looks up from the game on his phone. He’s always got to be doing something, his old age chill still years away from settling into his bones. That’s one thing about being the oldest man on the team. These young guys make me feel weathered beyond my years.

I mean, I’m only forty and yet I feel a hundred compared to them.

“Hollywood. You said I guess the rumors were true .”

“Oh.” He sets his phone in his lap. “It started in boot camp and followed him throughout his career. He won’t confirm or deny it, but the rumor is he’s related to some old school Hollywood family.

We know he’s from Southern California, and there were stories at our graduation that Knox Mejer was in attendance with his family. Do you know Knox?”

“The action movie star?”

“The one with a twin brother who does all his stunt work, an older brother who is a blockbuster producer and director, and a fine as hell supermodel sister who has starred in many a young man’s fantasies? That’s the one.”

“Okay, so why do you think Logan is related to them?”

“Well, when the stories circulated that the Mejer family was on post, we tried to figure out who they would be there to see. Then we realized we couldn’t find Logan anywhere.

At first, the rumor started as a joke, but what I heard from Karden was a few years later, while they were deployed overseas, the USO came through and Ms. Lyra Mejer, aka Selyne, accompanied her big brother Knox on his press tour for the movie O Five Hundred.

After the show, Logan was put on a seventy-two-hour R&R, even though there were no flights in or out of the area that week. No one knew where he went.”

“Bullshit.” I roll my eyes.

“I’m serious.”

“Why would a guy with that kind of money and those kinds of connections end up as an army grunt on the front line?”

Linc shrugs and kicks his feet up on my dash. “Don’t know. Maybe he’s an adrenaline junkie or a glutton for punishment?”

“Spoken like a self-flagellating adrenaline junkie,” I mutter, narrowing my eyes on his feet. “Speaking of death-defying acts—if you don’t get your boots off my dash, I’m going to break both of your legs.”

He blanches and drops his feet to the floor. “Sorry. I forgot how you are about your truck.”

I frown as he uses the sleeve of his sweatshirt to wipe away any trace of his boot prints before returning his attention to his phone.

Two hours and four how-to podcast episodes later, we make it to the resort without issue.

The roads are clear and the sun hovers just above the horizon—the sky a clear crystal blue overhead.

It promises an amazing and warm soft-opening, but I’ve been up here enough to know better than to believe the sky for an accurate weather report.

Radar says a mild storm will roll through tomorrow afternoon, but we’ll see if that really happens and if it will be mild or not.

I park my big truck near the staff dormitory and kill the engine before nudging Linc awake. I swear, the guy can fall asleep anywhere.

“Are we here?” He runs his hand down his face.

“Yeah. Leave your bag, but bring your skis. Let’s check in and get our keys and assignments for tomorrow.”

“Cool.” He jumps out of his seat and opens the back door, leashing Li-Lou with her service vest and grabbing his gear.

I lift Sarge out of the back and put her paws on solid ground before grabbing my gear. The four of us walk through the front door of the lodge and take a left through the ski equipment rental shop to the staff door secured by an electronic keypad entry.

A lyrical laugh trickles through the air and tickles the back of my neck as I pull up the text message with this year’s security code.

“Holy shit,” Linc hisses.

“What?” I turn to look over my shoulder.

Two blondes, one curvier than the other, both equally beautiful with sun-kissed skin, sit on the bench next to the rental counter. They giggle with unburdened joy as one attempts to yank the hard cast rental boot off the other.

“Do you think they’re sisters?” Linc damn near growls and I can’t help but pin him with a shake of my head.

“Don’t know. Why?”

“We should ask them out.”

I punch the code into the keypad and the lock pops free. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Sweet Jesus.” I mutter, leading the way inside the staff area with Sarge by my side.

Linc follows, but stays standing in the doorway looking out at the women like a kid outside of a store gazing longing through the display window at the prized toy of the season.

“To be a young horn dog full of self-confidence again.”

“One, I’m not a horn dog, but fully aware of what I like—and blondes with beautiful smiles do it for me. Secondly, when’s the last time you had sex? And thirdly, what’s the harm in asking them out?”

Raising my brow, I’m torn between chewing his ass and answering him honestly.

While he worked for me in the military, I recruited Linc on my way out the door, unsure if he was going to re-enlist or not.

There was a time when Linc was my problem child—one of my best trainers with the worst conduct off-duty.

He had a lot of childhood trauma to work through when he was younger, his impulse control damn near zero when I met him.

He’s grown a lot over the years.

Now, I have to remember we are colleagues, not NCO and subordinate. I outrank no one—thank god—and I like it that way.

Narrowing my eyes, I glance out at the two beautiful blondes.

“You might not be a horn dog today, but I’ve known you since you were nineteen years old, so don’t act like you’ve always been sweet and innocent.

Secondly, my sex life is none of your business and you better never ask me about it again.

And lastly, we can’t date them. It’s part of our employment contract that we don’t ask out the resort guests. ”

He frowns and brings his eyes to me. “Really? I agreed to that crap?”

I shrug, a pang of disappointment settling in my belly.

He isn’t wrong. They are beautiful, especially the curvy one sitting on the bench.

She’s probably too young for me, not that I’ll ever find out.

Even if she isn’t, I wouldn’t know how to approach her anyway, much less ask her out.

Being smooth with the ladies has never been my forte. “It's a fraternization thing.”

“Fine. If we see them on Sunday after we get off work, we’ll ask them out.”

“And then what?” I scoff. “They’re renting their equipment, which means they’re not local. They’re probably flying back to Southern California or Florida or some other beachfront property next week.”

“Man,” Linc grumbles and pushes past me into the locker room. “You’re bumming me out.”

I glance at the women one more time before turning my back and walking to the offices where our dorm keys wait for us. “You’re better off finding a woman in Spring City if a relationship is what you’re looking for.”

He sighs, throwing his jacket and checking his gear that he left two weeks ago in his assigned locker. “I don’t know what I’m looking for. I figure when I find it, I’ll know.”

Nodding, I hand him one of the two keys to our shared room. I’ve heard that’s how it happens for some guys, but I myself have never been hit by Cupid’s javelin.

For a man who has been married and divorced, that’s saying something.

“Maybe you’ll be lucky and it’ll smack you upside the head with a two-by-four.”

“Is that how it was for you?”

Frowning, I shake my head. “No. I don’t think everyone gets a lightning bolt. I certainly never did.”

At forty years old, I assume I never will.