Forever Mine Read online

  Evernight Publishing ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2015 April Zyon

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-254-4

  Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

  Editor: Brieanna Robertson

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  I would like to dedicate this book to my wonderful readers, each and every single one of you. Also to my fantastic editor who was with me through every step of the Massey, Texas books.

  I would also like to invite you to join my reader group, a group that is for my two writing aliases as well as for another fabulous author, and excellent friend.

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/moirahonor.readergroup/

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  FOREVER MINE

  Massey, TX 9

  April Zyon

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  Athena had taken over her father’s practice as soon as she graduated college. She had known from the moment she could first walk and talk that she wanted to help people just as her father had. He had been her hero for as long as she had lived. He had always been the best person she knew, until the moment she took over his practice and learned the truth.

  Now, it was six years later and she was still trying to dig herself out from under the mess that her father had created, a mess that he had dumped on her and ran from. It was not good, and sadly, there was no one she could talk to about it. She couldn’t turn to her friends because they wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t talk to the local law enforcement because she didn’t want to put them into any type of danger either. So she had held her own council while she tried to work out how to put everything to rights.

  Once more, she looked at the blotter before her and sighed. “No,” she whispered quietly. Picking up the phone, she dialed the number for the FBI liaison in Dallas that she had been working with for the last six years. When the voicemail picked up, she left a message. “Hello, this is Athena Rhodes. I need for you to call me back as soon as possible.” She had received a message that the man they had been trying to get to was finally going to reach out to Athena and they wanted to meet with her to ensure that she got with the program—their words not hers.

  After leaving the message, she got back to work on planning out her treatments for the patients that were really there for help—the men and women of the town she had grown up in that truly turned to her father, and now her.

  After putting the final touches on the treatment plan she had set up for one of the kids in town, she leaned back. “Poor kid.” He had been the one to find his mother dead after going on a cattle ride with his father. She had been dead for nearly three days when she was found, and it was a bad scene for the kid to walk into.

  Looking at the clock, she cursed. “Crap.” She was going to be late for her appointment with her personal trainer if she didn’t hurry. Grabbing her purse, she locked up the cabinets, ensured that the windows were locked, and raced out of the office after locking her office doors. Setting the alarm from her phone, she waited for the beep before running to her car. She was in that big of a hurry.

  ****

  Three days later...

  Athena looked over the notes she had taken for her latest patient and added the medication she had prescribed for the young woman. Tapping the pen on the paper, she smiled and added another note about the woman’s living conditions.

  She has ensured that she’s moved from the toxic environment she was living in and has clean ties and a fallback in place. I fully believe that with six more months of talk therapy, she should be back to rights and able to deal with the troubles she has on her own. With the proper tools that I’m giving her, she will be able to be a valuable asset to society and will be able to thrive on her own.

  She might not be in the biggest town, but she was happy where she was. She jumped when her phone rang. She hadn’t been expecting a call, so to get one surprised her. “Hello?” she asked with a small frown.

  “Dr. Rhodes?” The cultured tones came across the line.

  “Yes, this is. Can I help you?” Someone had called on her personal line. That was very unusual.

  “This is Agent Lawrence. We have an agent that is going to be there in two days to help you with the meeting.”

  The meeting? she thought to herself. “What meeting?”

  “The meeting with the contact that your father had been dealing with. The leader of the gang whose money your father had been running through his practice.”

  “And the drugs that he had prescribed?” She had noticed that her father wrote a great deal more scripts than he had patients. That had been the initial trouble that Athena had run into.

  “Of course. Do you have a pen handy to take down the agent’s phone number?”

  “Yes. Please go ahead.” Athena wrote down the name of the man and phone number. “I’m sorry, did you say that his name is The Stallion?” For some odd reason, she thought of a person that she desperately had tried to put into her past. A man that she had always had a thing for, someone who hadn’t been back in Massey since he’d turned nineteen years old. No, it couldn’t be him. He was off saving the whales or something like that, according to his mother.

  “Yes, that’s not his name, but that’s the name that he goes by when in the field.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Athena said. “And when should he be there again?”

  “Two days. Please be sure to be ready.”

  “I will. Thank you,” Athena told him before she put the phone down. “Well, I guess that’s something,” she muttered aloud. Putting the conversation out of her mind, she instead turned to her next patient’s chart.

  Chapter Two

  County Line

  Massey, Texas

  He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there staring at the sign announcing, “Welcome to Massey, TX Population 5,609 and growing!” but the hood under his ass was cooling, and the sun had reached its highest point. Hell, it was starting the slow slide toward the horizon.

  It had been a long, long time since he’d been home. The last time he’d been there he’d flown in for his pop’s funeral, stuck around for the meal, and then got the hell out of Dodge. Since then, he hadn’t been home once. He called, though, every single weekend right after his mother had finished breakfast on Sundays. They would chat for exactly one hour and fifteen minutes. No more, no less. The woman always had enough gossip to fill that time, so he rarely had to say much of anything.

  Yet, here he was. Staring into the abyss of the quintessential small town. Ranches and farms spread out as far as the eye could see and beyond. Nestled in the middle was Massey. His hometown, and the place he’d burned rubber to get away from the moment he’d turned eighteen. Unlike his brothers, Martin had always hated coming back. To him, it had felt claustrophobic. Whether from his family’s expectations, or from his own uncertainty about the future, he didn’t know.

  This time was no different. So, there he was, sitting on the hood of his ‘66 Mustan
g. While she maintained her shape, he’d given her a few tweaks over the years. A new paint job when he was eighteen, and a new hemi engine when he was twenty-two. There were a few other not exactly legal additional elements to Eris, named after the goddess of chaos, strife, and discord. His brothers had actually named his car, but he’d let it stick. Hell, he’d even gotten a little name plate that was attached to the dashboard right over the speedometer.

  Martin shook his head, leaning back on his hands as he continued to stare in the direction of the town. He remembered back in high school a rumor Frank had told him about. His older brother had apparently also started it, but he denied it with a smirk every single time Martin confronted him.

  According to the “rumor,” if a girl managed to talk Martin into taking her out a date, she prayed he’d be driving Eris. If he showed up in his pop’s old pickup truck, then she knew she would be getting walked to the front door, given a peck on the cheek, and he’d promptly leave to never call her for another date. But if he showed up in Eris, the girl would be getting a tour of the backseat, on her back, and things would be a rocking.

  Not once had Martin ever taken a girl out in Eris. There’d been one he’d thought about, right before leaving town for good, but she’d been too young, and he definitely hadn’t needed that sort of thing to follow him or her around for the rest of their days.

  Athena Rhodes. Named for the virgin goddess of reason, intelligent activity, arts, and literature. A more perfect name for the woman in question there never would be. She’d always had an ethereal quality about her, always thinking before leaping, and was the one woman who still had him jolting up out of bed in the middle of the night from the dreams she starred front and center in.

  Not the teenage version of Athena Rhodes either. Nope, he knew exactly what she looked like as of four weeks ago. Hell, he even had her photo in the folder sitting on the passenger seat of his car. The rest of what was in the folder was why he was there, despite digging in his heels with the director of the FBI. Fucking bastard found it funny that Martin didn’t want to go home for a visit and deal with the trouble Athena found herself in. In the director’s mind, it was two birds, one stone. In Martin’s, it was a colossal fuck up in the making. Especially if Athena was anywhere near it.

  Athena, bane of his existence. She’d been just starting to come into the woman she would one day be when he’d left Massey. Now she was more than he could ever have imagined. Five-foot-seven, long, rich red hair the color of a wine with hints of copper and strawberries. Green eyes that could lighten with amusement or darken like a coming storm. Athena had the stereotypical redhead temper, though he knew from his mother’s gossip she rarely showed it any more. So she’d gotten it under control. Should be interesting to test that theory.

  Pale golden skin, just a hint of a tan, with a smattering of freckles over her nose and upper curve of her cheeks. A slightly rounded face with amazing bone structure, straight nose, slightly pointed chin, gave her face a heart-shaped look. A long ,elegant neck he’d imagined nibbling on in his quest to discover if there were freckles anywhere else on her body. His dreams said yes, but Martin didn’t think he’d really ever find out.

  To top off his perfect woman’s image, Athena had some meat on her bones. She was built like a woman, sturdy, and not like one of those twigs from Hollywood that would blow over if you sneezed in their direction. She was, quite literally, his dream woman given form. Or maybe, he should say, she was the woman of his dreams, if only he had the nerve to tell her.

  His other problem with the woman. She got him all twisted up inside, and turned him into a babbling fool. Or she had. Martin really hoped she still didn’t have that particular effect on him. ‘Cause that would just be the fucking icing on the cake for this whole damned trip.

  The sound of an engine pulled his attention back, and he let out a sigh when the truck got close enough for him to recognize it. All the time in the world seemed to have passed, and the damn pickup truck that was used around the Carver Ranch was still exactly the same. Squinting slightly at the reflection off the windshield, he waited for his brother to swing it around and park it behind the Mustang.

  The crunch of boots to gravel told him where his big brother was, yet still, he waited. Only when the other man slid onto the hood next to him did he give a nod. “Frank,” he said quietly.

  “Martin.” That was it, nothing else.

  Course they didn’t really need to say much of anything else. Despite rumors to the contrary, ones sort of started by him, he and Frank had worked together more than once. They even talked on a fairly regular basis. While Frank had worked for a different branch, and under different mandates for the US government, Martin had always been his brother’s contact inside the bureau.

  “Eris is looking good,” Frank said after another ten minutes of silence.

  “She held up well on the drive. Only got a bit cranky with me outside of Dallas. But a quart of oil and she was purring like an overgrown kitten again.”

  Frank snorted out a laugh at that. “I can’t believe you still have her.”

  “Dude, she’s family. Quit trash talking my car.”

  Hands up, Frank cracked a grin. A real grin. As in teeth and everything. While Martin was staring in shock, he missed what his brother was saying. “What? Sorry.”

  “I asked you how long you plan on sitting out here. According to Willard, you’ve been here since eight this morning. It’s now nearly two in the afternoon.”

  Heaving a sigh, Martin shoved his hands through his pale blond hair. Out of all the Carvers, his was the lightest in color, but his eyes were the darkest. The oddities of the familial gene pool. “Working up the nerve to drive across the county line is all.”

  “Uh-huh. You do know that Mama’s already heard you’re here. And the fact you are sitting here, and not at her kitchen table where she can smother you with all that built up motherly love, means you are in seriously deep shit, little brother.”

  Martin winced at that. Yeah, his mama would hug him, weep all over him, and then likely bean him with her rolling pin. Theresa Carver was in no way a pushover. She might play the part occasionally to lure the unaware in close, but then she struck. She could make a grown man in a full rage cry like a little girl in under two minutes. Without even batting a lash. She was that good.

  “So, what has you here?” Frank asked.

  Normally, he wouldn’t discuss it, but Frank still held his beyond top secret clearance level, and likely would as long as he was still breathing. “Athena Rhodes, or rather her dirty, lowdown scoundrel of a father.”

  Frank’s head whipped around to look his way. “Shit. You got handed that one?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well fuck me.”

  Yup. Pretty much Martin’s exact thoughts on the matter.

  Chapter Three

  Athena’s phone rang and she picked it up without looking at the caller ID. “Dr. Rhodes,” she said as she added more notes to the file. “How can I help you?”

  “Ah, it’s the good doctor.” The cultured tones of the man on the other line all but screamed wealth, and that he wasn’t a part of the Massey, Texas culture. He was Italian, perhaps?

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, actually you can. You see, doctor, your father was a valuable member of my organization. He was taking care of me and my interests until you took over the entire practice eighteen months ago and he retired to places unknown. Now while we have been trying to ensure that our arrangement was upheld, you have given my men trouble. Grudgingly working with them over threats. That ends now, Doctor Rhodes, or your dear father, who I found in Finland, of all places, will understand just how painful a breach of contract with me would be. Do you understand me?”

  Athena felt sick. “What?” She rose to her feet, shaking. “I’ve done what you asked.”

  “Only after I’ve given you ultimatums. This is the last time. You will do as I tell you from this moment out or daddy dearest will pay the p
rice, and continue to pay it until he begs for death.”

  “You can’t do this.”

  “Call the feds and tell them that the deal is off. That you’ve been relieved of your burdens with us. Call them now. And yes, my dearest Athena, I know.”

  She felt sick. She knew that she was pale because she was shaking as well. “I will.” She needed to reach her father. She had thought that he was far enough away that he wouldn’t be found. She was obviously wrong.

  “See that you do, darling Athena. Now, my son is going to come visit you later in the week. Please be sure to make him very, very welcomed.”

  “Yes, sir.” God, she couldn’t believe it, but she knew she would do whatever they said in order to keep her father safe. Taking a deep breath, she added, “Whatever you say.” She could kill her dad, but he was all she had left in the world, so she wouldn’t.

  “Good girl. Please keep in mind that when he comes, he enjoys being called sir as well. Now, you have a package that should be there later today. Please be sure to deposit the money into the account listed with the package.”

  Fabulous. More money she would need to enter into her accounting software, more money she would have to try to funnel out of her offices and into that bastard’s accounts, cleaned, so to speak.

  Once the phone was disconnected, she dialed her contact and had to leave him a message. “This is Dr. Athena Rhodes. I’ve been released from the payroll of the men that were trying to use my father’s business accounts. I think that they found out about you.” Which was true. “So you no longer have to send your guy out here. It will save you money, and time.” She hung up then before she gave herself away. Part of her, though, hoped that they wouldn’t listen to her. Part of her hoped that she could somehow get the information to the feds without the mafia that her father worked for finding out. Then again, somehow, they had found out and she had been assured that no one would learn what was happening. Great. She was so screwed.