Unexpected

By Mia Jones

Jana is asked to babysit her sister on the cruise she was going to enjoy with her new husband. When that went sour, Jana had to go and was not looking forward to it until she met Grant.

Grant wasn't on the cruise to meet anyone. He was there to find the people that were kidnapping and selling young women. When he meets Jana he hates that he has to lie to her but it was a lot of people at stake.

Because of circumstances out of his control, Jana is pulled into the middle of his investigation and unintentionally solves it for them. Besides his fear for her, he'll now have to come clean with all the lies and he doesn't know if she'll ever forgive him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fiery Vision Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201700836

Book preview

Chapter One

Beck, slow down, Jana said as she followed her sister onto the cruise ship. She tried to look around, but her sister was yanking her along. Jana had never been on a cruise before. She wasn’t one to travel a lot, but she especially didn’t want to be on this one.

Becky snorted. No, I want to get our bags in our cabin and then check out the fresh meat on board.

Jana rolled her eyes. Her sister, Becky, was on a rampage, and although Jana understood why, she was still afraid her sister would make another mistake. The fact that their mom pleaded with Jana to go with her made the responsibility even worse.

Why their mother thought Jana could control Becky was beyond her.

The cruise was supposed to have been Becky’s honeymoon. But when she found her fiance in bed with her best friend a few days before the wedding, Becky had turned the situation into an excuse to let loose and party.

Jana had always been the sensible one out of the two of them. Her parents had never had to worry about her taking chances, and thank God for that because they needed all their attention on Becky, the wild one.

Becky had put their parents through hell since the first day of junior high when she was sent home from school, suspended for fighting.

Who did that? Who caused mischief on the very first day of a school year?

Her sister did, and she hadn’t stopped since, and somehow Jana had been dragged into it more times than not.

The last thing she wanted to do was babysit her sister on a cruise ship full of men. The fact her sister was gorgeous made it next to impossible. They both had long black hair and were petite, but Becky always dressed like a runway model, and her eyes were a cobalt blue. That mixed in with the dark hair and pale skin was an incredible contrast; it had always attracted men of all shapes and sizes. Becky’s personality was also a huge factor. She was outgoing and always the life of the party, where Jana tended to fade into the background.

She’d always been told she was as beautiful as her sister; she just didn’t flaunt it as Becky did. Her skin was tan from being outside all the time and her eyes were bright green. She’d rather be home with her hands in the dirt making beautiful gardens to dressing up and partying.

Jana grinned. She and her sister were different in every way. Jana took life seriously, was a homebody, and her job was getting dirty as a landscape designer. Becky had never taken life seriously, never stayed home, and freaked if she broke a nail or, God forbid, got dirt under them.

Despite the fact they had nothing in common besides their parents, Jana loved her sister and would do anything to protect her, even if it was from herself.

Chapter Two

Holy shit, would you look at that.

Grant grunted from the elbow in his side. Payton, knock it off. We’re here to do a job, not find a girlfriend, for God’s sake. This is serious.

I got it, man. But we have to act like we’re regular vacationers, right? We can’t walk around in agent mode. We have to blend in.

I get that, but I know you, Grant snapped. Just keep your focus on what’s important.

Payton snorted. I will.

Grant grinned and looked around at the group of men that surrounded him. Good. Now you all have your assignments. If you have a problem or find anything, check in with the rest of us. I don’t want us to be seen together too much.

The seven other guys nodded and then headed out to different parts of the ship.

This will be interesting, Payton said.

We need to find out what’s going on this time. The captain is getting frustrated, and so are the guys on the hill.

Hell, if the ship’s owner weren’t good buddies with a senator, we probably wouldn’t be here.

Grant nodded. He’d thought the same thing, but he could do nothing but what he’d been put on the ship to find.

Let’s head out.

Payton grinned. Try not to be a stick in the mud. Nothing says we can’t have a little fun.

Grant rolled his eyes. I’ll leave that up to you.

The rest of the day was spent meeting new people and acting like he was enjoying himself, which was hard. Payton, his partner and friend, had accused him of having a stick up his ass, but he’d never been Payton’s happy-go-lucky person.

Maybe it came from the childhood he’d had. He went hungry more times than not, and he’d had to learn to stay out of his father’s way or get hit at a young age. It took any innocence and fun out of him.

He remembered being a small, scrawny kid but still trying to protect his mother from his father. He’d taken the brunt of the beatings, but he’d thought his mother had always been so fragile, he’d had to protect her.

When he started to work out with weights at the high school gym and fill out, his father had finally stopped the abuse with a little help from Grant.

After Grant had come home from school one day, he saw his father kicking his mother as she lay on the floor.

Grant had beaten his father unconscious and then taken his mother to the hospital. When they got back, his father had been gone and never returned.

That was a turning point in his and his mother’s life. She’d gotten a job, made friends, and grown stronger.

They had moved into a nice apartment, leaving the shack they called home for most of his life.

His mother, Patricia, had even met a great guy and gotten remarried after learning