Embrace the Wild (The Great Outdoors Book 5) Read online

  Embrace the Wild

  The Great Outdoors Series

  Shayne McClendon

  Embrace the Wild by Shayne McClendon

  The Great Outdoors Series

  Original Edition Copyright © 2013 Shayne McClendon

  Updated Edition Copyright © 2016 Shayne McClendon

  Updated Edition: December 3rd 2016

  Published by Always the Good Girl LLC

  www.alwaysthegoodgirl.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either 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 locales is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Shayne McClendon

  The Barter System Series

  Choice of Subjects (Prequel)

  The Barter System

  Hudson

  Pushing the Envelope

  Backstage

  Liberation

  Radiance

  The Great Outdoors Series

  Sunny’s Heart

  Permission to Come Aboard

  Permission to Land

  Special Delivery

  Short Story Anthologies

  Quickies – 2014 Edition

  Quickies – 2015 Edition

  Sports Romances

  Love of the Game

  Hart of the Matter

  Leap of Faith

  Country Romances

  Yes to Everything

  Somebody

  Gravity

  Break Down Here

  Roadside Assistance

  Dramatic Romances

  Completely Wrecked

  The Hermit

  More fantastic escapes for my readers are coming soon!

  Dedication

  For Jana who listens to my ideas any time of the day or night and Alex who helps me turn the craziest shit into reality.

  I couldn’t do this without you guys.

  To the Barter Babes, thanks for being patient when I disappear for weeks at a time to focus on my day job. You always forgive me and I’m forever grateful to you.

  To Angela, Yvonne, and Mo…for never failing to make me laugh and always ready to talk wholesale ridiculousness.

  I love you, ladies.

  Thank you, readers. Thank you for reading.

  Much love,

  Shayne

  Table of Contents

  Embrace the Wild

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About Shayne McClendon

  Embrace the Wild

  Lina is exhausted living a life of pretend as a starved supermodel and mediocre actress. Her manager mother will stop at nothing to maintain control over her life and career.

  With help from an old friend, she walks away from the luxury and into the wilderness.

  Wade Overly and Knox Simon love retirement from active duty. Years of rattling around war zones is a long way from the best friends’ peaceful mountain cabin in Montana.

  Until the day an old contact enlists their help to guard a mystery woman. They’re given no details of her life, have no idea what she’s running from, but welcome her.

  They never expected to love her.

  When her past comes calling, they show her they’re willing to do whatever it takes to keep her on the mountain.

  Safely between them.

  Prologue

  September 2004

  They traded phone numbers when they were in rehab together. It felt like a million years passed since their time there.

  Before the world learned her name…and forgot his.

  On the fourth night in her own version of hell, he saved her from being raped by another patient. He subdued the man with two well-placed strikes and led her to the nurse’s station.

  She trusted him immediately.

  He stayed by her side while she spoke to the police and offered his own statement without emotion.

  In the weeks that followed, he became her unspoken protector. He didn’t touch her. She never felt sick at the way he looked at her. She felt a kinship to him.

  He saw past her outer shell as she saw past his.

  The day she was to be released, he walked her to the front and handed her a piece of paper with his phone number on it. Beneath the number was a single word and she understood what it meant.

  He’d chosen his new identity.

  “If you need me, call me. No conditions, Galina.”

  Staring into his silver-gray eyes for a long moment, she swiped the tears that slipped over her cheeks and nodded.

  Carefully, she hugged him, giving him time to reject it as she often rejected such affection. He returned the embrace gently, barely touching, and she was grateful.

  They smelled of the utilitarian soaps, shampoos, and detergents of the facility. Their clothes were simple sweats, their shoes had no laces.

  His tall body was too thin. At twenty-eight, he was detoxing from another raging battle with heroin. A fight that appeared after the loss of his beloved mother. He ended nearly a year of sobriety with a binge that almost destroyed him.

  Her tall body was too thin. At eighteen, she neared six feet and weighed less than one hundred pounds. Her mother believed her eating disorder to be a positive thing for her acting and modeling career. Food had become her enemy.

  Their demons were written on their bodies, on their souls, and she wondered if they’d survive them.

  At her ear, he murmured, “You’re strong. Fight. If you get to a point when you can’t fight anymore, run and save yourself.”

  Releasing him, she stepped back and nodded. Glancing at the paper he’d given her, she smiled. “Hollow. I like it.” Meeting the eyes of a man she would forever liken to a fallen angel, she added softly, “Perhaps I can find another name.”

  He winked and for just a moment, she glimpsed the man buried deep inside. The one who still believed in hope. Their hauntings were another trait they shared.

  “Whenever you want a new name…let me know.”

  “I will.” She looked around the large lobby of the main building. “You’ll be alright?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you call me if you need me?”

  “Yes.” She knew it was a lie.

  “I’ll miss h-having someone to talk to about books.”

  “I’ll miss the way you curse in Russian when you’re pissed.”

  She chuckled. Her father’s driver appeared behind her and she jumped. The way her friend met the man’s eyes made her own widen. Jessup picked up her duffle and returned to the exit.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Yes.”

  Looking over her shoulder and back to him again, she asked quietly, “Can I trust him?”

  “Yes.”

  Blinking, she inhaled deeply and said, “Thank you, Hollow. For ever
ything.”

  “You’re welcome, Galina.”

  With a final smile, she turned and walked nervously to the door. Her insides felt like they might shake apart.

  “Ready, miss?” Jessup inquired.

  She spared one more glance at the black-haired, silver-eyed guardian who kept her safe while she tried to regain control of her mind and body.

  Pressing her hand to her stomach, she nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  * * *

  Two years later, she saw her fallen angel at a function thrown by her father. He pretended not to know her and Galina understood. Her savior in rehab barely existed by then.

  Hollow could not afford friends.

  Chapter One

  May 2012

  Around the world, people knew Galina Oksana Kahfke-West by the single name Lina.

  Almost every day since her birth, she’d been a beauty queen, a child star, a model, and an unwilling object of men’s sexual fantasies before she was even legal.

  Her entire life…spent in front of a lens.

  The woman who gave birth to her was raised in a culture where a beautiful child opened doors and put food on the table.

  Svetlana Kahfke-West was ambitious to the point of cruelty and it seemed no amount of power or money would ever be enough. Had she raised her child in Russia, Galina would have been bartered to one of her mother’s connections in her teens.

  Since time began, beauty was a form of currency.

  In her late forties, Svetlana remained youthful and gorgeous. Other than managing her daughter’s life, maintaining her outer appearance was her top priority.

  She immigrated from Russia mere months before Galina’s birth. Barely eighteen at the time, she caught the eye of handsome financier Jacob West.

  Instantly smitten, he used his wealth and power to smooth the way for Svetlana and her sister to enter the United States.

  Already wealthy from a long line of old money, everything he touched expanded his success. Currently number ninety-three on the Forbes 500, he moved up steadily every year.

  He was a good man wrapped firmly around her mother’s finger. Svetlana was his only weakness and not even his own child could break the spell of sex and fury she wove around him. Every situation was easily manipulated to her advantage and she ensured Jacob’s appetite for her remained insatiable.

  They were a beautiful couple, obsessed with power and prestige and ultimately uncaring whether their daughter was caught in the crossfire of their mutual goals.

  Over the years, Galina attempted to appeal to her father for help. Every time, she found herself outplayed by her mother. She grew to understand the confines of her prison.

  As a grown woman, she regularly made attempts to escape. Refusing to relinquish the power she maintained as Galina’s manager, Svetlana sent her to rehab after each capture.

  Despite being in full control of her faculties and having no addictions that would pose a danger to her health, her mother convinced a friendly judge to rule her mentally incompetent and deem her a suicide risk.

  With the stroke of a pen, her mother was named her permanent guardian with full control over her life. The woman became her official warden.

  For a while, Galina went through the motions as her mother used her newfound legal power to accept jobs on her behalf that made her want to die inside.

  Big screen roles were particularly hard. She knew she wasn’t a very good actress and the critics knew it, too.

  The years passed and she focused on surviving each day. She tried to see the silver lining of the life she lived by helping others through her celebrity status. Svetlana allowed it because it was free publicity.

  For more than two decades, she worked. She accumulated more money than most people saw in their lifetime and her father turned it into even more.

  More than anything, she wanted to stop all of it. Stop taking off her clothes. Stop engaging in simulated sex scenes with strangers. Stop counting her calories every second of every day while being weighed and measured obsessively.

  She didn’t know what a normal life was but she thought she could figure it out if she had the chance. Movies that depicted average families, children, and pets living in little houses in little towns made her cry.

  At twenty-five, she met a sweet man who fell in love with her. One of the technicians on yet another horrible movie, Anthony was careful of her space, gentle in how he spoke to her, and she thought he was wonderful.

  She didn’t love him but loved spending time with him in stolen moments. He never pushed for more than chaste kisses or holding her hand and she appreciated his restraint.

  To reward one of the few men who’d ever been kind to her, she gave him her virginity in her trailer during a rushed and unsatisfying encounter. He cried.

  He wasn’t gorgeous or wealthy. His family was dysfunctional and scattered. He stuttered slightly when he was nervous.

  Galina explained the confines of her life to him and he hated that she was treated as nothing more than an exotic circus animal.

  One night after filming wrapped, she slipped away from her keepers and found the apartment where Anthony lived. Shocked to see her standing in the hallway, he invited her in and proceeded to straighten his home in a panic.

  They sat together on his couch and watched a movie. She allowed herself to lean against him with his arm around her shoulders. A moment of true peace and happiness.

  She drifted off and woke to realize he was asleep as well. Lifting her hand, she placed it on his cheek and he smiled as his eyes fluttered open.

  The words on the tip of her tongue were never uttered because his door was kicked in. Two of her mother’s security team held her between them roughly as two others beat Anthony brutally.

  Screaming and sobbing, Galina begged them to stop.

  Svetlana appeared in her line of sight and stared at her for a long moment. “You will return home. You will never see this person again or I’ll have him killed. Do you understand?”

  “Let him go. He didn’t do anything. I came here on my own.”

  “Tsk, tsk.” Her mother released a string of insults in Russian about the gentle man who’d been kind to her. “As if I’d allow you to waste your body on such a specimen.”

  Walking over to where her men held Anthony upright, Svetlana bent to smile into his battered face. “She is not meant for such as you.”

  His voice hoarse, he spoke through swollen lips, his teeth bloody. “She’s not a piece of meat. She deserves to be happy.”

  Sighing, Svetlana straightened. “What a childish statement.” Crossing her arms, she stared at him. “Happiness is for the ugly and the poor. People like you can afford happiness. People like us take satisfaction, power, position.”

  Managing to lift his head, he managed, “How sad your life must be then. I feel sorry for you.”

  Galina watched her mother still.

  “Mother…please don’t hurt him anymore. I’ll go with you. Just leave him alone.” The silence drew out and her heart raced in dread. “Please.”

  “You are a stupid man. The sort who will be a continual thorn in my side.” She laughed bitterly. “A man convinced he’s in love is more dangerous than any other.”

  “Mother…”

  “Shut your mouth, Galina. Take her to the car.” She fought but couldn’t break their hold. She started screaming. “Sedate her first. I don’t need more problems.”

  One guard wrapped her in a bear hug and the other injected her with something that immediately slammed into her system. As she slumped, she met Anthony’s eyes across the room.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault your mother is a monster, Galina. I love you. I don’t regret loving you.”

  Carried from the apartment and dumped in the back of the SUV, she remembered nothing of the drive.

  She woke in her own bed with a horrible headache and bruises all over her arms. On the nightstand was a printed email from the
production company shooting the movie.

  “It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our head lighting technician, Anthony Malone. Services to be held…”

  Dropping the paper, Galina ran into the bathroom and vomited the miniscule contents of her stomach.

  As she sat back, wiping her mouth with a towel, her mother leaned in the doorway. “One day, you’ll realize that I have the power.” She smiled and it made Galina nauseous again. “When the marks from your unfortunate outing fade, you’ll meet several men interested in courting you. Don’t fight me.”

  Galina started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Svetlana’s eyes widened before she straightened with a frown.

  Laying down on the cool marble floor, she didn’t care about the presence of a woman who saw her as nothing more than a possession. She laughed until she dissolved into tears.

  Eventually, she was left alone. Stumbling to her sink, she removed every bottle from her medicine cabinet and filled a glass with water.

  Stopped before she’d taken more than a few pills, she spent two months in another rehab.

  She refused to speak, refused to interact, and waited for her mother to take her home. She always ended up under Svetlana’s thumb.

  There seemed to be no escape.

  Chapter Two

  July 2012

  Eventually released from another ridiculous medical facility that was nothing more than a fancy spa, Galina hoped for a break. She needed to breathe.

  Then the suitors started arriving.

  Svetlana was subtle about them at first. She encouraged her daughter to smile, have fun, and keep an open mind.

  Each potential lover was richer than the one before. All of them were powerful. They were politicians, royalty, and businessmen from around the world.

  Several of them terrified her.

  Desperate, she went to Jacob. Her father was optimistic that Galina would find happiness as a wife and mother. “Your mother wants what’s best for you, darling. I know you don’t always see eye to eye but give her a chance.”