Page 1 of Serve ’N’ Protect

Chapter One

The ring was beyond stunning—14-karat white gold with a huge French-cut center diamond surrounded by tiny pavé diamonds.

Too bad she’d never wear it.

Cassidy snapped the red velvet box shut and tossed it on the coffee table where it landed with a pathetic thunk. Thinking about all the could-have-beens that should have been over the last year would only drive her into a new level of suckiness. Focus on the good, her mother always said. She was only thirty-three.

And lucky to be alive.

She looked around her living room. It was only a week after Thanksgiving, but Christmas was her absolute favorite time of the year, and she hadn’t been able to wait a day longer to put up decorations. Going overboard hadn’t been the plan, but once she’d opened the boxes of garland, ribbons, and pretty ornament balls, there’d been no stopping her.

That familiar tightness returned to her chest, making it difficult to breathe. A year ago, her heart was filled with optimism, her attitude all sunshine and roses as she and Hugh were making holiday plans.

It was hard to imagine ever being so disgustingly cheery again.

This year, Hugh was gone, and he was never coming back, which led to the first and second items on her upcoming New Year’s resolutions list. The first being to stop thinking about Hugh and the second being to do whatever it took to never, ever, get her heart broken again.

She looked around the room, smiling somewhat dejectedly yet pleased with her handiwork. Silver and gold garland draped in perfectly formed scallops along the walls, punctuated by big, velvety red bows. Tiny holiday figurines graced every spare inch of shelf space, and battery-operated candles stood proudly on her windowsills. And her favorite aspect of her holiday design…the tree. Metallic balls in every color of the rainbow hung from its limbs, along with tiny white lights and glittery silver tinsel.

The decorations were kick-ass, and she’d gotten every single one of them in place all on her own, bringing her to the third item on her ever-growing list of resolutions—regaining her independence. Being part of the Morgan family, that would likely be the most difficult thing on the list to accomplish.

Her smile faded as she turned back to her coffee table. Four stacks of meticulously arranged documents sat next to her laptop. Assets. Liabilities. Tax returns. Accounts payable, receivable, and every other document needed for a top-to-bottom audit of Walt Teedle’s financial assets.

Since the expansion of the Patuxent River Naval Air Base, Leonardtown, Maryland had become home to many supporting technological companies, Teedle Tech being one of the first and the county’s most prestigious. When the owner, Walt Teedle, had hired her for the audit, she’d been both thrilled and flabbergasted. There were many other bigger, more experienced accounting firms he could have gone with, but he’d chosen her.

The deadline to complete the audit was December 24, three weeks away and plenty of time for a job such as this. For many reasons, letting Walt down wasn’t an option. Money was tight, and the bills were stacking up fast, particularly those for repairs to her money pit of a house. Seemed like something was always broken and falling apart. Luckily, Walt had offered her significantly more than the going rate.

She unclipped Walt’s most recent tax return, settling back on the sofa with her feet on the table, the only way she could actually get comfortable these days.

After the accident, she’d been forced to quit her job while she recovered and started rehab. Getting around was still difficult. Sitting in an office chair for eight hours straight would have been torture. Her only realistic option for income had been freelance accounting, but she’d been out of the game for a while. Building up her own clientele list would take time.

She hoped this job would help speed that along. Staying in this house alone had never been the plan. Paying the bills and maintaining the place was becoming more and more difficult. Bottom line, she needed this account, needed to do a good job and get it done fast so she could get paid and hopefully get more accounts on Teedle’s recommendation.

She pulled up one of several spreadsheets she’d created on her laptop. This was where she’d crunched all the critical numbers. With any luck, she’d complete the audit well before the Christmas Eve deadline. If only she could concentrate.

If only that damned dog would stop barking.

The sound was slightly muffled but still plenty loud enough to kill her concentration.

Cassidy glanced through the window to her neighbor’s house. John Freeman was overseas in the military but occasionally rented out his home while he was gone. Two nights ago, she’d woken to the sounds of vehicles pulling in next door but hadn’t seen anyone outside since. There was no vehicle in the driveway, although John’s new renter could have stored a car in the garage.

Whoever he or she was, apparently they were one of those irresponsible, insensitive jerks who left their dog completely unattended while they were away all day. This was a sparsely populated, heavily wooded area, and most of the houses in her neighborhood weren’t all that close together. Naturally, she had to live thirty feet from the one with the incessantly barking dog.

As she always did, she opened the side table drawer, pulled out the external hard drive she stored there, and plugged it into her laptop. She’d learned the hard way that backing up new work saved a lot of wasted time and effort. Nothing like putting in hours of number crunching only to wake up the next morning to a crashed laptop and everything she’d been working on gone forever.

After the sync was complete, she unplugged the device and deposited it back in the drawer. The barking grew louder. Two more minutes passed before she snapped her laptop closed and let loose a groan that sounded like one of those baby tigers she’d watched on Animal Planet.

Something crashed—glass. The barking grew even louder, as if the dog was heading right toward her front door.

She grabbed her cane, leaning on it heavily to support her weight as she stood. Pain shot through her knee to her hip, and she hissed in a breath, waiting another second for it to subside to its customary dull throb. Finding a new physical therapist was now at the top of her New Year’s resolutions list.

The barking continued as she very ungracefully hobbled to the window and pulled aside the sheer curtain. “What in the world…?”

One of the ground floor windows on her neighbor’s house was broken, with a gaping hole in the center. The alarm hadn’t gone off, and she knew her neighbor had one installed before he’d left for his last tour. If this was the handiwork of a burglar, he—or she—needed to find another day job.

She turned to grab her phone from the hall table and call the police. More barking, and this time she was positive the animal was right outside her door. Groaning with every step, she clumped to the front door and opened it, jumping back and nearly falling flat on her butt. Her heart pounded as she took in the enormous, scary-ass white German shepherd prancing nervously on the other side of the glass storm door. Spots of blood dotted the dog’s face, neck, and shoulders. Every ear-splitting bark exposed long, sharp incisors.

With her free hand, she grabbed the doorknob for balance, looking from the dog to the neighbor’s broken window. That could explain the blood. But why would the dog have done that?