You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)

You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)

Lexi Blake




PROLOGUE





Fairfax County, VA



Phoebe looked up at the house with no designs on actually living there. Yeah, she wasn’t an idiot. This place was way too nice for a group home. It was a two story with big columns. Colonial. She’d read that in some book. She liked books. Books didn’t lie to her for the most part. They didn’t say one thing when the social worker was around and then smack her face the minute they were alone, so all in all she preferred books to the real world.

Also libraries were pretty f*cking awesome because they didn’t give a shit that you didn’t have the money as long as you managed to turn the books back in on time. Phoebe always turned her books in on time.

A book from a library was the one thing she wouldn’t steal.

Everything else was fair game and once she was inside, she would look around to see what her sticky fingers might be able to grab. After all, her eighteenth birthday was only three years away. A girl had to plan for that grand moment when she went from foster care to homelessness.

“Could you try to smile?” Alicia wasn’t bad as social workers went. She was a lovely woman with caramel-colored skin who seemed to actually get that it sucked to be Phoebe.

“Could you try to not sell me to some weirdo pervert who’ll make me do sex tapes and lick his big toes?” Yeah, just because Alicia wasn’t so bad didn’t mean Phoebe wouldn’t give her shit.

Perfectly brown eyes rolled and Alicia frowned as she parked the very boring sedan she’d probably paid a whole two years worth of shitastic salary for. “I’m serious, Phoebe. Franklin Grant isn’t the usual foster dad. He’s very wealthy and very private, and over the years he’s taken in exactly two kids and he adopted them both. You’re the third he’s shown an interest in.”

“Why?” That information sent every spidey sense she had tingling because she knew damn well that too good to be true usually meant she got her ass kicked in some way.

Alicia’s jaw firmed. “He has to talk to you about it. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure exactly what he does for a living but I know he works for the government and he has a security level that means I can’t even read his records. Usually this is a very long process, but if he decides to take you, you’ll be adopted within the next six weeks and you’ll have a family, Phoebe. He’s promised to pay for your education and set up a trust fund for you if you agree to his terms.”

Her gut dropped. What the hell were his terms? Who used a word like “terms” when it came to adopting a kid? Alicia talked like she had a choice, but Phoebe knew better. She hadn’t had a single choice since the day her mom had overdosed on heroin and her dad had chosen to not take her in. Her father. He’d had a new family and the new wife didn’t want Phoebe around her kids. It hadn’t been a big shock. She hadn’t seen her father in years but she’d still stood in his doorway praying he would let her in. She’d been seven years old and she’d seen her half siblings from the doorway before their mom had scooted them away like Phoebe was something dangerous.

It had been Alicia who held her hand and walked her away. Alicia had driven her to the first of a seemingly endless line of foster homes. She couldn’t even remember some of their faces and others she would never forget. But Alicia had been the constant. She knew other kids got shuffled through social workers as fast as they did homes, but Alicia had always been there. She counted on Alicia.

Though she tried not to cry ever, the hated tears were suddenly in her eyes. “Are you selling me?”

She’d heard it could happen. Especially when no one in the world cared about what happened to a girl. Foster care kids ran all the time. No one gave a damn to find them.

Alicia turned to her, her jaw dropping open. “What? Phoebe, no. Honey, this man is interested in you because of your IQ scores. I have some suspicion he works for the NSA or the CIA. Do you understand? I think you’re being recruited. If that scares you we can turn the car around and nothing and no one will make me bring you here again.”

Phoebe looked out the window. It was a sunny day and the big colonial house stood out against the brilliant blue sky. In the distance, she could see a pasture with a couple of horses. The whole setting was peaceful and so foreign to a girl who’d grown up in some of DC’s worst slums. What would it be like to wake up to green grass and trees?

She was scheduled to enter a group home in six weeks and after she aged out she would be on her own. There would be no education for her. There would be a fast food restaurant job if she was lucky enough to find a place to live. There would be years and years of trying to get by. There would likely come a time when she was desperate enough to try a little of what her mother had in order to get a moment’s respite from how shitty life was. She would be in and out of prison until she finally took too much and found the place where all junkies went.

Wasn’t anything worth trying if it meant a shot at getting out of this life?

“You said his name was Franklin?” Like the turtle. When she’d been younger, she’d read the Franklin books. Even when her mother had been alive, she’d hidden in books. She’d taught herself to read at the age of four, and one of the moms in the tenement they’d lived in had been a kindergarten teacher and lent Phoebe books. Franklin. Arthur. The Berenstain Bears. It was stupid, but the fact that this man’s name was comforting helped to calm her.