McKenzie, Cooper - The Soldier's Mate [Prequel to The Billionaire's Mate] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  Prequel to The Billionaire’s Mate

  The Soldier’s Mate

  When Angel Dugan agrees to befriend a deployed Army soldier who is getting ready to retire, she never expects to fall in love with him.

  Nick knew from the first picture he saw that she was his mate. But how does he tell her that he is an alpha shapeshifter without a pack or home? Will she accept him in all his forms?

  By the time they meet, two months into their relationship, each has fallen in love. Touching for the first time enhances the magic they’d shared via e-mails and web chats. But when Nick is called to meet the local pack council, will they deny him the right to settle with his new mate in New Bern? If they demand the soldier to move on, is his mate willing to go with him?

  Genre: Contemporary/Paranormal/Shape-shifter

  Length: 20,242 words

  THE SOLDIER’S MATE

  Prequel to The Billionaire’s Mate

  Cooper McKenzie

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to only ONE LEGAL copy for your own personal reading on your own personal computer or device. You do not have resell or distribution rights without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. If you do not want this book anymore, you must delete it from your computer.

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  THE SOLDIER’S MATE

  Copyright © 2010 by Cooper McKenzie

  E-book ISBN: 1-60601-996-1

  First E-book Publication: September 2010

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2010 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter from Cooper McKenzie

  Regarding Ebook Piracy

  Dear Readers,

  I love writing my books and interacting with you. I love imagining and creating the worlds and characters and situations found in my books. Writing is also my job and I work hard at it.

  I get upset when my books are pirated. This means that someone has stolen my work.

  It is illegal to pirate ebooks. Just because it’s easy to share someone else’s work for free, does not make it right, legally or morally. Pirating ebooks is no different than shoplifting from a store or robbing a bank.

  Please do not share this ebook with anyone. Do not send a copy of it to a forum, newsgroup, or file sharing site or auction it. Please do not give a copy of this ebook to anyone who has not bought their own copy from Siren-BookStrand or one of their legal distributor sites. Some readers think the sharing of a copyrighted ebook doesn’t amount to anything, but it does. It’s hurtful to me as a writer. It makes it difficult for me to continue writing. I have to support my family in some manner.

  Please respect my hard work and creativity and please do not pirate my ebooks.

  With deep gratitude,

  Cooper McKenzie

  DEDICATION

  To the baristas at New Bern’s Port City Java – thanks for putting up with me!

  THE SOLDIER’S MATE

  Prequel to The Billionaire’s Mate

  COOPER MCKENZIE

  Copyright © 2010

  Chapter 1

  Angel Dugan stepped from her car and checked her watch for the fifth time in the last three minutes. Everything had gone against her, and now she was late. Nick’s plane should have landed five minutes ago. Hurrying across the airport parking lot, she cursed the vanity that had her wearing high heels. She hoped they made her overly voluptuous body look a little longer and leaner, even though she hated them. As she’d told Nick, she preferred bare feet to shoes, but today was a special occasion. Nick was coming home.

  In their last e-mail, six impossibly long days before, she’d promised she would be waiting when he got off the plane. After two months of exchanging e-mails, chatting online, and finding they were so compatible it was eerie, they were finally going to meet in person for the first time.

  She crossed the sidewalk at a high-heeled teetering trot. When the automatic doors didn’t whoosh open fast enough, she paused mid step while fighting for balance. As soon as the glass panels slid wide enough for her to fit between them, Angel continued forward again. Once inside she looked at the single board that announced arrivals and departures.

  “Oh thank you,” she murmured after reading that the 10:24 flight from Atlanta had yet to arrive.

  “Can I help you, honey?” The question came from her right.

  Turning, Angel smiled at the older woman behind the ticket counter. “I thought I was late to meet the plane from Atlanta.”

  “Traffic out of Atlanta was delayed this morning. Should be landing in any minute now,” the clerk said.

  “And where will the passengers come in?”

  “Right there,” the woman gestured toward the wide hallway directly in front of Angel. You can’t go past the security checkpoint, but you can watch for him through the glass.”

  Angel nodded. “Thank you.”

  She didn’t bother to ask how the woman knew she was meeting a man. In New Bern, members of the military flew in and out daily. The staff probably saw a lot of homecomings.

  Once the clerk turned to help a young mother with two children, Angel headed for the restroom. She wanted to check her makeup one more time. Nick thought she was beautiful from pictures she’d sent, and the grainy webcam images he’d seen. She hoped he wasn’t disappointed with this first face-to-face meeting.

  Though she’d told no one but Nick himself, she’d fallen in love with him after their first few e-mails. He professed the same feelings and wanted to marry her as soon as they could. His plan was to retire from the Army and to spend the rest of his life spoiling her. That sentiment touched her battered heart and filled the empty place in her soul. No one had ever spoiled her before. She’d always been the one spoiling others. That was the one thing her ex-husband claimed to miss about her—that she always treated him like a king. But that was behind her. She’d promised Nick she would try to let go of the past and focus on what lay ahead of them.

  Nick. In just a few minutes she would be able to see him, touch him,
and hug him as she’d wanted to do since their first online chat ten days after she’d received his first e-mail. It had taken only a few messages back and forth for her to realize that, with all the billions of people in the world, she’d found her soul mate, thanks to her best friend, the incurable romantic.

  * * * *

  “You did what?” Angel stared over her coffee mug at her best friend, Carly Jenkins, as if she’d turned purple and sprouted another head.

  Their early Tuesday morning coffee meeting was a ritual they’d started just after Carly’s husband, Peter, had left the country six months before. They would share coffee, talk about their jobs, their joint volunteer efforts, and lack of male companionship. Carly’s was voluntary and only for a year, while Angel, at forty-two, had given up ever finding the right man to spend the rest of her life with. After her first marriage to the wrong man, she still believed in true love and soul mates, and refused to settle for anything less.

  “I gave your e-mail address to Peter to give to one of his friends,” Carly said, wearing a satisfied smile. Peter worked in Baghdad as a contractor for one of the oil companies.

  “What on Earth possessed you to do such a thing? Giving my address to a complete stranger, what were you thinking?”

  “He’s not a complete stranger. He’s a friend of Peter’s. He’s an American, a soldier in the Army, and a good man from everything Peter tells me. He’s divorced and getting ready to retire and return to the States. He’s looking for a good woman to settle down with.” Carly broke off another bite of the half-eaten cranberry nut muffin they were sharing and popped it into her mouth.

  Angel could see her best friend thought she’d done a good thing by sharing Angel’s personal information with someone halfway around the world. Closing her eyes, Angel took a deep breath and held it while counting to ten. Then she counted to twenty. When her lungs began to protest, she let the air out in a whoosh and tried to breathe normally.

  “Why did you give him my e-mail?”

  “You need a good man to love you and take care of you. Someone who will appreciate everything about you. You were never meant to be alone. You have too much love to give and passion to share with the right man. From what Peter tells me, Nick could be that man.”

  “But…” Angel wanted to make some excuse for why she couldn’t be interested in this man. The truth was she did want to meet someone. She’d wanted to meet someone since before the ink had dried on the final divorce decree. And men in uniform were the hottest kind of men. Being seven thousand miles apart meant he couldn’t demand sex until he returned to the States and they knew each other a lot better. Maybe, just maybe, this might work out. After all, if Peter was vouching for him, the man had to have some redeeming qualities.

  Taking another deep breath, she released this one with a sigh. “Alright. He can e-mail me, but I’m not promising to marry him or anything like that.”

  “I know you won’t be disappointed. Just give him a chance. Be honest about who you really are, what you are looking for, and everything will work out. I just know it,” Carly looked at her watch then gulped down the last of her coffee as she slid from her chair. “I’ve got to run. His name is Nick Nash.”

  “I’m not promising anything.” Angel gathered her own belongings before following Carly out the door. How did she ever let Carly talk her into these things?

  “Just be your sweet self and see where things lead. That’s all I’m asking.” Carly said as she climbed into her car. “Just give him a chance.”

  “I’ll try.”

  * * * *

  Angel stared at her reflection in the mirror and noted her makeup looked good, despite the fact the rest of her body was damp from the North Carolina summer’s heat and humidity. A raging case of nervous anxiety had claimed her when Nick informed her he was actually on his way to New Bern. She’d been certain he would back out, reconsider, change his mind, but he hadn’t. She tried not to look too closely at the lines that had begun to form around her eyes and over the top of her mouth, the lines that made her feel old and tired.

  Digging to the bottom of her purse, she found her lip balm and applied it — instead of the waxy lipstick that always dried her lips — so that her mouth looked dewy and moist. She didn’t think Nick would look good in the Berry-Berry lipstick anyway, and this first meeting was bound to include what she hoped would be the last first kiss of her life. She wanted it to be a good one and not marred by lip color on her man’s face.

  Swiping on the lip balm and rubbing her lips together, she smiled at her image in the mirror. Maybe Nick was right, and she was pretty. After all he said he had 20/15 vision, and she never had been a good judge of her own appearance.

  Turning away from the mirror, she hurried from the restroom when a barely understandable announcement broke the silence.

  “Flight 1024 from Atlanta is now landing.”

  It would be a few minutes before the passengers entered the building, but she wanted to be there waiting at the gate, just as she’d promised.

  * * * *

  Though exhausted from five days of traveling more than a third of the way around the world, Nick Nash could not stop grinning. The smile was so big, his cheek muscles hurt. It had been growing with each time zone he passed through, each takeoff, each landing. Finally he was only minutes from seeing the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with. The woman he’d only seen on his computer webcam and in pictures. The woman he had recognized even in two dimensions as his mate. He was glad Peter had urged him to contact her, even though meeting a woman had been the last thing on his mind. All he had wanted was to finish his tour, retire and find somewhere nice to settle down, preferably nowhere near an Army base or a desert.

  Once the plane stopped in front of the one-story brick terminal, it was hard to be patient while the other passengers gathered their things and slowly filed out of the plane. He wanted to shove them out of his way or jump over seats to reach the open door and get off the plane. He could feel his woman waiting inside, and he needed to get to her. Why hadn’t he thought of this and booked his seat in the front of the plane? He would have had more leg room and been first off the plane.

  With a deep sigh, Nick forced himself to calm down. Angel would be inside. She would be waiting for him, just like she’d promised. She had to be. Destiny would not bring him this far just to leave him disappointed because his mate had changed her mind. If she had, he would track her down and change it back using whatever means necessary.

  “Excited to be getting home?” The old man standing across the aisle asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Nick said, not wanting to be impolite, but also not interested in talking. Idle conversation would only further slow the process of getting off the plane.

  “Been gone long?”

  Nick nodded. “Too long. But I didn’t know about New Bern until two months ago.”

  “Really? So you’re not from around here?”

  “No, sir. My fiancée lives here, and I’ve come home to her. Where we live doesn’t matter to me as long as we’re together for the rest of our lives.” Nick felt his smile grow as he explained why he was excited to arrive at a place he’d never been before.

  “How did you meet her if you’ve never been here before?” the pink-haired teenage girl in the row behind them asked.

  “Online romance. Mutual friends introduced us.”

  “So you’ve never met her?” The man’s wife peeked around him to ask.

  “No, ma’am. We’ll be meeting for the first time as soon as I can get off the plane and inside the terminal. But we both know we’re meant to be together.”

  “Oh, how romantic,” the woman gushed before nudging her husband’s shoulder. “Harvey, get these people out of his way. He needs to go meet his girl.”

  Harvey glanced back at his wife then to the crowd inching toward the door. Before Nick could stop him, he took a deep breath.

  “Folks,” his loud voice filled the plane. “Could everyone please
clear the aisle? This here soldier needs to get off the plane so he can meet his fiancée for the very first time. Please, everyone, move out of the aisle, and let this hero through.”

  The request in that volume and tone reminded Nick of his own voice when ordering the men under him while in the field. Obviously, Harvey had some military training. Nick’s face burned as every single person between him and the open door moved out of the aisle and stared at him.

  Looking at Harvey, he nodded. “Thank you, but it really wasn’t necessary. I would have waited.”

  “Nonsense, boy. Now get moving. Your woman’s waiting,” Harvey smiled as his wife nodded. “And thanks for your sacrifice.”

  Nick nodded because he couldn’t think of a thing to say. With his carryon over his shoulder, he headed up the now empty aisle. Each person he passed smiled, patted his arm and said, “Thank you,” or “Welcome home,” or “God bless you.”

  What kind of friendly place had Angel brought him to? Never in all his travels around the globe had any one person been so kind, much less a whole planeload of people.

  He stopped at the doorway and turned back to face the plane. His cheeks burned as he said, “Thank you all.” Then he ducked his head and stepped out the door. Hot, heavy air surrounded him as he descended the metal stairs to the tarmac. He was used to the heat, but the humidity was something new. For a moment he wasn’t sure which he preferred the dry heat of the desert or this moist heat that seemed to rival a tropical forest.

  He collected his duffle bag and large suitcase from the lineup of luggage then headed to the glass doors, following the other passengers. His mate waited inside, and he couldn’t wait to meet her.

  Chapter 2

  Angel shifted impatiently as the first passengers from Nick’s flight entered the airport. The butterflies in her stomach suddenly multiplied and morphed into tap-dancing elephants. The queasy feeling threatened to send her racing sick for the restroom.

  She was just a few minutes from meeting the man she’d spent more time talking to online over the past two months than she had during the entire year she’d dated her ex-husband. Nick knew her better than her ex did, too. But was she really ready to meet him face to face? What if he had changed his mind? What if he wasn’t on the plane? Turning so she couldn’t see the passengers as they entered the building, she forced herself to take several slow deep breaths to calm down. She blinked rapidly to clear sudden tears from her eyes as well.