Page 3 of Stolen By the Billionaire
In warfare, the larger force dictated the rules of engagement.
US Navy SEALs were always the smaller fighting force, so a Navy SEAL was taught that they must break the rules to win.
Blaze knew how to break the rules. All the rules. Every time.
Mary Varvara Bell had threatened him, so he’d threaten something of hers.
2
The Family Farm
Sarah
Sarah Nevaeh Bell walked out of her farmhouse and blinked at the fiery red sun swelling in the cornfields on the eastern horizon. Cloud wisps wrapped the sky with gauze, slashes of peach soaking up the red-hot sunrise.
Weak cirrus clouds meant no rain again, but no tornadoes, either.
She trudged toward the barn, her boots stomping on the sunbaked ground laced with cracks.
As she passed her chicken coop, an enormous Great Pyrenees dog meandered out to greet her. The thick white fur on his back and legs looked gray-orange in the red-tinted early sunlight.
Sarah bent and held out her hand as he lumbered over. “Hey, Remi! How are the chickens this morning?”
Something was wrong with Remi’s mouth.
His white-furred face looked swollen, and his jaw was sagging lower than normal.
Oh no. Not another vet bill.
Sarah hurried over to the dog, who was the size of a ram and could stand up with his paws on her shoulders to look over her head.
He stopped walking and waited for her.
Her nerves rattled. “Remi? You okay, boy?”
Remi was a working dog, the guardian of the chickens, and he’d fought off coyotes, foxes, and the occasional rattlesnake, all without more than a few scratches and a rabies booster.
But his face looked misshapen, like he’d dislocated his jaw or worse.
She was praying, her heart pounding, by the time she reached him and buried her fingers in his thick fur. “Remi?”
Remi spat a yellow chick out of his mouth onto her boots.
The chick stumbled around, peeping frantically, matted with dog slobber but otherwise fine.
Sarah scooped it up and examined the dog-breath-stinky bit of fluff. “You okay, little guy?”
The chick glared up at her with its beady black eyes and tried to dive off her palm, even though it would have broken its fool neck if it hit the ground.
She juggled the chick as it flopped in her hands, seeking escape and probably certain death. Only when the doofus thing was caged between her fingers did it finally settle down and snarl at her with its gaping beak.
Remi, his job of rescuing the lone chick finished, smiled up at Sarah and panted.
She beamed at him. “Good dog, Remi! Such a good boy. You knew this dingbat chick would have died of hypothermia last night after escaping its nest, didn’t you? I think they’re making these chickens dumber and dumber every year. Come on. Let’s see which of those broody hens is missing a chick, huh?”
Remi led her to the henhouse, where Mrs. Little was sitting on only four chicks. Sarah shoved the eloper under the momma chicken and got pecked for her trouble. While there, she collected three eggs from the other hens and set them in the egg basket to take back to the house.
Outside the henhouse, Sarah loved up Remi for a few minutes because he was, indeed, a very good dog for keeping the wayward chick warm in his mouth all night long without chewing it even a little. He wandered back to the coop after covering Sarah’s jeans in white fur, and she resumed walking toward the barn.
