Hold On (Delos Series Book 5) by Lindsay McKenna Read Free Book Online Page A

slurping up the hard candy, licking their small fingers and smiling as they enjoyed their treats. He would remain with the girls until they finished their candy, because if he didn’t, the boys would try to come and take it away from them. And more than a few were looking longingly his way.
    Beau gave them a dark, unspoken look of warning that they were not welcome. The boys remained sitting, squirming, but no longer fighting among themselves. Matt handed out one piece of candy to each of them. Beau chuckled to himself, glad he’d gotten the girls. They were far easier to work with than those wild little boys.
    He happened to lift his head and was surprised to catch Callie staring at him. He wasn’t sure what the look on her face meant, but he smiled over at her and she promptly turned and left the room.
    Beau wanted to tell her how pretty she looked this morning in her purple turtleneck sweater and dark gray cotton trousers. She wore her red hair in a long ponytail down her back, and he itched to slide his fingers through that molten crimson mass.
    His dreams had been torrid last night, and he’d awakened this morning with a painful hard-on. Even worse, he’d also awakened with an ache in his heart—for Callie. This was clearly going to be about more than sex.
    Unconsciously, he rubbed the area of his chest where his Kevlar vest rested. Callie was a complicated person, and Beau understood her distrust of men in general. Of course, getting hit on all the time was nerve-wracking, not to mention infuriating, to a woman. He remembered his father telling the boys one time how he’d met their mother. Amber had been beautiful, fawned over and chased by every boy on Black Mountain, when she was in her early twenties. Beau remembered how his father, who was a patient man, had gotten her to choose him over all her other suitors. He had treated her with respect, never tried to sneak a kiss from her, and took her on long walks instead, talking to her about what was important to her. What were her dreams? Her goals? What made her happy? What made her laugh?
    His father was a wise man, Beau decided, and he swore he would apply that same philosophy to Callie.
    “Here.”
    Looking up, he saw Callie was holding out a washcloth. “You’ve got a bunch of little girls with sticky fingers, Gardner. Clean them up so they can come and get breakfast, okay?” She smiled one of the sweetest smiles he’d ever seen.
    He grinned crookedly and thanked her. One by one, Beau dutifully cleaned every pair of little hands thrust up into his face. It took about ten minutes, but the girls’ mouths and hands were wiped clean of candy. He shooed them down the hall to the kitchen, and they ran like little wild horses, their hair flying behind them, giggling and laughing.
    It lifted his spirits as well. Children were innocent. They needed protection and support. Sadness moved through Beau, because all of these children had been ignored by their villages and left to starve to death. They had no place to go. If he could have, Beau would have adopted the whole brood of them, but that wasn’t reality. And it broke his heart, because their lives in this harsh corner of the world were never going to have happy endings.
    Matt was busy schooling the wayward boys, and it was clear that they were listening to him. Beau smiled to himself, watching his sergeant speak to the boys in Pashto like a native. He was a good leader, not one who used bullying tactics to get them to do what he wanted.
    Beau had seen real changes in the boys since he’d been at the orphanage, and it was all thanks to Matt. He had stopped the boys from hitting or attacking the girls, which was a huge triumph. As the last boy left and walked, instead of raced, down the hall, Beau sauntered over to Matt. The boys and girls were now integrated at the tables. These boys were going to learn to respect the girls. It was a good lesson for both genders as far as he was concerned.
    Matt pointed with