Risking It All

“I never get involved with bad boys like you.”

His hand closed around hers. She liked the power of his grip, decided that she might want to feel his hands on other parts of her body, too.

“Well, that’s good,” Cash replied, “because I don’t get involved with good girls.”

“How do you know I’m a good girl?” Rina asked.

“Trust me. I know.” He grabbed her arm when she pitched forward. “Let’s get you to your room safe and in one piece.”

“I’m not inviting you inside,” she said as she fumbled in her bag for the key.

“I think I should walk you back to your friend at the bar.”

“Why? So you can prove to everyone how uptight I am?”

“Now, that doesn’t even make sense,” he said.

“And neither does this.” Rina took Cash’s face in her hands and planted a bold kiss on his lips. His arms snaked around her waist and he deepened the kiss. She didn’t want him to stop. Ever.

STEPHANIE TYLER

writes what she loves to read – steamy romance with military heroes and happy endings. But she has long since given up trying to control her characters, especially the Navy SEAL alpha males. She lives in New york with her husband and her daughter. you can find out more about her by visiting her website, www.stephanietyler.com.

Dear Reader,

Pushing limits, going to extremes, taking risks… all of these things were going through my mind as I began to write Risking It All.

When Cash, a Navy SEAL who likes to indulge in big-wave surfing, walked onto the scene in my debut Blaze® novel, Coming Undone, I knew I had to find him a heroine of his own. So what happens when you mix a woman who’s afraid to take risks of her own with a man whose whole life involves taking himself to the very edge of danger?

Rina Calhoun is a driven documentary filmmaker focusing on seemingly ordinary people who do extraordinary things, always wondering what drives them to the extreme and wishing she could follow suit – and her dreams.

Since I’m a big believer in following your dreams, no matter how impossible they may seem, here’s to risk-taking! And, of course, falling in love…

Enjoy!

Stephanie

PS I love hearing from readers – please come on over and visit me at www.stephanietyler.com!

RISKING IT ALL

BY

STEPHANIE TYLER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Zoo, for always being my hero.

1

THE MAN THE OTHER SURFERS called Cash was about to bring Rina Calhoun to an orgasm and he wasn’t even in the same room. Not in person, anyway.

She had to remember to thank him for that. Later. After she was done watching him fly through the deep blue waves in all his perfect, lean-muscled glory on the celluloid big screen. After she’d caught her breath and composed herself, since she’d already locked the door and turned down the lights completely, and after she’d made her own copy of this segment of the videotape to take home with her for those long, lonely nights.

Whoever said documentary filmmaking had loftier, more satisfying rewards than making money was definitely onto something.

Someone that talented on a surfboard, someone with that much…balance, well, such prowess had to extend to other areas, didn’t it? The thought of that extreme talent translating into the bedroom made the small area, where she’d been working all afternoon, suddenly stifling. In spite of the air-conditioning. The film equipment, which included various industrial computers, always ran hot, but this was ridiculous. She pulled her long hair back and off her neck and fanned herself with the folder that held the contract and terms of the short documentary.

Where on earth did the cameraman find this guy? He was the best part of this footage, which was saying a lot since it focused on filming some of the biggest waves she’d ever seen and the surfers crazy enough to hang ten on them.

Cash’s segment focused on demonstrating the evolution of the sport into something called extreme surfing. The cameras had followed him and others as they were towed into the most dangerous waters she’d ever seen, and showcased them riding the waves out. And occasionally, wiping out. Hard.

Very, very hard chest. And arms. And abs.

She couldn’t stop following his every single move. He mesmerized her by the way he swam, talked, moved as if he walked on water and owned those waves. In command and in control, the type of man she’d always fantasized about, but was never able to find in real life. Because, in the light of day and off the screen, most of the bad boys she’d met were really just plain bad, and did nothing to live up to their hype. The only thing they did tend to do was believe their own press. That was part of the reason she went for the calmer ones, with steady, regular jobs and steady, regular techniques in bed.

Which was why she was still unattached and unsatisfied. The perennial, hard-working good girl. And all work and no play was smothering her, until today.

She fiddled with the knobs on the control panel, bringing in sharp contrasts between the waves and Cash. She used a series of slow-motion special effects to make it appear that the wave was spraying the viewer the way it had apparently sprayed the camera screen. Zoot, the cameraman, must’ve been very close to the action on this one. And she could tell that filming Cash had been a last-minute decision, since Zoot’s attention, and the bulk of the film he’d dumped on her, had been of jet skiers and body boarders.

This video was the intended fourth in a series of documentaries, all of which fell under the heading, Going to the X-treme: Bigger, Faster, Better. This portion of the series dealt with the extreme side of water sports. She’d been the editor for the entire series, which included segments on drag racing, parachuting and bungee jumping. But nothing she’d seen so far in her year on this project brought her as close to the edge as Cash had.

She didn’t understand how something that dangerous could still hold the moniker of sport, but she had to admit that watching it was exhilarating. To actually be the one on the surfboard must be an adrenaline rush like nothing she’d ever considered experiencing.

She rewound the tape again, added a graphic and, save for the sound sweetening, she was done with the rough cut of the last segment. The most important segment, the piece that was always completed first, since it set the tone of the entire video for the editor. The piece that had to be shown to Vic for approval, because even though he trusted her, he was a control freak, and ultimately, the one in charge.

The doorknob rattled, and a voice called, “Are you alone in there?”

“Sort of,” she called back, and propelled the chair on wheels across the short distance to unlock and open the door. Stella Taylor stood on the other side balancing containers that held their lunch and two sodas. She wore a bikini, a pareo and smelled like suntan lotion.

“Oh, good, I’m starving.” Rina grabbed the food from Stella and placed it on a desk, away from all the equipment. She took one of the cold sodas and placed it against her cheek. “I see you’ve had time for the beach.”

“Hey, I needed to go over the post-production script. I needed light. And you’re way too preoccupied with your work,” Stella said, as only Stella could. Immediately, Rina knew her friend was morphing from scriptwriter to budding mystic and astrologer, and prepared herself for the coming lecture.

“Funny, I thought we were sent here to work,” she countered.

“All work and no play will not help your aura. You need another outlet.”

“You’re not going to pull out the tarot cards again, are you?”

Stella eyed her. “You don’t need a reading, sweetie. You need to get laid.”

“Enough.” She put her hand up before her friend could continue. “I don’t need sex right now. I need to finish this video because we need to get our grant.”

She did not want to edit X-treme videos for the rest of her life. The money and the experience were both great, but it was all just a stepping stone to the big prize—the annual grant contest sponsored by the World Film Organization.

Rina wanted to showcase people who made a difference in the world, and by doing so, she’d also be making a difference. It was her Uncle David’s legacy, a continuation of the work he’d started but had never completed. By submitting part of this footage, along with pieces she’d shot herself and Stella’s narrative in a mini-film version of this particular X-treme video—well, this would be the most important part of their grant application.

“And we will get it. But you really need to give your karma a shine. And I think he’s exactly the one to give it to you.” Stella pointed to the freeze-frame close-up of Cash, and Rina cursed herself for not turning off the footage before opening the door.

“My karma’s fine.”

“Your karma hasn’t been cleansed, so to speak, in over six months, and even then it wasn’t properly shined.”

Leave it to her friend to bring up her last relationship, which Rina could admit to herself was less than satisfying on many different levels. “I’ll bypass the bad boys. You go for it.” But even as she said it and motioned to Cash, her stomach tightened.

You’re pathetic.

“So you’re telling me that this guy does nothing for you?” Stella asked, arms crossed as she continued to stare at Cash’s image.

“I didn’t say that. But he’s not my type.”

“Because he’s not boring and predictable?”

“I prefer to think of my past boyfriends as stable.”

Her friend sniffed indignantly. “Many of the men I’ve dated are stable.”

“Yeah, sure. That’s a word I associate with a grown man who skateboards off the roof for fun.”

“I’ll have you know that Dan did that because he was practicing a new stunt. Besides, we broke up and I know you too well. Whenever you want to avoid talking about your love life, you bring up mine. Nice try, though, but I think that surfer’s definitely the one to break your dry spell.”

“The only thing he’s going to do is help me make this video the best one yet. And I thought you’d agreed to swear off bad boys to cleanse your own karma?” she countered, and Stella sighed with momentary defeat.

“Did you get the end done?”

“I did. And you’ve got to see it.” Rina rewound the tape to the spot, as she’d done at least a hundred times in the last hour or so.

Stella glanced at the screen where Rina had paused the video on an image of Cash, full-on, staring straight ahead toward the camera and smiling. Then Stella stole the remote from Rina’s hand while simultaneously pushing Rina’s chair out of the way to get a closer view. “I can’t wait to write this copy,” she murmured.

“Hey, I’m not done editing yet.” Rina snatched the remote back out of her friend’s hand. “Besides, don’t you have our grant proposal you’re supposed to be finishing up?”

Stella sat down, opened her sandwich and still didn’t take her eyes off the screen. “It’s all finished. The only thing left to include is a copy of the most kick-ass piece of work we’ve got.”

“It’s this one, Stel.”

“Nothing at all to do with the hottie on the board, right?”

Rina grinned. “Maybe just a little.” But she certainly wouldn’t do anything about it. A fantasy never hurt anyone—it was when you got to know the guy that the fantasy was ruined. Keeping him on screen guaranteed that he’d stay the perfect man. It was easier that way. She didn’t need to get bogged down in a bad relationship, couldn’t afford to have her focus torn away now, when she and Stella were so close to realizing their dream of being their own bosses.

Rina wasn’t the type to have her head turned by a pretty face anyway. Part of it was her inherent shyness, and the other part was the intensity with which she approached her work. It was an odd combination that didn’t sit well with many men. Or any men, if her past relationships were a means to judge.

Instead of spending time looking for love and having relationships, she and Stella had been furiously dedicated to getting the funding to one day make the documentary that would put their partnership on the map. Rina had been involved in documentary filmmaking since she’d graduated college, and she’d taken internships while she’d still been in school. She’d met Stella on one of those jobs, both of them nothing more than glorified gofer for the gofers, but in between coffee runs and changing camera batteries, they’d bonded. And they’d learned everything they could about short filmmaking.

The main topic of their shared thesis for the grant proposal dealt with the psychology of danger, and showcasing the way that ordinary people were pushed to do extraordinary things. So getting a chance to work on this X-treme series was a fantastic wrap-up session for both of them.

“Your uncle would be proud of you, Rina.” Stella smiled at her, put a hand on her shoulder, and Rina knew Stella was right. Her Uncle David had been the one to put the camera into her hands in the first place, the one to show her how and why pitch was important, the one to recognize her talent for drawing people out in front of the lens.

David had been killed by a land mine while filming a rebel outbreak along the Western Tanzanian border where it met Burundi when Rina was just fifteen. He’d also been one of the earliest journalists to embed with troops, long before the term was actually coined and the concept became popular.

Things were never the same in her family after that. Her mother tried to put her children in a protective bubble, especially after Rina’s father died a few years later and her aunt went wild and ended up impulsively marrying a Navy SEAL who was as much, if not more, of a wild man than her uncle had been.

And Rina had done a little of both extremes, a little pushing of boundaries and then retreating to safety. And, as much as she wanted the grant proposal to go through, as much as she wanted to travel and see the world and meet extraordinary people—people who made a difference—and continue her uncle’s work, she was scared.

One year behind the camera on projects that pushed men and women to their physical limits and beyond hadn’t helped matters any. A good filmmaker had to keep an emotional distance from the subject on the other side of the lens, and her fear of getting involved, pulled in to any of that, helped a great deal on this project. Impartiality, being able to look at what the subjects were doing with a critical and non-judgmental eye, was crucial.

Rina wasn’t sure what had happened when she saw Cash, but nothing would beyond watching the tape pretty often over the next few weeks, anyway.

Her uncle would have pushed her hard to get that grant as soon as possible to go into Africa and begin shooting the first segment in the proposal. And she was scared to death at the thought of moving forward like that, and of telling her mother her plans.

Cross that bridge, and a few oceans, when you get to it. Her uncle had been passionate enough about his work to put himself out there, at risk. When the time was right, she’d need to rise to the challenge. Until then, just getting to that opportunity took up her focus.

“My uncle would be out there on the board himself,” she said.

“Maybe that surfer could show you a few moves. Loosen you up and remind you that there’s more to life than what happens behind the scenes.”

“I’ll leave the wild-child act to you, okay?”

Stella shook her head. “Well, at least hurry up and show the video to Vic. Like, this afternoon would work,” Stella urged.

“Not going to be a problem,” she murmured, more to the man named Cash than herself, who still smiled at her from the screen. “Not going to be a problem at all.”

“WE’VE GOT A not-so-small problem,” Vic said, and her heart sank.

Rina stared at her boss, who’d managed to find the loudest Hawaiian shirt she’d ever seen and pair it with bright orange swim trunks. How everyone else on this project managed to slip time in for vacation while she’d been holed up in this cubicle was beyond her, but now wasn’t the time for complaints. “Okay. Tell me.”

“This is shaping up to be the best video in the series. The best work you’ve ever done,” he said, and she waited, held her breath because so far she hadn’t heard anything that constituted a problem. “But Zoot’s assistant never got a release form from one of the surfers. That guy named Cash.”

Without a signed release form, she wouldn’t be allowed to use Cash’s face on film. These days, many people even balked at being a faceless image on a screen, and Vic insisted on signed releases for everyone captured on film in his video productions.

Her stomach sank and she could literally feel her big chance slipping through her fingers. She fisted her hands in an attempt to stop that from happening.

“Are you sure? Maybe the paperwork just got misplaced.” She heard the panic in her voice and she wished Stella was here with her instead of with Zoot in a jeep headed to the other side of the island.

“I’m sure. You’ll have to cut him out.”

“Vic, cutting him out is going to ruin everything,” she said. Everything. It would also require days of work, and the video just wouldn’t have the same impact.

Cash’s face—and her career dreams—flashed before her eyes. To have to hire a big-name surfer would cost money the production company didn’t have, and their focus on this particular line of videos was not to showcase pros, but rather, rabid fanatics of the sport who wanted to turn pro and devoted all their time and energy to it.

“I don’t see any other choice.”

“I can track him down,” she said, and Vic sighed and shook his head.

“The footage was shot only yesterday morning over in Oahu, near the Pipeline,” he offered reluctantly. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll find him there.”

“How could Zoot and Keith forget to get a release?” she asked, because the main cameraman on this series was usually far more on-the-ball about these things.

Her boss shrugged. “Keith said one minute the guy was there, and the next, he was gone.”

It was worth a shot trying to track him down. Because this film—this great film—was getting submitted as part of her grant proposal. The film was the part of the package that everything hinged on.

No way was she letting this go down without a fight. “Besides yesterday’s location, any idea where I could start to look?”

Vic handed her a piece of paper. “This guy runs a surf shop. Supposedly, he knows everybody who’s anybody in that area. If your surfer’s a regular, you might have some luck.”

“I KNOW CASH,” the man the natives called Bobo said.

Rina clutched the counter so hard she thought she’d leave dents. “Do you know where I can find him? This is really important,” she told him, but suddenly, everyone in the crowded surf shop seemed to have some sort of opinion on her wayward subject.

“Cash doesn’t live on the island. Dude comes here a few times a year to surf,” another man called out from the back of the store where he was setting up a display of surfboards.

“No one knows what his deal is, but the man can hang ten with the best of them. Could go pro if he wanted to.”

“Rumor has it he’s rich as hell, living off his inheritance and beach-bumming around the world,” surfboard display guy said.

“Another rumor says he’s got some kind of criminal past and he’s island-hopping and hiding from the feds,” a customer added, while Bobo rang up his purchases.

“I’m not sure you’re his type.” A tall, cool blonde, the opposite of everything Rina was, approached the counter and looked her up and down. “He likes blondes.”

“Don’t listen to her—she thinks everyone likes blondes,” Bobo said. “Cash is equal opportunity with women. He likes them all.”

“I’ll just bet,” she murmured, because that was par for the course with the men in these videos. Rina had learned from Stella’s example, since her friend had found out the hard way. She’d fallen for one of the drag racers from their first documentary in the series. It had been one of those “you’re so perfect for me, baby” scenarios, which left Stella floating on air. Until the creep never called her again.

Stella decided to quit trying to find true love, and to stick with flings with bad boys. That way she kept her heart uninvolved, while Rina vowed to stay away from guys all together. She realized that most people who did extraordinary things with their lives had problems staying in any kind of relationship—never mind long-term ones.

Taking risks with the camera was one thing, but taking risks in her personal life was another matter entirely.

According to her family, Rina’s whole career choice was a complete crapshoot, and far too risky for their tastes. They’d wanted her to do something safe, didn’t see her career for what it was—a calling. A love. Something she couldn’t possibly give up, even if she wanted to.

“Look, I don’t want to sleep with him. But I really need to find him as soon as possible,” she said, and explained about the video.

“Crews are always coming through here. You wouldn’t believe how often things like this happen. Cameras get so involved in filming that they forget the technicalities,” Bobo said, shaking his head as if it was all her fault.

“So, you can help me then?” she asked.

“Hang on a second,” he replied, rifling through some papers behind the counter. “Today’s your lucky day, lady,” he said proudly. “I’ve got some equipment on back order that I have to send to him. So I’ve got his address. His hotel’s address. But I’m not sure if I should give it out to you.”

“I’ll make sure your shop gets a lot of air time in the documentary,” she offered. “In fact, I think my cameraman interviewed you.”

“They all interview me.”

“This one had purple hair.”

“Now that one, I do remember.” He sighed. “I guess Cash can take care of himself. Just send me a copy of the tape when you’re done.”

She promised him she would, and once outside the shop, pulled her digital camera, complete with video capabilities, from her bag. She shot the shop at a few close-up angles that would fit in perfectly with what Zoot had captured so far, and then she worked it from across the road.

When Bobo himself stepped out of the shop and went into the small alleyway to the right, she got another great shot of him helping to unload what looked like surfing equipment from a serious-looking salesman.

The surf-shop owner was going to be thrilled at the exposure, she thought as she quickly copied the images onto two separate mini zip drives and stuck the originals in the small inner compartment in her bag. She’d lost film before, thanks to mechanical failure and other unforeseen events, but none of it had been nearly as important as anything to do with this particular video.

She wasn’t taking any chances on losing footage this time.

CASH’S CELL PHONE vibrated against his thigh, and he pulled the device out of his pocket and answered without bothering to look at the number. “Waves were killer,” he said, and the captain of the boat, who’d been out with him all afternoon while he tried to tackle some of those waves, gave him the thumbs-up.

Yeah, it was all about the image out here.

“Problem.” Justin’s voice crackled in his ear, the man’s drawl thicker, the way it always got when he was unhappy. “There’s some chick here taking pictures of our favorite man. Says she’s a documentary filmmaker.”

“Cool. Shouldn’t be a problem, dude,” he said, because the captain was still listening and because he knew it would annoy the crap out of Justin. One of them should be having some sort of fun this afternoon and dammit, it was going to be him.