Page 2 of Enticing Her Love

“Hopefully not for long. Take a seat.” She nodded to the chairs across from her desk and went to sit behind it.

Sutton lowered herself to a chair, feeling nauseous.

“I’ve noticed tension between you two, and I’m concerned it will affect the show.” Karen paused, as if waiting for a response.

Shitshitshit. There was no way Flynn would get canned over this, so Sutton lied to save her ass. “I’m not sure what you think you’ve seen, but things are fine between us, right, Flynn?”

He didn’t spare her a glance, his jaw ticking. “There’s no tension.”

“Then it sounds like I made the right decision,” Karen said. “I’ve changed your assignment. You’ll no longer be spending time with the tribe. The show is now focusing on the two of you surviving three nights—seventy-two hours—in the Amazon rainforest.”

“What?” Flynn snapped. “It took months to get the tribe’s approval. The show is set, focusing on the culture of the tribe and the conditions they live in, the challenges they face with the encroaching extractive industries, deforestation, poachers, and drug runners. You can’t just throw all that away for this.” This came out with so much venom, Sutton startled.

“It’s done,” Karen said with finality. “The leader has agreed to let you travel within their territory without a guide or a tribal member.”

Flynn’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have any idea how dangerous the rainforest is? How the hell am I supposed to keep the crew and her safe?” He dropped her like a curse. “None of them are trained for this. It’s a fucking death warrant.”

“I agree with Flynn,” Sutton said anxiously. “I’m not—”

Karen held her hand up. “Let me remind you how hard you both fought for this assignment. Sutton, when I met with you about the dangers of the rainforest and the possibility of you getting lost, hurt, or worse, you said you had done your research and knew the dangers, and you trusted Flynn to keep you safe. And, Flynn, when I addressed those concerns about Sutton and the crew, you insisted you had the expertise to ensure their safety. You promised to make sure the crew didn’t leave the camp without a tribal member and to stick by Sutton’s side every minute. I’m holding you to that. But I’m not unreasonable.”

Sutton exhaled loudly. “Oh, good. I thought you were seriously sending us in with only Flynn to keep us all safe.”

“I am serious,” she said. “I’m not unreasonable in thinking Flynn should be responsible for you and the crew, which is why the crew will not be joining you on this trip. There’s no need to risk more lives than absolutely necessary. Sutton, you’ll be reporting as usual, and, Flynn, you’ll be filming, and the camera will have a shotgun mic. I’m counting on you to keep her safe. But the ball is in your court. Are you two up for the job, or do you want to walk away from Discovery Hour?”

Sutton couldn’t breathe.

Flynn continued staring at Karen, the muscles in his jaw clenching. Sutton half expected smoke to come out of his ears. If he refused to do the assignment, she wouldn’t have to, and she might even get a new boss in the process. So she held her tongue.

He gave one curt nod and bit out, “Absolutely,” then turned those serious eyes on Sutton.

“Sutton?” Karen asked.

Hell no was on the tip of her tongue, but Flynn’s eyes held a challenge, and when she opened her mouth, “I’m in” came out.

Chapter Two

SUTTON DIDN’T KNOW which she wanted more, to give Karen a piece of her mind for sending them on this ridiculous trip, to smack the hell out of her infuriating boss, or to sleep for twelve hours straight.

She and Flynn were at the Guayaquil airport in Ecuador, awaiting the last leg of their twenty-plus-hour trip. What was Karen thinking, sending them into the rainforest alone, like some sort of freaking team-building mission with wild animals and deadly insects and poisonous plants? She’d told them there would be gear waiting at the Coca airport for them, including a satellite phone, two tents, a hatchet, a machete, a lighter, a flashlight, a net, two canteens, and a first-aid kit.

How about a gun and full-body armor?

It was the freaking Amazon rainforest for Pete’s sake.

Sutton was terrified about the trip, but she wasn’t about to let the man who was afraid of nothing in on her secret. Not that Flynn had shared any of his experiences with her. Just the opposite. He never talked about himself. Everything she knew about her boss came from researching him before she’d met him.

She’d learned he was the youngest person, at twenty-one, to win Wilderness Warrior by outlasting thirteen other contestants in Kenya, Africa. Rumor had it, when they came to extract him, he refused to leave, wanting to prove to himself how long he could last there. He’d also survived a month in the jungles of Indonesia by himself, tracked polar bears in Alaska, climbed Mount Everest, and accomplished many other near-impossible, dangerous feats. He’d banked a million dollars from the reality-show win and had gotten all sorts of notoriety, but then he’d disappeared for a number of years. By the time he’d emerged, he was no longer a headliner. There were all sorts of theories about why he’d disappeared, and people thought that made him mysterious. The media had even dubbed him the lost boy. But Sutton couldn’t care less about where he’d gone or why. All she cared about was why he was such a jerk to her, always pushing her to dig deeper, even after she’d practically dug to China, and never offering any words of praise.

She and Flynn had traveled together many times over the past year and a half, but it was always with a crew. Spending hours trapped in airplanes and airports with him was a new kind of hell. She’d rather be buried alive with tarantulas than spend three days with him anywhere.

She thought about where they were heading. She’d researched every little thing about the Amazon rainforest and what they would face during their visit with the tribe. Once she’d learned they’d be roughing it alone, she’d taken an even deeper dive into the dangers that lurked there. The rainforest was home to some of the largest species of tarantula.

Suddenly her pain-in-the-ass boss didn’t seem so bad.

But he was bad enough.

It was his fault there was tension between them in the first place. She’d had it with him and his unyielding demands and lack of niceties. Which was why she was focusing on her phone and attaching her résumé to an email that could hopefully get her an interview for her dream job as a reporter for Global News Now (GNN), one of the country’s leading news outlets, and get her out of her current untenable situation. Her finger hovered over the send icon, but she hesitated, thinking about the people she enjoyed working with at the World Exploration Network and the founders of LWW, who had given her a shot at reporting. Sutton had a bond with them through the Ladies Who Write sisterhood, which was like a sorority for women who liked to write, at Boyer University, where they’d all gone to college. The founders were older than her, but they’d not only founded the sisterhood prior to starting LWW Enterprises, but they’d eventually gone on to buy the house where the girls had lived at Boyer and had since helped many of them find their way in the professional world. She didn’t want to let them down.