Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Alpha, Delta
SERIES: ARe Alphas
AUTHOR: R.J. Scott
PUBLISHER: All Romance
LENGTH: 66 pages
BLURB:
An ARe Alphas Release!
Officer Finn Hallan has never run from a fight. With Niall’s life and love at stake, he’s not about to start now…
Finn Hallan is a member of the elite Norwegian Emergency Response Unit, code name Delta. When the team is sent to respond to a hostage situation on an oil platform in the Norwegian Sea, he has to face demons he thought he had buried a long time ago.
Scottish engineer Niall Faulkner’s skills in oil platform decommissioning takes him to the Forseti platform at the worst possible time. When he’s captured by terrorists, his only thought is that he will never get to tell his lover how he really feels.
Can Finn keep Niall alive? Or will they both die at the hands of hijackers in the frigid waters of the Norwegian Sea?
REVIEW:
Wow! What a lot of action packed in to a short story!
This story is set in Norway, centering around an oil rig that needs to be decommissioned. A setting I’ve never read about before, and I found it rather interesting. Niall is an engineer from Scotland, he and his brother work for the organization NorsDev, and they are responsible for planning the decommissioning of the Forseti platform in the Norwegian Sea. Niall is speaking at a seminar when he meets Finn, a member of the Delta team (Norwegian Emergency Response Unit) who has been sent with a team-mate to sit in on the NorsDev safety seminar. Finn is from London, working with the ERU as some sort of rescue/negotiator/bad-ass….
The two men meet at the seminar, have what should have been a one night stand, but turns in to a sort-of relationship. The problem is they rarely are together. Between their work schedules they don’t spend much time together, and haven’t really defined their relationship. After a few months of sporadically meeting up, Niall is heading out to the Forseti platform for a couple of weeks when it is hijacked and the action really starts! And my plot descriptions stops!
So this is a short story at only 66 pages, and a lot is crammed in here. Overall I liked it, but it is just so rushed. There isn’t really any time to get to know these men, and although I liked them I wasn’t invested in their relationship. There is no history to them or between them, we see them together one night before the shit hits the fan. I understand this is a short story and I know there isn’t time to build a background for them, but it was just so fast…. I wanted to get to know them better and see them as a couple. Finn and Niall are great characters and their story was interesting, with a nice bit of action and a good ending. The writing was good, although there were a few editing issues, a couple of typos and a mix up in names. Not enough to ruin the book, but enough that I was aware of it.
I enjoyed this story and I’ll probably go look at the others in this collection!
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Chapter 1
“This is the second fucking time we’ve had to do this and I’m telling you now I’m not staying for the whole thing.”
Finn Hallan glanced over at his teammate and wondered if he should check him for any visible weapons. Erik was one of those guys who was never happy about sitting still, let alone in a meeting as seminar dealing with health and safety.
“Cap’s not going to like you backing out of this,” Finn warned. He was just as restless, too used to action and getting on with things instead of sitting here in a briefing room listening to changes in policy. Thing is, this shit was statutory and Cap had made Finn and Erik attend, in case there was anything important about oil platform safety. Finn was certainly not going up against Cap, and he knew Erik needed to keep his ass in the chair if he wanted to stay on the team.
Delta was a highly sought after group of people to join and if you made it you didn’t refuse to sit in meetings that you’d been ordered into.
“We need a serious emergency,” Erik groused. “A hostage negotiation or at the very least a terrorist threat.”
The woman in front of him turned and frowned at the words, but she took one look at both Erik and Finn and turned back to face the front. Finn knew they looked out of place. Both in the dark dress colours of the Delta uniform, not long off duty, they probably gave the impression of some kind of hardass security detail. Certainly not the kind of guys you told to shut up. She would know who they were, members of the ERU, codenamed Delta, and the ones who policed for terrorist activities in Norway and out into the Norwegian sea. Which, incidentally, was where most of these NorsDev employees in the briefing worked.
Erik grinned and raised his eyebrows suggestively before cupping his groin and looking pointedly at the back of the blonde’s head. Finn shook his head. She was a NorsDev exec and everyone knew the high-ups at the energy company had nothing to say to the ranks. If only she knew how much Finn and Erik could do for her if she was in trouble, if only she was aware of the kind of men they really were—ones who never sat still—then maybe she’d be a little more understanding of the boredom factor.
The presentation on the large screen at the front of the room switched to a new slide with a name in block capitals. NIALL FAULKNER. Not a name that Finn recognized and he couldn’t help the groan when he saw the line under the name. Platform Decommissioning Engineer.
“Oh Jesus fuck. Save me from nerds with clipboards and PowerPoints. I think my last brain cell up and died,” Erik muttered.
The speaker indicated the slide, “And now I’d like to hand it over to Niall Faulkner. Some of you will recall Niall was responsible for the X220 additions.” A ripple of murmurs around the room indicated that at least some knew what the hell that meant. Evidently this Faulkner guy was someone with a name at NorsDev. A man stood in the front row of the lecture theatre and made his way up the four steps to the stage, tripping on the last step and grabbing at the retreating previous speaker as he left. Luckily the new guy, Niall, Finn assumed, didn’t fall flat on his face, but he couldn’t help the smile on his face. It was funny shit seeing someone fall over.
Niall made his way to the lectern, looking down at his notes and shuffling them into some kind of order. The main spotlight flickered then focused directly on him and Finn had an instant gut reaction to the man on the stage.
Short and slim, with dark hair and glasses, he was the hottest safety officer Finn had ever seen.
“Woo boy,” Erik said under his breath. “You thinking he’s way to pretty to be a man?”
Finn didn’t dignify the comment with a response. Erik was the only member of the Delta team who knew Finn was gay and that comment was directly aimed at Finn and the fact Erik kept trying to get Finn hooked up with someone. Anyone.
“Not my type,” Finn lied very quietly. Actually, this Niall guy was pretty much the epitome of Finn’s type. Preppy with a side order of nerdy was just exactly what Finn liked under him, or over him, or hell, anyway which around him. And the glasses? Hell, glasses got him every time.
“You think he’s batting on your team?” Erik asked.
“Absolutely,” Finn deadpanned.
RJ Scott has been writing since age six, when she was made to stay in at lunchtime for an infraction involving cookies. She was told to write a story and two sides of paper about a trapped princess later, a lover of writing was born.
As an avid reader herself, she can be found reading anything from thrillers to sci-fi to horror. However, her first real true love will always be the world of romance where she takes cowboys, bodyguards, firemen and billionaires (to name a few) and writes dramatic and romantic stories of love and passion between these men.
With over sixty titles to her name and counting, she is the author of the award winning book, The Christmas Throwaway. She is also known for the Texas series charting the lives of Riley and Jack, and the Sanctuary series following the work of the Sanctuary Foundation and the people it protects.
Her goal is to write stories with a heart of romance, a troubled road to reach happiness, and most importantly, that hint of a happily ever after.
rj@rjscott.co.uk
www.rjscott.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/Rjscott_author
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www.tumblr.com/blog/rjscott (some NSFW (not safe for work) photos)
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