Hold 'Em: Vegas Top Guns, Book 3 (14 page)

That was it. He didn’t say another word.

First came relief…then a twinge of guilt. She’d doubted him.

“Great,” Jon said. “Then you won’t get your ass lost on the way there.”

As the men took their leave, Leah followed with heavy steps. Mike slanted her another unreadable look. A tiny tilt of his head encouraged her to step away and talk to him as Ryan and Jon kept bullshitting.

She hooked her thumbs in the loops of her flight suit to avoid reaching for him. “Yes?”

His eyes had iced to that pale, pale blue. She was coming to learn him better now than she had during their long-ago three months. Back then, they hadn’t cared enough to get annoyed.

“Don’t pull that bullshit on me again,” he said, quietly enough that the words stayed close.

She didn’t want to talk about it. Not there. Not when she felt so raw at the edges. “Don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t try to bluff me.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his head, as if he missed his shaggy hair also. “It’s my ass on the line too.”

She bit the inside of her cheek then defensively crossed her arms. “I know. I’m just…tense.”

He laughed a little bit, flashing her one of his bright grins. One of the real ones. Laugh lines feathered out from his eyes. “You think you had a shitty day? Try being in my shoes.”

“You’ll get it.” She ran a finger down his forearm where he carried a lot of his stress. When he was really trying to hold back, his tendons stood out in stark relief. “It’ll just be a matter of time.”

“Trust me, I know.” A spark of amusement turned his eyes back to neon. “But if you want to give me some after-hours training, ma’am, I know just the place.”

“Behave. We’re not in the bedroom.”

“Much to my disappointment.”

The black coil inside her loosened enough to let her laugh. “I bet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After a mock salute, he swung onto his bike and put his helmet on. When the engine droned its heavy power, he slanted her a wicked smile. She wanted to hop on her own bike and ride alongside him, but she still had crap to deal with.

Instead she watched him peel out of the lot before turning back to Ryan and Jon. Both watched with matching expressions of amusement.

Jon leaned against his Aston, as if the paint job on the expensive machine didn’t matter in the least. “What’s up with you and Strap Happy?”

Leah choked. A stream of curses wove together in her mind. Trust Jon, the original kink, to figure out that something was up. So damn pervy, he picked up the tiniest little clue like some goddamn sex radar.

She coughed into a loose fist and tried lying. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Isn’t that the guy you banged forever ago? The one who didn’t think you could be a pilot?”

The back of her neck burned. She hadn’t realized she’d spilled that much about her old relationship with Mike. At least Jon hadn’t caught on to the current strangeness. Besides, he was like Fort Knox when it came to a friend’s secrets. Drop into a drunken stupor and confess endless stupidities, and she wouldn’t hear a word about it.

Unless he felt like giving her shit.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Dude,” Ryan spat, which was about as close as he ever came to cursing unless he was bombed. “That explains what happened when I introduced you two. If I’d realized, I wouldn’t have assigned him to you. Or invited him out with us.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. We’re…friends now. It’s all good.”

She’d be damned if that wasn’t more than half the problem. It was
all
good. Everything with him. Even the way he’d called her on her tensed-out bullshit.

Everything…except the way he obviously chafed under her command at work. But they
were
at work and would be for the foreseeable future.

If she could only keep the two halves separate, life would be perfect.

Chapter Sixteen

Paulie’s was a helluva lot more crowded than when he’d met Leah there previously. The long weekend must’ve given everyone time enough to make plans that didn’t involve a shady little dive. On a regular Friday night, though? It was packed. As Mike pulled in, freshly showered after another grueling day in the simulator, he could barely find a spot to park his BMW.

A grueling day to top off an absolutely punishing week.

He shook the engine’s vibrations out of his thighs and removed his helmet. Now it was time to relax.

Although he hadn’t yet flown, he was glad to have come this far with his squad mates. Lunches, briefings, maintenance checks—all provided opportunities to get acquainted with their culture. They were rowdy and slightly cynical, but a righteous sense of purpose permeated every exercise. Their role as Aggressors was to best prepare fellow pilots for combat. The goal was actually positive—building and preparing rather than destroying.

Almost against his better judgment, Mike enjoyed it.

That didn’t make his hours in the simulator any easier to stomach, or Leah dogging him for every mistake.

The exterior walls of Paulie’s vibrated with a heavy bass beat. Loosening the sour twist of his mouth, he resolved to put all of that aside. He found a casual sort of smile and pushed into the bar.

“Hey, Strap,” the major called, waving him over. “Pull up a chair.”

The gang, it seemed, was already there.

Mike sidestepped through the milling crowd toward where Fang sat with an adorable redhead nestled under one arm. Tin Tin was there too, leaning back with his cultured insouciance. Only his eyes gave him away, peering into every dark corner. Frankly, he made Mike nervous, but the guy was also invaluably smart and occasionally hilarious.

Plus he was Leah’s friend. There was no getting around the fact that being anywhere near her meant accepting two guys who’d already claimed pieces of her life and loyalty.

A waitress took his drink order as Mike sat, trying not to make it too obvious that he was looking for Leah. Her bike had been outside, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s a goddamn star some nights,” Tin Tin said.

Mike was about to ask what he meant when the younger man’s nod gave it away. At the front of the bar, perched on the little stage and flooded with white light, stood Leah. Eyes closed, she belted out a very convincing take on Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains”. The smoke-yellowed walls rattled as the music continued its rollicking pulse. Rather than be dwarfed by the strong music, Leah fed off its energy and channeled it into her performance.

All Mike could do was watch—as if the entire preceding week, with its shit-ton worth of frustrations, had never happened. He was back in his bedroom, kneeling before her. Only now he suffered the uncomfortable awareness that they were not alone. Every action and reaction would be fodder for her friends, for his new colleagues.

Perhaps that explained the band of sweat along his brow when she finished.

Applause from their table was the loudest, but Leah earned a good number of catcalls and shouts from the rest of the bar. She bowed a few times with a hand pressed against the dip of her V-neck halter. The stretchy black material hugged from her collarbones to the first flare of her hips, where a scant two inches of skin peeked out before dipping into the waistband of her hipster jeans.

“And now that the princess has descended from her throne,” Fang said, “I can introduce you. Cassandra Whitman, meet Mike Templeton—our latest whipping boy.”

Leah froze mid-motion in the process of taking a chair. Mike did his best to ignore that, as well as the chilling slice of awareness along his forearms.

He shook hands with Cass and forced small talk past numb lips. “The major’s a lucky man, I’m sure.”

She laughed, tucking a strand of that gold-red hair behind her ear. “Do we have to, Ryan? Really? Tell him rank is off the table around me.”

“You heard the lady.” Fang tipped his beer in mock salute. “Chill, Strap. After this week, I’m sure you’ve earned it.”

Leah had regained some of her composure, seated on the other side of Tin Tin. Her face was still flushed in the wake of her performance, but Mike noticed the tension around her eyes. Shit, this wasn’t going to be easy.

“Princess, you done busting his balls yet, or what?” Tin Tin asked. “I want him in the air and between my sights pronto.”

“Nope,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “Still more busting to do.”

Mike would’ve thought her too rigid right then to make a joke, but the laughter in her voice was obvious.
Come out and play
was what he heard. For the first time in four days, it almost felt possible. They were off duty now. They were there to have a good time.

Where it wound up was something he’d just have to wait and see.

“Major Fang, sir,” Mike said, grinning, “I think you should be advised that you have a sadist in your midst. The woman is
not
natural.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Tin Tin added.

Leah offered a sweet smile. “Aren’t you a mite young to be cursing, Jon? Your mommy will be most disappointed.”

Mike accepted his beer from the waitress and cooled his throat with a hearty swig. “Yeah, man, what are you, fourteen?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Fuck me,” Mike said. “That’s obscene.”

Tin Tin took a swallow of liquor from a simple tumbler. “Is that why the ladies insist on fixing me a nice cup of cocoa when I’m through making them scream?”

Cass
tsk
ed. “Jon, does Heather know you talk that way?”

He smirked, hitching an ankle across his knee. “Heather
loves
when I talk that way.”

“Wait,” Mike said. “You really have a girlfriend? I call bullshit.”

As if offended, Tin Tin frowned. “Girlfriend sounds so juvenile.”

“Well, that fits, jailbait,” Fang said with a laugh. “So she left you for the bright lights of London, eh?”

For the briefest of moments, Tin Tin’s nonchalance dropped. Mike detected something almost like…disappointment? Frustration? Or maybe he was imagining it because frustration, as well, had been his constant companion for days.

“Yup, on business for another two weeks. I tell her this stupid ‘be a successful director of auditing’ shit is really unnecessary now that she has
me
, but the bit of fluff won’t listen.”

A girlfriend. Who was some big-shot accountant. Mike could almost imagine an adult-video-store clerk or a twenty-year-old art student, but not a mature woman.

Leah rested her chin in her hands, batting her lashes at Tin Tin. “Does she know you sound so…wistful when she’s gone? Even though she’d deck you for being so patronizing?”

“Shut up, you. No need to get personal.” He paused for a rather menacing heartbeat. “Unless you want me to. Shall I ask how you’ve been filling your time lately, Miss Dr. Pepper All the Time?”

“You can ask, but you’re not getting anything out of me.”

Tin Tin waved a hand. “God, you’re cranky. What happened to the fun we used to have? Dragging your ass home from bar fights.”

“Holding your hair back as you prayed to the porcelain gods,” Ryan added.

Leah’s hands tightened around her glass. “Will you two can it? You’ll give Strap here a bad impression of me.”

“My impression can’t get any worse, Princess,” Mike said. “I already think you’re an evil harpy.”

“Harpy-hood is one of my many talents.”

Mike barely made out the words when Tin Tin said quietly, “You know I’m only teasing, right? You’re doing great.”

She slugged him on the arm.

Only after the shit-flinging had died down in favor of another karaoke song did Leah glance at Mike, as if testing the waters.
Yes
, he wanted to say.
We can do this. Just loosen up.

Then her eyes widened as she caught sight of his silver cuff.

Yes, he’d worn it on purpose. Yes, he’d hoped it might set her off. One way or the other. After the bad-as-dysentery time they’d been forced to endure at work, he needed something to grab back power.

The only problem was, Tin Tin caught the direction of her scowl. His eyebrow lifted. He shot a look between them.

Shit.

But much to Mike’s surprise, the young man only shrugged and signaled the waitress for another round.

Ryan banged his hand against the table. “All right, flying jackasses. Who’s up next? Jon, you set?”

“Nah, man. I was waiting for you to take a sledgehammer to my eardrums again.”

“You’re under orders now, Dimples. By God, get up there and entertain us.”

Cass added a whistle and raised her glass. “You’re lucky we’re permitting you to pick your own song this time. Just don’t screw up or it’s Gloria Gaynor next.”

“I
will
survive.” Tin Tin threw back the rest of his drink and jogged up to the stage.

Mike didn’t follow the younger man’s preparations for his turn at the mic because Leah had scooted over a seat. She was thigh to thigh with him so quickly that the blood dropped out of his head. Zero G. Just like that.

She clinked her glass against his near-empty beer bottle. “Congrats on surviving this long—in the simulator and in here.”