In Rides Trouble (11 page)

Robert Knight had left, bags in hand, that very afternoon.

“So who are you seeing?” she asked and, for a moment, he froze. Then he realized she was asking about his surgeon. Shell was in pharmaceutical sales and knew most of the doctors in the city.

“I have an appointment with Dr. Keller in the morning.”

“Good.” She nodded. “He’s the best. He’ll have you back in fighting form in no time.”

“Shit,” he laughed, “I wish that was true. I think my fighting form days are long gone. I’m getting old, Shell. Too old for this line of work.”

“You shut your mouth,” she harrumphed. “If you say you’re getting old, that means I’m getting old, and I absolutely refuse to believe it.”

He grinned and wrapped his good arm around her shoulders, planting a kiss in her hair—
mmm, vanilla
. The smell would always remind him of home, and she always knew just what to say to make him feel better.

“I love you, you know,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she sighed, leaning into him, “I know.”

***

Bill paced back and forth in his loft bedroom on the third floor of the shop, his worn copy of
Moby
Dick
open on his bed, his cellular phone gripped tightly in his hand.

Should he call her or shouldn’t he?

He’d seen the news coverage and the interview she and his sister had given. To anyone who didn’t really know her, Eve’d looked poised and unflappable.

To him? Man, she’d been a wreck.

She hated the press, hated the spotlight, hated having her life flayed open for public perusal, and then there’d no doubt been the cross-examination by her father…

Why
do
you
even
care?

Yes, that was the question of the day, wasn’t it? Why
did
he care? “Goddamnit!” he cursed and rubbed at his complaining stomach before jerking open the door and sticking his head into the hall.

He was hoping to see a light on under his sister’s door, but…

No luck.

He went to pull his head back in when he caught the soft murmur of voices and the warm flicker of firelight coming from the media room.

Padding on bare feet down the hall’s warmly polished wood floors, he jerked to a shocked halt at the doorway to the media room. He had a crystal clear view of the back of the extra-long couch and two heads tilted very close together. The smoky-sweet scent of burning pine logs filled the large space, tinged with the earthier aroma of hops and barley.

What’s this?
His sister and the mysterious Mossad agent sharing a beer and cuddling on the couch in front of the fire?

Not if he had anything to do with it!

Oh sure, Angel had handled himself like a pro out in the field, had been quick and agile and rock steady. The guy appeared to be well-educated and well-read—unlike a lot of meat-headed, spec-ops bozos. And, on top that, Angel had been willing to risk his life to save Becky’s, but all that didn’t add up to the kind of man Bill wanted dating his sister.

Not by a long shot.

Because Angel and his past were still a huge question mark, and if there was one thing he didn’t like when it came to his baby sister, it was question marks.

Before he could take a step into the room and demand to know just what the hell was going on, Angel called out, “Come on in and join us, Bill.”

The dude hadn’t turned his head, hadn’t flinched, hadn’t so much as missed a beat in the conversation he was having with Becky.

Whoa. Can you say spooky, boys and girls?

Of course, Bill was used to working with spooky men. In fact, some might even consider
him
a bit spooky…

Coming to stand in front of them, he narrowed his eyes at the hand resting on Becky’s shoulder. But instead of doing the smart thing and removing the offending appendage after accurately reading Bill’s blatant get-your-goddamned-hands-off-my-sister expression, Angel simply allowed one corner of his mouth to quirk.

Oh, you’ve got balls. Huge,
suicidal
balls.

Bill experienced a pressing need to jerk the guy up by his collar and demand to be told just exactly what his intentions were toward Becky. Unfortunately, he’d already tried that on one or two of Becky’s suitors and had paid the price for it.

His kid sister was diabolically devious and frighteningly inventive when it came to retribution, and his meddling in her affairs—especially her love life—always called for retribution, at least in her mind.

Stubborn, prideful,
vengeful
woman.

He swallowed back the words perched on the tip of his tongue, and he shoved his cell phone at his sister. “Call her.”

“Huh?” She wrinkled her nose, blinking up at him.

“Call Eve. Make sure she’s okay.”

“Billy,” she rolled her eyes, “Eve’s probably fast asleep.”

“Nope,” he shook his head, waving the phone at her until she huffed and snatched it out of his hand. “She’s
probably
rehashing the interview with the reporters and the interrogation by her father and gnawing the living shit out of her thumb. She needs someone to reassure her that she did the right thing today, lying to the press and Daddy Dearest.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Yeah, and I’m also right.”

She scanned his face for a brief moment before grumbling something unkind about his lineage, which was kind of funny considering she happened to share those same ancestors.

“Fine. I’ll call her. But when I rouse her from a dead sleep, I’m letting you make the apologies.”

“Fine.” He crossed his arms over his chest, watching her punch in the numbers and trying to ignore his burning ulcer. He’d be damned glad when he could wash his hands of this entire situation. Maybe then he’d be able to lay off the Pepto.

“Eve,” Becky said into the phone, “I’m sorry to wake you, but—oh, you were awake?” Bill smiled triumphantly, but she ignored him. “Well, I just wanted to check on you and see how you’re doing and—”

She listened intently for a while then shot him an astonished look. “Well, put a Band-Aid on it so you won’t be tempted to self-mutilate.”

Angel, listening quietly and still with his cursed arm around Becky’s shoulders, lifted one sleek brow. Bill chose to ignore him. It was either that or give in to the nearly overwhelming urge to chop that damned arm right off.

The machete he kept in his room would do the job quite nicely…

“No, no,” his sister said, her tone reassuring. “You did great. And it
was
the right thing to do. Don’t think of it as lying so much as simply omitting a few details…Yepper, okay, I will. Call you tomorrow, okay?”

She ended the call and handed his phone back to him, pursing her lips. “Don’t say it,” she said, referring to the I-told-you-so hovering on his tongue.

“I don’t have to say it. You know it’s the truth.”

“Whatever.” Her favorite word to end an argument she had no chance of winning.

“All right, well I’m beat, so I’m gonna hit the sack. You should do the same.” He held out his hand to her while simultaneously shooting Angel a meaningful look.

“I’ll head to bed,” she said, ignoring his hand, “just as soon as I finish my beer.”

Sometimes her stubborn streak drove him nuts. Oh, who was he kidding? It
always
drove him nuts.

And he couldn’t very well take a seat beside them after he’d made the statement about being beat. It’d be too obvious, and she’d never let him hear the end of it.

It’s fine
, he assured himself.
She’s a big girl.

Still, he couldn’t help but cast one last concerned look over his shoulder before exiting the room.

This didn’t bode well.

His stomach made a rough sound of agreement and, as he made his way back to his room, he reached into the front pocket of his jeans for the travel sized bottle of Pepto-Bismol he’d taken to carrying there.

So much for laying off the stuff…

It was going on oh-two-hundred when Frank finally schlepped his tired ass up the metal stairs leading to the lofts and the living spaces on the third floor of the shop.

The murmur of the big screen and the crackle of the fire indicated someone was still awake in the media room, which wasn’t unusual given the off-the-wall schedules of the men living there. So he wasn’t quite sure what made him turn right once he topped the stairs, toward the media room, instead of hanging a left toward the row of loft-style bedrooms.

A sixth sense, maybe?

A higher power?

Probably.

Because the scene that met his eyes when he rounded the end of the sofa was pretty much the universal kick-in-the-teeth he needed to help him get his head screwed on straight.

It all made perfect sense now.

Angel’s death-ray stare back on the
Patton
when he said he’d give his life for Becky. The guy’s growled assertion that Frank wasn’t the right man for her. The man’s proprietary arm around her shoulders on that last leg of the flight from Israel to the states…

That same arm was around her shoulders now, his hand dangling dangerously close the gentle curve of her softly rounded left breast.

The sight went through Frank like a bolt of lightning. He didn’t know if he was simply stunned or on fire with jealously.

The first, he assured himself, but the heat climbing up the back of his neck and burning the tips of his ears was a clear physical call of liar-liar-pants-on-fire.

Great. So now, on top of being a total A-hole for…well, a variety of reasons, he could add
jealous
bastard
into the mix.

A growl built in his chest, but he suppressed it because it would’ve woken the two sweet little lovebirds—
barf!
—from their beauty sleep. Angel’s dark head was thrown back on the cushions of the sofa while Becky tucked hers under the guy’s freshly shaved chin. Peanut curled next to them, purring quietly.

It all looked so very idyllic, so very…
right
, what with them both being so young and so exceedingly pretty.

Holy hell, when Frank had kissed her, it probably looked like a classic case of beauty and the beast. So…yeah, this made a whole lot more sense.

Man, he was a fool, and a
blind
fool at that. Because he hadn’t seen it coming.

Sure, he’d seen the pair of them with their heads together a time or two since Angel’s arrival. But Becky was always joking around with the guys, treating them all like family, so he hadn’t thought much of it.

Or maybe he’d just been so sure of her continued adoration of
him
, he’d missed the signs of her transferred affections.

Sonofabitch!
That was it. It had to be.

And it hadn’t been desire he’d seen burning hot and bright in her eyes after what’d happened between them down in sick bay. It’d been humiliation, and probably a little guilt because… yeah, she’d kissed him back.

He remembered that part very clearly.

So…why had she kissed him back?

Out of curiosity. Out of a need to prove to herself once and for all that he really wasn’t the one she wanted.

Well, fuck-fuck-fuckety-fuck. There you go.

And as he stood there, looking down on the picture-perfect little tableau, his shoulder started aching like a month of Mondays, and he suddenly felt every single one of his thirty-nine years.

This
is
how
it
should
be
, he told himself, absently rubbing at the bandage around his shoulder. After all, he couldn’t offer her all the things she wanted or needed. To do so would be to betray Shell, and he’d sooner cut off his stupid, injured arm than do that.

So…okay, this was good. This was right.

Uh-huh, so then why does it feel so wrong?

“Is there something I can help you with, Boss?” Angel’s voice startled him, particularly because the guy hadn’t opened his eyes or changed the modulated rhythm of his breathing. He appeared to be as fast asleep as when Frank first walked into the room.

Spooky.

“No,” he answered, wishing like hell he could scream,
Yeah, you can get your goddamned hands off my woman!
But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The fact that Becky could never be his woman? “I was just checking to see who was still awake.”

“It appears it’s just you and me,” Angel said as he raised his head from the sofa cushions to glance down at Becky who, God love her, was drooling down the front of the guy’s T-shirt. After smiling softly at the sight, Angel lifted his dark eyes and pinned Frank with a challenging stare.

Oooh, that’s ballsy.
“She’s been through a lot,” Frank said, fisting his hands to keep from using them to not-so-gently help Angel wipe that smug look right off his face. “She should be in bed.”

“I’ll make sure she gets there,” Angel promised, his tone insinuating.

“Great,” Frank managed to grind out before he turned and stomped from the room.

Yeah, great. Just…great!

Slamming the door to his bedroom, he went to wrench his shirt over his head before he remembered the damned sling and the wrapping and—

Sonofa—

He sank down on the bed and pummeled the mattress as the pain and frustration and…jealousy—yes, that was definitely jealousy—raged through him like a runaway forest fire. The walls would’ve been a preferable outlet for his temper, but they were three feet thick and made of brick, so there was really no doubt as to who’d be the victor of that little duel.

The repeated jarring of his shoulder soon had pain lancing through him like a hot knife. Only then did he stop Muhammad Ali-ing his bed and raise his head to stare blankly at the warm brick wall in front of him and the beautiful painting of the nighttime Chicago skyline.

The woman was so damned talented.

Although Becky usually didn’t paint landscapes—she tended toward portraits and abstracts—she’d managed to capture the vibrancy and life of the city until he fancied he could actually hear the resonating
boom
of the fireworks bursting over Navy Pier. Feel the cool breeze blowing off Lake Michigan. Taste the salty sweetness of Garrett’s popcorn.

He had no idea she’d seen him studying a photographer’s snapshot of the Chicago skyline that day when the group took a break and ventured out to the Old Town Art Fair. He had no idea, that is, until two months later when she presented him with this canvas precisely reproducing the photograph.

It was his thirty-seventh birthday, and he’d realized then that what she felt for him went beyond the employer/employee relationship and, God help him, he’d simultaneously loathed and loved the fact. Loathed it because there was absolutely no way he could ever act on the longing he sometimes saw in her eyes. Loved it because she was so damned beautiful and bright and just so flippin’…
wonderful
it was impossible not to feel honored by her sweet affection.

And now that sweet affection had turned from him to another man and—

Sonofabitch!

Well, it’d been bound to happen, hadn’t it?

He couldn’t expect her to continually sow the seeds of love in inhospitable soil, could he? No. It was inevitable she’d move on to more enthusiastic pastures.

And Angel, that prick, appeared to be enthusiastic as hell.

He punched the mattress one last time before throwing himself back on it, staring in bleary-eyed oblivion at the silver ductwork snaking its way across the timber-wood ceiling.

There were only two rules he considered ironclad, fucking-A unbreakable. One was you never leave a man behind; the other was you never steal another man’s woman.

Well, by all accounts, rule number two was now in full effect.

Somehow, when he least expected it and when he wasn’t looking, Becky became Angel’s woman.

So
that’s it
, he thought, throwing his good arm over his eyes.
It’s finally over.

And holy hell, it hurt so much more than he ever thought it would.

***

Who
is
she?

That was the question on Becky’s mind when she awoke alone on the sofa in the media room, Peanut snuggled next to her, the fire reduced to bright, orange coals in the grate.

Who
is
the
woman
Frank
sneaks
out
to
see?

She couldn’t be his wife, because all Navy SEALs were required to list their spouses and significant others with JSOC—Joint Special Operations Command. It was a way for the government to keep eyes on their agents and their agents’ families, but it was also a way to keep those same families safe.

And Becky had seen Frank’s SEAL file.

No wife. No fiancée. Not even a serious girlfriend had been listed.

And
yes,
she’d probably be in deep doo-doo if anyone ever found out she’d taken a good long gander at those highly classified files, but thanks to Ozzie—who’d taught her the back door into JSOC’s network in exchange for a lesson on designing and hand-rolling a gas tank—she’d been able to sneak in and sneak back out without anyone being any the wiser.

She briefly considered the possibility that the woman up in Lincoln Park—she preferred to think of her as Chesty McGivesItUp—was a recent installation, but she quickly disposed of that idea because, as memory served, no sooner did Frank and the boys purchase the rat-infested, decaying compound they’d eventually turned into Black Knights Inc., than Frank started making his stealthy trips up north. Which meant the woman had been firmly ensconced in his life
pre
-Black Knights Inc. and she should have been listed in his file. Unless, of course, she was just a girlfriend. A girlfriend that he had for over four years…

So why didn’t he propose? Why didn’t he talk about her? Was it possible she was simply a friend with benefits?

That’s what made the most sense.

Yeah, now that she thought about it, Ms. McGivesItUp had to be Frank’s go-to gal when the ol’ libido started acting up. But,
damnit
, why did the big dill-hole have to go all the way up to Lincoln Park when
she
, Becky Reichert, was right there, ready and willing to fill that particular position in his life?

If all he wanted was a little in-and-out, she had a slot A that would be more than willing to accommodate his tab B on occasion and then, maybe, they could—

“Oh good. You’re awake.” Frank came to stand in front of the sofa, a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a watermelon-flavored Dum Dum in the other. He handed over both.

“Thanks.” She accepted them gratefully, noting the fact that he brought in her usual breakfast, in bed no less…er, perhaps it was more accurate to say he brought her breakfast in sofa?

Whatever. Regardless, it was clear that although he might not like to entangle himself in messy, personal
relationships
, he sure as heck knew her personal
habits
. So, like it or not—and she was very sure he would prefer
or
not
—the two of them were entangled.

Just not as entangled as she wanted them to be.

“What’s up?” She took a sip of the scalding coffee and unwrapped the sucker.

“Just got a new order in from one of the Blackhawks players. He wants a custom-made Black Knights chopper to auction off for a charity he’s sponsoring.” He handed her a memo with the details, and just like that, it was business as usual.

Frickin’ frackin’
great
.

But really, did she expect anything else?

“But uh…you don’t…what I mean to say is that if you’re n-not ready…” He took a deep breath, scratched his chin, and muttered a curse as he stared at the scuffed toes of his biker boots like they might hold the secrets to the universe.

Okay, so maybe it
wasn’t
business as usual, because that halting, stuttering man in no way resembled the never-hesitate, suck-it-up, get-back-to-work Frank Knight she’d come to know over the past three-plus years.

Glancing at him curiously, watching the muscle tick in his square jaw, she scratched a crusty glob of sleep from the corner of her eye in order to get a better look at the man standing before her. “What?” she asked around the sucker. “If I’m not ready for what?”

“For work,” he ground out, searching her face. “If you need time to see doctors or specialists or…fuck, I don’t know. But if you need time to—”

“Doctors for
what?
”

“For…for.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bouncing in the thick, tanned column of his throat. “For all the things that happened while you were held hostage by those goddamned pirates.”

Her chin jerked back as her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. She popped the sucker from her mouth. “And just what do you think happened while I was held hostage by those goddamned pirates?”

“I don’t know,” he groaned, rubbing at his chest as if his heart hurt. “And not knowing is
killing
me, but I’m afraid knowing is going to be worse, because the thought of—”

“Frank.” She lifted a hand, stopping him. The concern in his fierce eyes made her chest warm with pleasure. “Nothing happened. I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t raped.” His eyelids squeezed closed as he drew in a deep breath. “The worst thing I suffered while on board the
Serendipity
for those six days was a moderate sunburn and a little mental anguish.”

His eyes flew open as he regarded her intently. “Do you need to talk to someone about that, uh, mental anguish? Someone professional,” he was quick to add.

“No. At least I don’t think so,” she said when he gave her a disbelieving look. “I feel okay about the whole hostage situation. Really, I do. I knew if I could just keep the boat in the water that you and the guys would come for me eventually. I
knew
that. And that knowing helped keep the terror at bay. So I don’t think I’m suffering from PTSD or anything. Nothing that serious. In fact, I feel pretty good. I’d feel better if Sharif was in custody, but…” She shrugged.