Stealing His Thunder (Masters of Adrenaline) (16 page)

Mmm.
Fuck he was hot. “It’s not?”

“You can ask nicely.”

For a spanking?
No, thank you.
She had better things in mind. “Please will you fuck me on the hood of this car, Fox?”

He let out a long groan. A moment later, he cleared his pained expression and said firmly, “No. We’re going to have a nice conversation that doesn’t deteriorate into sex for once.” Shaking his head, he teased, “So demanding, this girl.”

“Are you seriously complaining that we have too much sex and don’t talk enough?”

“Are you seriously offended that I want to talk to you rather than fuck you?” The bastard smirked. “Besides, it’s good for you to wait for what you want once in a while.”

“Sadist.” She sucked her teeth, wondering how determined he’d be in the face of temptation. Probably very.

“Yup. Get back to work, sexy.”

Grumbling, she looked back down at her project, remembering the real reason she’d provoked him. “Seriously. You’ve pretty much set this project up already. What’s the point? It’s obvious you know how to build it.”

He sighed and moved in beside her. “Yes. I know how to build it.”

“So you’re testing me? Or is this like a pity job to make me feel important?” Offended now, she snapped, “Because that’s pretty condescending, Fox.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing like that. The guys wanted to see how much you knew. We needed a starting point. To know how best to use your skills.”

“Why not just ask?”

Leaning against the worktable, he crossed his arms over his chest. “The guys we’ve worked with before . . . they talk a big game. It’s easier to trust people when we can see firsthand what they can do.”

Though it made sense, it still stung a little. “So you don’t trust me?”

“Not me. I trust you. But I need Luke and Atlas to be on board with this. If I can show them what you can do, it’ll be easier for me to bring you in. Understand?”

She sighed and crossed her arms, mirroring his stance. “Well, tell Luke and Atlas their test is fucking lame. I can do this with my eyes closed. Next time, give me a real challenge.”

Chuckling, he straightened then kissed the top of her head. “I think you’ll fit right in.”

It was exactly what she wanted. To fit into their group, to be one of them. Not just Fox’s girlfriend, but an actual respected member of the team.

Fox turned to the table and looked at the equipment. “Come on. Help me build it anyway. It’s a test, but we really do need one and no one else felt like doing it. I’ll tell the guys you can engineer circles around them.”

She laughed, then they set to work on the project together. It was nice, having someone to share her passions with, who understood the difference between an RF and an IF transceiver. The fact that they could understand each other’s lingo was a huge plus, but add to it the sexual chemistry, and this was like hitting the lottery.

“So, what’s the big rush for money?” he asked. “You’ve brought it up a few times, but never say why.”

Her first reaction was to shut him down. Normally she wasn’t so open about her family problems, but . . . She trusted him enough to tell him this, and she wondered how far his empathy extended.

She hoped she wouldn’t get all emotional about it in front of him. Being pitied sucked big time. And it wasn’t what she wanted. “I’m just trying to pay for my grandma to live in the nursing home with my grandpa. He has Alzheimer’s but she can’t afford for them both to live there, and the different government systems in place only cover him. They’ve never been apart. Not since they got married at nineteen. My parents are trying to sell their house to pay but . . . It’s sad.” She shrugged, trying to ignore the thickness in her throat. “It’s their home. They’ve lived there for a long time. If I had enough money, my parents could keep their house and my grandparents could stay together.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Fuck, I’m sorry. That’s awful.” He frowned. “Is that why you wanted to join us so bad? Why didn’t you just tell me?” When he set down what he was working on and walked back over to her, she struggled to get her emotions under control. Of all of the subjects he had to choose, why did it have to be something that would make her cry?

Way to prove you’re one of the guys, Addison.
Although sleeping with him probably hadn’t helped that either.

His big arms wrapped around her and for a moment she enjoyed the feeling of safety, despite the dangerous air he always projected.

“I’m going to give you the money.” The words rumbled through his chest, under her ear. “How much do you need?”

What? Was he crazy? She pressed her lips together, fighting back the new threat of tears. Of course she knew he must be loaded, but it hadn’t occurred to her to ask him for help. She wanted to get the money on her own, not accept charity. From Fox? It felt weird.

“No, I . . . It’s generous of you, and kind, but I can’t accept your offer. Not without working for it.” Part of her regretted the words as they came out of her mouth. If it was her last chance to get her grandparents back together and save her parents’ house, was it selfish of her to stand on her principles?

“Stubborn girl.” He squeezed her, taking the bite out of his words. “I’ll loan it to you then. You can pay it off. Interest-free. Or it could be an advance on what I pay you.”

Well shit. That was a solution she might be able to reconcile herself with. But what if she could never pay him back? Would he be like a creepy loan shark turning up at her place and demanding payment . . . of one kind or another? Hell, that got dirty fast.

Walking away from his second generous offer just seemed rude.

She cocked her head to the side and peered up at him. “Really?”

The way he looked down at her, his gaze warm and hinting at deeper feelings, both thrilled her and made her uncomfortable. So they liked each other. It didn’t mean this was permanent, except maybe for the business part of things, she hoped

“Of course, really.” He kissed her, like he was using it to seal the deal.

“It’s a lot of fucking money.”

He gestured around the garage. “Does it look like I’m hard up for cash?”

“But Luke and Atlas . . .”

There was no hesitation or discomfort in his gaze. “They’re more charitable than you think. They’re always bugging me to donate money to this or that, and they like you.”

She chewed her lip. It sounded ideal, but there were too many things that could go wrong. Drawing up legal papers with a car thief seemed unlikely. “I don’t know. Will this complicate things between us? What happens if things between us go bad?”

He laughed. “Even if you go evil and turn me in to the cops, I doubt I’ll ever feel like your grandparents don’t deserve to live together.” His mouth set in a grim line. “Shit like that just shouldn’t happen to people.”

That statement hung in the air for a while, and she wondered what he was thinking. He seemed preoccupied. When he refocused on her, he squeezed her affectionately.

“Why would you do this for me?” she asked. “Honestly.”

He sat back on a stool and pulled her up onto his lap, leaning back on the workbench. “My grandma had dementia before she passed so . . . I know what it’s like. We were in the position where we could pay for the best available care, and it still didn’t feel like enough. Not after all the good she had done.”

Oh, so he really did get it then. There was a flicker of vulnerability in his gaze, a hint of the boy he’d been not that many years ago. She wanted to see pictures of him like that—young, sweet, and not yet jaded. He would have been adorable.

“I’m sorry, Fox. Were you close to her?”

He nodded. “Very. I was her first grandchild, and she lived with us for a while between when she couldn’t live alone and when she needed a nursing home. She’d get confused and wander off, and my dad and uncle were always terrified we’d find her facedown in the pool. After we moved her into the nursing home she was safer, but even though we visited every day, it wasn’t the same as living with family.” Absently, he kissed her forehead. “We should have hired 24/7 care and kept her home, but her caregivers might have figured out what we really did for a living. It was too dangerous, but that choice still bothers all of us. Sometimes I think the experience of her living with us is why my cousin Macy decided to go into medicine.”

Macy was Luke’s baby sister, if she remembered correctly. She knew their family had visited, but Fox had hinted strongly that she stay away. It wasn’t that she minded giving him space to visit with his family, and she knew their relationship was new, but it had felt more like . . . he was hiding her. He’d barely texted her the whole time they’d been in town, but maybe they’d been busy or he hadn’t wanted to be rude. She’d spent those days feeling like a fourteen-year-old girl with an unrequited crush, constantly checking her phone in the hopes he’d texted. It was damn embarrassing, even though she never planned to tell anyone.

“Did your grandma know about the family business?” she asked, curious. She couldn’t imagine telling her grandparents where the sudden chunk of money for them to be together was going to come from. She’d need a good cover story before showing up with it. Would they buy into the whole lottery thing? Crap, that story would fall apart as soon as someone tried to look it up online.

Gramps would have been the one with the biggest objection and the most likely to sway her from her current path, but she only ever got the smallest glimpses of the real Gramps now. The disease had stolen most of him away.

She shook off the weird sense of delayed loss that came with the territory. It was like he’d died but his body had been too stubborn to read the memo. Then, once in a while he’d show up a little then disappear again. Maybe she shouldn’t be upset about having had the chance to say good-bye several times, but it was like a prolonged torture where she could never decide if it hurt more or less than if he’d died suddenly. Watching everyone struggle to help him understand who they were on his less lucid days filled her with a monotonous, enduring horror that hadn’t lessened over the past two years.

Would the same happen to her parents some day? To her?

Back to what she could control. Maybe she’d tell them she got an awesome part-time contracting job in her field with an incredible sign-on bonus

“No,” Fox said, pulling her out of her thoughts.

For a moment, she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. Oh, she’d asked whether his grandmother knew about their business.

“She didn’t know,” he continued, giving her a nudge off his lap. As he moved back around to his workstation, his smile was regretful. “We had to lie to her. She would have kicked my uncle’s ass if she’d had any clue. If she hadn’t been deteriorating, we never would have gotten away with it.”

Addison moved in next to him and started fitting the pins in the back of the opener but his sad sigh made her turn to watch him work. He was staring down at his section of the project, his brows drawn and looking stern. It was almost the expression he got when he was bossing her around in bed—sexy, confident, determined. It was hard to ignore the urge to interrupt him.

She was good for about five minutes, watching the play of muscle in his arms, studying his forearm tattoos—the dead trees tattooed in as much realistic detail as the cathedral tattoo that took up his entire back. Lower . . . well, there were tattoos on his legs too, but she’d yet to have the presence of mind to study them closely when he had his jeans off. There may have been gargoyles involved, or maybe she’d just been cross-eyed.

“So it’s your uncle’s business?” she finally asked, when he paused.

He looked up again, and she was struck anew by his dangerous good looks. His eyes were so blue, and his reddish-blond hair and beard made him all the more tasty. Her friends posted pictures of guys like him on Facebook, but they were tattoo models, not their boyfriends. Fox was too hot to be boyfriend material, if that made any sense. It was hard to believe that she could deserve this kind of demigod full-time.

The smile he bestowed upon her made her breath catch.

“My uncle Scott started the business, but he retired. It was probably supposed to go to Luke, but Luke is . . . Luke. He’s good at stealing cars, but doesn’t like organizing the business end of things. Luke can get pretty impulsive and disappears sometimes. He prefers not to be nailed down to details. We were all raised together anyway, trained together, and the others agreed I was the more appropriate choice. I’m business-minded.”

“And not Atlas?”

“He was too young at the time, but you never know. He might fight me for it one day.” He chuckled. “Hopefully he doesn’t maim me too badly in the process.” He quirked a brow at her. “Do you have any siblings? Why don’t I know this?”

She raised a brow sardonically. “You tend to keep my mouth busy when we’re hanging out together. You can’t blame me for that.”

“Behave,” he said with a smile. “If you distract me and I put this together wrong, the guys will kick us both out of the group.”

So hard to be good around him. He only had himself to blame.

“I’m an only child,” she answered.

“Huh. That must have been nice.”

“Nice?”

He shrugged. “It seems like it might be. No one to break your shit or convince you to do stupid things.” He chuckled as if remembering something specific.

He reached for her and trapped a lock of her hair between his fingers, then slowly twirled it, but it was her eyes he was watching. Even though nothing inherently sexy was happening, there was a constant current of electricity between them.

At first she’d thought it was just her, but he seemed to feel it too. Not just a sexual connection either—something deeper. She kept pushing it away, trying to stay away from labels and conversations about the future, but he made her question her former opinion about staying unattached. What did she really want out of life?

“I guess,” she replied, hoping her hesitation didn’t betray her thoughts. She focused on what it’d been like to be an only child, growing up. “I mostly remember being bored. That’s probably why I started to crave excitement. Making up for a boring childhood.”