Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(108)
“I still got a couple fingers left in that bottle of Jack,” Mac told Zane and Cos as they joined him.
The bottle had come with the room. He wasn’t sure whether it had been a gift from Shadow Mountain command or forgotten by the last occupant of the room. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Sure,” Zane said, with a long spine-popping stretch. “I could use a day cap.”
Cosky simply nodded.
“How about you?” Mac raised his voice as Rawls slowly walked past, supporting most of Faith’s weight. “You up for a night cap?”
The woman looked like she’d hit a wall. White face. Red eyes. Crumpled shoulders.
“I’ll pass.” Rawls turned down the offer without hesitation. “I’ll see you three at fifteen hundred.”
He meant the afternoon what-the-f*ck-went-wrong meeting.
One hundred percent of his attention fixed on the woman stumbling along beside him, Rawls steered her to one of the electrical carts parked along the side of the hangar, lifted her into the passenger seat, and took the driver’s seat. Seconds later the cart was out of sight.
“Well, Rawls has finally been bitten,” Zane said, staring off in the direction the cart had taken. “Never thought I’d see the day.”
Mac snorted—he could have said the same about Zane and Cosky.
“Hell,” Mac said. “Most likely it’s a temporary thing.” He held out hope anyway. “His head’s been scrambled as hell lately. Besides, they’ve only known each other a week. Proximity and adrenaline, when combined, can have a temporary bonding effect.”
Zane shot him a dry look. “Beth and I only knew each other a few days.”
“And she was your f*cking soul mate, which you realized the instant you saw her,” Mac said, forcing derision into his voice, which was surprisingly hard to sustain. Apparently he was getting soft in his old age. “Which makes that comparison complete shit.”
“I could mention how long I knew Kait,” Cosky pointed out. “But I won’t, because this has nothing to do with length of time. It has to do with the way he looks at her. He’s never looked that way at a woman before.”
“The way he looks at her?” Mac repeated with a harsh laugh. “Christ, you’ve been hanging around your woman too long. She’s turned you into a f*cking emoticon.”
Zane rubbed a tired hand down his greasy, camo-painted face. “Nah, I get it. He looks at her like he looked at Baby.”
Mac cocked his head, confused. “Baby? As in his ride? What the f*ck does his hot rod have to do with anything?”
“Rawls was obsessed with that damn car. Every chance he got he was out there in the driveway washing or waxing her,” Cosky told him with a shrewd look in his eye, as though he knew Mac was protesting a bit too vehemently. “He looks at Faith the way he used to look at that old Camaro of his—before those bastards blew it up.”
An icy mask slammed down over Cosky’s face as he mentioned the car. Mac couldn’t blame him. The same bomb that had incinerated Rawls’s “Baby” had also destroyed every possession that Cosky had owned. Leaving him homeless, carless, weaponless, and running for his life.
“You know, Commander,” Zane suddenly said, amusement glittering in his green gaze. “It’s not nearly as terrifying as you seem to think.”
Mac took a cautious step backward, every instinct he possessed shouting that he wasn’t going to like the new direction this conversation had taken. “What the f*ck are you talking about, jackass?”
“Falling in love.” Zane cocked his head, the gleam in those grass-green eyes brightening.
“Yeah.” Another slow step back. “I’ll leave that to you pussies.”
Cosky snorted. “Don’t think we haven’t noticed how you look at her, Mac. Fuck—you look at her the same way Rawls looks at his doctor.”
What the holy f*ck!
A hurricane of denial flooded him. “I don’t know what you jackasses think you’re seeing. But let me nip it in the bud. I am not in love with Amy.”
Goddamn it, I’m not.
It wasn’t until their uproarious laughter filled the hangar that Mac realized he’d been the one to put a name to the emotion.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
ERIC ROLLED OVER, reaching for the phone vibrating against the nightstand. He groaned beneath his breath upon recognizing the number flashing across his cell’s front display. A call from Coulson never boded well for the quality of the day.
“Who in the world would call you at such an ungodly hour?” Esme’s groggy voice asked from the pillow beside him. She sat up, craning her neck to see the flashing number, before collapsing back onto the Vividus mattress with a tsk-tsk. “David Coulson. I should have known.” She sighed, snuggling back into her pillow and closing her eyes. “Well, answer it. The sooner you tell him to go to hell, the sooner we can go back to sleep.”
Sitting up and bracing his back against the Parnian headboard that fanned out across the wall behind him, he slid his finger across the green arrow to accept the call.
“Bugger you, *,” he said sourly into the phone. “It’s three a.m., for bloody sake.”