Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(33)
Slurp! A warm, wet tongue curled under his chin, then journeyed the length of his face to tangle in his hair. Slurp! The action was repeated, and he looked up into the bright brown eyes of the Labrador.
Hello, reality. Where the hell have you been the last twenty seconds?
“Cut it out, you big goofball.” He pushed the dog’s massive head away as the world around him once more skipped into action. The Labrador sat back, thick tail thumping the grass, a doggy grin splitting its face. Then the beast let loose with a gleeful, “Yorp!”
The bark sounded like something that would come from the throat of a pubescent boy, cracking up an octave somewhere in the middle.
“Well, that’s a pathetically wimpy excuse for a bark if ever I heard one,” Steady muttered, turning over to rub his tailbone—the thing no doubt bruised from the ass-plant he’d done onto the boards of the porch.
“Yorp!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mac pushed at that big, yellow head again when it started nosing in his direction, long, pink tongue poised to strike. “We heard you the first time.” He squinted at the flashing, silver pendant attached to the dog’s blue collar, and thought, really? “Fido, huh? I guess ol’ Charles isn’t real creative when it comes to pet naming.”
“His name is Fido?” Ozzie called from the porch, having holstered his weapon.
Mac was about to turn and nod over his shoulder when he felt movement beneath him. A soft, seductive sort of wiggle.
For the love of Christ! He was still sprawled atop Delilah!
Now, he really wished he could say he nonchalantly, just oh-so-casually rolled off her. That would’ve been the acceptable way to handle the situation. But considering he remembered, at that precise moment, that he’d gone and sprung the world’s hardest boner—the thing could’ve been used to cut glass—it should’ve come as no surprise that the jackknife maneuver he used to propel himself upward was one for the record books. The World’s Most Ludicrous and Uncoordinated Dismounts record books…
“Well, yeehaw, cowboy! Did that pretty filly buck you off?” Ozzie called. “And you call yourself a bona fide Texan? Pssht.”
Mac chose to ignore Ozzie because, really, how the hell was he expected to think of a comeback at a time like this? Instead, he reached down, offering Delilah a hand, and hoping beyond hope that she hadn’t noticed the spruce tree he’d been packing inside his pants while lying atop her.
No such luck. When he hauled her to her feet, the surprised, slightly speculative look in her eye—not to mention the deep flush staining her cheeks and that deliciously overripe chest of hers—told him she hadn’t missed a damn thing.
Well…hell…
Chapter Eight
“Holy hemp balls, Batman! Look at the size of this thing! It’s Goliath’s bong!”
Delilah was sitting at Charlie’s kitchen table and frowning at the personal income tax returns and financial records she’d found in the filing cabinet acting as an end table in the nearby living room. A needle in a haystack…that’s what she was looking for. Something nefarious in Charlie’s dealings that might tell her why he was missing along with her uncle. And Charlie was missing. Gone for at least two days, by her guess. You know, given the state of the dry, crusty food on the dishes stacked in the sink and the general mayhem the dog had created when he began to worry his owner wouldn’t return.
The cushions on the brown, threadbare sofa in the living room were shredded, cotton sticking out everywhere and littering the space in great, white wads that glimmered in the light of the two lamps flanking the front window. Toilet paper was strewn around the downstairs bathroom and glued to the wet linoleum floor—glued because Fido had been using the toilet as his water bowl and he hadn’t been very fastidious about it, dropping big, sticky blobs of drool and potty water everywhere. And then there was the bottom of the front door… It looked like it’d gone ten rounds with a wood chipper and lost. The wood chipper being Fido’s teeth and claws in his frantic bid for freedom from the house.
Poor Fido…
She reached down to scratch the Lab’s soft, floppy ears and was rewarded with an adoring whine and the promise of eternal love shining in his soulful brown eyes. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s just the best boy in the whole world? Are you best boy in the whole world?”
“He’s probably the most mellow boy in the world if he lives with the guy who smokes this thing,” Ozzie said.
She glanced up from the dog to find Ozzie waving around a three-foot-long water bong in eye-bleeding orange. And, oh, how she wished the reason her uncle hadn’t been in touch with her was because he’d gotten himself good and baked.
If he’d pulled the ol’ Cheech and Chong, she’d be pissed at him for scaring her shitless and doing something that by Illinois law could get him thrown in the nearest eight-by-ten. But at least she’d know what to do… Namely, feed him copious amounts of White Castle and Cheetos and wait for the THC to wear off before hauling his stoner ass back home. As it stood, she was no closer to finding her uncle than she’d been before she left Chicago. And, to make matters worse, now she was dealing with another old Marine who’d mysteriously gone AWOL.
She glanced back down at the tax filings. There was something here. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Besides his Social Security and military retirement benefits, Charlie Sanders didn’t have any income. But there were expenditures listed in his—