Hell for Leather (Black Knights Inc. #6)(66)
Who woulda thunk it?
Maneuvering Delilah over the threshold, he allowed the door to swing shut behind them. Well, almost shut. It caught on the doorframe at the top and remained open a tiny crack. Yeah, super secure spot Morales picked out for us. Pfft. Not bothering to wrestle the aperture into place, he turned back to find Delilah watching him. And it was then he realized he was alone. With her. In a motel room. With two beds.
His stomach began a freefall like the time he’d been on a BKI mission that required him to execute a HALO—high altitude/low open—jump out of a Boeing C-17 over the spiky mountains of the Hindu Kush. That particularly hairy assignment had almost killed him. He wasn’t completely certain this situation right here wasn’t just as dangerous.
***
“If you’re okay here, I’m gonna head next door,” Mac said after he switched on the window air-conditioning unit. It hummed to life, filling the room with the sharp, dry aroma of chemical coolant.
Delilah turned to find him backing toward the door, the look on his face wary and slightly…alarmed? Wha—She blinked, narrowing her eyes as her weary brain tried to make sense of his expression. Then it hit her when his gaze darted to one of the beds and lingered there a moment.
Really? He’s scared I’m going to jump his bones?
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. And then, blame it on exhaustion or frustration or mental whiplash from riding an emotional roller coaster for the last thirty-six hours, but she found, in that moment, she very much wanted to prove him right. She did want to jump his bones. If for no other reason than to wipe that ridiculous look off his face.
Crossing her arms, she tilted her head. “What’s with you, anyway?”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“I mean, all this time, I thought you didn’t particularly like me. Thought maybe you didn’t like red hair.” She lifted a lock off her shoulder. “Or thick thighs.” She motioned toward her legs. “But then there was that whole deal up in Sander’s bedroom and—”
“You don’t have thick thighs,” Mac muttered, not quite meeting her gaze. “I don’t know why women always think they have thick thighs…”
“That’s what you took away from what I just said?”
He did meet her gaze then. And what do you suppose the big, irritating, lug did? He shrugged. Shrugged! Ooh!
“Okay,” she huffed. “Let me put it another way. How can you have spent the last four years sneering at me like I’m something stuck to the bottom of your shoe, and then suddenly claim last night that you’re my friend? How can you claim to be my friend last night, only to kiss me cross-eyed up in Sander’s bedroom this morning?” She enumerated her points on her fingers as she made them. “And how can you kiss me cross-eyed this morning, only to turn around and sneer at me down in Sander’s living room five minutes later? It’s like you can’t decide whether you like me or loathe me.”
He hooked his thumbs in his front belt loops and rocked back on his heels. He may’ve been trying to pretend supreme indolence, but the air around him, the air between them, crackled with electricity. And his expression might’ve suddenly gone all lazy, Southern boy, devil-may-care, his stare heavy lidded, but his eyes were absolutely full of guarded calculation.
“Like you said,” he mumbled, “given the evidence in Sander’s bedroom, it’s quite obvious my feelings toward you fall firmly in the ‘like’ category.”
“I’m not talking physically,” she stressed. “I get now that your boy parts like my girl parts, thick thighs and all, but—”
“You do not have thick thighs!”
“Why the hell are we still talking about my thighs?”
“Because you keep bringin’ them up!” He’d dropped the easy-going act. Now his wide jaw was sawing back and forth, and he crossed his arms over his chest. Yep. There were those barbed wire tattoos. And there were those bulging biceps.
“Answer the goddamned question, Mac!”
“It’s not that I don’t like you!” he roared, then caught himself and blew out a breath. For a second, he did nothing but give his jaw muscles a workout as he scowled down at the floor. Then, slowly he said, “But the thing is, I don’t want to get involved with you…with a woman like you.”
Whoa. Huh? Her hackles twitched to life.
“You might want to clarify that last statement,” she warned, fisting her hands on her hips as she stalked toward him. He retreated a hasty step in response. “What do you mean a woman like me?”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jerking up the tan column of his throat.
“I just meant…uh…a woman who’s beautiful and vivacious and used to being adored and…um…stuff.”
“Because…” She made a rolling motion with her finger, his pseudo-compliment having fallen on deaf ears because the way he said beautiful and vivacious, they might as well have been dirty words.
“Because I’ve seen what happens.” He swallowed again when she took another step forward, then another, until the steel toes of her biker boots were barely an inch from his.
He was trapped between her and the motel room door. And not that he couldn’t pick her up and toss her aside as easily as he could a cocktail napkin, but for now she had him right where she wanted him.