Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(55)

“I’m also learning rudimentary field medicine from Steady, and Mac has loaned me all his textbooks from the Academy,” she announced with no small measure of pride. “I figure in a few more months I’ll have more training than…”

He stopped listening because he was really, really busy devising inventive ways to kill the Knights.

Sniping? Explosives? Field medicine? FBI investigative techniques? Next, she was going to tell him she was perfecting her own nuclear weapon.

He couldn’t let her continue on this path. It led to nothing but sorrow and death, and he’d sooner gouge out his own eyes with a dull stick than see her put herself at such unnecessary risk.

“Never, Rebecca,” he told her, cutting her off from whatever the hell it was she was saying now. “I’ll never allow it.”

“Allow it?” Her brown eyes widened in astonished disbelief, then narrowed as dark fury contorted her pretty face. “Allow it! Screw you, Frank! You’re not my husband, and you’re not my father. It’s not your place to allow or disallow anything. I’m a grown woman, and I’ll do whatever the hell I want!”

He wasn’t her husband because he was too old, and he wasn’t her father because he was just a smidge too young. But he was her boss, sort of, and he was in a position to make sure she didn’t go on with this foolish plan to turn herself into an operator.

Fuck, an operator. His heart couldn’t even countenance the thought.

“You think anyone will hire you once I advise them against it?” he asked coolly, throwing a couple of pills to back of his throat and swallowing them down. It was a hell of a lot more difficult than usual, considering this conversation turned his mouth into a desert.

Her jaw dropped open. “You…you’d do that? You’d keep me from—”

“In a heartbeat,” he promised gravely. If it meant keeping her safe, he’d do anything.

Her face froze in shock. Then she blinked rapidly as if trying to fight tears, and he dug down deep in order to steel himself against them. Feminine waterworks were usually the kryptonite to his Superman, but he’d be damned if he’d let a few tears sway him this time. What he did was for her own good. He knew it even if she didn’t.

But she didn’t cry, didn’t let a single teardrop fall. Nope. Not Rebecca “The Rebel” Reichert. Instead she drew in a deep, quivering breath. Then she stared at him, wearing an expression he’d never forget even if he lived to be a hundred years old.

It was a look of complete disillusionment.

Yeah, now you’re starting to get the picture, sweetheart.

Seeing that look on her face made his chest tight as a cocked bowstring, but he wasn’t about to take anything back.

This was for her own good.

“You’re an uncompromising sonofabitch, you know that, Boss?” she whispered, nostrils flaring. The pulse in her neck beat a rapid tattoo he could see from five feet away.

Boss.

Never in his wildest dreams had he thought hearing that name on her lips would cut him to the f*cking bone. He nearly winced as unexpected pain lanced through him like a saber strike, somewhere in the region of his heart.

No matter. If it meant adiosing her plan to become an operator, he could withstand anything. Even her hatred.

“Now you’re starting to get the picture, Reichert,” he whispered softly.

***

And just like that, it was game over.

Becky dipped her chin toward Frank, a choppy little motion of defeat, before she turned and marched stiffly from the doorway of his office.

She would not cry. She would not cry.

She’d already shed far too many tears over the bastard in the three-plus years they’d worked together. But as of this second, no more. No more pining and self-flagellating. No more waiting for the day when he’d stop thinking of her as an annoying little sister type and start realizing she was a woman, a woman with quite a bit to offer a guy like him. A woman with quite a bit to offer an organization like the Black Knights.

But no. He’d just made it abundantly clear that day would never come. He’d never see her as anything more than a convenience. A female grease-monkey capable only of ensuring their civilian cover remained steadfastly in place.

Oh, she’d deluded herself into thinking their constant bickering and banter was all in good fun. That maybe, just maybe he felt for her a tiny smidgen of what she felt for him. That perhaps, like her, he was waiting for the day when they could drop all the artifice and bullcrap and finally get around to telling each other how they really felt.

Boy howdy, what a loser she’d turned out to be.

“I’m a frickin’ idiot,” she whispered miserably to the empty conference room. The quietly humming computers seemed to mockingly agree with her assessment.

Frank didn’t harbor any secret pining.

Hell no.

After what just went down, it was readily apparent he didn’t even like her. Worse than that—oh, yes, there was a worse—he held not the slightest bit of respect for her. And that was just so…so…awful.

Damn.

Hot tears burned up the back of her throat until it felt like she’d swallowed battery acid. As she fled up the stairs to her room, her bare feet slapped against the metal risers. The sound was as dreadful and hollow as the gaping hole that’d just been blown through her heart.