Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(79)
Now, she didn’t just want to hit him, she wanted to chop his frickin’ head off.
“I think you are the most—” The shrill riiinnngg, riiinnngg of his cell phone interrupted the scathing condemnation bubbling up the back of her throat.
He raised a sardonic brow.
Yeah, saved by the bell. Talk about cliché.
She snapped her mouth closed and angrily watched him pull his iPhone from the hip pocket of his jeans. He cut her a grim look before holding the device to his ear. “Ghost,” he barked, giving her his broad back, a back that revealed the garish evidence of her raking nails and the hot ecstasy of the previous night.
A night that was probably the best of his life, but one he obviously had no desire to repeat.
She turned away. She wouldn’t listen to the rest. She didn’t need to. Everything she needed to know had been written all over his dastardly handsome face.
It was over.
He’d agreed to one night, and that night had reached its inevitable conclusion.
So that left her with…what?
Nothing, that’s what.
Nothing but the poignant memory of the sweet passion they’d shared. Nothing but the awful knowledge she’d never love a man the way she loved him. Nothing but a heart that’d been burgeoning with hope and was now smashed into a thousand bloody pieces.
She flung the sheets aside and clambered from the bed. Scurrying to the bathroom, she threw on her discarded clothes and refused to give in to the hot tears waiting enthusiastically behind her eyes.
What had she expected?
He was Nathan Weller, Ghost, the Ice Man, Mr. Emotionless—as Ozzie liked to call him. Had she really thought one night with her would suddenly transform him into someone else?
Well, he had been transformed, but like Cinderella, his metamorphosis came with a time limit. Not the stroke of midnight like the fairy tale, but the first appearance of the new day.
Only he didn’t leave behind a glass slipper.
Oh, no.
He managed to leave behind her stupid, impulsive, shattered heart.
Chapter Seventeen
“I’m gonna need you t’hold on tight,” Nate instructed Ali as they wove in and out of Chicago traffic, Phantom squeezing between the cars that hadn’t already made room for the roaring beast of a bike. “Ozzie just called and told me the river tunnel is inop, so we’re goin’ in the front door hot and fast.”
“River tunnel?” her voice sounded scratchy, unused. Well, no surprise there, considering these were the first words they’d spoken to one another since Nate f*cked up royally back in that despicable motel room.
Nearly fifteen solid hours of total, you’re-such-an-* silence where Ali didn’t deign to touch him save for the few instances when she’d had to brace herself as they leaned into curves. He’d never thought it possible to crave or…miss simple contact from another human being so much in his life.
“Oh, you mean the Bat Cave,” she said, answering her own question. “What happened?”
Man, just the sound of her voice made his heart rate kick up a notch. Maybe if he took the next corner real fast, she’d be forced to wrap her arms around him and then…no. Considering she was perched all the way back against the sissy bar, she’d likely choose to go flying off the back of Phantom rather than submit to laying a finger on him.
Damn. For a relatively intelligent guy, he sure could be a grade-A dumbass on occasion. That morning being a shiningly shitty example.
“Somethin’ about a problem with the hydraulics in the motor that runs the door back at Black Knights Inc.,” he told her. “We could access the tunnel via the terminating door in the parkin’ garage across the way, but then we’d be stuck down there for God only knows how long before Rebel fixes the problem and I don’t know about you, but the thought of sittin’ in that dank tunnel under however many gallons of fishy Chicago river just doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time.”
Whoa. He was suddenly all Chatty Cathy? He wasn’t sure he’d strung that many words together since…well, since she’d held him safe in her arms and sweetly wheedled the story of Moscow out of him.
Maybe he was trying to make up for all the hours of silence today…or maybe he was just an *.
He figured she’d bet on the latter.
“Hmm,” she grumped, unaware of the turmoil of his thoughts, “I’ll agree with that, but I don’t understand why we need to go in hot and fa—Hey! You moron!” She shook her fist at a cab driver who’d nearly T-boned them while trying to push a light.
Wow, put the girl through a couple of days of high-level stress, dress her in black leather and give her a gun, and suddenly she went all Xena: Warrior Princess.
The cabbie must’ve read her I-can-castrate-men-with-just-a-thought expression. He lifted his hands, the universal my-bad signal, and Ali growled. “Anyway, I don’t get why we have to go in the front door hot and fast. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
He could hardly believe they were having this semi-rational conversation after the way he’d handled things back at the Happy Acres. He’d behaved like such a douchebag, but dear lovin’ Lord, he’d never expected to wake from the reoccurring dream of Grigg’s horrendous death to Ali’s beautifully concerned face.