In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(15)
All that pondering was for naught, because Frank had arrived. The man she admired, respected, and adored from afar—since he made it absolutely clear that’s as close as he wanted her—had arrived.
Here I come to save the day!
Mighty Mouse maneuver complete. Finally.
She considered throwing her hands in the air and crying hallelujah or maybe bursting into soggy tears of gratitude—have herself a real Oprah moment. But that was so cliché, so very damsel-in-distress. Instead, she pasted on a fierce scowl, swung around, and fisted her greasy hands on her equally greasy hips.
“Well, it’s about damn time you got here,” she groused, tilting her chin far back and letting her eyes drink in Frank’s wonderfully familiar face.
The bright overhead lighting—which didn’t do a thing to help with the stifling heat in the engine room—highlighted his frame and reminded her just how big he really was. With shoulders like a stevedore, bowling ball-sized muscles in his upper arms, and thighs like a professional baseball catcher, he was a mountain of a man. But he was so precisely proportioned, every part of him so in harmony with the rest, that unless you were standing next to him, you’d never know he was a behemoth.
A wonderful, beautiful behemoth.
Okay, maybe beautiful was pushing things a bit, especially since he had a thick, gruesome scar that slashed through his left eyebrow and a thin white one that cut up from the right corner of his mouth. According to her brother, Frank received the first in a knife fight with a jihadist outside a café in Karachi, Pakistan. The story behind the second one was a mystery no one had been able to solve.
So no, he wasn’t beautiful. But his storm-gray eyes were the fiercest she’d ever seen, and his thick, curly, sable-brown hair was as silky and shiny as mink fur. Add those features to a wide forehead and rather full lips, and you came up with an incongruent face that was…well, breathtaking in a brutal, visceral sort of way.
Not that she could see much of that breathtaking face right at the moment, considering it was covered with an uneven pattern of gray/black face paint, and his thick hair was hidden beneath a tight diver’s hood. Still, she was able to make out the mocking twist of his lips.
“I wouldn’t let you become an operator, so you decide to try your hand at piracy, is that it?” he asked with feigned exasperation.
She stuck her tongue in her cheek and lifted one brow. “A girl’s gotta find excitement where she can.”
He snorted and let his gaze wander over her, his hard expression suddenly softening.
Okay, yepper, she must look about as good she felt.
“Are you okay?” His tone was unusually gentle.
“I’m just hunky-dory,” she reassured him even as hot tears burned the back of her throat and proceeded to make camp in her nose, stinging like a fresh cut doused in alcohol. It was appalling to realize she wanted nothing more than to throw herself into his capable arms and cry, cry, cry herself dry. Just release all the pent-up fear and anxiety of the last six days.
Boy, wouldn’t that shock the hell out of him? Tough-as-nails Rebel Reichert letting someone bear witness to any vulnerability? Proving, for once, that yes, she was a woman, prone to tears just like the rest of them? And then there’d be the whole touching him thing.
In the three years they’d worked together, she could count the number of times they’d had actual physical contact on two hands. And in each of those instances, he’d jumped away like she was on fire because, you know, he wouldn’t want to give her any ideas or anything. Wouldn’t want her to start thinking they could have any sort of relationship beyond employer-employee.
So yeah, if she were to leap into his arms and bury her face in his neck, he’d probably need to be fitted for a body bag, and then where would she be?
Armed, that’s for sure, she thought as she swallowed down the hovering tears and covetously eyed the waterproof M4 strapped across his broad back.
“Did you bring me a weapon?” She raised a finger toward the matte black barrel of the automatic. The smell of him, the smell of hot male skin and salty seawater invaded her nose and made her dizzy. Or maybe it was just the fumes from the busted diesel engines.
That had to be it, because she was not the type of namby-pamby girl to get all gooey over one guy’s particular aroma. Although…she could admit she was very partial to the way Frank usually smelled. A strange combination of Zest soap, warm leather, and gun oil.
Oh, who was she kidding? She wasn’t just partial to the way Frank smelled. She was partial to Frank. Which only made it that much more infuriating when he treated her like the inconvenient annoyance he had to suffer to maintain the cover for Black Knights Inc.
He grabbed her hand away from his M4, his big palm hot as it briefly encircled her wrist before he quickly released her.
Yepper. Go figure…
“I can do you one better than a weapon.” He grinned that endearing lopsided grin of his, the one that always hit her straight in the heart. Pulling out a watermelon-flavored Dum Dum, he brandished it in front of her face, then snatched it out of her reach when she went to swipe it from his grasp.
“What’s the magic word?” he taunted.
“Gimme,” she growled, eliciting a low bark of laughter that sounded so wonderful she nearly dissolved into a puddle again.
Geez, she needed to get some sleep, or at least take a moment or two to pull herself together before she wimped out and totally ruined her reputation as a hard-ass. Or did something equally stupid like grab his ears and finally, finally do what she’d been dreaming of for the past three-plus years…just lay a big, wet one on him.