In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(24)

Some things never changed. Just his goddamned luck.

“You don’t look like a new woman,” he told her. “You look exactly the same way you did eleven years ago.”

Without a week’s worth of grime and grit covering her face, she was just as drop-dead gorgeous as he remembered…unfortunately.

“Where’s Becky?” she asked, ignoring his last statement even though a blush climbed up her throat to stain her cheeks.

“She went to check on our boss.”

“Good, I’ll go join her.” She nibbled on her lower lip like she always did when she was nervous. The gesture was so familiar, reminding him of everything that happened between them, and he couldn’t stop the sudden fury that raced through his veins. “I want to tell her that I…Hey! What are you doing?”

What was he doing?

He was frog-marching her toward the briefing room Captain Garcia had allocated for the Knights’ personal use, that’s what he was doing.

It was amazing how the years just…fell away. Leaving room for all the old hurts to come rushing in.

“You can go see Becky later. For now, you and I need to talk.”

“I…I don’t know what we have to say to one another,” she stammered, her big eyes wide. “It’s been over a decade. Ssurely we can just let bygones b-be bygones.”

“If it was up to me, I’d take you up on that, sweetheart. But it’s not up to me.”

She sucked in a stunned breath before she ripped her arm out of his grasp. “Don’t call me sweetheart, and don’t touch me! You lost that right eleven years ago!”

“Lost the right!” he bellowed at her. It was as if he was a twenty-year-old kid again, with the same twenty-year-old temper. “You obviously have a very selective memory, sweetheart.”

“Oh!” she stomped her foot, and there was the pampered little princess who’d broken his heart. He unceremoniously shoved her into the briefing room and kicked out a chair. Motioning for her to sit with a hard point of his finger.

She threw her nose in the air and crossed her arms over her chest.

Goddamnit!

He wasn’t handling this well, but she always did that to him. Made him act out of character.

Whenever she was around, he felt the need to beat his chest and knock heads together, and the whole thing was as disconcerting as it was ridiculous. “Eve,” he growled. “Just take a damn seat. I promise you I’m not here to rehash the past. Whether you believe it or not, there are more important things to discuss.”

“Like what?” she asked, still refusing to sit.

Fine. Let her stand. He, for one, was beat.

He plopped down in a chair on the opposite side of the conference table and scrubbed a hand over his face. Sighing heavily, he said, “Like the fact that you can’t tell anyone, I mean no one, not even beloved Daddy, about me or my partners’ involvement in this little endeavor.”

“But…why?” She obviously chose to ignore his slur against her father.

“Because one of the things that makes us so effective is the simple fact that no one knows the true nature of our work—besides the President and his Joint Chiefs, of course.” And now the two commanding officers of this naval ship. Damn it!

“You’re kidding me,” she shook her head, eyes darting around the room as if trying to find the hidden cameras. Only no one was going to jump out from behind the door and yell, You’ve been punk’d!

Nope. Not this time.

“Becky said you guys were private government defense contractors. There are tons of those, so I don’t know why—”

“We’re more than that,” he told her. “Much more.”

“But…but,” she shook her head again.

Yeah, a lot of folks had trouble believing the reality of 007 when they were faced with it. Probably because the real-life version was so much less sexy. Blood and guts and days spent wallowing in your own smelly sweat certainly weren’t “martinis, shaken not stirred.”

“But the captain and his first mate know who you really are. Becky told me so.”

“Yeah, they do, and don’t think for one minute it didn’t burn our asses to blow our covers.” He didn’t bother to correct her terminology in reference to the commander.

“But Dad is going to wonder what happened to me. He’s going to ask…” She started chewing on her lower lip again.

“So tell him the truth. A group of spec-ops guys rescued you and then disappeared. End of story.”

“But that’s not the end of the story, and I’ve never lied to him.”

“It’s not a lie, Eve,” he grumbled, frustrated. “It’s an omission.”

“Lie, omission, they’re the same thing, and I don’t understand why I’d need to compromise my relationship with my father just so—”

He growled, slamming a palm on the table and causing her to flinch.

Good. Great. She needed to be scared. She had no idea the power of the powder keg of information parked beneath her oh-so-fine ass.

“Let me rephrase,” he enunciated slowly, “you will keep this to yourself.”

She searched his face for a brief second, her rapid breath causing her chest to heave, before she cautiously lowered herself into the seat he’d kicked out.