In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(41)
Angel, listening quietly and still with his cursed arm around Becky’s shoulders, lifted one sleek brow. Bill chose to ignore him. It was either that or give in to the nearly overwhelming urge to chop that damned arm right off.
The machete he kept in his room would do the job quite nicely…
“No, no,” his sister said, her tone reassuring. “You did great. And it was the right thing to do. Don’t think of it as lying so much as simply omitting a few details…Yepper, okay, I will. Call you tomorrow, okay?”
She ended the call and handed his phone back to him, pursing her lips. “Don’t say it,” she said, referring to the I-told-you-so hovering on his tongue.
“I don’t have to say it. You know it’s the truth.”
“Whatever.” Her favorite word to end an argument she had no chance of winning.
“All right, well I’m beat, so I’m gonna hit the sack. You should do the same.” He held out his hand to her while simultaneously shooting Angel a meaningful look.
“I’ll head to bed,” she said, ignoring his hand, “just as soon as I finish my beer.”
Sometimes her stubborn streak drove him nuts. Oh, who was he kidding? It always drove him nuts.
And he couldn’t very well take a seat beside them after he’d made the statement about being beat. It’d be too obvious, and she’d never let him hear the end of it.
It’s fine, he assured himself. She’s a big girl.
Still, he couldn’t help but cast one last concerned look over his shoulder before exiting the room.
This didn’t bode well.
His stomach made a rough sound of agreement and, as he made his way back to his room, he reached into the front pocket of his jeans for the travel sized bottle of Pepto-Bismol he’d taken to carrying there.
So much for laying off the stuff…
Chapter Ten
It was going on oh-two-hundred when Frank finally schlepped his tired ass up the metal stairs leading to the lofts and the living spaces on the third floor of the shop.
The murmur of the big screen and the crackle of the fire indicated someone was still awake in the media room, which wasn’t unusual given the off-the-wall schedules of the men living there. So he wasn’t quite sure what made him turn right once he topped the stairs, toward the media room, instead of hanging a left toward the row of loft-style bedrooms.
A sixth sense, maybe?
A higher power?
Probably.
Because the scene that met his eyes when he rounded the end of the sofa was pretty much the universal kick-in-the-teeth he needed to help him get his head screwed on straight.
It all made perfect sense now.
Angel’s death-ray stare back on the Patton when he said he’d give his life for Becky. The guy’s growled assertion that Frank wasn’t the right man for her. The man’s proprietary arm around her shoulders on that last leg of the flight from Israel to the states…
That same arm was around her shoulders now, his hand dangling dangerously close the gentle curve of her softly rounded left breast.
The sight went through Frank like a bolt of lightning. He didn’t know if he was simply stunned or on fire with jealously.
The first, he assured himself, but the heat climbing up the back of his neck and burning the tips of his ears was a clear physical call of liar-liar-pants-on-fire.
Great. So now, on top of being a total A-hole for…well, a variety of reasons, he could add jealous bastard into the mix.
A growl built in his chest, but he suppressed it because it would’ve woken the two sweet little lovebirds—barf!—from their beauty sleep. Angel’s dark head was thrown back on the cushions of the sofa while Becky tucked hers under the guy’s freshly shaved chin. Peanut curled next to them, purring quietly.
It all looked so very idyllic, so very…right, what with them both being so young and so exceedingly pretty.
Holy hell, when Frank had kissed her, it probably looked like a classic case of beauty and the beast. So…yeah, this made a whole lot more sense.
Man, he was a fool, and a blind fool at that. Because he hadn’t seen it coming.
Sure, he’d seen the pair of them with their heads together a time or two since Angel’s arrival. But Becky was always joking around with the guys, treating them all like family, so he hadn’t thought much of it.
Or maybe he’d just been so sure of her continued adoration of him, he’d missed the signs of her transferred affections.
Sonofabitch! That was it. It had to be.
And it hadn’t been desire he’d seen burning hot and bright in her eyes after what’d happened between them down in sick bay. It’d been humiliation, and probably a little guilt because… yeah, she’d kissed him back.
He remembered that part very clearly.
So…why had she kissed him back?
Out of curiosity. Out of a need to prove to herself once and for all that he really wasn’t the one she wanted.
Well, f*ck-f*ck-f*ckety-f*ck. There you go.
And as he stood there, looking down on the picture-perfect little tableau, his shoulder started aching like a month of Mondays, and he suddenly felt every single one of his thirty-nine years.
This is how it should be, he told himself, absently rubbing at the bandage around his shoulder. After all, he couldn’t offer her all the things she wanted or needed. To do so would be to betray Shell, and he’d sooner cut off his stupid, injured arm than do that.