In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(42)

So…okay, this was good. This was right.

Uh-huh, so then why does it feel so wrong?

“Is there something I can help you with, Boss?” Angel’s voice startled him, particularly because the guy hadn’t opened his eyes or changed the modulated rhythm of his breathing. He appeared to be as fast asleep as when Frank first walked into the room.

Spooky.

“No,” he answered, wishing like hell he could scream, Yeah, you can get your goddamned hands off my woman! But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The fact that Becky could never be his woman? “I was just checking to see who was still awake.”

“It appears it’s just you and me,” Angel said as he raised his head from the sofa cushions to glance down at Becky who, God love her, was drooling down the front of the guy’s T-shirt. After smiling softly at the sight, Angel lifted his dark eyes and pinned Frank with a challenging stare.

Oooh, that’s ballsy. “She’s been through a lot,” Frank said, fisting his hands to keep from using them to not-so-gently help Angel wipe that smug look right off his face. “She should be in bed.”

“I’ll make sure she gets there,” Angel promised, his tone insinuating.

“Great,” Frank managed to grind out before he turned and stomped from the room.

Yeah, great. Just…great!

Slamming the door to his bedroom, he went to wrench his shirt over his head before he remembered the damned sling and the wrapping and—

Sonofa—

He sank down on the bed and pummeled the mattress as the pain and frustration and…jealousy—yes, that was definitely jealousy—raged through him like a runaway forest fire. The walls would’ve been a preferable outlet for his temper, but they were three feet thick and made of brick, so there was really no doubt as to who’d be the victor of that little duel.

The repeated jarring of his shoulder soon had pain lancing through him like a hot knife. Only then did he stop Muhammad Ali-ing his bed and raise his head to stare blankly at the warm brick wall in front of him and the beautiful painting of the nighttime Chicago skyline.

The woman was so damned talented.

Although Becky usually didn’t paint landscapes—she tended toward portraits and abstracts—she’d managed to capture the vibrancy and life of the city until he fancied he could actually hear the resonating boom of the fireworks bursting over Navy Pier. Feel the cool breeze blowing off Lake Michigan. Taste the salty sweetness of Garrett’s popcorn.

He had no idea she’d seen him studying a photographer’s snapshot of the Chicago skyline that day when the group took a break and ventured out to the Old Town Art Fair. He had no idea, that is, until two months later when she presented him with this canvas precisely reproducing the photograph.

It was his thirty-seventh birthday, and he’d realized then that what she felt for him went beyond the employer/employee relationship and, God help him, he’d simultaneously loathed and loved the fact. Loathed it because there was absolutely no way he could ever act on the longing he sometimes saw in her eyes. Loved it because she was so damned beautiful and bright and just so flippin’…wonderful it was impossible not to feel honored by her sweet affection.

And now that sweet affection had turned from him to another man and—

Sonofabitch!

Well, it’d been bound to happen, hadn’t it?

He couldn’t expect her to continually sow the seeds of love in inhospitable soil, could he? No. It was inevitable she’d move on to more enthusiastic pastures.

And Angel, that prick, appeared to be enthusiastic as hell.

He punched the mattress one last time before throwing himself back on it, staring in bleary-eyed oblivion at the silver ductwork snaking its way across the timber-wood ceiling.

There were only two rules he considered ironclad, f*cking-A unbreakable. One was you never leave a man behind; the other was you never steal another man’s woman.

Well, by all accounts, rule number two was now in full effect.

Somehow, when he least expected it and when he wasn’t looking, Becky became Angel’s woman.

So that’s it, he thought, throwing his good arm over his eyes. It’s finally over.

And holy hell, it hurt so much more than he ever thought it would.

***

Who is she?

That was the question on Becky’s mind when she awoke alone on the sofa in the media room, Peanut snuggled next to her, the fire reduced to bright, orange coals in the grate.

Who is the woman Frank sneaks out to see?

She couldn’t be his wife, because all Navy SEALs were required to list their spouses and significant others with JSOC—Joint Special Operations Command. It was a way for the government to keep eyes on their agents and their agents’ families, but it was also a way to keep those same families safe.

And Becky had seen Frank’s SEAL file.

No wife. No fiancée. Not even a serious girlfriend had been listed.

And yes, she’d probably be in deep doo-doo if anyone ever found out she’d taken a good long gander at those highly classified files, but thanks to Ozzie—who’d taught her the back door into JSOC’s network in exchange for a lesson on designing and hand-rolling a gas tank—she’d been able to sneak in and sneak back out without anyone being any the wiser.

She briefly considered the possibility that the woman up in Lincoln Park—she preferred to think of her as Chesty McGivesItUp—was a recent installation, but she quickly disposed of that idea because, as memory served, no sooner did Frank and the boys purchase the rat-infested, decaying compound they’d eventually turned into Black Knights Inc., than Frank started making his stealthy trips up north. Which meant the woman had been firmly ensconced in his life pre-Black Knights Inc. and she should have been listed in his file. Unless, of course, she was just a girlfriend. A girlfriend that he had for over four years…