Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(16)
She gaped at him in disbelief.
“Right on!” he told her, not trying to hide his contempt. “You keep that sinfully luscious mouth of yours wide like that, babe, and you’ll have Preacher down on one knee pledging his everlasting love within a week.”
“Y-you don’t mean that!” she cried.
“Don’t I?” He twisted his lips into an ugly sneer, and all the pain and rejection burning inside him came out in a flurry of terrible words. “Don’t you go thinking you’re any different from the scores of other girls I bagged at the Clover. The only thing that sets you apart from them is the fact that you never got me off.”
She stumbled back like he’d hit her, grabbing her throat. “I was right about you,” she choked, her strangled voice barely discernible above the pounding clatter of the rain. “You are heartless, and I don’t ever want to see you again…!”
Yeah, he thought, glancing at her now, the guilt over how he treated her that day still as fresh as it’d been four years ago, convincing her I’ve changed and that she should take another chance on me is going to be far from easy.
In fact, considering everything, it was a damned miracle she deigned to speak to him at all.
But that was Shell for you. Sweet, forgiving Shell…
“You’re more beautiful than ever,” he told her.
“You’ve mentioned that already.” She rolled her eyes.
He couldn’t help but smile, because every time she did that, every time she rolled her eyes at him, he had to fight like crazy not to reach over and drag her out of that lawn chair and onto his lap.
Shit.
And there went his mind again. It didn’t help that he’d spent the last four years yearning for her until he actually physically hurt. And now that he was here? Sitting beside her? Dude, he considered it a wonder he wasn’t foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.
And in the spirit of not foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog, he searched for a way to keep the conversation going, because just sitting here looking at her, he could definitely feel the old salivary glands gearing up to work overtime.
He seized on the one thing he figured she’d be only too happy to discuss. “Your brother seems happy.”
“Mmm,” she agreed, not picking up his tossed conversational ball, the wonderfully obstinate woman.
He tried again. “Never thought there’d be a woman with the intestinal fortitude to handle Boss, but Becky must shit bricks.”
“Crude,” Shell mused, sliding him a disparaging look, “but accurate. You did always have such a way with words, Jake.”
He winked, and she rolled her eyes again.
Rock finished with Kenny and started in on Fleetwood Mac—at least it’s not another country song—and Jake took the opportunity to rake in a deep breath as he wondered how to broach this next subject.
“Shell,” he finally whispered. She turned to him, her eyes particularly stormy-looking in the firelight. Stormy-looking and sad. He hoped to help with that second part starting right now. “I want you to know how—”
He was interrupted by a series of rings and beeps and tinny-sounding rock music that split the easy air in the courtyard as each of the Knights’ cell phones sprang to life.
Boss dug his phone out of his hip pocket and held it to his ear, barking only one word, “Go.”
The rest of the Black Knights deactivated their devices and waited for instructions. They weren’t long in coming, but Jake was surprised his name was the first one Boss called. “Are you carrying, Snake?”
No sooner had the words left Boss’s lips than the hard punch of adrenaline surged through his system. “No. That big redheaded behemoth at the front gate frisked me before letting me in.”
“Follow me,” Boss said with a jerk of his chin.
“Roger that,” he came just short of snapping a salute.
Yo, old habits die hard.
He pushed up from his chair and trailed Boss to one of the little outbuildings surrounding the courtyard where the big guy pulled out a strange-looking key from the lanyard around his neck. Inserting it in a complicated lock, the door sprang open with a hiss.
Okay, so…it was clearly an air-locked environment, which for a small, private defense firm seemed a bit over the top.
What the hell are they hiding in there?
Proof of extraterrestrial life? Documents exposing the truth behind President Kennedy’s assassination? A living, breathing, peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich-eating Elvis Presley?
Boss motioned him forward, and he hesitated a split second—just a split second, mind you, to prepare himself to be greeted by a colony of little green men—before peeking in the door.
Um, okay, so no fat Elvis or bug-eyed aliens, but he totally grasped the need for air-tight security. There were enough munitions stored in the building to give all of Bravo Platoon boners.
“Take your pick,” Boss said casually, as if it were no big deal to be in possession of enough weapons to outfit an entire division.
“Should I be worried?” he asked, easily recognizing the hard look on Boss’s face. He’d seen it often enough during their years together.
“Nah,” Boss shook his head, then seemed to rethink his answer. “Look, man, we just caught an assassin trying to set explosives near the western wall—”