Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(6)

Crap. She was obviously jumping at shadows.

Opening the door, she retrieved the bouquet and fished through them for a card.

Nothing.

Huh…

Shaking her head in confusion, she walked into the kitchen and took down a vase from above the refrigerator. She filled it with water, then arranged the brilliant blue roses and placed them in the middle of her kitchen table before skirting around the counter to resume her task of rolling out dough for homemade pasta.

She was still frowning at the flowers when her brother slammed in through the back door, wincing when his cast accidently banged against the jamb.

“Something wrong with the front door?” she asked as he ambled toward the refrigerator.

“Thought I’d try something new,” he replied as he took out a gallon of milk and twisted off the cap, tilting his head back to drink straight from the carton.

“Lovely,” she muttered, shaking her head as she threaded a piece of dough into her pasta machine.

There was no use scolding him. She’d tried that, and it’d never made any difference except to exacerbate her own frustration.

“Snake’s back,” Frank blurted, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth before replacing the milk and strolling over to lean a hip against the counter.

Great big, fat, cricket-chirping, tumble-weed blowing silence.

That’s what followed his announcement for all of about thirty seconds, until she could swallow down her stupid heart. She’d been dreading the day she’d hear those words, though a part of her always knew it would eventually come.

“Oh, yeah?” she finally managed to ask, glad to discover her voice wasn’t shaking like her knees. “What does he want?”

“He says he’d like to see you,” Frank admitted nonchalantly, popping a ball of dough into his mouth before she could swat his hand away.

Her belly did a good impression of an Olympic gymnast at this second declaration, but she chose to ignore the sensation.

“You shouldn’t eat that!” she admonished, evading his last statement because, truthfully? She couldn’t go there. Not yet. “Okay, fine. Go ahead and eat it, you big dummy. But if you get salmonella, don’t come crying to me.”

“I won’t,” he assured her with a wink. “I’ll go crying to Becky. She makes one helluva nurse.” He patted the blue spica cast that held his newly reconstructed shoulder immobile, grinning like a loon. She knew that particular head-in-the-clouds smile was because Becky Reichert, the hotshot motorcycle designer who provided the cover for Frank and all the guys over at Black Knights Inc., had agreed to become his wife.

It’d be a marriage made in motorcycle designer/secret-agent heaven, no doubt.

Here comes the bride. All dressed in…studded black leather?

Shaking her head, she tried to envision that particular wedding ceremony and failed miserably.

“Uncle Frank! Uncle Frank!” Franklin raced into the kitchen from the living room, clutching the blue construction paper upon which he’d glued colorful, crazily shaped tissue-paper fish. Her heart warmed at the sight of her rough-and-tumble son with his mop of unruly, sable-colored hair and his stormy gray eyes. “Look what I made with Miss Lisa today!”

Frank scooped the boy up in his good arm, regarding the sticky, slightly limp piece of art like it was the Mona Lisa.

“Well, would you look at that,” he mused, his deep voice infused with the appropriate amount of awe to bolster a three-year-old’s ego. “Looks like you’ve got a burgeoning artist on your hands here, Shell.”

Franklin pressed a tissue-paper fish more firmly onto the construction paper with one stubby finger. The tangy aroma of Elmer’s glue wafted from the soggy work of art.

“In fact,” her brother continued, “this little man might just be the next Picasso.”

Franklin’s lips puckered. “No way! I’m not gonna be no pistachio! I’m gonna build motorcycles with you, Uncle Frank,” he declared hotly before squirming to be let down.

Her brother deposited him on the floor, and Franklin trotted toward the living room, the conversation apparently having reached its conclusion in his brain until her brother said, “Well, you can do anything you want to do, kiddo. The sky’s the limit.”

Franklin turned back, blinking twice as if truly grasping the magnitude of this last statement. Then he swung around and raced away, singing “On Top of Spaghetti” at the top of his lungs as the lights in his sneakers blinked happily.

“You and Franklin should come back with me tonight,” Frank declared.

Her stomach did another quick flip at the thought of actually coming face-to-face with Jake Sommers.

She should’ve been ready to see him again. She should have been.

She wasn’t…

“We’re trying to take Becky’s mind off what happened yesterday evening. She’s still a little shaky,” he continued, and Michelle pushed aside her aversion to the thought of seeing Jake just enough to think a little shaky? Becky Reichert had shot and killed a villainous, bloodthirsty man not more than twenty-four hours ago, and she was only a little shaky? “Rock says he’s gonna grill up some steaks and brats. And it’s such a beautiful evening for a barbeque.”

There he went again with that loony grin. It was almost eerie. Like attack of the pod-people eerie.