Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(8)
Uh…yep. That was the first thing Jake blurted upon his arrival the evening before. I’m here for Shell.
Geez. Just call him Captain Obvious.
“That’s what I said,” he grumbled uncomfortably, adjusting himself in the brightly painted Adirondack chair.
Rock grinned, his teeth flashing white against his dark goatee as he sat forward in gleeful anticipation. “Tell me, what size must a guy’s balls be in order to walk up to his former commandin’ officer and declare his intent to plant his flag, so to speak, in the man’s baby sister? Texas-sized, maybe? Alaska-sized?”
“Cut it out,” Jake growled, avoiding Rock’s gaze as he took a sip of locally brewed ale and let his eye wander around the enclosed courtyard located behind the motorcycle shop that was the front for Black Knights Inc.
Black Knights Inc…
They’d really done it.
All those years the three of them, him and Rock and Boss, had talked and planned and dreamed of building their own clandestine government defense firm, and they’d really gone and done it.
Without him…
He didn’t know whether to burst with pride for his former Bravo Platoon teammates or break down and cry because he’d missed it all. What he did know was he’d made himself sick on the ride from the west coast to Chicago, wondering what his reception might be.
But he shouldn’t have worried. Men who fought wars together had a connection, a soul-deep connection that time and distance and familial affiliation couldn’t touch.
Rock and Boss welcomed him back with open arms. And for the first time in a very long time, glancing at the familiar, sardonic expression on Rock’s face, he felt like he was home.
If home included the pins and needles he was sitting on as he waited for Shell’s arrival, that is…
Because no matter how hard he’d tried—and you better believe there’d been times he’d given it his all—he’d never stopped loving her.
He hadn’t stopped loving her that night in the Clover when, scared out of his mind, after barely stopping himself from nailing her up against the wall of the men’s bathroom, he shoved her in Preacher’s arms and saw the hurt and disbelief fill her eyes. He hadn’t stopped loving her that rainy day when she caught him at the base’s front gates to tell him she’d fallen for Preacher. He hadn’t stopped loving her that afternoon two weeks later when Preacher pulled him aside on the way to mess to softly inform him, Shell and I are getting married. He hadn’t stopped loving her that day in the mountains of Afghanistan when he learned she was having another man’s baby. And he hadn’t stopped loving her in the long, too long years between then and now. If anything, his love for her had grown, become an overwhelming thing.
And any minute she was going to come through that door. Any minute.
He snatched a glance at the door in question. Did the knob turn?
No. Just his eyes playing tricks on him and, good grief, he was so totally losing it.
“And Shell?” the Cajun broke into his spinning thoughts. “How d’ya think she’s gonna feel about havin’ you back around?”
That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it?
He shrugged and stared past Rock’s right ear, the air inside his lungs getting sucked out like he’d stepped into a vacuum.
“Dunno, brohah,” he wheezed, trying and failing to drag in a much-needed mouthful of oxygen. “But I think I’m about to find out.”
***
Why does he still have to look so darned good?
That was Michelle’s first thought as she stepped into the courtyard and set eyes on Jake. He was lounging in a bright red Adirondack chair, sprawled there as if he hadn’t a care in the world. And the audacity of that pose considering… well…everything that’d happened, burrowed under her skin like a chigger.
Since this was her first time inside the big gates of Black Knights Inc., she should have been scoping out the place. She should have been overcome with curiosity, checking to see exactly what her brother had been building for himself over the last three and a half years.
And she was…Sort of.
With a teeny-tiny portion of her brain, she registered the mammoth, three-story factory building with its aged brick and leaded glass windows. Through the most fleeting of observations, she took in the various outbuildings surrounding the tidy brick courtyard covered by a red-and-white striped canopy. With the most miniscule portion of gray matter, she noticed the unlit fire pit, the mammoth stainless steel grill, the basketball hoop standing next to the furthest outbuilding, and the odd assortment of brightly painted lawn furniture.
But she was able to catalog all of this by using only about 0.1 percent of her brain, because from the moment she set foot inside the courtyard, her eyes were glued to Jake’s ridiculously handsome face and that body of his that could’ve been the model for an anatomy class, and the other 99.9 percent of her mind was wholly occupied with one and only one thought…
Why, why, oh why does the lowdown, no-good cad still have to look so frickin’ good?
Couldn’t the universe have taken pity on her, for once, and let wonderboy get fat or go bald? Couldn’t it have allowed him to develop a rather tragic case of full-body psoriasis or fall victim to a series of odd facial tics?
No?
Damn you, universe!
Of course, if he had acquired some strange affliction, bleeding heart that she was, it would’ve probably only softened her toward him.