Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(34)
Okay. So he had her dead to rights there. “Still. You could’ve told me when we worked on Kylie’s case together.”
“Then it wouldn’t have mattered,” he said with a lift of one shoulder against the leather seatback. “But now it does. All I’m saying is you don’t have to worry about me when we go find this Danny Marcus guy. I can take care of myself, and I won’t interfere unless you need backup.”
“Like you didn’t interfere with Carmen?” she asked, the words out before she could cage them. Although the hookup with her CI could’ve gone so much worse, Walker had thrown Isabella for one hell of a loop by interrupting their conversation with flawless—albeit a little bit formal—Spanish. The last thing she needed was to worry about a distraction that could twist this trip to the park into a disaster.
No, rewind. The last thing she needed to worry about was what Walker had heard Carmen say. God, when this case was said and done and safe in Peterson’s hands, Isabella’s first order of business was going to be to find a warm, willing bedmate with a whole lot of stamina and some time on his hands.
Walker tipped his head to look at her and added a little more wattage to his smile, which did nothing for the state of her composure. “That wasn’t interfering. I’m charming, remember?”
“You’re something, all right.” Using the pretense of fastening her seatbelt as a cover, Isabella snuck a covert glance at him. Damn it. She’d given him the inch. Of course he wasn’t going to let go until he’d taken every last bit of the mile. “You’re really not going to let me take you back to your car, are you?”
“Not even a little bit,” Walker confirmed. “But don’t worry. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Ha! Pretty flipping unlikely, considering the way his cocky little smirk was suddenly turning her panties into a hot zone. His mouth was weirdly beautiful for being on such a rugged face, those full, firmly set lips set against the backdrop of dark stubble. The occasional flash of straight, white teeth. The suggestive lift at the edges of his mouth that made her wonder what he could do with that quick tongue.
And how many times he could do it.
Good Lord she needed to get some air in this car. Like yesterday.
“Fine,” Isabella said, jamming her keys into the ignition and her finger over the button to lower her window a few inches. Scrambling for something to focus on other than Walker’s potential for superior oral skills, she blurted the first thing that popped into her overly addled head. “I had no idea you speak Spanish.”
He nodded. “Arabic, too, although I’m not nearly as fluent.”
“That’s an interesting skill set,” she said, her curiosity bubbling enough to finally override her libido.
“I also sing a mean karaoke version of Springsteen’s ‘Born In the U.S.A.’, and on occasion, I cook,” he quipped back.
“Hmmm.” Isabella spared him a quick glance before turning onto a side street to head deeper into North Point. “Now it’s even more interesting. I assume you learned Arabic overseas?”
“Baghdad. Most of the Spanish is from high school, and Kylie taught me the kitchen skills.” Although Walker didn’t skip a beat with his cadence, he aimed the words out the passenger window, the small action grabbing every last bit of her attention. He clearly meant to slip around the topic of his deployment, and for a second, she nearly caved. But Isabella had never been anything other than brash, with him or anyone else. Changing her stripes now seemed stupid, and anyway, she couldn’t deny the truth.
She wanted to know more about the dark, sexy firefighter sitting next to her in the shadows.
“Nice try with the bait and switch,” she said. Hell, she knew every evasive maneuver in the book. And even a couple that weren’t. “Too bad for you I’m not that easy.”
Walker’s laughter deepened both her curiosity and her surprise. “You are a lot of things, Moreno. Easy doesn’t even make the top twenty.”
Isabella laughed too. After all, he wasn’t really wrong. “So you were stationed in Baghdad as a Ranger?”
He paused, but then he said, “For part of my first tour. But I actually spent most of my time in Afghanistan. Kabul and Kandahar.”
This time, she managed to check her shock before it made the trip to her face. Two tours as a Ranger were definitely no pleasure trip down Main Street. “That does explain the Arabic. You got any other hidden talents I should know about?”
He lifted one dark brow. “Not unless you’ve got an MK24 you need me to assemble or field strip.”
Isabella knew she shouldn’t flirt with him, with that dangerously distracting smile and those deep-ocean eyes, but God, the words slid out as if they’d been well-oiled and waiting to go. “Be careful, Walker, or I might start to blush.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he said, the corners of his mouth edging up. “It figures you’d be the type to get all giddy over high-end weaponry, though.”
She lifted one hand off the steering wheel to signal guilty as charged. “I did some extra tactical training with the Remington 700 last year, but those MKs are pretty badass.”
“They get the job done.” Walker watched the grungy neighborhood scenery for a minute before his own curiosity seemed to get the better of him and he added, “The Remington 700 isn’t your run of the mill hardware. Where’d you get your hands on one?”