Thrill Ride (Black Knights Inc. #4)(98)

“He’s a fool.”

“No,” she shook her head, taking a tentative sip and wincing, not at the heat, but at the grow-a-patch-of-hair-on-your-chest flavor. “Not a fool. Just stubborn and guarded and unwilling to put himself in a position to get hurt again. Unwilling to let me put myself in a position to get hurt like he did.”

“Well, then he’s a goddamned, misguided coward,” Steady hissed.

Before she could open her mouth to defend Rock, a gentle whirring sounded from below. It was the big garage door on the shop.

Boss turned away from the television. “We expecting anybody home today?”

He asked the question of the group, but it was Ozzie who answered. “Nope. Only person scheduled to be coming back in the near future is Mac. And he’s not due ’til tomorrow.”

“Anybody unaccounted for from last night?” Boss queried, because it wasn’t unusual for one or more of the Knights to spend his evenings elsewhere when he was in town.

“We’re all here,” Steady offered.

Suddenly everyone knew who was coming home, and it was a race to see who could get downstairs first. A race, that is, except for Vanessa and Steady. The Black Knights’ in-house doctor continued to stand there with his arm around her shoulders as the coffee turned to acid in her stomach.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he said, taking the mug from her hands. It was then she realized her fingers were shaking and she was threatening to dump hot java all over the newly waxed wood floor. “You could just go to your room until you’re ready to see him.”

“No,” she shook her head, taking a deep breath. “It’s better to get it over with.”

Steady smiled encouragingly, giving her a reassuring chuck on the chin before lowering his arm and taking a step toward the door.

“Steady?” she stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “I want you to know, Rock never lied to me. He told me he could never love me, but I…I didn’t believe him.” She ducked her head, staring at her shoes. “That was…that was arrogant of me, I guess.”

“Or maybe just hopeful,” Steady offered, and she glanced up into his beautiful, swarthy face to find the expression in his eyes understanding, understanding and kind. When he finally decided he was done sowing his wild oats, Vanessa figured he was going to make some woman very happy.

“Yeah,” she nodded, the lump in her throat causing her breath to hitch. “Yeah…maybe just hopeful.”

***

Rock backed Patriot into his spot in the shop, pushed the button on the hydraulics, and switched off the grumbling engine. His spot…

Dieu, when he left three weeks ago he was certain he’d never see his spot again. But so much had happened in the interim. Then again, so much had not happened, too. Because after spending two full weeks with the CIA, having each one of his Project missions picked apart and analyzed under a microscope, he’d simply been given his walking papers. Well, those and a direct order to take what he knew of Donna Ward and The Project to his grave or else he might find himself on the receiving end of yet another visit from some fabled black stealth Chinooks.

Um, no thank you very much. One such visit in an operator’s lifetime was plenty.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, you crazy Cajun sonofabitch!” Boss thundered, clomping down the stairs from the second floor, the rest of the Knights right on his heels, sounding like a herd of buffalo. Except…

Where’s Vanessa?

“Feels like I just left, but also like I’ve been gone a year,” he said, pulling off his helmet and hooking it over the handlebars before swinging from the back of the bike.

He was instantly in the center of a group hug, arms and legs squeezing him from head to toe and, “Ozzie, get your hand off my ass,” he growled.

“Oh, is that what that was?” Ozzie chuckled as the group stepped back en masse.

And there they were, the people he’d grown to love.

Yes, love. There was no more denying it. Because no matter how hard he fought it, the truth of the matter was, these men and women were his family, and he loved them like crazy. It was just too bad it’d taken almost losing them for him to realize what a goddamned, hardheaded fool he’d been.

And speaking of goddamned, hardheaded fools…

“I guess you heard about Dunn,” Boss said, and Rock raked in a deep, weary breath.

He hadn’t known Dunn for long, but in that short time he’d come to respect the man. And though he never cottoned to anyone taking their own life, he could understand how Dunn had come by the wrongheaded belief that the world would be better off without him in it. After all, he’d been psychologically programmed to take out murderers. And with Billingsworth’s death, he himself became a murderer. It was all so sad, and had Rock known what was in the man’s head after they were released, he would’ve done everything in his power to stop the guy. Unfortunately, he’d been clueless.

“I heard,” he shook his head. “It’s a cryin’ shame.”

“Yeah,” Boss nodded, the group observing an impromptu moment of silence in Dunn’s honor.

Then Rock asked the question that’d been eating a hole in him ever since he pulled in. “Where’s Vanessa?”

“Here.” Her voice sounded from the stairs.