Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(58)

More anxious to get away from Winterfield’s zealous, duplicitous eyes than anything else, Penni quickly agreed to Chelsea’s suggestion. Five minutes later she’d washed all the blood from her face. Using a couple of butterfly bandages, she closed the little cut and stood back to study her handiwork. She might have a small scar, but whatever. Scars added character, right?

Like my face needs any more character. She rubbed a finger over the bump on her nose. It was courtesy of her father’s genetics. She’d hated it growing up. But ever since she lost him, she’d grown exceptionally partial to that bump. Every time she looked in the mirror, she saw a little of her father. A little of his French ancestry amid all the dark-eyed, dark-haired Italian blood she’d received from her mother.

Brushing a lock of hair behind her ear, she noticed her hands were shaking. Come to think of it, so were her knees. In fact, so were her insides. She plopped down on the lid of the toilet and used one hand to support her head while pressing the other to her quaking stomach.

Christ almighty! It suddenly hit her how close she’d come to losing…everything. Dan. Her future. Her life. The life she was—

“Penni?” Dan’s voice sounded through the bifolding door, muffled by the loud hum of the twin-turbo engines. “Y’okay in there? Chelsea said you came in to clean your—”

Hopping to her feet, she pushed open the door and managed a wavering smile when she saw him standing outside. He was hunched down, too tall to stretch to his full height inside the plane’s fuselage. His eyes were rimmed with red, no doubt from the stinging rain. The stubble on his chin was quickly maturing toward a manly, full-grown beard. And thick, brown blood crusted over the wound on his forehead and caked in his eyebrow.

Despite all that, or maybe because of it, it occurred to her she’d never seen a more gorgeous man. He looked exactly like what he was, a staunch defender, a fearless gladiator, a guy who’d taken on the world and come out the victor. A hero. Her hero.

And, oh, how she wanted to kiss his handsome face. Run her hands all over his warrior’s body. Throw her arms around his neck, hug him close, and never let him go. Tell him all the things that she was scared to tell him. All the things she wanted because she wanted…so much. Too much?

Probably, her father’s voice cautioned.

She recognized the truth in that one word. The last few hours had been crazy, intense, but nothing had changed since that moment yesterday evening when she stepped inside the big gates at Black Knights Inc. Really? Was that just yesterday? Nothing was any clearer, any more settled, any more certain.

So make things more certain. Tell him…

No. No. Now was not the time. When his mission was over, when Winterfield was delivered, then she’d tell him.

“Jesus, Penni,” he said, rubbing a hand down his face. The calluses on his palm made a scratchy sound against the bristles of his beard. He reached and tenderly brushed his finger down her cheek, below her butterfly bandages. “I’m so sorry.”

“F-for what?” she asked, her voice more breathless than she’d like. Her knees definitely more rubbery than she’d like. She was still experiencing the effects of her delayed shock. And that, combined with Dan’s bone-melting touch, had her bracing herself with a hand on the little vanity.

“For dragging you into this mess,” he told her. “For putting you in danger. For making you do something you were hoping you’d never hafta do again.”

Her quivering stomach stood stock-still. Her trembling knees became steady as rocks. How can he possibly know that? How can he… “What do you mean?” she blurted.

“That’s why you quit the Secret Service, right?” His eyes searched hers, and maybe it was the way the light was shining from the vanity, but she noticed for the first time how his lashes were nearly black near the lids and graduated to platinum blond at the tips. “Because the horror of…of…”

“The Assignment,” she finished for him.

“Huh?” He cocked his head and she nearly smiled. She’d known even before she finished speaking that would be his response.

“That’s what I’ve started calling Kuala Lumpur,” she admitted, knowing her expression was a little sad. She couldn’t help it. Thinking about Malaysia would always be bittersweet. She’d lost so much—her friends and colleagues and the future she’d always thought she wanted. But she’d gained so much too. A chance to know Dan and to forge a life she’d thought was fading beyond her reach. “The Assignment,” she clarified. “Both words are capitalized.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “’Cause of its significance. I get it. I’ve lived through some shit that qualifies for all caps too.”

Had he? She wanted to ask him to tell her about it. She wanted to ask him…so many things. She wanted to know so many things, to hear his lifetime’s worth of stories and dreams and hopes and disappointments. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head as if jostling his mind back on topic.

“Anyway,” he said, “I figured after that, you lost your…uh…I guess you’d say stomach for this kind of work.” He ducked his chin, staring up at her from beneath his sandy eyebrows. “And then you come to me and boom! You’re right back in the thick of it. Am I right?”

“Something like that,” she admitted.