In Rides Trouble (23 page)

Don’t be a coward!
her conscience yelled at her and, prodded by that shrill inner voice, she made herself meet his confused gaze as he sat up on the bed.

His endearingly crooked grin stopped her from saying the words on her tongue, and she couldn’t help herself, she reached forward to trace the thin white scar on the edge of his lips. “How’d you get this?” she whispered.

“I got it courtesy of my father.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story,” he leaned in for a kiss, but she backed away. “One that begins with my father’s cheating and ends with a ridiculous childhood promise I thought I made to Michelle.” He frowned at her reaction to his move.

And there it was. That woman’s name. Thrown out there so casually and carelessly.

Becky’s heart shriveled down into a hard stone and pulsed inside her chest like a bad tooth. She swallowed. So much for putting off the come-to-Jesus talk. “What are we doing here, Frank? How can you love her and make love to me?”

“I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other.”

Men. The insufferable assholes!

“You can’t understand how wrong it is to be in love with Michelle while you diddle me?” She couldn’t help it, the last few words came out on shriek of outrage.

She bent to grab her jeans, stepping into them and angrily pulling them up her legs even while she searched for her bra.

Where
was
the
stupid
thing?

Oh yes, hooked over his lamp.

Another cliché.

Man, she was really racking them up today.

“First of all,” Frank said, scowling, as he watched her wrestle herself into her clothes. “You and I do
not
diddle. We make love. Secondly, I
love
Shell, but I’m not
in
love
with her. I think there are laws against that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking there are no flowers in my family’s attic,” he said as he shoved himself back inside his jeans and fumbled one-handed with the buttons.

She raised a brow. The man had obviously lost his mind.

He rolled his eyes at her look of confusion. “Let me see if I can explain it another way. Are you in love with Bill?”

He
had
lost it. No question. “No, of course not. He’s my brother.”

“Well, there you go.”

“What are you saying, Frank?” she demanded, hands on hips. “Are you trying to tell me that—” A picture of long, tall, sable-haired Michelle flashed through her frazzled brain. “Michelle’s your sister,” she breathed, shaking her head as she made the connection, not knowing whether to laugh or cry or both.

“Of course she is.”

Of course
nothing
. “You mean to tell me you’ve been sneaking out for over three years to go visit your
sister
?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it
sneaking
, but, yeah. Wait…did you think…? Ha!” He slapped his knee. “So that’s why you jumped up like someone bit you in the ass and started dragging on your clothes in a huff? You thought I was two-timing you with Shell?”

“Why isn’t she in JSOC’s database from back when you were with the Teams?” she demanded.

“What the hell are you doing hacking into JSOC?”

“Answer the dang question!”

“It’s not an easy answer, goddamnit! There’s a long,
classified
story behind it. But, suffice it to say, I had a buddy in Delta Squad whose family was targeted because one of his enemies was able to hack into JSOC and get that information. Now I don’t tell anybody anything more than is absolutely necessary.”

“Okay, but,” she shook her head, “at least you could’ve let us know about her. It’s not like she’d be in danger from the Black Knights.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” he told her, his tone brooking no argument. “There’s a sad tale surrounding Shell’s involvement with operators, and I promise I’ll fill you in on all the hairy details. In fact, given Snake’s arrival, I’m gonna have to deal with all of that sooner rather than later.”

I’m here for Shell
…Suddenly, the mystery man’s declaration made sense.

“But for right now,” Frank continued, his eyes hot, “I don’t want to talk about anything besides the fact that you’re wearing too many clothes.”

***

The land-speed record for shucking one’s drawers was broken by Becky Reichert, and before Frank knew it, she was nude once again—
thank
you, sweet Jesus
—and looking at him with such determination and lust and
joy,
he couldn’t help but drag her onto his lap as he lay back on the bed.

“God you’re beautiful,” he said as she knelt above him, her long hair falling like two halves of a golden curtain between them.

And nope, that hadn’t been what he’d meant to say to her when he walked in the door, but it seemed to work, because she kissed him to within an inch of his life and fumbled with the buttons at his fly. When his erection sprang free, she sank down onto him and words completely failed him.

All he could concentrate on was how right it felt when she rode him sweet and fast and hard, taking him so deep inside her that he wasn’t sure where he ended and she began.

“I love you,” she whispered, leaning forward to kiss him, her mouth hotly demanding, and
those
were the words he’d meant to tell her as soon as he saw her, but all he cared about was hearing her say it again.

He reached up to push her hair away from her face so he could see her eyes. “One more time.”

“I love you,” she murmured, immediately following that up with a groan as she swiveled her hips, grinding against him, and that’s when it happened.

He blew apart.

Just disintegrated into a cloud of heart- and dove-shaped confetti, because he’d suspected Becky’s love for years, but hearing the words on her lips was more beautiful than anything he could’ve imagined.

Oh man, he wasn’t going to last another thirty seconds.

“I need to—” he tried to work his hand between their bodies and finally managed to press his thumb into the top of her sex.

“Oh, Frank, I’m going to come.”

And
those
were the words he needed to hear because, “I’m right behind you, honey.”

Locking her arms around his neck, Becky cried his name as she slipped over the edge, and, true to his word, he immediately followed.

***

“I still can’t believe you thought I was two-timing you with my own sister,” Frank chuckled, and Becky nipped at the flat, brown nipple lying so close to her cheek.

“No one uses the phrase two-timing anymore,” she declared, her heart so full of love, she thought it might burst. “It’s too old-fashioned.”

“Well,
I’m
old-fashioned.”

“Frank Knight,” she pushed from his chest and stared into his beautiful, stormy eyes, a kernel of hope glowing in her chest since she realized there wasn’t another woman standing between them, “you’re the least old-fashioned man I know.”

“Wanna bet?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t think it’s right for a couple of people in our, uh, situation to be living together under the same roof and reveling in unprotected sex without the writ of a judge. So what say you we make this thing between us official?”

She jerked back as though someone popped her on the chin. The kernel of hope in her chest started to blaze. “Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”

“I don’t know,” he grinned, all lopsided and wonderful. “Do you think I’m asking you to marry me?”

Marry. Me.

Dear Lord, they were just two words. Two little words. But they managed to make her heart sing. Then again, those two words hadn’t been preceded by the requisite three words.

Oh yeah, she hadn’t forgotten about that.

With tears filling her eyes and the promise of forever burning in her chest—she certainly wasn’t cold anymore—she leaned toward him. Stopping with her lips a breath away from his.

“You skipped a part,” she murmured, running a hand through his hair, marveling in the texture, amazed that she’d be free to do this, just this simple thing of running her fingers through his hair, for the rest of her life.

“I’ll get down on one knee if you want me to, but I’m gonna look pretty silly doing it in this cast.”

“That’s not the part I’m talking about.” She threw a leg over him, straddling his lean, naked hips, careful to avoid bumping into his cast. “I’m talking about the profession of certain feelings that are usually made before a proposal of marriage.”

“Oh, that…”

“Yes,
that
.” She lightly bit the tendon in his neck.

“I love you,” he said. Just like that. Plain and simple.

Well of course, that’s how he’d deliver it. He was Frank Knight, after all. No-bullshit, no-prevarication Frank Knight. What did she expect?

The tears that’d been hovering burst free, and she buried her nose in his neck with a sob. “It’s about damn time,” she mumbled when she could find her voice.

“Yeah well, are you going to answer my question or not?”

“Yes,” she whispered through her tears, sitting up to look into the most brutal, beautiful face she’d ever laid eyes on. “Yes, I’ll marry you. On one condition.”

He grinned as he rolled his eyes. “I guess if I’d wanted a nice, biddable wife, I should’ve looked somewhere other than a tattooed, sharp-tongued, Harley-riding, motorcycle designer.”

“I’m serious,” she sniffed, reaching to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

“So am I,” he said with a scowl.

She punched him on his good shoulder, eliciting a bark of laughter from his deep chest.

“Okay, okay,” he held up his hand in surrender when she narrowed her eyes. “Whatever it is, whatever your condition, just name it.”

“I don’t want to be treated like a nosy civilian. I want in. On
everything
.”

For a minute, he just stared at her. Then he closed his eyes and grimaced like someone was shoving hot needles under his fingernails. Finally, he said, “It’s going to kill me, you being out in the field, but if that’s what it takes to make you happy, then you can be an operator—ah!” He pressed a finger over her mouth when she started to interrupt him. “But before I let you out on an assignment, I’m going to test you on everything from weapons to recon to field dressings, and if you don’t measure up, I’m keeping your sweet ass at home.”

“Can I talk now?” she burbled around his finger, joy and peace and so much happiness filling her up that she wanted to shout her triumph to the walls.

“That depends.”

She lifted a brow.

“Are you going to argue with me?”

“You said yourself you didn’t want a biddable wife,” she continued to have to talk around his finger, because he’d yet to remove it. The arrogant, fabulous dill-hole.

When he frowned and looked like he was mentally gearing up for a fight, she relented. “But in this case, I’m not arguing.”

It was his turn to raise a brow.

“I’m not arguing, because I don’t want to be an operator.” He got very still. “I just want to be let in on what’s going on with you and the guys when you’re out in the field. I don’t want to be treated like the unloved stepchild. You and the Knights, you’re my family, blood or not, and I deserve the right to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’re a team. All of us. It’s time you realized that.”

He reached up and thumbed away a tear that lingered on her cheek, the look in his eyes so warm and full of love she almost started crying all over again.

“You don’t want to be an operator? But you’ve worked so hard. What changed your mind? Not that I want you doing that kind of work, or course, but I just want to make sure it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened today. Because you gotta know you did the right thing in that motel room.”

“I know,” she told him as she tucked her head under his chin, sucking in the smell of soap, leather, and warm, healthy male. “I know I did. But I don’t want to make a habit of it.”

“Not all ops require—”

“I don’t care about being an operator, Frank,” she pushed her nose into his neck, a niggle of desire heating her blood when her lips brushed against his hot skin. “I’m not sure I ever really did. What I cared about was being
included
.” She sat up. “Are you going to include me?”

“Well, that depends.” He grinned when she rolled her eyes.

“I guess if I’d wanted a nice, biddable husband, I would’ve looked somewhere other than an ex-Navy SEAL turned private covert operator. So go on, what’s your condition?”

“That you marry me,” he said, catching her lips in a kiss so hot her ears burst into flames.

“I think we’re going around in circles here, Frank,” she told him when she could catch her breath.

“Are you going to marry me, or not, Rebecca Marie Reichert?” he demanded, and he looked so cute and fierce, she couldn’t help herself, she bent to nip at his full lower lip.

“I am,” she breathed against his mouth. “And are you going to let me in on the meetings? Let me officially become part of this team?”

“I am,” he told her, reclaiming her mouth at the same time his hand landed on her ass, grinding her against him, and that was the third best thing he’d said to her today. Right after “I love you” and “marry me.”

For those of you familiar with the vibrant city of Chicago, Illinois, you’ll notice I changed a few places and names, and embellished on the details of others. I did this to suit the story and to better highlight the diversity and challenges of this dynamic city I call home.

Deep in the heart of the Windy City, three things can be found at Julie Ann Walker’s fingertips: a keyboard, a carafe of coffee, and a sleepy yellow Labrador retriever. They, along with her ever-patient husband, keep her grounded as her imagination flies high. Visit her at
www.julieannwalker.com
.

First of all, I’d like to give a big literary kiss to my wonderful husband for supporting me, encouraging me, and nodding enthusiastically—even though sometimes his eyes glaze over—when I drone on and on and
on
about the minutiae of my writing career. I couldn’t have done this without you, sweetheart. You’re my rock and my inspiration. (Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.)

Secondly, I’d like to give a shout-out to Sean Flynn for his beautifully written article, “Pirates in Paradise,” which ran in the May 2010 issue of
GQ
magazine. That article was so wonderfully written and so amazingly informative; it inspired me to pen this book. You’re a rock star, Sean. No doubt about it.

And, finally,
thank
you
to our fighting men and women, those in uniform and those out of uniform. You protect our freedom and way of life so we all have the chance to live the American Dream.