by Alex Lidell
For the first time, I notice Cullen’s ink—an emblem just below his left shoulder of an eagle perched on a shield with two anchors coming out of the bottom, plus a spiky tribal pattern that wraps his left bicep. With Cullen’s smooth motions and glistening sweat, the inked predator seems alive. Shit. Everything about him seems alive and potent and too damn beautiful for fairness. Watching a light dew of perspiration glisten over his forehead, I feel my panties dampen.
And knowing I slept with him in his bed last night?
I press my thighs together, taking several deep breaths to calm my body. Not good, Sky. Very not good.
Cullen jumps and turns in the air, landing a back kick that knocks the punching bag clear off the rafters above. “Fuck,” he mutters, walking over and heaving the punching bag up onto its hook as if the massive thing was just a potato sack. “How are you feeling, Reynolds?” he asks without turning around.
I swallow. Of course he knew I was there watching. “Fine.” Except for the fact the temperature feels like a hundred degrees just now. At least my voice didn’t come out all sultry like some Mae West knockoff. “You?”
He turns toward me, breathing hard from exertion as he wipes his face with his shirt. “Good.”
Well, nice to know we’re both being open and honest about everything.
He glances at his watch. “Your timing is impeccable. I just ordered some breakfast. It’ll be here in fifteen. Let me go hop in the shower.”
I nod, stepping out of his way as he sets course for the door, his scent filling my nose as he passes. God, how is it even possible that the man smells good enough to eat even after working out?
I close my eyes, reminding myself to stop going there. What is up with me today, anyway?
“Thank you for the damsel-in-distress recue last night,” I call after him. I know I’m tempting another reprimand, but I owe him the acknowledgment. I owe him a lot more than that. “To you and to the guys. I know you didn’t want me going forward, and it put all of you in danger to come after me. That certainly wasn’t my intention.”
He stops and turns, his face serious. “No thanks necessary. You’re one of ours, Reynolds. We have each other’s back no matter how the problem starts.”
I tip my head up. “Does that mean you aren’t upset anymore over my going to that house?”
Cullen leans his arms against the doorframe, his brow furrowed. I hadn’t expected him to give quite that much thought to the answer, but I’m discovering there are many things about Cullen that I didn’t expect. “Oh, I’m furious as hell. At Frank Peterson and you both,” he says matter-of-factly. “I just haven’t worked out what to do about it. But to my previous point, I don’t need to like what you’re doing to have your back.”
Stepping forward, I lay my hand on his chest, his heart beating hard against my palm. “Thank you,” I whisper, rising up on my toes to kiss his cheek.
Cullen blows out a breath. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“On the bright side, I’m pretty sure we saved Zack’s life. He’d have gotten seriously hurt sooner or later in that place. So all in all, it was a win.”
He snorts, unimpressed. “Bad decisions can lead to good outcomes,” he says, his gaze going distant for a moment. “And good decisions can end badly too.”
I’m fairly certain he doesn’t realize that he’s said the latter aloud, but my breath stills anyway, my journalistic instinct scenting an opening. “Is that what your nightmares are about?” I ask. “A good decision gone badly?”
Cullen tenses, his gaze narrowing. “What?”
I step back carefully, just in case.
“Damn it, I’m not going to attack you,” he says, then sighs and shakes his head—probably realizing what had happened. What I was asking and why. “Yes,” he says curtly, as if reading from a military report. “I stood up a field hospital in Afghanistan for civilians unable to get medical care. The plan backfired.” He shakes himself, a shift in his eyes and shoulders warning me against pressing further. Now, or ever. “I need a shower. Please try to stay out of drug dens, gang wars, or anything that’s likely to get you shot while I’m looking for my shampoo.”
With Cullen gone, I spend a few minutes trying to absorb everything he just told me before forcing myself to shelf the thoughts until I have the time to examine them in full detail. Shrugging myself back into the here and now, I set a course for the kitchen in search of coffee.
For an investigative journalist, I’m a hell of a terrible pantry searcher, though, given that I’m still at it when the doorbell rings a few minutes later. I start toward the door, hesitating at the thought of letting anyone into Cullen’s house, even though it’s most likely the delivery guy coming early. Still, after yesterday…
The doorbell rings again, followed by a pounding on the door that makes me flinch. Before I need to shore up courage, however, Cullen emerges from his bedroom, a towel around his otherwise bare, wet body. My adrenaline skyrockets as I take in his flawlessly shaped pectorals, abdominals, and obliques. The man could easily be on the cover of Men’s Fitness. I’m studying his six…no, eight-pack of abs when he jogs down to the living room and barks at the delivery guy to stop the racket even as he opens the door.
Except it’s not the delivery guy. It’s Frank Peterson.
20
Sky
“Why, Hunt, if I knew that’s how you felt, I’d have brought lube.” Snorting at his own jest, Frank steps inside, his beady eyes taking in the place. Before I can step behind something, the man’s gaze lands on me, his eyes widening as color rises along his neck. “Never mind. I see your cock is taken care of.”
Heat rushes to my face, though at this point, anything I do to get out of sight would only make things worse.
Shifting his weight to put himself more firmly between me and Frank, Cullen crosses his arms over his wide chest. “What do you want, Peterson?”
Frank reaches into his jacket and pulls out a sheet of paper. “This is the replacement bill for my personal property, which you damaged in your temper.”
Cullen looks impassively at the paper. “Two thousand dollars? There isn’t an iPhone on the market with that price tag.”
I keep my face schooled, though if Cullen destroyed Frank’s phone, I finally understand the lack of messages from my editor. Wait, what the hell am I even thinking? Cullen broke Frank’s phone? What are we, in middle school?
“It wasn’t from the mass market. It was customized,” says Frank, reaching for the bill in Cullen’s hand. My editor runs a hand down his suit lapels—a forest-green number with too-wide pinstripes that might work on the golf course, but not so much in real life, no matter how expensive it is. The man shrugs. “If you prefer to contest the damage, I’ll be happy to file a police report instead. This was simply a courtesy to settle things outside legal channels, one I extended only because I know your condition makes impulse control a challenge. Plus, my brother was fond of you.”
Cullen’s jaw tenses at Frank’s mention of his brother, his very unclothed body radiating menace. “File whatever you like, so long as you get out of my sight. You know my attorney’s contact information, I believe.”
Frank sighs. “This is stupid, Cullen. You’re going to pay more in attorney’s fees than you would for the phone. Look, how about we split—” Frank cuts off as Cullen advances on him, encroaching on his personal space until the smaller man retreats back out the open door, which Cullen shuts in his face.
Right. I let out a breath I forgot I held as Cullen’s shoulders rise and fall with a heavy sigh, the man plainly trying to get hold of himself. Being the smart person that I am, I disappear back into the kitchen before he looks up.
By the time Cullen joins me in the kitchen a few minutes later, his face is schooled back to his usual granite. Though my lower regions miss the sight of his glistening half-naked form, the mossy-green sweater that matches his eyes and a pair of dark jeans he’s put on is a rather pleasing consolation prize.
“Thank you for…” I wave my hand over my body to show the jeans and shirt I’m wearing thanks to Cullen’s good graces. “Next time I get into a fight with a drunk drug dealer, I’ll be sure to have a change of clothes ready.”
“Yeah.” A corner of his mouth actually twitches at the joke, which for Cullen must be like laughing aloud. “Oh, before I forget.” Ducking out into the hallway, Cullen returns with another garment bag, the now-familiar orange overnight delivery tag stuck to its side. “It came late.”
Tentatively taking the bag from Cullen’s hand, I reach inside it to pull out a gorgeous pale yellow dress, its wraparound design promising to accentuate my body without being too snug or uncomfortable. A matching set of pumps and—holy crap, an Arc’teryx jacket that is a climber’s dream and perfect for the Colorado autumn weather—completes the set. The price tags have been taken off, but I can tell the stuff in here is worth at least a month’s salary.
Unsure exactly how to handle this, I revert to our familiar-to-us dynamic and go on the offensive. “Cullen, you can’t keep getting me clothes. I…” I can’t afford these. “This isn’t my style.”
“It should be.” Cullen stretches his back and heads toward the ringing doorbell again. “Your other choices are anything that I have in my closet or the scrubs the hospital let you come home in,” the man calls over his shoulder.
Actually, my other option is to go home and pick up my own things, but that would require a ride from Cullen, which puts me back into the same boat of owing him something. I hesitate another moment, then decide to put the dilemma on hold for now, given the smell of fresh-baked crepes that’s sneaking from the delivery the man just accepted.
For the next quarter hour, we enjoy raspberry crepes with some of Cullen’s espresso, which was stationed in the one place I hadn’t looked. I only realize how starved I am two portions into my breakfast—but by that point, it’s too late to worry about appearances. Fortunately, Cullen tucks in with the same companionable vigor.
“I have some admin to catch up on,” Cullen says once we’ve devoured our breakfast like a couple of vultures. He frowns at the word admin, and, based on what I’ve seen him leave for me to do at the Rescue, the attitude is unsurprising. “But I’ll be back around four to pick you up for Eli’s damn barbecue.”
I blink at the presumptuousness. “Why do you think I’m going to this barbecue?”
“Because it’s a Rescue thing and you’re an employee,” Cullen informs me. “And because if I have to go, you have to go.”
I roll my eyes. “Can you drop me off at either my place or the Rescue on the way? I’ve got work to do and no laptop to do it on.” At least I hope I still have work to do, if Frank’s little visit this morning isn’t leading to me getting fired.
“Use mine.” Beckoning me to follow him into his office, Cullen pulls out a laptop and taps a few keystrokes where I can’t see his screen.
“If you’re deleting porn from your history, don’t bother,” I tell him.
“Don’t worry, the porn is bookmarked for your convenience,” he replies without pause, then turns the computer toward me. “Password is pipe hitter five zero five, all one word.”
“Speaking of porn…” I mutter.
Cullen snorts. “Pipe hitter is a special forces term SEALS use a lot to refer to themselves, not whatever it is you were thinking.”
“Right.” Despite being the one to have started this line of conversation, I feel my skin heat. Nonetheless, I pull myself back to the one elephant in the room we’d not touched on. “What’s with you and my boss? I didn’t know you two even knew each other.”
Cullen’s eyes darken dangerously. “I grew up in Denton Valley,” he says curtly. “We know each other.” There’s a finality to his words that makes it clear we’re done with this line of questioning. But just in case I need further clarification, Cullen turns on his heel and walks out the door.
Very mature.
I spend the rest of the day on the computer, typing up my hard-won story along with my initial research into police response times, interspersed with bursts of checking email. There’s one from my mom, asking me to call her, several from climbing stores promising to sell me the best gear at rock-bottom prices I can’t afford, and a note from Frank informing me that he expects my extracurricular activities with my boss at the Rescue will not interfere with my deadlines. I reply to none of them, though Mother, being Mother, keeps sending me notes as if I might have just overlooked the first five.
Finally, when my achy body no longer agrees to typing, I set up my phone on FaceTime while I scour Cullen’s kitchen for crepe leftovers.
“Lary, darling.” My mother’s face appears on the screen, her makeup as perfect as her face-lifted visage. In the background, the ocean waves lap each other in little curls—she must be on that cruise with Greg. “I’ve been trying to get through to you since last night. What’s so important you can’t call your mother back?”
I rub my temple. When all else fails, try the truth. “I was in the ER. A man came after me, an—”
“No!” My mother’s hand covers her mouth, her eyes wide and the Tiffany diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist catching the light.
Realizing what I inadvertently said, I shake my head. “No, no. He just shoved me around a bit. A dislocated shoulder and some bruises. Nothing broken.”
Relief floods my mother’s face, and for a moment, I want to reach through the screen and hug her. Then she speaks. “Oh, thank the Lord—nothing that a little makeup can’t fix, then.”
I swallow a sigh. Right. “Makeup doesn’t actually fix anything, Mother,” I say on reflex, though I’m not sure why I bother. In her world, it likely does.
My mother leans closer to the screen. “Where is it that you’re talking to me from, Lary? That looks like a man’s house. Is it a man’s house?” Her eyes narrow, and I swear to God I see a flash of jealousy sparkle beneath the heavy makeup. “If you turned down an invitation to a family event to trollop around with a—”
“Ma. Stop.” I rub my temples and count to five before my anger settles. “One, Greg is not family. Two, I’m staying with a friend because I was assaulted last night.”
“Mmm. And did this friend get you the Gabbana tee you’re currently wearing?”
I look down at my chest, realizing that, holy crap, she’s right. I knew the jeans were designer, but I hadn’t looked closely at the top before pulling it on this morning.
“Now listen to me, Lary honey. This friend might seem nice at the moment, but I’m telling you right now the gravy train will not last. We need someone stable. Someone with values. And I must tell you, Greg’s feelings were quite wounded at you not coming with us. I do think it’s important to make it up to him. I’ll have a plane ticket sent to you to join us at the next port of call and—”
I hang up the phone and send Mother’s three subsequent attempts to reach me to voicemail. Cullen went overboard with the clothes, but he probably just tapped whatever ad showed up on his phone. At least I hope that’s what happened.
Putting both the conversation with my mother and my phone out of my thoughts, I dive back into my work.
In the late afternoon, I’m back in Cullen’s truck, watching the still-unfamiliar roads go by as we head to Eli’s. Making a sharp turn, Cullen enters what I think is the best-paved Colorado street ever, but turns out to be a long-ass driveway. It’s lined on both sides with such thick Douglas firs that it feels as though we’re driving through a tunnel. As we pass the obscuring evergreens, I finally catch sight of a large bed-and-breakfast-like building.
Cullen pulls up in front of a wide iron gate, the vast fence looking like it surrounds the property.
“Where are you taking us?”
Cullen shoots me a quizzical glance. “To Eli’s barbecue.”
“I thought you said it’d be at his house.”
> “It is at his house. This is it.”
I whistle softly. I saw a number of high-end homes in New York, but everything there is stacked up on each other. With the space available in Colorado, Eli’s mansion has the room to sprawl and unfurl its wings. The bottom two stories are built with what appears to be the native red sandstone, the reddish-orange hue going beautifully with the upper story’s cedarwood finish. Two sections on either side of the house rise into octagonal structures, almost like castle towers, with the middle and largest part elevating into a peaked roof with floor-to-ceiling windows. My favorite part, though, is how the house backs up into one of the lower hills before they become steep Colorado mountains.
As Cullen punches something on his phone to open Eli’s gate, I shake my head. I knew the Trident gods were all well-off, but I never connected the tailored suits to quite this level of affluence. Not in someone as good-natured and laid-back as Eli. Granted, beside Cullen, a cactus would come off as good-natured and laid-back. Still, I’d never have guessed that after checking and wiping down the Rescue’s equipment at evening’s end, this is where Eli heads home every night.
“So is Eli related to the Rockefellers or something?” I mutter as Cullen leaves the car on the semicircular driveway and cuts the engine.
“Something like the British version of that. But don’t bring it up,” says Cullen. “They’re not close.”
I can relate.
“Cullen. Sky. Glad you could make it.” Walking around the corner of the mansion, Eli is dressed down in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved button-down, a beer in his hand. “We’re all out back. How are you feeling? Do you like your new place?”
For a moment, I just stare at Eli in utter confusion, wondering if he somehow found out that I spent my night in Cullen’s bed. Whether this offhand jab is a shot in the dark or…
“You did tell her.” Eli’s gaze narrows, cutting to Cullen. “I mean—”
Cullen rubs the back of his neck, a tell of his that I’m beginning to catch on to. “Of course I told her.” He turns his head toward me. “The guys moved you into a new apartment, Reynolds.” He turns back to Eli. “See. Told her.”