“Sounds like a great trip.”
“It was okay.”
“What? Not fun to see the family again?”
“No. I mean, yes. Of course that was fun. But I had a couple of phone calls…” She clamped her lips together.
“A couple of phone calls…?” he prompted.
“Business calls,” she said briskly.
There was more to it than that, Chay thought. It was that old sensing thing again, or maybe it was the surprise in her eyes, as if she’d said more than she’d expected to say.
He wanted to ask her about that, but a silky gold curl somehow escaped the ponytail and curved against her cheek.
It was a major distraction.
His fingers twitched with the desire to tuck it back.
Foolish.
Not just foolish. Ridiculous.
“… a truce.”
“Sorry?”
“I said, what I suggest is a truce.”
“A truce,” he said. “You want a truce.”
“I said I’m suggesting one.”
He almost laughed, but her expression was dead serious. Okay. He could play serious too.
“The difference being?”
“The difference being, I’m suggesting we behave ourselves tonight.”
Damn. Not laughing was tough.
“You mean,” he said carefully, “the war will pick up where we left off if our paths ever cross again?”
She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. This time, more than his fingers twitched.
“I mean,” she said, “the odds are that won’t ever happen. You know. That our paths will cross. So why even consider it? There’s no reason to look beyond tonight.”
Chay considered the request. For once, this woman who was always certain her ideas were sensible had actually come up with one that really was sensible. Tonight was a one-off. There was no way they’d ever see each other again, which meant they could afford to treat each other politely for the next few hours.
Unless he kissed her, in which case civility would fly out the window, but he’d get a taste of her again…
Man. Was he out of his fucking mind?
Chay cleared his throat and stuck out his hand. She gave it the kind of look he’d seen guys give giant camel spiders in Afghanistan.
The twitch behind his fly died a quick death.
“It’s just a hand,” he said brusquely, and held it up, palm out. “No secret weapons. You’re safe.”
Bianca looked at the lieutenant.
Yes. She certainly was.
She knew it because she was not the kind of female he undoubtedly specialized in. The kind who would melt at his feet. She saw him for precisely what he was. A man who objectified women. Who collected them the way some men collected cars.
A man who brought out the absolute worst in her.
Her thoughts flew back to the fuss she’d made over ordering a simple glass of wine. And yes, being honest, she had to admit it had been a fuss.
True, she believed in organization. And in exercising control over her environment. But she’d gone overboard with the wine thing.
Why?
Was it because the lieutenant made her feel flustered?
She could see how he’d have that effect on some women. Women who might find him attractive…and, yes. She knew some might. Lots of women were drawn to bad boys. You didn’t need to be a candidate for a doctorate in psych to know that.
That face. The high cheekbones. Eyes so green they flashed like emeralds. That long, leanly muscled body. That low, slightly rough voice.
And that swagger.
He moved with a lazy grace. A lion on the hunt. Self-assured. In command.
And, Dio, the way he took what he wanted. That kiss he’d forced on her. What kind of man would do something so primitive?
A man like Chay Olivieri, a voice within her whispered.
Her gaze swept over him.
He had on a worn leather bomber jacket over a tight black T-shirt. Faded jeans that clung to his narrow hips and long legs. Scuffed boots. He looked tough and dangerous, and since she was not a woman attracted to bad boys, why did that make her heart skip a beat?
Not that what he wore dictated who he was.
The day he’d kissed her, he’d been wearing dress whites. He’d looked like the naval officer he was, but he’d behaved like a barbarian.
No warning. No lead-up. No polite moves at all.
He’d simply hauled her into his arms and kissed her. As if kissing her had been his right.
She’d been stunned. So stunned that it had taken her a few seconds to react. That was surely the only reason she hadn’t punched him in the belly or kneed him in the groin or shoved him away.
It couldn’t have been the feel of his strong arms around her, or the hardness of his body, or the silken feel of his mouth.
The hot, exciting, amazing feel of his mouth…
“Well?”
The sudden sound of his voice made her jump. She blinked and looked at him.
“Is it a truce?” he said brusquely. “Or are we just waiting for the start of round two?”
Bianca hesitated. She’d heard people speak of warning bells ringing in their heads and if asked, she’d have said the notion was laughable.
But warning bells were ringing in her head right now.
Not bells exactly. This was more like a tiny voice whispering Bianca, Bianca, don’t be foolish. Walk away. Turn around, phone for a taxi. Walk away.
And that would be even more foolish.
This man was her sister’s husband’s best friend. And, in ways that had been impressive—even if she’d never admit it to him—he had helped save her sister’s life.
Besides, what was one evening? What could possibly happen in a few short hours?
“Truce,” she said.
She put her hand in his…
And felt the heat of his touch, the heat of him, sear its way straight down to her toes.
CHAPTER THREE
The parking lot, a sea of pickup trucks and low, lean sports cars, was dimly lighted. Bianca jerked away when Chay reached for her elbow.
“The light’s bad,” he said, “and the lot’s uneven. They’ve been talking about resurfacing it for years, but they still haven’t done it.”
“I’m fine.”
He lifted his hands in surrender. “Suit yourself.”
He had a long stride. Matching it wasn’t easy. Did he know she was taking two steps to his one? Was it deliberate? And he was right about the lot. It was a muddle of dips and broken concrete, but she could manage. She could—
“Oof!”
Her heel caught in something. He grabbed her arm before she went down.
“Dammit,” he growled, “what’s the big deal about accepting my help?”
What, indeed? He was right. His hand on her elbow was meaningless. It was a simple act of courtesy and there was no sense in making more of it than it deserved.
Besides, surely they’d be at his vehicle soon. Would it be a truck with oversized tires or a car that looked fast even standing still? Either would suit him. She’d taken a fascinating course. Psychology of Marketing 101. A man like this would—
He stopped walking. She all but fell into him.
“Here we are,” he said.
Here they were, where? Bianca almost said, because they were standing before a motorcycle.
A huge, black, shiny motorcycle.
“A motorcycle?” she said, her voice rising in disbelief.
So much for that marketing course. Of course, Chay Olivieri would ride a motorcycle. How come she hadn’t thought of that?
“A ’91 Harley Davidson FXDB Sturgis.”
He offered the name in much the same way she’d
have offered the title of her dissertation, with a detached coolness that you could tell masked a sense of pride.
Only one difference.
Interpersonal Bonding Among Millennials in the Age of the Internet couldn’t kill you. A Harley Whatever-It-Was could.
Bianca folded her arms. “Forget it.”
“Excuse me?”
“I am not riding that—that thing.”
“Technically,” he said, as he unhooked a pair of helmets from a bar and offered one to her, “you won’t be riding it. You’ll be a passenger.”
Just what she needed. Advice on vocabulary from a man who owned a not-very-subtle stand-in for male genitalia.
Although why a guy who looked like he did would need any kind of stand-in…
A series of hard-hitting guitar chords rose into the night.
Chay dug in the pocket of his jeans and took out an iPhone. “Yeah?” He listened, nodded, said, “See you in ten,” and tucked the phone away. “That was Tanner. The Thai place is jammed. We’re meeting them at a little Italian place farther up the highway.”
“Not on that thing.”
“That thing,” he said tightly, “is one of the finest bikes ever made.”
“How nice for you.”
Chay folded his arms. “What’s the problem?”
She had never been on a motorcycle. That was the problem. Especially one that looked like a beast from hell. More to the point, she’d never understood why anyone would want to ride one. Motorcycles looked as if they took charge of their riders. With cars, even trucks, it was the other way around.
“There’s no problem,” she said, hoping she sounded nonchalant. “I just prefer a car. Or a truck.”
“Because?”
Dio. The man was persistent.
“Because they’re more comfortable.”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “So you’ve been on a bike before?”
Hell. Say “yes” and he’d only ask more questions. Say “no” and he’d get that smug, superior look on his face and tell her she’d missed the opportunity of a lifetime.
“That isn’t the issue,” she said. “I simply prefer a car.”
He made a show of looking around.
“Well, that’s going to difficult, seeing as the bike is what we’ve got.”
“What you’ve got.” Bianca opened the small black bag that hung from her shoulder and plucked a smartphone from its depths. “I’ve got a phone, meaning that in no time whatsoever I’ll also have a taxi.”
He nodded. “Who’s your carrier?”
“What?”
“I said, who’s your carrier? Your cellphone provider.”
“I don’t see where that’s any of…”
She frowned. Jiggled the phone.
“Something wrong?”
He spoke politely. Far too politely, especially now that there was a smirk on his face.
“My phone isn’t working.”
“No. I didn’t think it would. Cell coverage sucks here—if you don’t have the right carrier.”
Bianca held her phone skyward. Waved it. Glared at it. She swung towards him, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Did you do something to my phone?”
He laughed. She blushed. She was not in the habit of asking stupid questions. Had an hour with Chay Olivieri reduced her to this?
“I wish I could take credit. I mean, I’d love to be a magician who can kill a smartphone with a look, but nope, I can’t. Everybody around here knows the deal. The coverage sucks for the next couple of miles.”
Bianca breathed in. Breathed out. He could almost see her telling herself he was either lying or joking. She turned the phone off. Turned it on. Did the little dance people do when their phones crap out.
“The twenty-first century Mashed Potato.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“That dance. The one people do when they’re trying to find a network. Fun to watch, but it won’t work. Not here.”
Bianca felt her lips twitch. She wanted to laugh, but behaving politely for an evening when other people were around was one thing. Laughing with the enemy was quite another.
Instead, she muttered something in Italian and dropped the phone into her purse.
“So,” Chay said politely, “you change your mind about how we’re gonna get to that restaurant?”
“You could,” she said coldly, “use your phone to call a cab for me.”
He shrugged, leaned back against the motorcycle and folded his arms over his chest.
“Yup. I could.”
Dio, she despised this man! Despised him! He was so disgustingly smug, so arrogant, so convinced that he was God…
“Must I beg?” she snapped.
He gave her a long, assessing look. The remnants of that irritating smirk vanished.
“There’s a thought. I mean, having you beg might be interesting.”
His voice was soft. Rough. The sound of it took her back to that weekend, to the wedding, to the way he’d kissed her and she’d told him never to try that again and he’d said he wouldn’t, not until she asked…
Without warning, he stood away from the Harley, dug out his phone and tossed it to her.
“There’s an Uber icon in the top row,” he said briskly. “They’ll send somebody for you.”
She nodded. For some inexplicable reason, her throat had gone dry.
“Just tell the dispatcher you’re at the Landing Zone. The drivers all know where it is.”
She nodded again, found the icon, touched it, put the phone to her ear. “Yes,” she said, to the person who answered. “I need a car, please. I’m at a bar. The Landing Zone. Fine. Uh-huh. Oh. Just a minute.” She looked at Chay. “Where am I going?”
“What do you mean, where are you going?”
“The restaurant. What’s the name of it?”
The restaurant. He’d been there half a dozen times since it had opened. That little Italian place was what everybody called it.
Surely it had a name.
Unfortunately, he had no idea what it was.
He told that to the Tigress. She looked at him as if he’d just announced he was from Mars.
“What do you mean, you don’t know the name? You must know it. You’ve been there before, haven’t you?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. But I never think of it as anything but the Italian place.”
She stared at him. Then she put the phone to her ear and said, very politely, “Sorry to have bothered you.” The polite tone vanished as she shoved the phone in his direction. “Call Tanner. Ask him.”
Right. Ask Tanner the name of the restaurant. Why do you need it? Tanner would say, and then he’d have to explain that Bianca was the one who needed it so she could tell an Uber driver where to take her.
Well, hell.
All of that would become clear when they arrived separately, he on his Harley, she in a car. Unless he waited for her outside the place because he’d certainly get there first. So, yeah, he could wait until she arrived, and then they’d go inside together—unless, by some chance, Tanner and his wife had decided to wait outside, too…
“This,” he said grimly, “is getting complicated.”
“In what way?”
“The idea was not to make Tanner and your sister uncomfortable, right? Well, arriving at the restaurant separately might not fill the bill.”
Bianca didn’t answer. Then she sighed, looked skyward, as if she might find an answer to their dilemma scrawled on the night’s black canvas.
Finally, she nodded.
He was right.
She could almost hear the questions, especially from her sister—a sister who, given the same set of circumstances, would undoubtedly view riding the Harley as a thrill.
Except, as Lie
utenant Arrogant had pointed out, she wouldn’t really be riding it. He would ride; she’d just hang on for dear life.
Hang on to him—she’d seen the way couples rode these things.
And maybe, just maybe, that was the real issue.
That she didn’t like the idea of putting herself into someone else’s care.
Into a man’s care. Into this man’s care.
Oh, hell.
Maybe the real issue was envisioning herself sitting tucked behind him, wrapping her arms around his hard body, pressing herself against his back…
The hot images in her mind fled, replaced by uncomfortable images of herself trying to deny the truth of those images to her sister. Alessandra had always possessed an uncanny knack of seeing through her.
Bianca took a deep breath.
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I’ll get on that thing.”
“It’s called—”
“I don’t care what it’s called.” She waved her hand at the Harley. It looked as if it had gotten even bigger. “It will be more exponient to do this together.”
“It’s expedient. And—”
“I knew that,” she said sharply. “I misspoke. That was all.”
That wasn’t all. Chay didn’t know her very well. Hell, he didn’t know her at all. But he’d already figured out that when she was upset or nervous, her all but perfect English developed flaws.
“But there will be rules.”
Jesus H. Christ. “What rules?”
“You will not go too fast.”
“Not a hair over ninety,” he said, straight-faced. “What else?”
“You will go slowly on curves.”
“Curves are my specialty. What else?”
“I do not want you to think I am wary of riding this—this—”
“Harley,” he said politely. “A Harley Davidson 1991 FXDB Sturgis.”
“Whatever. I am not wary of it, but—”
“Of course you’re wary of it,” he said impatiently. “You’re scared you’ll fall off. Or that we’ll crash. When you’re afraid of something, admit it. Face it. Deal with it.”
She looked at him in surprise. Psychology, from Lieutenant God?
“Just relax.” His tone softened. “I’ve been riding most of my life.” His teeth flashed in a quick smile. “Hell, I’ve been riding damn near all of my life. And I haven’t had an accident yet.”
Privilege: Special Tactical Units Division: Book Two Page 4