“Jesus,” Vanessa whispered and realized her vocabulary needed some work. She’d used that same expletive three times in as many minutes.
“Jonathan Dunn could live with being a killer,” Becky mused, sidling up beside Boss, sliding an arm around his waist. “But he couldn’t live with being a murderer. And he couldn’t let the woman and man who’d turned him into a murderer live either. It’s so…so senseless and sad.”
“I’d say you’re right,” Boss agreed, bending to place a kiss by her temple. “On all fronts.”
Vanessa had to turn away. Ever since Rock left, Boss and Becky’s obvious love for one another, not to mention their overt affection, well…she was ashamed to say it got to her. Reminding her of everything she’d hoped to have and everything she’d lost when she’d gone all-in with Rock.
“Hey,” Steady whispered, coming to throw an arm over her shoulders, giving her a gentle squeeze even as he handed her a mug of steaming, so-thick-it’d-stand-up-on-its-own coffee, “you okay?”
And there they were again, the kid gloves…
Geez, she was a real piece of work. A real piece of sorry, lowdown, heartsick work.
“I guess you probably already know the answer to that,” she told him, taking the coffee, inhaling the dark, rich aroma. She didn’t have an ounce of pride left after that show she’d put on down in the chopper shop, so there was no use lying.
“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.
When he looked up to see her slowly descending toward the shop floor, trailing Steady, his heart damn near leapt out of his chest. She was so beautiful. So dark and exotic and courageous and smart and wonderful. Everything he’d never dared to dream and didn’t come close to deserving. Everything he was done pretending he didn’t want.
“If ya’ll will excuse me,” he said to the group still gathered around him, “I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”
Like Moses at the Red Sea, the Knights parted for him. He was at the stairs in two seconds, catching Vanessa around the waist before she could step from the last tread. Without warning, he didn’t dare give her any warning or she’d probably lay into him like she damned well should, he kissed her. And when her mouth opened on a surprised squeak, he really kissed her.
She stiffened, going stick-straight in his arms for a couple of interminable seconds during which time he feared he may have messed everything up so badly that there was no way to repair it. Then the most wonderful thing happened…
She kissed him back. She wrapped her arms around his neck, hooked an ankle behind his knee, went all soft and sexy like he’d been remembering in his dreams, and she kissed him back.
Someone started to applaud—Steady?—and Rock pulled back, smiling down at her.
“Rock?” The
re was a question in her big, dark eyes. A question he was good and well ready to answer.
“J’taime, mon amour,” he told her, I love you.
“Oh, Rock,” she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder, but not before he’d seen the tears standing in her eyes.
“Shh,” he whispered, cupping the back of her head.
“I h-hate crying in-in-in front of everybody,” she sobbed quietly into his motorcycle jacket. “I’m sssssupposed t-to be tough.”
“Woman,” he crooned, kissing her ear. “You’re the toughest, bravest person I know.”
She shook her head, her face still buried in his shoulder.
Turning toward the group, “We, uh,” he jerked his chin and eyes upward. “We’re gonna go—”
“Yeah,” Boss cut him off. “Get lost, will ya? We’re already sick and tired of looking at that ugly mug of yours.”
Rock chuckled, nodding, before he bent and hooked an arm under Vanessa’s knees and hoisted her up against his chest. She squawked out a protest, but he ignored her as he took the stairs two at a time, the Knights clapping and whistling in his wake.
***
Sometime later…
“Hmmm,” Vanessa moaned blissfully, rolling off Rock who was still winded and sweaty. “That was nice.”
“Nice?” he lifted his chin, frowning over at her until his goatee drooped. “Just nice?”
“Deliciously nice,” she clarified, leaning toward him to nibble his earlobe.
“Hmmm.” He let his head drop back to the pillow, turning his chin to give her better access to that ear. She loved when he did that. She loved him. And, miracle of miracles, he loved her. If she were any happier, she’d probably explode into a cloud of Valentine chocolate–box dust. Just…poof. “Now that’s nice,” he said, his arm snaking around her shoulders to pull her close.
For a few minutes they nuzzled and snuggled and laughed, then she pressed back, leaning up on her elbow in order to prop her cheek in her hand. “Rock?”
“Call me Richard,” he murmured, eyes closed, dark lashes creating a fan of shadows on his cheeks. He was sliding a lazy hand up and down her hip. “I love it when you call me Richard.”
She bit her lip, smiling. “Richard?”
“Oui, chere?”
“Why did you change your mind?”
“Change my mind about what?”
“About loving me?” At this, his eyes snapped open and he searched her face. For some reason, her heart began to flutter and she pressed ahead quickly, “See, I figured you’d gone back to Louisiana to reassure yourself that loving someone hurt too bad. That letting me love you would eventually hurt me too bad. I imagined you standing over Lacy’s grave and—”
He placed a finger over her mouth, nodding his head. “Oui, I went back to Louisiana and I visited Lacy’s grave. And maybe I did it to try to bolster my stance on love.” Now her heart wasn’t fluttering, it was pounding. “But you know what happened as I was standing there in the sunshine with the Spanish moss hangin’ down from all the trees, the birds chirpin’ and the squirrels playin’?”
She shook her head, unable to look away from his sparkling eyes.
“I realized all I was rememberin’ were the good times, the happy times. With Lacy, with my parents. And it occurred to me, that though their deaths were painful, I wouldn’t give up the times I had with them for anything. The sweet times, the lovin’ times are worth everything else that comes along in this ol’ life, even the agony of loss. And that’s when I knew I’d been a fool. See, I didn’t change my mind about lovin’ you, Vanessa. I’ve loved you all along.” Oh, and weren’t those just about the sweetest words ever spoken? “I just changed my mind about admitting it to myself, and about letting you love me.”
“That’s a really good answer,” she told him, her smile so big it was making her cheeks hurt.
He shifted onto his side then, his expression growing serious. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, chere.”
She tunneled her fingers into his short hair, leaning down to kiss his lips. “Ah,” she whispered, “but, like you said, all the good times to come, all the loving times to come are going to totally make up for it.”
“Dieu, I hope so,” he muttered, palming her ass and rolling them until she was on top of him. “And I never thanked you for comin’ after me, but I want to thank you now. I’d be dead if you hadn’t done what you did. It’s because of you I’m here now.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” she said, shaking her head and laughing.
“What?”
“Boss said you’d thank me for that one day, but I didn’t believe him. Guess I should have, huh? That man’s rarely wrong.”
“I don’t want to talk about Boss,” Rock said, and her breath hitched when she felt him hard and throbbing between her legs.
“No?” she whispered, moving gently against him, loving the feel of him beneath her. “So then let’s talk about how you can thank me for saving your stubborn ass.”
“How’s that?” he asked, trying to catch her lips, but she eluded him.
“You can thank me by taking me out. On a date.”
“I’ll take you to moon if that’s what you want, mon ange. Now, kiss me.”
“Nope,” she shook her head, giggling when he frowned. “I don’t want the moon.”
“Merde,” he grumped. “You’re gonna make me dress up in a monkey suit and take you somewhere fancy, right? Like Alinea? Or what’s that frou-frou Italian place Christian likes so much? Spiaggia?”
“The Cubs are in town next week,” she said, fighting a grin as he got very still beneath her. Still, except for that one hand that continued to rub her ass unconsciously.
“You’re a baseball fan?” She could hear the hope and excitement in his voice as clearly as one hears a struck bell.
“Aren’t you?”
“Marry me,” he said, and she couldn’t help it, she laughed.
“How about we start with a baseball game and see where it goes from there?” she said, groaning when he kissed his way up her throat to nibble on her chin.
“That’s sounds like a wonderful plan, chere,” he murmured before claiming her lips. But in her head, she knew she was eventually going to get Rock to that altar. And, oh, what a wonderful story they would have to tell their grandchildren. The story of a woman who was scared of the dark and a man who was scared of love, who’d come together to overcome all their fears…
Acknowledgments
As always, I must give props to my husband. This past year has been a doozy. Full of ups, downs, and even a few sideways. But, you’ve been by my side through it all. My heart, my inspiration, my rock…
A big shout-out to Catherine Mann, fellow romantic suspense author. Cathy, you agreed to read the manuscript of a total unknown, then dared to go a step further and endorse the book in front of the world. I am forever honored and grateful.
A resounding huzzah to all the folks at Sourcebooks. It takes a village to launch a debut series into a bestselling one, and the hours each of you spent on these books both awes and humbles me. Thank you.
And, last but certainly not least, 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.
About the Author
Julie Ann Walker is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of the Black Knights Inc. romantic suspense series. She is prone to spouting movie quotes and song lyrics. She’ll never say no to sharing a glass of wine or going for a long walk. She prefers impromptu travel over the scheduled kind, and she takes her coffee with milk. You can find her on her bicycle along the lake shore in Chicago or blasting away at her keyboard, trying to wrangle her capricious imagination into submission. For more information, please visit www.julieannwalker.com or follow her on Facebook www.facebook.com/jawalkerauthor and/or Twitter @JAWalkerAuthor.
lker, Thrill Ride
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