In the Line of Fire: Hot Desert Heroes, Book 1

by Jett Munroe

  Even though to her Beck was the best looking of the bunch, she had to battle through encroaching shyness that being around hot guys always brought. With a smile she said hi and gave a little wave as she walked toward them. When she reached Beck she stopped. “Hey,” she whispered. And right there bashfulness won the fight. She couldn’t kiss him in front of his friends the way she wanted to, so she went up on her tiptoes and brushed his cheek with her lips. “Welcome home.”

  His eyes went as soft as a misty dawn. “Uh-uh, that won’t do,” he murmured. He dropped his duffle bag and drew her close in a hug. “Christ, you smell good.”

  “Thanks,” she said. He felt good. Warm and strong and alive.

  He grinned then, one big hand at her nape, the other at the small of her back. He slanted his mouth over hers. It was sweet; it was hot.

  It was also short. She appreciated that he wasn’t going for the gusto in front of his buddies, but she couldn’t deny she was disappointed at the brevity of it. Some of that disgruntlement must have shown when he let her go because his grin was fit to split his face. “Babe,” he muttered.

  “I still don’t know what you mean when you say that,” she muttered back at him.

  He touched her lips with his again then moved to her side. “Laney, this is Solomon Quincy, the final member of my former squad who’s coming on board at REG. He hooked up with us on this last job.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Quince, Delaney Murphy.”

  She held out her hand and received a brief, firm handshake. “It’s nice to meet you…Quince, is it?” she asked with a sidelong glance at Beck.

  “Friends call me Quincy or Quince. I don’t care which.” His deep voice held a wicked drawl that betrayed his Southern roots. “Nobody calls me Solomon, not even my mama who gave me the ridiculous moniker.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. “Um, well, it’s nice ta meetcha.”

  She got identical grins from all four men and rolled her eyes. Yes, she got that she was being a dork. She didn’t need their unspoken commentary on that fact.

  Beck tightened his arm around her waist and bent until his lips were at the side of her face. “You’re cute,” he murmured in her ear, “but you need to relax.”

  As he straightened she frowned at him. “It’s not as easy as you telling me to do something and I automatically am able to do it, you know.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because,” she said, “it just isn’t.”

  He did that lip-twitch thing but didn’t say anything. With the arm around her waist he turned her and walked with her into the kitchen. “Make yourselves comfortable,” he said to the guys over his shoulder as he pulled his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll grab some beers and order the pizza.” He looked at Delaney. “I just realized, where’s your sister?”

  “She decided to spend the night over at Andi’s.” And that was all she was going to say on the subject, with three other men hanging around within hearing distance.

  “You want me to send these guys on their way?” he asked. “Until he can get furnishings, Quince is bunking with Rafe. They can all eat next door at Rafe’s place as easy as here. I figured Morgan would be here, so I didn’t think it would be a problem having them stay for dinner.”

  “You haven’t eaten and neither have I,” she said. “And they’re here, so go ahead and order.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. She’d gotten her wish for a buffer between her and Beck, though not the one she’d wanted, so she could settle down and get used to him again. But she wasn’t sure how settled she’d really feel surrounded by his buds. She hadn’t been around these men much, had just seen them at the coffee shop with Beck. Hopefully they wouldn’t expect her to carry the conversation.

  Getting to know these men who had his back in dangerous situations was a good thing, she told herself. She’d feel better about him being away if she knew the men with him.

  “As long as you’re sure,” he said softly.

  “What’re you going to do? Go out there and tell them they have to leave?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Yeah.”

  She was shocked that he seemed to have no problem with being rude that way. “No you’re not,” she said. “Order the danged pizza.”

  He grinned, fiddled with his phone then pressed a button and put the phone to his ear.

  Delaney realized what he’d been doing. “You have a pizza place in your Contacts list?” she asked disbelievingly.

  He shrugged. “Order pizza a lot. Saves time.” Then he started speaking into the phone, ordering a couple of “extra-large pies with the works” as well as a big order of wings. Just as he added two of their pizza-sized chocolate chip cookies, Delaney told him, “You don’t need to order dessert. I made a cake for you.”

  He stopped and stared at her a moment, then without taking his eyes off her, he said into the phone, “Never mind the cookies. Just the pizza and wings’ll do.”

  “And a two-liter of diet,” she prompted. “I don’t really like beer.”

  “Add a two-liter of diet soda,” he told the pizza dude. “Anything else?” he asked her.

  She shook her head.

  He told the guy that he’d pay cash upon delivery and ended the call, then fetched four longneck bottles from the refrigerator. Delaney went with him into the living room and watched as he passed out the beers. He set his on the coffee table and took her hand to lead her down the hallway. “Food’ll be here in thirty,” he said loudly enough she knew he was talking to his friends. “We’ll be right back.”

  She followed him into the bedroom, only because he had her hand in a firm grip. When he closed the door behind them, she said in a fierce whisper, “We are not having sex with your buddies practically right outside the door.”

  He dropped her hand and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close. Bending his neck, he stared into her eyes, his own gleaming. “No, we’re not,” he agreed. “But we are going to properly greet each other after I’ve been away from you for twenty-three goddamn days.”

  He’d counted the days. Her ire disappeared under a swelter of sweetness. “Oh.” She wet her lips. “I can do that.”

  His lips tipped up at the corners. “Yeah,” he whispered against her mouth, “I figured you could.”

  As Beck dropped his mouth onto hers, she lifted her hands, curling one around the back of his neck, fingers in his hair, and the other around his back, palm curved over his shoulder blade.

  Christ, but it had been too long. Passion took over. He opened his mouth over hers, his tongue spiking out, pushing into her mouth, giving her a very hard, very deep kiss.

  She tasted like chocolate and something fresh that was all Delaney.

  Fuck him.

  Keeping one arm locked tight around her waist, he slid the other one up her spine and to the back of her skull, fingers tangling in her silken hair, tipping her head to the side. He’d dreamed of her while he’d been gone, the first time ever he’d had a carnal dream about a woman he was dating.

  The reality was far fucking better.

  He bent forward slightly, arching her over his arm, forcing her lower body closer to his. She gave a soft moan, one he felt against his tongue. He felt it in his dick too.

  God, this was what life was about. What his job was about. Trying to make the world a little safer so he could come home to this.

  Beauty.

  His reward.

  Her fingers tightened in his hair and she pressed closer, her tongue sparring with his. And he took it, pushing her gently against the door, forcing her soft curves to mold to his frame.

  Only when he felt his control start to slide, did he stop. He tore his mouth away and rested his forehead on hers. He opened his eyes to see hers drifting open in a sultry flutter.

 
Fuck.

  Beck slid his hand out of her hair and clasped it with the one still at the small of her back, and put some distance between them. He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, and said in a low voice, “Okay, baby. Now that we’ve greeted each other…” He paused to savor her big grin. Christ, it was good to see her losing her shyness with him. He knew it’d be back in full force when they hit the living room, and he’d deal with that in a minute. But he had something much more important to talk to her about just now. “Tell me about the brakes on your car.”

  Delaney rolled her lips between her teeth and her eyes darted to his shoulder. “You already know what happened. They gave out on the way down Mount Lemmon.”

  “And you called Gabe.”

  She nodded. “He came right away, had a tow truck with him, and we had my poor car delivered to my mechanic and then I rented a car to use until mine’s fixed.”

  “Don’t need a rental, Laney. Turn it in and use my Audi.”

  Her eyes lit up before slender brows drew down as she met his gaze. “Won’t you need that for work?”

  He smiled. “Baby, I have the company SUV for work.”

  Her lips curled up into a smile. “Seriously? You’ll let me drive your Audi?”

  And she was back to being adorable. But it pissed him the hell off to think she could get so excited about such a little thing. Made him want to pay a visit to both that mama and ex-husband of hers. If she’d been treated right, it wouldn’t be a surprise to her that the man she was with would let her borrow his car.

  Needing to touch her skin, he brought up one hand to cup her jaw and rubbed his thumb along her soft cheek. “Seriously. It probably won’t take them long to fix your car. I’ll call your mechanic tomorrow and see what’s going on.”

  She tipped her head back and to one side while her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you need to talk to my mechanic? It’s my car. I’ll talk to him about it, like I have every other time I’ve had to have it in the shop.”

  It amazed him how someone who could be so incredibly shy at times could at other times have so much goddamned backbone. And it was remarkable how often it appeared when all he was trying to do was look out for her. “Because that’s my job where you’re concerned, baby,” Beck said as gently as he could. “Making sure you stay safe.”

  “I can handle repairs to my own freaking car,” Delaney snapped. “And it’s not like you can do your job for me when you’re not even in the freaking country because you’re doing your job for someone else, now, can you?” She took a breath and he heard it shake. “You have no idea what it’s like, careening down the side of a freaking mountain with freaking brakes that don’t freaking work, your sister next to you, a sister you love and hope to God you aren’t about to get killed, surviving that, and then being unable to call the one freaking person on the freaking planet who makes you feel safe. Because at that moment, even as you just cheated death, you feel as freaking unsafe as you ever have in your entire freaking life.” She put her hands on his chest and gave a shove.

  It was easy to see she was still worked up over the experience, and he understood that. The biggest thing he got from her rant was that he made her feel safe. His chest expanded. That was so big, so important to him that for a moment he couldn’t move. Then he chose not to move, sensing that if he gave her physical space, she’d take emotional space too. And after having been separated from her by a couple of continents and three weeks, he wasn’t giving her either. “No, I don’t know how that feels exactly, Laney, but I have faced death before. I’ve watched men in my squad, good men, die right beside me.”

  Her anger seemed to melt away, turning into tears that made her eyes glisten. “I was so flipping scared, Beck,” she whispered. “And I really wanted you to be there.”

  He drew her back into his arms, holding her tight against him. When Gabe had told him what happened and Beck realized she could have died, he’d been livid. And felt guilty for not being there. But even if he had been in town, he couldn’t have prevented the car’s brake failure.

  Though he could have been the one to get her and her broken-down car off the mountain. And that was what she’d wanted. The fact that he hadn’t been able to didn’t sit well with him, either.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he soothed. While she wasn’t making any noise, he could feel her tears wetting his shirt, as well as the small quakes of her body when her breath hitched. He wrapped her up as tight as he could in his arms. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”

  He’d like to say it wouldn’t happen again, but he wasn’t going to lie to her. He couldn’t make that promise, not yet. Maybe not ever.

  He had a certain skill set, as did Ty, Rafe, and Quincy, which meant they were uniquely qualified to go in to dangerous situations and have a good likelihood of coming out alive. His past was full of dark deeds, all done in the name of country or honor.

  She could have everything else. Just not his darkness.

  For now, he held her while she let go of some of the residual fear. After a few moments she pulled back and swiped her cheeks with her fingers. “I need to blow my nose,” she whispered.

  “Okay, baby,” he said gently. He let her go and watched her walk into the master bathroom. She closed the door behind her. He heard her blow, then heard the water run.

  There was silence for a few moments before she opened the door. “I look like I’ve been crying,” she said.

  “They won’t notice,” he told her, figuring she was concerned the others would comment on her puffy eyes. As she drew near, he snagged her hand and twined his fingers with hers. “All they’ll see is your beauty.”

  She snorted. “You are so full of it sometimes.”

  He let that slide. For now. But someday she’d know she was everything he saw her to be. So he merely smiled and murmured, “Let’s go get some pizza, yeah?”

  Delaney nodded and preceded him out of the room.

  At the area where the hallway opened up, she made a right turn into the kitchen. He let her have that play and turned left to join his friends in the living room.

  “Everything okay?” Ty asked in a low voice. He’d obviously seen that she was upset.

  “Yeah. She unloaded on me some of the aftermath she still has swirling around over her Mount Lemmon trip.” He sat on one end of the sofa and glanced into the kitchen to see she was busying herself with gathering plates, napkins, forks, and knives. “Uh, baby,” he called out to her, “we won’t need forks and knives.”

  She set the knives aside and didn’t look at him as she gave an agreeable “We’ll need forks for the cake” and set the silverware on the countertop.

  A low buzz sounded, indicating someone was at the outer door of Red Eagle. “Got it,” Ty rumbled and got to his feet. Beck peeled off four twenties and handed them to Ty as he went by.

  When Ty came back he held a stack of boxes that included two extra-large pizzas, three dozen wings, and a two-liter of diet soda. He set everything on the coffee table. “You aren’t getting’ any change, bro, ’cause you’re a generous tipper,” he told Beck with a grin. “Gave the kid more than a twenty percent tip for havin’ to haul this bounty.”

  Beck was too hungry to care at the moment. “More beers?” he asked the guys.

  He got an affirmative from all three. He went into the kitchen and grabbed four longnecks from the fridge. “You got that?” he asked Delaney with a nod toward the stuff she’d set out on the counter.

  She rolled her eyes. When she looked back at him, she said, “It’s just a glass, five plates, and some napkins. I don’t know why you think I’m so incompetent I can’t even manage something like carrying a glass, five freaking plates, and some napkins.” She stomped past him.

  Blindsided by her accusation, all he could do for a few seconds was stare after her. He drew in a deep breath and held it, tamping down h
is anger, before he blew it out between pursed lips. All right then, that was a discussion they were going to be having before the night was over. He didn’t know where this latest insecurity of hers was coming from, but it seemed simple logic that if he’d truly thought she was incompetent, he wouldn’t have offered her a job. A job, which, from Gabe’s account, she was so far performing brilliantly.

  From the expressions on his team’s faces he could tell they’d heard her snap at him and wondered what was going on. He gave a negligible shake of his head and sat on the middle cushion of the sofa between Delaney and Ty.

  Quincy leaned forward in the armchair on the other side of the coffee table and flipped open one of the pizza boxes with a loud, “Come to Papa!”

  “You do know you have to share, right?” Rafe asked him.

  “Yes. Yes I do.” He partially rose from his seat and held the box out to Delaney. “Ma’am, if you’d like to, would you be so kind as to select your slices?”

  Her lips curved up. “I’ll start with one,” she said and did just that.

  “Babe, you’d better get more than one,” Beck cautioned. “Just sayin’, with this lot, all of this…” he made a circular motion that encompassed the coffee table and its contents, “…will be gone in about ten seconds flat. Twenty tops.”

  She obediently took another slice and said, “Okay, Quincy, that’s all I want.”

  “You sure?” he asked. When she nodded, he grinned and settled back on the sofa, holding the box just above his lap. “You gents help yourselves to that box.”

  While Beck, Ty, and Rafe began growling at him about his unwillingness to share, Delaney piped up with “I made cake”. When the men looked at her, pink swept across her face and she ducked her head a little. “So, um, you need to, um, save room for dessert.”

  “Well, that’s a different story, then,” Quincy said and plopped the box onto the coffee table. He took a plate and proceeded to stack six pieces of pizza on it. He wrestled open the container of chicken and picked out several wings, then settled back in his chair and licked barbeque sauce off his fingers before bringing a slice of pizza to his mouth.