In Rides Trouble: Black Knights Inc.

by Julie Ann Walker

  Not for the first time, she tried to guess what his real name might have been. Maybe it was something cool, like Asher or Raphael. Although, given life’s little ironies, it was probably more like Bob or something equally disappointing.

  “Who is that man?” Angel/Bob asked, dragging her from her fanciful thoughts.

  She glanced in the direction of his gaze but could barely make out the shadowed profile of the man tucked into a dim booth in the far back corner of the bar.

  “I don’t know. I can’t really see him. Why do you ask?”

  “He’s been watching us.”

  She squinted, trying to make out the face within the shadows. It was useless. “How can you tell? It’s too dark over there.”

  “I can tell,” his raspy voice brooked no argument.

  Okay, so Shadow Man was watching them. So what?

  “Well, it’s not like there’s a ton of activity in here right now. We’re probably the only thing to watch.” She took an unconcerned sip of her beer.

  And speaking of activity…

  She figured it was about time to check in and see just how ol’ Frank was making out with the whole trying-not-to-drool-down-the-front-of-Delilah’s-V-neck-sweater thing.

  When she glanced in their direction, she was pleased to find there was no drool involved, although there was a lot of playful grinning and flirtatious gazing.

  Grrr.

  “You should call him over here and do it,” Angel announced.

  Uh, non sequitur anyone? Still, Becky couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “I thought you said I didn’t need to. That I should just forget all about it.”

  “Yes,” he sighed, shaking his head in annoyance. “And I still believe that was good advice, but you’re not going to be satisfied until you get this apology…how is it you say?…out of the way. And I, for one, refuse to sit here and watch you fidget until you plotz.”

  “Ew!”

  “It does not mean what it sounds like it means.” With that, he grabbed his beer and stood up. And before she could stop him, he sauntered to the end of the bar where Frank and Delilah stopped their bantering to glance at him questioningly.

  Becky lit up like a campfire when Angel said something to Frank that caused him to frown so fiercely she was amazed Angel didn’t immediately curl into a protective ball. That particular look of Frank’s always had that effect on her. Angel, however, seemed immune. He just smirked and crossed his muscled arms over his chest, standing his ground.

  With a curse that even she, at the other end of the bar, could hear above the beats of the jukebox, Frank pushed past Angel, accidentally hitting the guy’s shoulder with his own—yeah right—to stomp in her direction. His big biker boots crushed the peanut shells scattered over the scuffed wooden floor into baby-fine powder.

  “What?” he growled, towering over her. She tried to remind herself that he was just a very fit man, like all the other very fit men she worked with, operators who had to keep their bodies in peak condition because their very lives depended on it. But she failed, because despite what she told herself, Frank Knight would always be the toughest, meanest, biggest sonofagun she’d ever known.

  “What what?” she asked, her hackles instantly twanging upright in defense.

  “Angel said you wanted to talk to me, so what did you want to talk about?”

  “What is it between you two, anyway?” she asked, thinking back on all that testosterone-y weirdness that’d gone down in Frank’s office.

  “That’s what you wanted to ask me?” he thundered, causing every head in the bar to turn in their direction. Thankfully, given the early hour, besides the Knights there were blessedly few heads.

  “No,” she hissed, trying to ignore the heat of embarrassment climbing up her throat to sting her cheeks. “I just don’t understand why you two—”

  “Becky,” he ground out. Well at least he’d moderated his tone so the whole bar was no longer privy to their conversation. For that, she was grateful. Until he continued, “Just spit it out, for the love of God.”

  Oh, and now it was her turn to make a scene.

  “I’m sorry, okay!” she yelled, sudden tears pricking behind her eyes, which only pissed her off further. If she stared bawling right there in the middle of her favorite bar, she swore she’d never forgive him.

  “You’re…you’re sorry?” he sputtered. Yep, she’d never before willingly offered up an apology, so she could understand his incredulity now. “For what?” he demanded, still looming over her until she felt the need to shrink down into herself. She had to make a conscious effort to keep her spine straight when her shoulders wanted ever so much to slink up around her ears.

  “For the time we…for w-what happened on the Patton,” she muttered as she darted a glance around the room to make sure no one else had heard that juicy little nugget. “I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you like that, and I’m…I just wanted to say I’m sorry, okay? I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I want things to be all right between us.”

  “Sonofabitch.” He briefly covered his eyes with his big hand. Then he dragged his palm down over his face and the raspy stubble on his jaw. Taking a deep breath, looking like he’d just aged ten years, he hooked a toe in the rungs of a barstool, yanked it out, and plopped onto the seat with a groan of weariness, or embarrassment, or some other emotion she couldn’t name.

  Ugh, this was turning out way worse than she ever imagined. Maybe she should’ve listened to Angel.

  Except…hold the phone, Frank’s eyes were strangely soft when he finally turned toward her. “It wasn’t your fault, honey.”

  Honey. Honey?

  If there’d been a record playing, the needle would’ve scratched across the vinyl surface. Scccrrriiitch. Because Frank Knight was not one for endearments. Hell, before the deal they made on the Patton, he’d refused to call her anything more informal than Rebecca, much less something as personal as honey.

  She sat there for a second. Completely pole-axed. All she could think was honey, honey…honey?

  Finally, shaking her head like a dog shakes off water, she managed, “Of course it’s my fault. You were out of your frickin’ mind.”

  “Mmm,” he agreed, nodding his head. “Just enough out of my mind to do something I’ve always wanted to do.”

  Her heart stopped beating. “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Becky.” He sighed, grabbing her pint of Guinness and taking a big slug. She couldn’t help but check the glowing neon Budweiser clock above the bar to make sure he wasn’t violating his food and drink cut-off time. He still had fifteen minutes. “Don’t pick this moment to turn dense.”

  So Angel was right. He had wanted to kiss her.

  “But if you’ve always wanted to kiss me, then why, for Pete’s sake, haven’t you?” She thought of all the time they’d wasted. Time they could’ve been loving, living their lives together instead of continually, carefully keeping each other at arm’s length.

  “Because I’m your boss, and I’m too old for you,” he replied, his eyes bleak as they stared straight ahead to the shelves of liquor glinting on the mirrored wall behind the bar.

  She couldn’t help noticing he made no mention of the woman up in Lincoln Park. So, had she been right about it not being serious? About the woman just being a friend with benefits? Her heart not only began beating, it leapt with hope.

  “First of all, you’re not technically my boss. My paycheck comes directly from the sale of the choppers, not the U.S. government. Second, thirteen years isn’t exactly a spring/fall relationship, Frank. It’s more like a spring/summer relationship, if you want to categorize it. Or,” she went on, getting more upset by the minute because things could’ve been so different if only he’d let them—the big, stupid dill-hole, “ma
ybe you could take the enlightened approach and admit that when it comes to relationships, age doesn’t matter.”

  He turned to her then, his expression strangely pained. “But it does, Becky.” When she opened her mouth to argue with him, he pushed ahead. “Besides, that’s not an issue now.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Simply that.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what we could or couldn’t have had now that you have Angel.”

  Her mind blanked. Simply…blanked. She understood the words that’d come out of his mouth—they were English, after all—but they didn’t make a bit of sense.

  “What are you talking about?” she cried, then nervously glanced around the bar.

  Thankfully, everyone except Angel appeared determined to give them their privacy. Angel, for his part, simply perched at the end of the bar, nursing his beer, not trying to hide the fact that he was narrowly watching their exchange.

  Now she really, really wished she could read the mysterious Israeli, because somehow he was involved in all this…this…whatever the hell this was.

  “I’m talking about the fact that you’re in love with the pretty-boy ex-Mossad agent.”

  It was like he was spewing advanced Calculus formulas. His words were English, but they might as well have been Mandarin Chinese. “I am?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No!”

  He blinked at her, the scar slicing up from the corner of his mouth going stark white, the big one slashing through his eyebrow puckering and turning vivid pink when he frowned fiercely. The man’s face was a brutal, beautiful mess. It was like a roughly detailed map of the harsh life he’d chosen, and she figured she could look at it for the next hundred years and always find something new to admire.

  After a long moment, he licked his lips and asked, his deep voice even deeper than usual, “You’re not in love with Angel?”

  “Of course not. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s carrying a flame for someone back home and…What? What’s that look for?” His square jaw jerked back on his neck like she’d punched him, his storm-cloud eyes intently searching her face.

  “But…but the way you two have been acting, I thought—”

  She held up a hand, stopping him. “And how have we been acting? Like friends? Like colleagues?”

  “Like lovers,” he growled.

  Okay, it was definitely time to call bullshit.

  “Whatever, Frank. I haven’t treated Angel any differently than I’ve treated the other guys. Think about it.”

  “I saw you two cuddling on the couch.”

  “Cuddling is a bit dramatic, don’t you think? It was more like I fell asleep on the poor guy, and he was nice enough not to disturb me even though I was snoring and slobbering all over the front of his shirt.”

  “But…” He shook his head, trying his level best not to believe her. God only knew why, because she sure as heck didn’t. “But you two have been inseparable since you got back.”

  “Uh, yeah. Because we’ve been racing to finalize the plans for his bike, since you just hit me up for another custom job. Surely you remember all the hours you and I spent coming up with the design for Boss Hog?”

  Geez, she sure remembered them. They’d been the best hours of her life, immediately followed by some of the worst. Because most evenings, after they’d worked all day together, side by side, he’d taken himself up to Lincoln Park. To Chesty McGivesItUp.

  Grrr.

  “I remember precisely what it was like to work so closely with you, Becky. And the two of us certainly weren’t laughing and joking around like you and Angel have been doing.”

  The man was an idiot.

  “That’s because things are different between us, you big, stupid dill-hole! They always have been!”

  He opened his mouth to say something when the front door of the bar opened and Samantha Tate, Chicago’s newest, brightest, most persistent reporter stepped inside.

  Oh, sweet Lord, not now. Becky rolled her eyes and groaned.

  The woman had left her about a zillion messages, all of which she’d studiously ignored. Because Samantha Tate wasn’t after another quote for her paper on the whole piracy incident. Of that, Becky was absolutely sure. Although just exactly what the reporter was after was still murky.

  And when it came to interaction with the press, she absolutely hated murky. Scratch that. It was more like when it came to the press, she absolutely hated interaction.

  The woman made a beeline for Becky.

  Well, this is just frickin’ frackin’ great!

  For the first time in over three years, she and Frank were talking, really talking, and then the one thing guaranteed to make the big, bad, I-ain’t-scared-of-nothin’ Frank Knight take off with his tail tucked between his legs came marching through the door.

  Given the clandestine nature of his profession was at direct odds with freedom of the press, she wasn’t surprised when he hopped from the barstool and carefully strolled away, leaving her to deal with the reporter on her own.

  “What do you want, Miss Tate?” she growled before the journalist could take a seat.

  “A follow-up,” the woman replied, slinging a hot-pink crocodile carry-all onto the bar and motioning for Delilah as she appropriated the barstool Frank had just abandoned.

  “Not gonna happen,” Becky shook her head. “In case you haven’t gotten the hint, I’ve given all the interviews I’m going to give. Told my story as many times as I’m going to tell it and—”

  “That press conference the day you returned, and the few phone interviews you’ve given since, aren’t going to satisfy the public’s thirst for more detail about your harrowing experience,” the reporter declared firmly before turning to Delilah. “I’ll take a martini, extra dirty, two olives.”

  “And I’ll take the check, Delilah,” Becky announced. “Add her drink to it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I guess it’s the least you could do after refusing to return my phone calls.”

  “Like I said, I’m all interviewed out.”

  “Mmm.” The reported nodded slowly, then slid Becky a calculated look that had the hairs on the back of her neck twanging a warning. “So how’d your employee get hurt?”

  “What?”

  “That big, brutal-looking guy that was just sitting here.” She motioned with her chin over to where Frank had joined the rest of the Knights by the jukebox. “He’s one of your employees, isn’t he? So how’d he get hurt?”

  “None of your damned business.” If ambition had a scent, it would be called eau de Samantha Tate. Becky just hoped like hell the breaking story that boosted Miss Tate to the top wasn’t the discovery of a covert group of government contractors operating out of good ol’ Chi-Town.

  “Why the hostility?” the reporter asked, feigning injury. “It was just an innocent question.”

  “I’ve learned no question is innocent when posed by the press.”

  “True.” Miss Tate laughed, shaking her head. “So, was he injured while rescuing you?” She took a big swig of the cloudy martini Delilah plunked down in front of her.

  Uh-huh, innocent question my ass.

  “Rescuing me from what?”

  “The pirates.”

  “Of course not. He’s one of my mechanics. What would he be doing out in the Indian Ocean?”

  “What indeed?” Miss Tate lifted a smooth, infuriating brow.

  “Thanks,” Becky murmured to Delilah after being handed the check. She glanced at the total and fished in her jacket pocket for her wallet, praying she had enough cash to cover the total without having to wait to run a credit card.

  Thank you, St. Peter, she did.

  Throwing a wad of bill
s on the bar, she stood.

  “I don’t know what you want from me, Miss Tate. Like I said before, I’ve told my story too many times already. And I’m sure people are just as sick of hearing it as I am of telling it.”

  “Something more happened on that tanker, didn’t it, Miss Reichert?” the reporter called after her. She’d already turned to head toward the door. “Something more always seems to be happening when you’re around. Tell me, why is that?”

  Becky’s heart dropped down to her feet, but she managed to swing around and march back toward the bar in order to tower over the nosy journalist—only she was too short to tower so she satisfied herself with glowering instead.

  “I’ve told you everything I know. Now normally, if someone wants to go on a wild-goose chase, I let them. But you’re not only wasting your time by barking up this tree, you’re also wasting my time. And yes, I know I mixed my metaphors, so just go ahead and quote me!”

  Miss Tate threw her head back and laughed. “I think if things were different, you and I would be very good friends, Miss Reichert.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “You never know.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Are you used to getting the last word, Rebecca?”

  “Always, Samantha.”

  The woman snorted and saluted Becky with her martini glass. Becky couldn’t help it, one corner of her mouth twitched.

  Shaking her head, she turned and started toward the door, only to slow her steps when she glanced into the back corner. Even though the features of man in the booth were still concealed in shadow, there was something slightly familiar about the general shape of his face, the hard ridge of his jaw and broad expanse of his forehead.

  Hmm…

  “Who is that?” she murmured to Frank with a jerk of her chin as he held the front door for her. The rest of the Knights had already exited Delilah’s—yep, throw a reporter in the mix, and men whose lives depended on their cover were quick to quit the scene. The rough growl of their engines firing up out on the street nearly drowned her question, but along with a superior physique, Frank also had superior hearing.

  “That would be the ex-CIA agent known as Dagan Zoelner,” he replied.