by Laura Kaye
Her feet dangled nowhere near the ground, though that was hard to focus on when he got his first eyeful of just how much of her skin that bikini bared. Christ. “I think I’d like to have seen that,” he managed.
“Can you make yourself useful and hold the hammock still so I can hop down?” she asked, amused frustration in her voice.
He swallowed hard as he bent to retrieve the scattered paper. No, not paper. Photographs. “Nope. I’m here for the dismount maneuver,” he said, as the photographs—arresting photographs—captured his attention. They were a mix of color and black and white. Of a cemetery…
She gave an aggrieved sigh. “Come on, douchecanoe, it’s starting to rain for real. Help me down so I don’t splat all over the place.”
The images in his hand were melancholy and haunting, and set off a weird feeling in his chest even as her words penetrated the way they’d captivated him.
With a half-hearted chuckle, he came toward her. “Douchecanoe, huh?”
“Uh huh,” she said, smirking up at him, so playful and pretty.
He came close enough that his knees touched hers. Without giving himself a chance to rethink the wisdom of his actions, he put an arm around her back. “Fine. Grab on to me,” he said, the words coming out low and rough.
“I don’t want to hurt your sh—”
“Grab on to me.”
She did. Her hands clasped around the back of his neck, coming nowhere near the wound on his shoulder that he knew concerned her. And then he pulled her against his chest until all her soft curves were pressed tight against all his hard edges.
Their gazes collided.
Her breath caught and she glanced at his mouth. Just the slightest little glance.
Billy was instantly and demandingly hard. And so fucking hungry for just one taste.
Shayna’s eyes flashed back to meet his. “Thank you,” she said in a breathy, needful voice that ratcheted up the lust suddenly heating his blood. From that look and the feeling of her body against him and their whole day together.
“It’s nothing,” he said, putting her down.
But she didn’t let go. “It means a lot to me.”
“What does?” His body wanted more of her pressed to more of him again. Wanted it bad. He clenched his teeth against the need clawing through him.
“Everything you’re doing for me.” Her voice still had that breathiness that grabbed him by the balls.
“It’s no problem, Shay,” he gritted out. It didn’t matter how bad he wanted more from this moment. He couldn’t let himself have it. But he also wasn’t pushing her away, was he?
Her gaze dropped to his mouth again.
“Shayna.”
Pink filtered into the fair skin of her cheeks and she dropped her arms. “I guess we should go inside.”
“Uh huh.”
She gave him one last look, then made for the door.
Which was the first time Billy saw the ink she’d mentioned she wore on her back.
From underneath her hair, he could just make out the symbol of an aperture on the back of her neck. The black was stark against her skin. But what caught his attention even more was the bigger piece she wore on the whole back of her right shoulder. A tattoo of several Polaroid photographs surrounded by watercolor flowers. Inside the Polaroid frames were images of a sun setting over mountains, the fuzzy seeds of a dandelion blowing away, and a little girl in a dress reaching for a red heart-shaped balloon as it floated skyward.
Wrapping the towel around herself, she disappeared inside, and he blinked out of his stupor and followed her.
As he closed the door, she said, “Oh, I’ll take those.” Shay gestured to where he still held her photographs.
“You took these?” he asked, happy for something else to focus on. Besides her gorgeous body and intriguing ink.
She nodded, but there was something about her demeanor that was suddenly off. Almost shy. Shayna accepted the pictures into her hand.
“They’re fucking good,” he said. “Beautiful and disturbing at the same time.”
She peered up at him, a guardedness in her eyes. “Disturbing how?”
Billy frowned. He hadn’t meant to offend her. “Just, I mean, they feel…sad.” Or maybe that was his own bullshit coming through.
“Well, they are of a cemetery.” Her tone was neutral though her gaze was questioning.
“But look at this one. It isn’t obviously in a cemetery.” He helped her shuffle through until he found the two shadows on the ground, one of a statue, he guessed. The photo was a black and white and powerful in its simplicity. “Is that you?” He pointed at the other shadow, and Shayna nodded. “Looking at this makes me feel a sadness. Because it looks like your shadow is about to turn into the angel’s shadow for a hug.” He shrugged, feeling like an idiot. “I mean, I’m no fucking art critic. I’m just saying how it feels to me.”
She nodded. “That’s fair. Thanks for saying they’re good.”
He shrugged, feeling like they just had a conversation that he only half understood. But clearly, he’d fucked something up. And it sat like a rock in his gut. “Hungry? I could make something.”
“Oh, no. That’s okay. Thanks though.” She thumbed over her shoulder, and he could tell he was losing her even before she said the words. “I’m just gonna go change and get ready for the week.”
Billy nodded and watched her go. And found himself battling about a dozen different urges.
To follow her. To ask what he’d said to bring her down. To pull her back into his arms. To ask where the third tattoo was—because she’d said she had three, but he only saw two, and the only other part of her back that was covered was her backside…
Not a single one of those were urges he should give into.
And food was not what he wanted.
Which meant he had to get the hell out of there before he caused trouble of the can’t-take-it-back kind.
Chapter Five
Sean and I are heading to Ben’s for chili dogs. You in?
Mo’s text had lit up Billy’s phone about three minutes after Shayna went upstairs, and Billy had been only too happy to agree. Being in the presence of his friends would keep him from doing anything stupid.
Mo and Sean were already in line when Billy got there. It only took a few minutes until they were ordering some half smokes, dogs, and fries. While they waited for their food, they found a booth in the back corner.
“How the hell are you, Riddick? I feel like it’s been forever,” Billy said to the Navy vet. They’d met through Warrior Fight Club almost two years ago.
“Same old,” Sean said with a grin. “Finding ‘em hot, leaving ‘em wet. Just like always.”
“Fucking firefighters,” Billy said on a laugh. Sean had worked as a firefighter in the Navy and did the same as a civilian. Overworked, if you asked most of his friends, because the guy covered every co-worker’s missed shift and took on every bit of overtime he could.
Mo gave a deep chuckle. “Son, I think them fires done cooked your noodle.”
Sean smirked. “Don’t you worry about my noodle, Moses. The ladies don’t complain. Trust me.”
Holding up his hands, Mo shook his head and looked to Billy. “How’s the new roommate?”
“You got a new roommate?” Sean asked, taking a sip of his beer.
Billy rolled his eyes. “She’s not a roommate. She’s a house guest. A temporary one.”
Sean’s dark eyes went almost comically wide. “Wait, your roommate is a woman?”
“An adventurous woman…”
Billy gritted his teeth against the memory of Shay’s teasing voice in his ear and Sean’s interest. Because the guy could be as relentless as a dog with a bone when he saw the chance to get under someone’s skin. Most of the time it was funny and good-natured, unless he happened upon an actual exposed nerve. Which, goddamnit, Shayna was tonight for some reason.
“Thanks a fucking lot, Mo. She’s not my roommate. She’s new to DC and
needed a place to stay until she can find her own apartment.”
Wearing a shit-eating grin on his face, Mo slid out of the booth, hand to his ear. “Is that them calling our number? I’ll get it.”
“She single?” Sean asked.
Billy glared. He felt himself do it. He didn’t mean to do it; it was just instinctual. And he knew the second he did it that he’d done something akin to waving a red flag at a bull. “Don’t even think about it, Riddick.”
Interest slid into the other man’s eyes—interest in busting Billy’s balls, that was. “So she is single. You warning me off because you’re interested then?”
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
“No, I’m warning you off because all you want is another fire station groupie to stretch your nozzle.”
“Dude, you stretch the pipe, not the nozzle.” Sean smirked again—it was pretty much his face’s primary setting.
“What the hell conversation am I walking in on?” Mo said, placing two heavily laden trays of food on the table.
“Just trying to teach Parrish to talk like a firefighter,” Sean said, grabbing for his half smoke and fries.
Billy took a big bite of his chili dog, glad that the food made it impossible to continue the conversation.
Though he should’ve known that wouldn’t stop Sean, who dunked two French fries into the ketchup before pointing them at him. “Since when did you want a roommate, anyway?”
“I didn’t want a roommate. Buddy asked me to help out his sister for a few weeks and I agreed. Simple as.”
“How old is she?” Sean asked.
Billy gave him a look. “Twenty-six. And if you’d stop taking shifts during club meetings, you’d know all this shit already.”
Sean shrugged. “The job’s the job.” They ate in silence for a few precious seconds, and then he said. “What’s her name?”
“Jesus fucknugget!” Billy bit out.
“Jesus…fucknugget?” Sean blinked and looked at Mo, who was about three seconds away from busting a gut.
“That’s a new one,” Mo said, chuckling around a bite of his half smoke.
Which, of course, was when Billy realized he’d used the ridiculous curse that Shayna had thrown at him that very first night. When he’d seen her naked.
“Whatever,” Billy said, somehow not getting away from her even though he’d left the house. What the hell was that about, anyway? “Her name’s Shayna Curtis. She’s got a new job as a staff photographer at the Washington Gazette. I’ve known her since she was a teenager, though it’s not like I know her all that well. And that’s everything there is to know. Okay?”
Although, even as he uttered the words, some part of him felt like he knew her better than his description let on…
But Billy couldn’t really think about that when the debate on whether to keep digging was plain on Sean’s face.
“Working on any interesting cases?” Mo said, throwing Billy a lifeline out of the conversation.
He happily grasped it. “The main thing on my plate is a civil investigation into suspected hidden assets, and I’m not finding the evidence they need for this trial. I’m going to give it maybe two more days before I deliver the bad news. And then I have a bunch of background checks to work through.”
“At least you get to be your own boss,” Sean said. “Firehouse is nearly as hierarchical as the damn Navy.”
Which begged the question that they’d all asked at one time or another and never gotten a straight answer to—why Riddick had left the Navy before putting in his twenty only to get out and do the same job. The guy always played it off like he’d just gotten tired of the military, but people didn’t end up in the Warrior Fight Club if they’d well handled the transition to civilian life. That was part of what WFC was all about.
Most of the people who ended up there—both men and women—did so because they had injuries, mental health struggles, anger-management issues, or other problems reentering the real world. Because the thing was that the real world did not feel very fucking real after being in the middle of the shit in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or in the case of Spec Ops teams like the Rangers, in a whole host of other places that the U.S. would never admit.
Mo sucked some chili off his thumb and nailed Sean with a stare. “You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t risking getting crispy every damn day.”
Sean shrugged and nodded. “Prolly.” He swallowed a bite of his dog, grabbed his beer bottle, and threw a questioning glance at Billy. “You like being a P.I.?”
The other topic it seemed like all of Billy’s thoughts and conversations led to lately. And he didn’t have any more clarity on it than he had all the other times a similar question had bounced around in his noggin.
“There are things I like about it. It’s flexible. It’s not the same thing every day. The structure of it is a lot like running an op. A really fucking watered-down op, but still…” Now Billy was the one shrugging. “And it pays the bills.”
But as the conversation turned to how the matches had gone down at Saturday’s WFC training and Noah’s Halloween party and how much the younger man had changed since he’d first joined the club, Billy couldn’t shake Sean’s question. Nor his own lackluster answer.
Was paying the bills all he really wanted to do with his life? When he had it to live and so many others didn’t?
Shayna was so excited about her first day at work that she started waking up at four AM and checking the clock to see if it was time to get up. She finally gave up on the whole project of sleeping around 5:30, a full half hour before her alarm was set to go off.
But she didn’t even care. Because she was chomping at the bit.
She showered and dressed in a pair of comfortable gray dress pants, a smart white button-down shirt, and a pair of dressy ballet flats, then she grabbed her folder of personnel papers, swallowed down some cereal, and packed a lunch. Billy hadn’t stirred during that whole time, so Shayna jotted off a quick note.
Hey Billy—off to work! Have a good day! –Shay
For a minute she second-guessed leaving it. Last night after she’d turned down his offer for dinner, she’d started feeling a little bad about her reaction to his seeing her photos. But when she’d went to find him to suggest they make dinner after all, he was gone. She hadn’t heard him leave, and he hadn’t said good-bye. And she couldn’t help but think that maybe she’d…what? Hurt his feelings? Or something? She didn’t know.
She’d spent the rest of the evening alternating between excitement over going to her new job this morning and regret that she’d worn so much of her emotion on her sleeve during that conversation with Billy.
She’d just felt exposed and even a little cornered by his insights into her work, like she might have to explain to him why she’d been in the cemetery and taken the shots in the first place. And that would lead to conversations she didn’t really want to have with him.
Or with anybody. Hell, even with herself, truth be told.
Not giving herself another moment for the ridiculous debate, she left the note and headed out the door.
It was way earlier than she needed to go, but she wanted extra time to find her way on public transportation and to scope out the neighborhood around the paper’s offices. She was half way down the block to the bus stop when she heard her name.
“Good morning, Miss Shayna.”
She recognized Reuben’s voice right away, and it lit a smile on her face. “Oh, hi, Reuben,” she said, finding him and his wiggly dog sitting on his front porch. “How are you and Ziggy this morning?”
“We’re moving a little slow, but we’re all right. You heading off to that new job?”
She nodded as she came to a stop in front of his gate. “First day.”
“You’ll knock ‘em dead.”
“From your lips, Reuben,” she said with a grin.
He pointed skyward. “He’s listening. Don’t you doubt it.”
“I’ll take all the help I can ge
t.” She threw him a wave. “Have a good day.”
“You, too, now,” Reuben said. Ziggy barked, and she heard the man tell him, “You settle down now. Shayna will give you a pet when she has more time.”
The conversation was just the pick-me-up she needed to shake off the last of the weirdness she felt over what’d happened last night. It wasn’t like she really knew Reuben, but there was something about his warmth of character that made him feel almost fatherly.
It occurred to her how much she missed that feeling. And to the extent she didn’t have it as much anymore, it was her own fault. She knew that.
Her parents had never once blamed her for Dylan’s death. Well, not out loud. But she feared that they did, down deep. And she knew for a fact that Dylan’s fiancé, Abby, blamed her.
Rather than chance seeing it in their eyes or hearing it in their voices, she’d made herself a scarce during the past two years. Oh, she called and emailed and texted from time to time. And she’d gone home for Thanksgiving and Christmas even though those had been brutal in highlighting how many empty chairs her parents had around their table these days. But all of that represented the bare minimum compared to how much she’d once visited and talked to them.
But today was not the day for such thoughts.
Today was the day for fresh starts and knocking ‘em dead.
Nine hours later and she wasn’t sure how much of the latter she’d had a chance to do, but it’d only taken this one day to prove that she’d made the right decision—in coming to DC, in shifting the focus of her career, and in taking this job.
Even though a lot of the day had been spent in completing forms and watching training films and in ten-second introductions with about a hundred people, just being in the Gazette’s offices had been thrilling. The low buzz of the news room. The occasional bursts of frenetic energy in the hallways. The framed newspapers that hung everywhere showing off the headlines of some of the biggest stories that the Gazette had broken.
