by Laura Kaye
“Because you probably wouldn’t care if a buddy was patching you up, right?”
He shrugged with one big shoulder. “Anyone ever told you that you can be too damn perceptive?”
“I’m a photographer, after all. It’s literally my job to see things.”
“Mine, too,” he said, tossing another glance over his shoulder, this one appreciative.
Their gazes collided. Held. Made Shayna’s heart beat harder.
“So, do I need to do anything special or just clean, bandage, tape?”
“Put antibiotic cream on before you bandage. And be sure to pat rather than wipe. Because of the movement of the joint, this spot is the one area that has struggled to heal. Otherwise, that’s it.”
She washed her hands and ran warm water over a wash cloth, then did as he said. “Let me know if I hurt you.”
“You won’t,” he said. “I can’t feel much where it’s scarred. My nerves are mostly shot back there.”
No wonder he hadn’t realized it was bleeding. Shayna debated whether humor would help or hurt the situation, then went for it. “Well, in case you have one nerve left, I don’t want to get on it.”
One beat passed, then another. Billy chuckled, and the sound did funny things to her chest. “Appreciate that, smart ass.”
She put a playful sauciness in her voice as she said, “You noticing my ass, Billy Parrish?”
He didn’t answer, even though she could almost hear his mental debate as to how to respond, which made her laugh as she tended to him.
“This is pretty much the same thing I had to do when I got the tattoo on my shoulder,” she said, smoothing antibiotic cream over the open skin. She grimaced as she did so, not because she found it unpleasant, but because she worried about hurting him despite his reassurances.
“How many tattoos do you have?” he asked in a low voice.
The question reminded her that he’d seen one of them, and heat filtered into her cheeks as she positioned the bandage. “Four. The one on my hip, and three on my back and shoulders. Once you have one, it’s kinda addicting.”
“Is that right?”
“Mmhmm,” she murmured, concentrating on the tape. “I think the bottom piece of tape might need to wrap under your arm a little to hold it in place. Is that okay?”
“Whatever you say, Goldilocks.”
“That’ll be Dr. Goldilocks to you, ya git.” She smoothed the tape down. His muscles were every bit as hard as they looked. Gah.
He chuckled again. “What’s with the colorful name-calling?”
She grinned. “I grew up with brothers. Am I offending your sensitive ears, Ranger Parrish?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “I’m a fan.”
“Good. There,” she said, surveying her work. Satisfaction warmed her belly, because she’d gotten to help him. And he’d called her pretty. And said he was a fan of the crazy crap that came out of her mouth. “All done.”
He rose and peered in the mirror. “Perfect, Shayna,” he said, their gazes meeting in the glass.
And she could’ve sworn he said, “Perfect Shayna,” without any hesitation between the words. Especially when he looked at her like he was doing right now.
As if she had on far too many clothes. And Jesus did she suddenly agree.
“Any time you need patched up, consider me your girl,” she managed, still meeting the heat in those brown eyes.
Brown eyes whose reflection looked her up and down. “Don’t you mean woman? Consider you my woman? You know, when I need patched up.”
Shayna released a shaky breath. “Yeah. Exactly.”
He gave a slow nod, then turned to look at her directly, bringing them toe to toe. “Then, consider me your man when you need muscle. Now, how about I go move your car and help you build a desk?”
With Shay’s assistance, Billy built the desk and the chair, helped her reorganize his guest room so everything fit, and disposed of all the cardboard packaging. Then he’d put her behemoth photo printer in place and watched as she began to impose a Shayna level of order on all her things.
Which was to say, it wasn’t very fucking orderly.
Of course, that drove Billy nuts. But he ignored it for the most part because he was enjoying spending time with her. She was funny and made him laugh and she was just…really easy to be with.
Having her around this weekend had made him realize just how much he was usually alone. And that it was actually nice to have some company around his place.
It wasn’t going too far to say that he’d had more fun with her setting up her room than he’d ever had in this house since he’d moved in. Doing a whole lot of nothing special. And that was all due to Shayna.
That was all to say nothing of the million little ways she’d communicated consideration for him beyond patching up his fugly skin.
Her whole thought process around the desk situation told him—without judgment—that she respected that he was more concerned with neatness and order than the average bear. And when they made lunch together, he realized that she’d replaced some of the food and drinks she’d used since she’d arrived. He hadn’t expected or needed that, but he’d appreciated it. Even the fact that she’d fought with him about helping with his shoulder spoke of someone who cared, even if admitting his weakness in needing help frustrated him, too.
They sat at the breakfast bar talking long after their sandwiches and salads were gone.
“So what kinds of investigations do you do as a P.I.?” she asked, turning on her stool toward him, just a little.
“Background checks are the bread-and-butter of my work, which is probably true for a lot of P.I.s. But I do a lot of surveillance work as well. Infidelity, workers’ comp, some collection of evidence for litigation. And when I think I might have what it takes to be helpful, I take on missing persons cases.”
Shay really listened when he talked. Like she was taking in everything he had to say. Ryan had been that way. You always knew you had his full attention, and it made you feel like you could always count on him having your back.
The comparison between the siblings was oddly comforting. Probably because Billy missed being out in the field with his brothers like a sonofabitch.
“Which is your favorite kind of investigation to do?” she asked.
He didn’t have to think that hard about it. “Missing persons cases are the most meaningful thing I do these days.”
She tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. “Do people come to you instead of the police, or after the police have given up?”
“Usually after the police have given up. Or in a situation where the authorities aren’t responsive.”
“Wow. That sounds like a lot of responsibility, Billy. Being someone’s last hope.”
“It is. But it’s also good feeling like what I do matters.” A knot lodged unexpectedly in his throat. Because in the Army, he used to live and breathe that feeling. And now he was sometimes fucking desperate for it.
Shay nodded. “Can I ask you something that might be kinda personal?”
Billy scratched his chin. “Uh, go for it.”
She gave a little smile, but it melted away again. “How hard is it to go from being a Ranger to being a civilian?”
There was that perceptiveness again. He met those sea-blue eyes and gave her the truth, not just because her curiosity was sincere, but because some day she’d have a brother going through the shit of transition, too. Though, hopefully not until Ryan put in his twenty and was good and ready to retire.
“It’s like…it’s like going from a world where everything’s in technicolor to one where everything’s black and white.”
Shayna’s lips parted like maybe he surprised her. But he suddenly needed her to understand. He turned toward her, their knees touching under the counter.
“It’s like, one day you’re dodging bullets and jumping out of helicopters into deserts alive with hidden threats and you’re taking really bad fucking people off the streets, and the
next day, you’re standing in a grocery store aisle with seventy-five types of cereal wondering if anyone knows how goddamn ridiculous it is that there are so many choices of one thing. And you’re going to dinners and parties and people are talking about what some celebrity said or wore or what happened on the last episode of a TV show and all you can think about is that somewhere someone might be dying because you don’t have their back. Which probably sounds arrogant as shit, but it’s how you feel. How I feel. Sometimes.”
And hell if that wasn’t more than he’d admitted to anyone in a long-ass time.
Shayna’s expression was a beautiful mask of emotion—more of that surprise, but maybe sympathy and sadness, too. And fuck, he really hoped none of what she felt was pity. Because even though he was capable of throwing himself a goddamn stellar pity party on occasion, he hated it from anyone else.
“So, uh, yeah. That was probably more than what you wanted, but, uh, that’s one soldier’s take.” He finally took a drink to cut off the string of awkward nonsense coming out of his mouth.
She swallowed, and it was a thick sound, as if she were a little choked up. And then he saw the glassiness in her eyes.
“I’m sorry it’s hard sometimes. And it must be harder because people who haven’t been through it can’t imagine it. Not really. We think soldiers come home from war and must be so happy about it never realizing…”
“That’s the thing,” he said, hardly believing how much he was laying bare—or how easy he was finding doing so. With her. “I was happy at first. I don’t think you have any way of guessing at all the ways in which being in the real world starts to seem surreal. It’s why so many people get out of the military and end up doing similar kinds of jobs as a civilian.”
His friend Noah was only the most recent example of that very phenomenon. Guy worked as an ordinance disposal tech in the Marines, which meant he spent his time around things that exploded or threatened to do so, and now he worked for TSA as a bomb appraisal officer.
Some of that was skills and qualifications. But some of that was an urgent fucking need to return to the work you’d done before, because it’d felt meaningful, and despite the fact that said work might’ve been responsible for injuring your body or fucking with your head.
“Like with you doing investigations,” she said.
He rubbed a hand over his face, needing that momentary break from laying himself so bare to her—and from how much Shayna fucking got him.
“Yeah. Exactly,” he finally said. “I was actually drawn to private security, but my recovery was kind of a long, slow process and I feared my responsiveness wouldn’t be what a crisis situation might require.” Which had been a helluva thing to come to terms with.
“You’re a good egg, Billy Parrish,” she said, her expression suddenly shy.
And fuck if he didn’t feel a little heat crawl up his face. “I think I preferred when you called me a ballbag.”
She laughed, a full-belly laugh that eked a smile out of him in return. “Fine, knobhead.”
And now he was laughing, too. How was it that this woman had taken him from some really damn intimate shit he’d barely been willing to tell his therapist to humor in the course of a few minutes? He didn’t know, but he appreciated it. A lot.
“Much better,” he said, nodding.
He could barely believe they’d been sitting at the breakfast bar talking for nearly two hours. Or that he’d enjoyed it so much when it’d involved digging into some of the shit he usually kept boxed up tight. But he had.
The LED clock on the microwave caught his eye. “Damn, is it three o’clock already?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I’ve taken up your whole day.” She grabbed his plate and bowl and threw him a smile. “Here, I’ll clean up. I hereby release you from furniture building and moving.”
He grasped her arm. “Don’t apologize. I liked getting to hang out with you. It’s been a while. I just need a few hours to do research on a case that’s been a pain in my ass.”
Her expression went so soft and sweet. “I get it. Really. Go ahead. Do what you have to do. I’m just gonna chill out anyway.”
“You sure?” he asked, pushing off the stool.
“Yes, knobhead, I’m sure.”
He flipped her off and made for the stairs, grinning to himself as she burst into laughter again, and then he threw her a wink as he went up.
On a grumble, Billy settled into the recliner in the corner of his bedroom with his laptop and the file on his current stalled case and made himself work. He managed to focus for about two hours when his eyes started to cross from scrolling through databases and spreadsheets in search of alleged hidden assets in a civil investigation he was doing—and not finding any evidence of them.
Why had he taken this case? When background checks and surveillance cases were so much more straightforward? And while hardly ever straight forward, at least missing persons cases were rewarding. This shit was just a pain in his ass.
On a sigh, Billy closed his laptop and rose—and caught a flash of color from the corner of his eye.
He looked out the window next to his chair to find Shayna lying in the hammock on his patio. Wearing a navy blue bikini, though partially covered by a towel, as if she’d gotten chilly and pulled it over herself like a blanket. She was asleep.
And fucking A, she was pretty.
He stood there a long moment, staring down at her, thinking how cool she was and how much he’d enjoyed this day—despite the bullshit fragility of his skin and the fact that they’d kinda argued. She was as stubborn as he was…and he liked that about her.
So many times today, she’d reminded him of her brother in ways both good and bad. Like Ryan, she was stubborn and strong-willed and straight forward and caring to a fault.
All of that was also bad, though, because he knew that the last thing Ryan would want for his sister was a broken-down, washed-out Ranger who was, at best, coasting listlessly through life while rocking some major survivors’ guilt and more than a little self-loathing for his part in failing his brothers.
He allowed himself one more glance at all her pretty curves. And then he reminded himself for the dozenth time: She’s Ryan’s sister. She’s Ryan’s sister. She’s Ryan’s sister.
Ryan’s sister, who was easy to talk to and made him laugh and got him to open up in ways he rarely ever did…
Still, Ryan’s. Fucking. Sister.
With that reality check in mind, for the next hour, Billy ignored the fact that Shay was lying in a bikini outside his window. Or tried to.
Fact was that ignoring just the idea of her presence was utterly fucking impossible.
Maybe it was the lure of the bikini. Probably it was just the bikini.
Jesus, he was acting like a teenage boy and not a man who had a whole list of numbers he could call of women who’d previously scratched his itch—and were willing to do it again.
As soon as his body had been able, he’d found sex to be one of the things that most helped him forget all that he’d lost. That most worked out the restless angst and agitation often roiling through his blood. He always made it clear that he wasn’t in it for a relationship, and with most of his partners, that’d been more than fine. They weren’t looking for that either—at least not with him. So, yeah, Billy had options that didn’t involve perving on his best friend’s sister who he was supposed to be looking out for as she got settled in DC.
So much for working…
He closed his laptop and tossed it on his bed. Got up. Stretched, but not so far that he pulled at the tape of his dressing. The dressing Shayna had put on for him.
At first, he hadn’t been able to feel her touch, but then she’d smoothed her fingers under his arm and around to his pec.
And he’d fucking felt it.
Just like he’d felt how she’d looked at him when she’d come home from shopping. He’d had to resist the urge to cover up his ruined skin, but when her eyes had conveyed such interest, such hunger, h
e’d fought that urge right back into its box.
Shayna Curtis hadn’t looked at him like he was a ruined man. And she hadn’t touched him like it either.
Which was why he couldn’t resist looking out the window again. She still lay sleeping, her hands curled around the towel on her chest. A few pieces of paper had blown off of the hammock to the brick paving of the patio. Shayna’s red curls got caught in the breeze and blew around her forehead.
In the distance, thunder sounded out in a long, low rumble.
Billy frowned, then went downstairs. At the back door, he debated right up until he saw the first droplets of rain hit the glass in front of him.
And then he had the strangest fucking thought: he had to protect what was his.
As in, take care of Ryan’s sister, like he’d said he would. That was what he’d meant. That was all he meant.
Fatter drops hit the window pane, not giving him the time to gut check any of the shit that’d just run through his mind.
Outside, he went right to her. A hand on her arm, he gave a light shake. “Shay, wake up.”
A smile played around her lips. “Billy…” The word came out as little more than a breath, but he still heard it. More than that, things inside him felt it.
“Shayna,” he said a little louder, trying not to look at the line of her collar bones or the scattering of freckles just above the fabric of her bikini top or the nearly bare curve of her hip that remained uncovered by the towel.
Her eyelids popped open, and those eyes the color of the Caribbean Sea looked up at him so soft and sleepy. And then awareness slid into them as she pushed up onto her elbows. “What’s the matter?”
Everything, his gut answered. Then his gaze scanned over her face. Or maybe nothing at all.
He shook his head at himself and in answer to her question. “It’s about to storm.”
“Oh,” she said, her gaze going up to the sky just as a fat rain drop nailed her between the eyes. “Aaah! I see that now.” She chuckled as she wiped at her face and twisted her legs off the edge. “You know, you strung this hammock up like it’s for the Jolly Green Giant. I had to make an acrobatic maneuver to get into it.”
