Ah, yes. The shared wall.
The wall he had stared at for the last five nights while they waited for things to get sorted so they could come out from hiding and return to Chicago. The wall he might have, just maybe, pressed his ear against a time or two in the hopes of hearing her…what? Snoring? Breathing? Pleasuring herself?
He stifled a groan.
“So?” She cocked a brow. “Will you?”
“Will I what?”
She frowned like his IQ had dropped fifty points in the last five seconds. Which, if he was being honest, it had. It did. Anytime she was in the room.
“Breakfast. Will you make breakfast? I know it’s my turn, but—”
“Say no more.” He lifted a hand. “It’s done.” Because even if breakfast duty was at the top of exactly no one’s list, he was glad to assume the responsibility if it would get Emily out of his room. After having her so close for so long, he definitely needed some alone time with his John Thomas. “A traditional English breakfast it is,” he added when she seemed to need additional reassurance.
She wrinkled her nose. “I can get on board with the sautéed mushrooms and the roasted tomato, but I’ve never understood beans for breakfast.”
“They’re good for your heart.”
Even from across the dim room, he saw her eyes ignite with mischief. Emily liked to push buttons, do the unexpected, say things hysterically crass. He assumed it was because she enjoyed keeping the people around her off balance. “The more you eat, the more you—”
“For heaven’s sake!” he scolded before she could finish the hideous children’s rhyme. “Grow up, will you?”
Although, the truth was, he wouldn’t change a thing about her. She drove him completely crazy. That was true. But she also made him laugh. And in his line of work—bloody hell, in his entire sodding life—laughter wasn’t something that came easily.
“So stuffy,” she complained. It was a familiar accusation.
“I’m not stuffy. I’m English, darling.”
“My point exactly.”
“Hurtful.” He crossed his arms and thrust out his chin. If he weren’t mistaken, her eyes alighted on his bare pecs, then traveled briefly over the sleeves of black, winding tattoos that covered his arms from his shoulders to wrists.
Is that interest I see in her eyes? he wondered hopefully.
He wasn’t bad to look at. He knew that. Not that he had to fight the women away with a stick or anything, but neither did he have to look quite hard for a willing bed partner. Alas, whatever brief flicker of intrigue he thought he saw in her eyes disappeared before he had the chance to study it.
“Will you be happy to leave home today?” she asked, still lingering in his doorway.
“England isn’t home,” he assured her, his mood dropping into the loo. The only good to come of that was that his John Thomas followed suit. So, apparently there were two cures for his flag flying at full-staff. One, a swift rub and tug. Or two, talk of the country that had betrayed him. “It hasn’t been for a long time.”
She considered him for a moment more, then nodded and turned to go. Before she disappeared down the hall, she got in a parting shot. If he had known just how portentous her words would turn out to be, he might have stayed in bed with the covers over his head. “Someday you’re going to tell me what happened here.”
* * *
Port Isaac, Cornwall, England
Emily Scott was having a good day.
She’d pawned breakfast duty off on Christian. She was wearing her favorite sweatshirt, the one Paulie Konerko had signed after he helped the White Sox win the 2005 World Series. And she was on her way home. Back to the world of baseball and deep dish pizza, towering skyscrapers and a lake so big and blue it looked like an ocean.
Add to that the fact that she would no longer have to stay cooped up in a tiny cottage with four of the most testosterone-packed males on the planet, and she’d go so far as to say her day wasn’t just good; it was Tony the Tiger grrrreat. Which was why she should have been prepared for things to start circling the drain. Long ago, it’d come to her attention that life liked to rise up and bite her on the ass when she least expected it.
Case in point: she found herself blinking in slack-jawed astonishment when two hours after she’d finished scarfing down Christian’s delightful English breakfast—minus the baked beans, natch—he opened the front door of his uncle’s cottage only to have a microphone shoved in his face.
“Are you Corporal Christian Watson?” a redheaded woman in a yellow pantsuit demanded. “Is it true you were the SAS soldier captured during the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
“Where have you been, Corporal Watson?” a man in a raincoat and cabbie hat demanded, holding up a digital recorder. “What have you been on about since you left Her Majesty’s Special Air Service?”
Emily got a glimpse of half a dozen other people gathered on the cottage’s front stoop—a honking big camera was on the shoulder of one man—before Christian slammed the door shut and twisted the lock. His face was a thundercloud when he swung back into the room.
“Bloody fecking hell,” he snarled, then followed that up with a string of profanity so blue it would make a sailor blush.
Why did curse words sound better coming out of his mouth? Oh, right. Because everything sounded better coming out of his mouth. That accent! She was hard-pressed not to fan herself.
Turning to the trio of men behind her, she found their expressions mirrored her own. In a word: shock. In two words: rampant curiosity. And in three words? Well, what the fuck? came to mind.
“What in the ass?” Ace asked, adjusting the straps of his backpack more comfortably on his broad shoulders.
They all had backpacks stuffed with the essentials needed to flee the country: basic toiletries and a change of clothes. Usually included in their “essentials” was an array of handguns, knives, and other pointy or bangy things which, when used correctly, resulted in death. But they’d had to leave their arsenal behind during their initial attempt to hop the pond a few days prior. Emily had wondered if the men felt naked without their customary repository of combat blades and sidearms.
“I mean, seriously, what in the ass?” Ace repeated. Colby “Ace” Ventura was a former U.S. Navy pilot turned operator for Black Knights Inc., the covert government defense firm Emily had gone to work for after she bugged out of the CIA. Although, in reality, it was probably more appropriate to say the Black Knights had taken her under their wings after the fiasco with her former boss forced her out of the CIA.
“That’s one way of putting it,” she said to Ace before turning back to Christian. “Another way of putting it would be to steal the timeless words of Ricky Ricardo.” She exaggerated her expression. “Christian…you got some ’splainin’ to do.” All those hours parked in front of the television as a kid watching reruns of I Love Lucy while her parents had been out doing who-the-hell-knew-what had apparently paid off.
Unfortunately, her flippancy was wasted on Christian. “Shite,” he hissed, followed by, “Bloody fecking hell.”
“You said that already,” she informed him helpfully, trying to lighten his mood. When she thought of the vulnerability she’d seen in his eyes in that first second after she’d woken him from his nightmare, her silly, squishy, far-too-soft heart turned over. “Try something else. I like to go with bugfucking dickmunch or son of a bee-stung bitch. But I might also suggest—”
“Sod off, Emily.” He glowered at her.
Really, Christian could glower like nobody’s business because, and there was no subtler way to put this, he was a stone-cold fox.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t handsome. At least not in the traditional sense. His looks were more those of the high desert. Harsh. Dangerous. Stark. And like an oasis in the sand, his eyes glittered and shone.
Intensely masculine, that’s what
he was. Carnal. Primal. Six foot three inches of big bones and Superman hair. The kind of guy who was attractive not because he had perfect features, but because he oozed confidence and testosterone and power. A breaker of hearts. A slayer of vaginas. The kind of guy who got most women sweaty just by breathing.
Lucky for her, she wasn’t most women.
Okay, so maybe she was. Because, seriously, not lusting after his hot bod was kind of like saying to herself, See that fat, furry little bulldog puppy? Do not think he’s cute. Still, whether or not she wanted to jump his bones was neither here nor there since she’d learn not to mix business with pleasure. Once bitten, twice shy, baby.
“Now is so not the time for your scathing wit,” he added.
“No?” She lifted a brow. “And here I was thinking any time was a good time for my scathing wit.”
“There are bloody reporters outside.”
“Yep. Saw ’em with my own two beady eyes.”
This time he gifted her with a put-upon grimace. Really, the man seemed to have a vast arsenal of sexy sneers and bone-melting scowls. And truth? She enjoyed each and every one of them. They gave her a glimpse of the real man beneath the carefully styled hair, the designer clothes, and the expensive whatnots. The man who was down and dirty, gruff and gritty. The man a part of her couldn’t wait to meet.
It was the wild part of her. The careless part. The crazy part that didn’t have a thought in its ditzy, horny little head except, Yowza! Gimme, gimme, gimme!
That was the part of her she tried like hell to ignore, choosing instead to focus on the other part of her. The sensible part. The reasonable part. The practical part that didn’t dare give him any more sexy ammunition to use against her already panting libido.
“What do we do now?” Ace asked.
“Back door.” Angel said, already turning. Angel was a former Israeli Mossad agent turned fellow BKI badass. Emily didn’t know much about him; his past was even more shadowed than Christian’s.
“Right. Good idea.” She hustled after him. Unfortunately, before they reached the back door, they heard the sound of voices coming from beyond it.
“Trapped,” she whispered, her heart kicking into overdrive. She would have liked to think the sudden uptick was a product of their increasingly alarming situation. But the truth was, it was at least partly due to Christian having followed and come to a stop directly behind her, close enough that she could feel the blast of his body heat.
“This is bad,” he muttered, taking a step back. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that he’d moved away.
“We need to stay calm,” Angel insisted in that precise way he had. Jamin “Angel” Agassi’s diction was perfect. But his voice? It was a wreck. Likely due to the fact that he’d had his vocal cords scoured to avoid voice recognition software after he left Israel. Talk about ew, not to mention ow.
“Right.” Ace nodded. “Before we get too excited, we need to know what we’re dealing with.” He lifted an inquiring brow at Christian. “Is it true? Were you the one captured during the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Emily turned to study Christian’s face and saw the muscle twitching beneath his right eye.
“Yes,” Christian said after a five-second beat. “That would be me.”
“Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch,” Ace swore, running a hand through his blond hair.
“What?” Rusty Parker, aka the only civilian in the group, asked. “What was the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Rusty was a former Marine who had worked one summer as a CIA asset before he up and moved to England to become a charter boat captain. Poor guy, she thought now. She wouldn’t have dragged him into this if she’d known just how much trouble she was going to cause him.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’m with Rusty. What was the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Christian shook his head. “We don’t have time for this.”
Christian, like so many of the Black Knights, was stubbornly closemouthed about his past. Most times, she didn’t press. In her world, a smart woman allowed men like them their secrets. But this time, she felt compelled to push.
“Sure we do. Since our only exits are blocked by reporters, we have all the time in the world.”
Christian blew out an exasperated breath that caused a whorl of hair to fall over his brow. It tried to distract Emily, but she refused to let it.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “But let’s bloody well make this quick, okay?”
“We’re all ears,” she assured him. “Fire away.”
That muscle twitched beneath his eye again. It was joined by one in his jaw. “It was near the end of the Iraq War, after major hostilities had ceased and before the incursion of ISIS into the country. I was sent in to keep an eye on a group of Iraqi policemen who were running a crime unit with rumored links to corruption and brutality in the city. My job was to gather enough evidence against them to warrant a takedown.”
“Oh, I remember reading about this.” Rusty narrowed his eyes in thought. “There was a shoot-out at a roadblock, right?”
Christian nodded. “The policemen I was tasked with surveilling somehow found out about me. When I was leaving the city to deliver a situation report to my commanding officer, I was stopped at a roadblock. At first I thought I could talk my way out of it, yeah? But they pulled their weapons and started shooting. I pulled mine and did the same. Took a round to the gut that put me in bad shape. But before they managed to overwhelm me, I slotted two of the wankstains.”
He said it so casually. Before they managed to overwhelm me. But Emily knew Christian. It must have been one hell of a fight.
“They took me to the police station where they questioned me for eight hours,” he added. Questioned. Ha! A nice way of saying he had been interrogated and tortured. Visions of bludgeoning, waterboarding, and thumbs shoved into his wound bloomed in her mind. It was enough to have her breakfast threatening to reverse directions.
“Is that what you were dreaming about this morning?” she asked. If the hoarse screams that had jolted her from a dead sleep were any indication, Christian’s eight hours in the hands of the Iraqis had been brutal.
The look he shot her was quick and definitive, the facial equivalent of shut your trap. But it was too late. Ace glanced back and forth between them, a shit-eating grin spreading across his handsome face.
“How would you know what he was dreaming about this morning, hmm?” Ace widened his blue eyes. “Is there something the two of you would like to tell us? Like, maybe you’ve finally had enough foreplay and it’s time to get down to the main event?”
“Foreplay?” Emily scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure you do. All that one-upping? The verbal sparring? That’s foreplay, luv.”
She waved a hand through air still tinged with the smell of bacon and buttered toast. “Whatever. One-upmanship is nothing more than good clean fun. And maybe a little ego management on my part.” She gifted Christian with a squinty-eyed stare, indicating his height with a gesture. “I mean, you’ve seen him, right? The clothes. The hair. The smile. Someone has to keep him grounded.”
“Rrrright,” Ace said, nodding his head.
She rolled her eyes and turned to Christian. “Tell him.”
Christian lifted a brow that asked Tell him what?
She thinned her lips and widened her eyes. Her expression said Tell him I’m right.
Instead of siding with her, Christian said, “Can we please get back to the bloody subject? In case you’ve forgotten, there are reporters outside preventing us from catching our flight and getting the hell off this sodding rock!”
Did he think their bickering was foreplay? She didn’t delude herself when it came to Christian. And despite her protestations to the contrary, she did want him. I mean, who wouldn’t? But he’d
given no indication he felt the same. In fact, he found her as annoying as a housefly. His words. Not hers. Which was just fine and dandy.
It was!
After all, there was that whole “not mixing of business and pleasure” edict she was determined to live by. And even if there wasn’t, the two of them were oil and water.
He wore designer clothes and drove a Porsche. She preferred yoga pants and sweatshirts, usually from the discount rack at Target. There was an air of mystery surrounding him, depths she dared not plumb. And she? Well, she was pretty much an open book.
If she was simple, he was complex. If she was day, he was night. A dark and stormy one.
Order Julie Ann Walker’s next book
in the Black Knights Inc. series
Hot Pursuit
On sale October 2017
Acknowledgments
A story begins in the mind of an author and ends in the heart of a reader. But between Point A and Point B are a lot of people who do a lot of work to make that story the best it can be. I’m fortunate to have a wonderful team toiling away on my behalf.
Nicole, thank you for being my sounding board, my advocate, and my tireless cheerleader.
Deb, thank you for your diligence (and ruthlessness) with that red ink pen. My stories are smarter, stronger, and funnier because of your insights.
Beth, thank you for always pushing the publicity envelope. I appreciate all you do to “get the word out” about my books.
Dominique, Todd, Valerie, Sean, Susie, Rachel, Dawn, and all the other folks at Sourcebooks, thank you for doing the hard work so that I can sit back and have a blast at this author gig.
About the Author
Julie Ann Walker is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of award-winning romantic suspense. A winner of the Book Buyers Best Award, Julie has been nominated for the National Readers’ Choice Award, the Australian Romance Reader Awards, and the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA Award. Her books have been described as “alpha, edgy, and downright hot.” Most days you can find Julie on her bicycle along the lakeshore in Chicago or blasting away at her keyboard, trying to wrangle her capricious imagination into submission.
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