Cindy Gerard - Killing Time

Where they’d talked. And eaten. And made love. And finally slept.

Lather, rinse, repeat. All night long.

Most of all, they’d talked. About Ramon. About Mike’s drinking. About their families. About their dreams.

About the burn scars on his leg. About the scars Ramon had carved on her heart, but that Mike had every intention of healing.

“Gabe made me and the guys an interesting proposition,” he’d said finally.

She’d listened intently as he’d given her the details. “And what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I need to find a hangar close to Langley for the Beechcraft.” Taking Gabe up on his offer wasn’t a decision he’d come to lightly. But now that he’d made it, it felt good. It felt right.

She’d kissed him. “The One-Eyed Jacks, back in the game. It’s a good plan.”

Something else had been weighing on him. He was getting a second chance, and maybe he wasn’t the only one who deserved it. “We’re going to need an operations manager. What would you think about recruiting Peter Davis for that position?”

The approval in her eyes had made his heart swell.

The touch of her hands had made something else swell.

They’d made love again; gotten hungry again.

Somewhere between the cheesecake, Greek yogurt, franks and beans, spinach crepes, and sparkling cider, he’d proposed.

The first two times he’d asked, she’d been asleep—make that comatose, after he’d plied her with multiple orgasms—so he figured the stand-up thing to do was ask her again, this morning.

So he repeated the questions. “Are we going to do this or what?”

“Do… this?” She yawned, let a hand, heavy with exhaustion, rest on his cheek. “Are you taking those little blue pills or something?”

He hugged her. “You’re my ‘or something.’ But that’s not the ‘this’ I was talking about. I was talking about that other ‘this.’ ”

She smiled against his chest. “Is this one of those ‘Who’s on first’ shticks?”

He raised up on an elbow so he could see her face, watch her eyes when he asked her. “Will you marry me, chica? Will you be my wife?”

She smiled. “You know I will.”

He swallowed back emotions so huge that, if he let them out, he might bawl like a baby. “Wait, there’s more. Will you cook for me? Clean for me? Kiss my boo-boos? Wear that sexy little red bustier and pretend you’re a pepera girl who plans to roll me for my money?”

Her eyes sparkled with laughter and tears, and a whole lot of love. “Since you make it sound so appealing, how could I possibly say no?”

“So… that’s a yes?”

She pressed her forehead to his. “That is a definite yes.”

“Wow,” he said and kissed her.

“You want to talk about wow? Wait until I introduce you to my parents.”

“Daddy’s little girl?”

“For a fact.”

“So I should probably do some heavy editing on the details of the night we met.”

She smiled into his eyes. “I love you. Promise you’ll always make me laugh.”

“With me, not at me, right?”

“Yeah. Like that.” She kissed him.

“Say it again.” He wasn’t laughing now. He needed to hear it. Lived to hear it.

“I love you. But more important, I really, really like you, Mike Brown.”

“I really, really like you, too.”

They made love slowly this time, like they were going to take all the time in the world. And they might have, if some knucklehead hadn’t picked that moment to pound on the door.

Mike groaned and buried his face in her neck. “Don’t make a sound. They’ll go away.”

The pounding got louder.

He growled and shouted at the door, “Unless this room is on fire, go the hell away!”

“Primetime. Yo. Open up.”

Taggart.

He swore into her neck. “And to think, three days ago I was happy to see him.”

Eva grinned and gave him a gentle shove. “Go on. Let him in.”

“Do I have to?” He stopped, looking horrified. “Did I just whine?”

She laughed and gave him another little shove. “Go.”

His heavy sigh had her giggling, but he got up, found his pants, and had the pleasure of watching her sweet naked ass disappear behind the bathroom door.

He opened the door. “What the hell do you want?”

“Not a morning person. I just remembered that about you.” Cooper grinned and shouldered past him into the room.

Taggart, also grinning because he knew damn well Mike was irritated, pushed in after him. “Whoa. Dude. Looks like you ate the whole menu up here last night.”

“Hi, guys.”

All eyes turned when Eva walked out of the bathroom, wrapped from neck to ankle in a white terry robe—and still sexier than any woman had a right to be.

“Eva.” Cooper sauntered across the room and hugged her. “How’s my favorite kick-ass road warrior?”

Mike muscled in between them. “She’s not your anything. Now what are you doing here?”

“We thought you might miss us,” Taggart said, deadpan.

“Did you get hit on the head with something? You do see her, right? Do you honestly think that I would give you knuckleheads even a passing thought when I’m alone with her?”

Cooper winked at Eva. “Well, when you frame it like that, I guess it makes us look kind of silly.” He added a Jethro laugh that broke Taggart up.

Mike shook his head. Then smiled. Then gave it up.

He had missed them. For too damn long.

These were his friends. These were his brothers.

He looked at Eva. This was the woman he loved.

He was never going to risk losing any of them ever again.

“What the hell. Let’s go get breakfast.” He pointed a finger at Taggart. “You’re buying.”

“Oh, no. We settle this like we always did.”

He reached into his hip pocket, pulled out his wallet, and produced his one-eyed jack.

“I’ll be damned.” Mike couldn’t believe he still had it.

Then Cooper whipped out his card, too.

Without a word, Mike walked over to the closet. When he came back, he was carrying his own one-eyed jack.

“To tradition.” Taggart’s sober tone spoke of all that had passed between them.

“To tradition,” Mike and Cooper echoed.

“You do the honors, chica.” Mike gathered the three battered cards together, and with great care for all they represented, all they’d been through, he shuffled them.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand. Now pick one.”

“Whoot!” Cooper crowed when Eva held up Mike’s card. “Breakfast’s on Primetime.”

Eva gave him a grin and mouthed, “Sorry.”

Taggart pecked her on the cheek. “I think I love this woman.”

“Yeah,” Mike said taking her into his arms, “but I really, really like her.”

CINDY GERARD’s wildly popular Black Ops, Inc. series with Pocket Books—Show No Mercy, Take No Prisoners, Whisper No Lies, Feel the Heat, Risk No Secrets, With No Remorse, and Last Man Standing—has garnered numerous industry awards and nominations (among them the RITA, Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice, Reader’s Crown, Daphne du Maurier, and Australian Romance Readers awards) and appeared on the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller lists. She is also the author of the bestselling Bodyguards series and more than thirty contemporary romance novels. She lives in the Midwest with her husband, a Brittany Spaniel, two cats, and too many tropical fish, where she is hard at work on the next installment of her knockout new One-Eyed Jacks series.