Ricochet (22 page)

“A fabric that’s strong enough to withstand flying debris. It’s what we’re using under the bridge to keep the concrete and metal from hitting the rocks on the north end.” His mind drifted backward in time, despite his best efforts to hold it in place. “Ricochet can cause a lot of damage.”

”And why do you consider yourself an expert?” she asked, a hint of humor in her voice. “Because you’ve avoided a lot of damage or caused a lot of damage?”

He wanted to smile, make light of it, but for him, ricochet was a negative theme in his life, one that caused way too much collateral damage—bouncing back and forth between his mother and foster care. Hitting one foster care home only to be sent to another, then another. School to school. Friend to friend. Woman to woman. The only constant in his life was the Army and Troy. And in the Army, ricochet, and the collateral damage it caused, took on lethal proportions.

Yes, unfortunately, he was an expert in ricochet.

He put his water away, avoiding her gaze. “I guess I’ve done my share of both.”

She’d been unusually quiet all day. Sure, the tough terrain made it difficult to talk, but he sensed something different about her, as if she were preoccupied. Almost as if she’d pulled away from him—which was just asinine, since there wasn’t anything to pull away from.

Over the last few hours, he’d gotten some small talk out of her—where she’d gone to school and how she’d gone to work for her father’s agricultural sales company afterward. She claimed she’d moved away to take this job with Renegades when he’d retired, but Ryker wasn’t buying that—at least not completely.

He’d also seen Troy head up to the trailer this morning while he and Jax had been hiking down to the storage parking, and Ryker had a hunch Troy had given her some serious anti-Ryker information to consider. He respected the way Troy was trying to take care of his friends, but Ryker didn’t appreciate being sacrificed to achieve that end.

He’d been avoiding asking her all day—he really didn’t want to know what Troy had said, but the very fact that she hadn’t mentioned it yet was making him a little crazy.

Rachel pulled the plans from the tube she’d been carrying. She leafed through the pages to find this section of the bridge.

There wasn’t any easy way to do this, so he just pushed the words out. “What did Troy say this morning?”

She found the page she was looking for and smoothed it flat. “Oh, you know.” She sighed the words as if the whole topic exhausted her. “Same old the-sky-will-fall-if-you-don’t-stay-away-from-Ryker thing.” She shook her head, and her ponytail brushed against her back. “I just…I mean, I understand what he’s trying to do and why…but then, I don’t.” She looked up but didn’t turn to face him where he stood behind her, only looked out at the ocean. “You’d never guess he’d been raving about you just a week ago. Ryker this, Ryker that. Ryker, Ryker, Ryker.” She laughed softly and looked down at the plans again. “We were all pretty sick of it, to tell you the truth. Now…all this…”

She finally glanced over her shoulder, and her gaze paused on his dog tags where they hug against his chest before her eyes lifted to his. “You told him, didn’t you?”

“No.” He planted his hands on his hips. “I didn’t. And I wouldn’t, because he’s acting like a possessive lunatic. But I think I know why.”

She shifted a quarter turn and met his gaze. “Why?”

“Has he ever mentioned a woman named Giselle?”

Her gaze went distant as she thought. “No. Who is she?”

“Love of his life. And when I say that, I don’t mean they fell in love, I mean they were like threads in the fabric of each other’s lives. Best friends, lovers. They’d known each other since she was ten and he was twelve. Became lovers young, maybe sixteen and eighteen, I don’t remember exactly.” He looked up from the ground and found her riveted. “Giselle had an amazing singing voice. Absolute heaven to listen to. And a few years ago, she got that big break in Nashville.”

“Not Giselle Diamond,” she said, part statement, part question.

“Diamond is her stage name, but yeah.”

“Oh.” She breathed the word, her face twisted with sympathy. “She left him for the dream.”

“It’s…a little more complicated than that, and I still don’t think I even know the whole truth about what happened to break them up, but, basically, yes. She went for it, and there wasn’t room for Troy in that life.”

“Ouch.” Rachel grimaced. “But, what does that have to do with me?”

“Sometimes you remind me of her. Mannerisms, figures of speech, just…” he gestured absently, “little flashes here and there. Especially when you two were bickering in the office. He and Giselle grew up together, so in some ways they interacted like siblings—the sniping, the rivalry.

“I think he sees that in you too, subconsciously if not consciously. And he was extremely protective of Giselle. She was a beautiful girl, and she had this raw sweetness about her that made her vulnerable. We toughened her up, so as she got older, she developed a steel core beneath the sugar—a lot like you.” Ryker shook his head and rubbed his fingers down the sides of his mouth. “But a girl like that in our situation… It was good she had us watching out for her.

“Anyway, I think he has sort of unconsciously transferred that protection instinct to you for that reason. And when it comes to me, I know he loves me. I know he brought me here to help me. But he’s not going to let me hurt you. At least not if he can help it.”

Rachel waited expectantly. When he didn’t go on, she asked, “What…situation?”

“The foster home Troy and I were in could be pretty rough. The woman running it didn’t care what we did as long as we didn’t get dropped home in a patrol car, which left Giselle vulnerable to the other kids in the house. Troy and I were best friends by the time Giselle came int, and we couldn’t stand the thought of some of the other kids abusing her. We took her under our wing, became the three musketeers. At least until we got kicked out at eighteen. Giselle was only sixteen, but she left with Troy.”

“And you went into the army,” she said, looking dazed.

He nodded.

“I had no idea…” Her voice trailed off.

“About Giselle?”

“No. I mean, I didn’t know about Giselle either, but I meant about foster care.”

Tension coiled along Ryker’s shoulders. His mind filled with,
Oh. Shit.
“I…I… He always talks about how close you all are. He’s never been secretive about it. Shit.” He lowered his head and scraped a hand through his hair, sick he’d shared that information.

“I won’t say anything,” Rachel said. “And maybe the guys already know. I haven’t been with them that long.” Her hands coiled and wrapped around each other in a helpless, embarrassed gesture. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For…I don’t know. Everything you went through as a kid. That you had to talk about it to explain…” She shrugged, looking helpless.

“Relax, sweetheart. I’m the one who brought it up.”

She licked her lips and nodded. Then turned to face the plans again. “Thanks for telling me.” She swung her feet underneath her, rose to her knees, and planted her hands on the paper to inspect the drawings.

Ryker’s full attention shifted to the way she looked on all fours, and he released a heavy breath of pent-up desire.

“So where do you want to start?” she asked.

He drew his bottom lip between his teeth. When he didn’t answer, she glanced over her shoulder, and recognition of where his mind had gone heated her eyes.

He had resisted making any advance toward her after that kiss in the trailer. No touching, no innuendos, nothing. And it was becoming clear this was a ridiculous effort—for both of them.

He stepped closer and dropped to one knee behind her. She immediately straightened, but her back met his chest, and he eased her into position again. With his chest against her shoulder, his erection against her hip, his hand flat next to hers, he slid the fingers of his other hand into her hair from the base of her neck to her crown. She closed her eyes and sighed.

“I’d start,” he whispered at her temple, “by getting you naked. Maybe almost naked, because you’d look so pretty in something skimpy and lacy, maybe red satin and black lace.”

Her fingers curled into fists, her nails scraping the plans.

He ran the tip of his nose down her temple, tilted his chin, and pressed his lips just below her ear. She shivered, the same way she had that night. Tightening his fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back. “Then, I’d create a little bite, because the pleasure always feels better when there’s a little pain for contrast.”

He slowly released her hair and massaged her scalp, pressing his lips to her jaw, her neck, listening for another sigh. When it came, he let his hand slide from her hair and straight down her spine, adding pressure at the center of her back. “I’d arch you, lifting your ass…” She moved fluidly, as if she were perfectly programmed, her hip rubbing against his cock as her ass rose. He moved his hand over the small of her back, the round of her cheek, and whispered to her, “So your pussy was positioned perfectly for my thrusts.”

He lowered his hand between her legs, and her hips lifted into his touch. Lust, need, excitement, they all rushed his blood at the same moment, and he growled, closing his hand and clutching her pussy through her shorts.

Her head came back, mouth dropped open, and a quiet, high-pitched sound of pleasure tumbled out. She couldn’t have responded any more perfectly. Ryker pressed his forehead against her jaw and collected the tendrils of dark desire that told him to take her, here, now, in the open. The thought lit a match in his blood. And she’d let him. In fact, she’d thrive on it the same way. He knew. But he also knew that afterward, when the passion ebbed and her mind cleared, they’d spiral into the same old standoff. And he was sick of having to fight her self-imposed limits.

So he pulled his hand from between her legs, slid it up her back, and clasped her neck gently. He turned his head to look down at the plans, resting his cheek against hers.

“Oh,” he said, his voice thick. “You meant the bridge.” When she opened her eyes, he tapped the base of the pillar on the paper. “I’ll give you the measurements starting at the bottom and move up.”

He kissed her hair, gritted his teeth, and forced himself to his feet with a rigid cock rubbing in all the wrong places.

Without looking back at her, he drew the laser level and measure from his backpack and clamped it to the tripod, then hiked another painful twenty feet with his cock rubbing against his pants, to the base of the column and set the tripod on solid ground.

“Ready?” he asked.

He called off three measurements before her phone rang—for at least the tenth time since they started up the mountain, and only four of those calls she’d answered.

“Hold on,” she said, her brow crunched in irritation as she pulled her phone from her pocket and silenced the call—which told Ryker it hadn’t been Renegades. She answered all those. “Goddammit,” she muttered. “Get the message already.”

She stuffed it back into her pocket and read the last measurement back to him, then said, “Go ahead.”

“I’m more interested in who you don’t want to talk to so badly? Is the ex trying to hunt you down?”

She laughed softly, but the sound was laced with bitter sarcasm. “That’s a twisted, convoluted way to look at it, I guess.”

“Really.” Hell, he’d only been kidding. Now he wanted to know about the ex. And
why
the fuck did he care? “Can’t wait to hear this.”

“And I can’t wait to get into the bath calling my name. Let’s get this finished.”

He moved to another location, repositioned the tripod, and called out another trio of measurements, trying to force his mind back to the stunt. But he’d thought this job through backward, forward, upside down, and sideways since it had been presented to him. His brain needed a break. And thinking about Rachel was always a vacation.

Before he moved to the other side of the pillar, he said, “It’s good to talk about stuff. Like I tell my team, if you keep it in, you’re gonna explode before an IED gets you.”

“It wasn’t a guy,” she said with an eye roll in her voice. “It was my sister.”

Ryker shuffled the tripod’s feet into the dirt until it was stable, then lined up the level, but his mind was on the call she’d had with her father the night before. “Don’t get along with her as well as you do your dad?”

“Nope.”

“One too many family backpacking trips?”

“Something like that.”

“Then why does she want to talk to you so badly?”

“Don’t know, don’t care, don’t want to talk about it. I’m getting cranky. Might want to finish this up before my bitch starts to show.”

“You have one?” he said, grinning behind the viewfinder as he noted measurements.

“You know I have one,” she said. “And she’s been getting way too much face time lately.”

He chuckled and called the numbers out. “So far it’s not half as bad as I’ve seen in the past. Does it get riled any worse than when Troy messes with your files or Jax changes your plans?”

She sat back on her heels and started rolling the blueprints. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a light sarcastic edge. “Lying, betrayal, secrets…that stuff pisses me off pretty good too.”

He thought about that as he slid the equipment into his pack. He’d crossed the line with lying and secrets. Betrayal, though… That one he’d bet belonged to the sister. He didn’t know anything about healthy family relationships but was pretty sure she knew exactly what her sister wanted to talk about. And he had a pretty good suspicion that her discord with her sister had something to do with that little quip about a twisted way to see the call as her ex trying to get ahold of her. Add the comment about betrayal and those protective prickles along his spine spiked again. Because he
did
know all about family betrayal.

“Is that why you told your dad you’re too busy to see him?”

“I
am
busy.” She bit out the overly defensive words, then cut herself off. But there was pain in her tone, in her expression. Pain that made his chest tight. “But yes,” she said, quieter, more in control. “I don’t want to spend my time with my parents when Nicole is there, because we all end up fighting, and it’s bad for everyone. It’s just better if I go when she’s not there.”