About That Kiss:A Heartbreaker Bay Novel(34)

"Are you telling me you really made a wish for true love with me?"

"No!" She bit her lower lip. "Not exactly, anyway."

"Then what exactly?"

"It was a fantasy, okay? Sheesh!" She tossed up her hands. "And I didn't even mean to!"

"Kylie, what did you wish for?"

She blew out a breath. "Sex. With you. You happy now?"

His eyes softened with good humor and heat as he smiled. A Big Bad Wolf smile. "Very."

"Don't let it go to your head," she warned without thinking. "Wait. I mean-"

Too late. He laughed his rare, full-on laugh, the one that never failed to make her smile.

"Oh, forget it," she said on a sigh and opened the O'Riley's bag. "Since  this whole lunch thing was a complete sham, you're going to share."

They ate in easy companionship while Joe kept one eye on the building he  was watching for work. After a few minutes, a bunch of kids poured out  of a school a block down.

"Were you a good student?" she asked, wanting to know more about him.

He snorted. "No."

"What was your favorite class?"

"Recess."

"Did you go to college?" she asked.

He slid her a look. "We playing twenty questions?"

"I'm trying to get to know you."

His mouth quirked. "You know me."

She rolled her eyes. "I know your body."

"And you like it," he said, smug.

Actually, she loved his body, every single, hard, toned, perfect inch.  And he knew it, too. But fine, if he wanted to go there, she'd go there.  "How about an easier question. Like, what's your favorite sexual  position?"

He cut those eyes to her, an intimate smile playing on his lips now, and  she poked his arm. "Come on, surely you know this one. I'll tell you  mine if you tell me yours."

He leaned in and dropped his voice to a pitch that sent tingles down her spine. "I already know yours."

She felt her face heat and broke the eye contact first. Scrambling, she  tried to think of a new question, one that would knock that predatory  expression off his face before she did something stupid-like jump his  bones.

"I was an okay student," he said, surprising her into looking at him  again as he answered her earlier question. "It wasn't that the work was  hard. I got A's on the tests, but I didn't do the homework, which  brought my grades down." He paused. "And recess wasn't really my  favorite class. It was science."

"Yeah?" she asked. "Why?"

"Because I had a crush on my hot-as-hell teacher. Mrs. Jones." He smiled  in fond memory and she actually felt a little jealous, which made him  laugh and tug at a strand of her hair.

"We going to check out the last apprentice on our list tonight?" she asked, desperate for a subject change.         

     



 

"Yes," he said. "I'll call you."

She nodded and reached for a sleepy Vinnie, her fingers grazing Joe's  thighs as she did. He met and held her gaze while she scooped the dog,  doing her best not to look like she enjoyed it. "See ya," she said.  She'd meant to say it breezily but it came out embarrassingly  breathless.

She'd walked all the way back to work before she realized she still had  no idea what would happen once they found her penguin, if they even did.

Would they take this thing wherever it led them?

Or would they go back to ignoring each other?

And which did she want? Okay, so she knew what she wanted. But given how  she knew he felt about relationships, hell if she'd ask for it.





Chapter 22





StupidIsAsStupidDoes



The rest of the day turned out to be interminably long for Joe. After  his surprise lunch with Kylie, he'd had to put out fire after fire at  work. He'd begun his day at five a.m. that morning and he didn't head  out until seven that night. He figured he'd grab some food and Kylie,  and then they'd check out the last apprentice.

But Archer showed up in his doorway, dressed to go.

Dressed meaning armed to the teeth.

And Joe knew he was not done with work.

"Need you," Archer said.

Which was how Joe found himself also armed to the teeth and heading out  with the guys. The client they were serving was a big commercial  property contractor who'd hired Hunt Investigations because expensive  pieces of equipment kept going missing from a renovation project in a  financial district building. A week ago, anticipating the next heist,  Joe and Lucas had hidden a transmitter on each of the remaining  expensive pieces of equipment at high risk of being stolen.

Sure enough, tonight the transmitter had alerted them to a piece of  equipment on the move when it shouldn't have been. They raced to the job  site, where it all went down surprisingly fast but dirty. They found  the equipment foreman himself stealing the small backhoe loader by  literally driving it off the job site. They hauled him out of the  machine, but at the last moment he must've realized this was the end for  him. He objected by pulling a knife from nowhere and nearly gutting  Joe. When that didn't stop the takedown, the dickwad then produced a  grenade.

A fucking grenade.

Joe and Lucas both dove for it. Lucas shoved him out of the way and  opened the trash chute. Joe was able to grab the grenade and throw it  in. The explosion was contained-well, mostly. Neither Lucas nor Joe got  fully clear and took unintended twin twenty-five-foot flights through a  sheet of drywall, landing hard on a stack of demo wood.

All of which had to be explained to more than one responding agency, and that ate up another few hours.

After, Joe sat shirtless on the table in the staff room of their office  with Archer checking him over to get a better look at the knife wound in  his side. "This needs stitches." His tone was harsh and he wasn't  particularly gentle when he wiped at the cut with an alcohol pad.

"Just stick a Band-Aid on it," Joe said.

Archer spent a minute cleaning off the blood before speaking. "It wouldn't have been the end of the world to go to a hospital."

Yeah, it would have. Joe had spent far too many hours in a hospital. His  job was dangerous so there'd been his own visits here and there, but  that wasn't what had gotten him. It'd actually been all the time he'd  been in waiting rooms. In his earlier years it'd been watching his mom  waste away, then later hoping his dad would come out of his various  surgeries okay. Then more recently waiting on Molly and her surgeries.  If he never set foot in another hospital again it would be too soon.  "Just stitch me up like you did last time."

Archer swore beneath his breath. "Lucas would be better. His hands are steadier."

"Or Reyes," Lucas said from his perch on the couch. He had a few scrapes  and bruises, but nothing major because he was indestructible and maybe  also a superhero. "Reyes has smaller hands."

Reyes was standing at the window playing a game on his phone, his thumbs  racing at the speed of light, though he slowed down enough to show  Lucas his "smaller" middle finger. Reyes was also covered in blood. Not  his-their bad guy's. Setting the game aside, he came to Joe and looked  him over. "I could do it. I'd give you a badass scar too."         

     



 

"No," Joe said to Archer. "He'll do something stupid like make the stitches in the shape of a heart just to fuck with me."

Lucas just grinned but got up when Archer gestured for him. He too bent  over Joe critically, making him feel like a bug on a slide. "Yeah,"  Lucas said. "You definitely need stitches."

"No shit," Joe said and sighed with acceptance. "Just do it already."

Lucas exhaled a short breath, which for him was the equivalent of an  exasperated sigh. He retrieved the necessary items from Hunt's medical  kit-more extensive than most urgent care's medical kits-and set about  closing the gash in Joe's side.

Molly walked in during this and stilled. "What happened?"

"I'm fine," Joe said though he was sweating bullets because goddamn, getting stitched hurt like a son of a bitch.

"You're not fine!" Molly said and glared at Lucas. "What are you doing to my brother?"

"Archer," Lucas said. "Get her out of here."

"Don't you dare," Molly said.

But Archer stepped in front of her.

She dodged him and came up next to Lucas to look Joe over. "Oh my God."  She gripped Lucas by the front of the guy's shirt. She was  five-foot-two. If you asked her, she'd tell you she was five-foot-four,  but she was full of shit. Lucas was over six feet and yet he let her  yank him down so that they were nose-to-nose.

"Be careful with him," she said.

Jesus. "I'm fine!" Joe said.

Neither Lucas nor Molly looked at him, still nose-to-nose, they just  stared at each other, some sort of weird, angsty chemistry going on that  Joe couldn't read.

"Did you hear me?" Molly asked Lucas.

"Woman, the people in China heard you."

"Does he need a hospital?" she asked.