Mission Delivery(4)

    Was I acting like an asshole? Probably. Did I care? Hell no. My woman was having my baby. If I had to travel at the speed of light, I was going to get there in time to witness this birth. I would be damned if I was going to miss another one.

    “Ignore his bad attitude, Captain Burke. He just found out his fiancée went into labor, so he’s anxious to get stateside,” Lucas informed our pilot with a smile as he moved to his seat.

    Forgetting I had buckled my belt already, I tried to get up out of my chair to lunge at the man who was supposed to be my friend yet was currently taunting me. Of course, I went nowhere and ended up looking like a dumbass because of it.

    Pointing my finger at Lucas who was now seated across from me as the others finished loading onto the plane, I snarled, “I’ll show you bad attitude, asshole, when I shove my size twelve up your ass. One day, it’ll be you with a baby on the way, and I’m going to laugh my ass off.”

    Lucas’s face went blank, and the sullen attitude he had left Miami with made a comeback. “Not likely, bro.”

    With those three words, the conversation ended, and I felt like a jackass. My battle brother was hurting something fierce, but he would not confide to any of us what exactly had happened before leaving Miami to make him that way. Riley and I suspected it had something to do with that girl from his past he had run into at Ice’s strip club, After Midnight, but no one knew for sure.

    Sensing the tense atmosphere, Riley waded in as the peacemaker, as he often was these days since his brother Declan was still out of commission. “You’ll never believe what I walked into the other day when I visited Declan at his temporary house.”

    “He was doin’ the nurse?” I joked.

    Riley shook his head. “Nope. It was the opposite. The nurse was trying to do him, and he was telling her no. Can you believe that shit? The biggest man-whore we know was trying to fight off a chick who was trying to wrap her lips around his cock while he was all but defenseless in a wheelchair.”

    Lucas snorted. “Since when did he become Saint Sullivan and take a vow of chastity?”

    Riley’s face became contemplative. “I think that explosion took out more than Declan’s back. I think it might have knocked some sense into him, as well. He hasn’t even so much as flirted with a woman since he woke up in the hospital, asking for one feisty redhead.”

    My jaw dropped in shock. “You’re shittin’ me, man. He’s asking for Teagan?”

    Riley nodded. “Yeah. You know, I’ve always known there was something different about her when it can to Dec. He doesn’t do repeats like that, but whenever she slipped in to see him, he dropped whatever he was doing. He always got a little broody after he’d wake up to find her gone, too.”

    “Those two are a match made in Hell; you know that, right?” I asked him.

    Riley shrugged in response. “I’m not so sure, Baker. There’s something about Teagan that gets to my brother, a feat no other woman has ever pulled off. For that reason alone, she gets my vote until she fucks it up.”

    For the first time since I had met the lady killer known as Declan Sullivan, I was worried about the man. Teagan Roberts might be my woman’s best friend, but she was also a force to be reckoned with. An impenetrable barrier surrounded the woman from letting anyone other than Belle and Seth close. Her childhood had basically ruined her emotionally. I was not sure even a man as driven as Declan would be able to get through that emotional armor she wore.

    “Don’t be so worried about Sullivan. He’ll either win the woman over or he won’t,” Lucas muttered.

    Bringing my focus back to the somber man, I asked, “And if he doesn’t win her? What does he do then, Lucas?” I was not asking so much about Declan as I was subtly asking about Lucas himself.

    Lucas shrugged a shoulder, trying to act nonchalant. “He moves on, Baker. Life is what it is, and sometimes you don’t get what you want. The world doesn’t end, so he’ll learn to move on with the world.”

    I was about to ask him if he was learning to move on with the world when the plane started to move, bringing my attention back to what was waiting for me across the ocean.

    Grabbing the arms of my chair tightly, I started praying for speed.