I DROVE TO THE AIRPORT. Whatever the hell was in her head hung thick in the air. I didn’t try to coax it out. I saw the moment I asked who she was that she wasn’t going to tell me. I knew women. Mi madre, my sisters, they were all a handful, but none of them like this. You always knew what a Luna woman was thinking. None of them had a secret like the woman sitting next to me. Of that I was damn sure.
I pulled out my cell and dialed Tyler.
My right-hand man answered on the first ring. “What’s up, boss.”
“I’m leaving a late-model, dark gray Jetta at the airport up here. I need it brought down to my garage.”
Tyler paused only a fraction of a second. “Your garage?”
He knew my condo was off-limits to everyone. He was the only one on my team who even knew where it was. “Copy.”
He inhaled. “Okay. By when?”
“As soon as possible.” I needed him up here.
Tyler exhaled. “I’m on assignment until—”
“ASAP,” I interrupted.
“I’ll see about transport.”
I glanced at her, but she was still staring out the window. “Negative.”
“All right,” Tyler hedged. “You want me to make a ten-hour round trip to retrieve an old car from Daytona?”
I didn’t answer. He would get it.
“There’s more,” he stated.
I turned the volume down on my cell. “Affirmative.”
“But you can’t talk. Okay, text me the details, and I’ll head up there.”
“Copy that.” I hung up.
She finally broke her silence. “I don’t fly.”
“I need to get back to Miami, and this is the quickest way possible.”
She didn’t move, but her muscles tensed. “I don’t like airports.”
“We’re not flying commercial.”
She glanced at me. “You have your own plane?”
“Not yet.” I half smiled at her to cut the tension.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth, then she turned back to the window. “I should’ve guessed you were a pilot also.”
“Not a pilot, chica.”
“You must’ve missed that check box on your overachiever’s to-do list.”
“Not that either, woman. I’m just an immigrant’s son trying to make a living.” I was raised on hard work, and the Marines taught me discipline.
She scoffed. “You more than make a living. I’ve seen your penthouse.”
“As I recall, you couldn’t wait to leave.” And I’d stupidly let her go.
“You didn’t want me there.”
Ever since I’d laid eyes on her, the thought of getting her in my bed had been burned on my brain. I didn’t take women to my condo. I had apartments over my office space that I used if I needed them, but no woman before Kendall, not even my mother, had been to my penthouse. Only a few of my closest Marine buddies even knew where it was. When I left the Marines and got in the business of personal security, I made it a point to keep my private residence secure. I’d spent too much time downrange behind a scope not to know exactly how fucking vulnerable anyone was to attack.
I glanced at her profile as I pulled into the airport. “Never said I didn’t want you around, chica.”
Her chest rose with an inhale, then the Kendall I’d first met surfaced. “Cut the shit, Cuban Boy. You don’t hang on to women any more than I’m someone who’d get off on that.”
I opened my mouth to dish it right back, but she wasn’t finished.
“And we both know you wouldn’t know what to do with me if you did catch me.”
This time, I smiled. From ear to fucking ear. “Oh, chica, I’m pretty sure I could think of a few things.” I parked next to Roark’s plane and leaned toward her, then I dropped my voice. “Some you might even enjoy.” I got out of the car, but not before I saw the chill bumps race up her neck.
Roark came down the steps of his new Cessna Citation. “We ready?”
Kendall got out of her car and slammed the door shut. “The Irishman,” she said dryly.
Roark’s hands went to his hips. “Scottish,” he uselessly corrected, unaware of her game.
“At least she has the right continent.” I made the joke to ease the tense set to her shoulders, but it didn’t make a difference. When she got out of the car, I saw the shift. The girl who relied on Candle had disappeared. The hellfire I’d first met was back.
“I see six months hasn’t changed you,” Roark replied dryly. Helping me out that night, he’d first met her when I did.
All attitude, Kendall walked up the plane’s steps as she tossed a disinterested glance at Roark. “You know how to fly this thing?”
Roark didn’t miss a beat. “You’re about to find out.”
I grabbed her bag from the back of the Jetta and hid the key over the rear driver side wheel. At an airport full of multimillion-dollar jets, no one was going to steal a ten-year-old car.
Roark circled the plane, doing his preflight checks, then stopped and gave me a look. “No retrieval, huh?”
“It’s complicated.”
He glanced at my chest, then the side of my head. “Same way the blood splatter on your shirt’s complicated?”
Mierda. I looked down at my Luna and Associates polo. “Damn it.”
“Your head okay?”
“I’m fine.” It was hard to see, but Rip’s blood splatter was there. I’d chosen black for the uniforms for my company for a reason, but nothing was foolproof.
Roark tipped his chin at the Jetta. “You need to wipe that down?”
I shook my head. “Tyler’s coming to retrieve it.”
“Not like you to be so sloppy.”
“Wasn’t my doing.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t want to know.” I untucked my shirt. “You got a spare on the plane?”
“Last cargo hold in the rear. Help yourself.”
I went aboard and grabbed a clean T-shirt from Roark’s stash, pulled it on, then dropped into the seat across the aisle from her.
Her body turned toward the window, her legs crossed, her face was almost impassive except for the small vertical crease between her eyebrows.
“You doing okay, chica?”
“I didn’t need to be carted away.” The words were biting, but her tone was tired.
I studied her a moment. “Not sure I’d categorize this as carting.”
“Right.” She carelessly gestured at the plane with one hand. “On a million-dollar jet, it’s flying.”
I didn’t correct her low-ball price as Roark pulled the door shut then headed to the cockpit.
“You have someone picking up my car?” She asked the question like she didn’t give a shit, but she crossed her arms.
“One of my men.”
“Because your men aren’t busy enough.” She turned and gave me the sharp gaze of someone dead sober. “Why did you come here?”
Half truth or full disclosure, it was a split-second decision. I made it with little regard for self-preservation, because for months, she’d been the only woman I could think about. “I wanted to see you.”
Her chest rose with an inhale, but her locked expression didn’t budge. “What made you think I’d want to see you?”
I smiled. “I was willing to take that chance.”
She didn’t return the smile. “All for a night’s fuck. How quaint.”
My smile dropped, but I hid my anger. “One night?”
She smirked. “Like you’d want more.”
“Like you think you’re not worth more.” I threw it back on her, but she had a point. My business kept me more than busy. I didn’t have time for a relationship, let alone one with a fucking handful like her.
She amped up the attitude, hard core. “SUVs, planes, your precious time away from your business, helping Candle.” Every successive word was more bitter than the last. “Was that supposed to impress me? Did you think showing up at my house before the crack of dawn was going to make me spread my legs and beg you to give it to me Latin-lover style?” She scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
My jaw ticked. Leaning toward her, my elbows on my knees, my hands clasped in restraint, I kept my voice even, but I threw her self-indulgent bullshit in her face. “You don’t show up for work for a week. You don’t return your boss’s calls. You don’t bother to let a single person know you’re fucking alive because you’re too busy drowning in a bottle of self-pity. But then you question my intent when I took time out of my day to check on you?” I glared at her because now I was pissed as hell. “Don’t flatter yourself, chica.” I leaned back in my seat. “You’re no fucking picnic.”
Roark fired up the engines.
“You don’t give a shit about me,” she muttered.
“What?” I’d heard her. I’d heard her loud and clear, but I wasn’t gonna play that game. She was a grown-ass woman, she should cop to her shit.
She raised her voice above the sound of the engines. “I said, I call bullshit.”
I looked over at her as we started to taxi. “You think that little of yourself?”
She glared at me like she wanted to cut me up in pieces.
I didn’t know why the hell I was bothering to reply. “Maybe having a felon for a boyfriend isn’t good for your self-esteem, chica.”
Her eyes narrowed. “How many women do you call chica?”
All of them. Any of them. But for her, I said it differently. She just didn’t pick up on it. “Every one.” I dropped my eyes to her mouth then to her legs. Purposely taking my time, I dragged my gaze back up to hers. “Must be the Latin lover in me.” I pulled my phone out and texted Tyler.
“Oh, I’m dismissed now?”
Dios mio. It wasn’t even nine a.m., and I was already tired as fuck. I paused midtext and looked at her. Cristo, she was a hot mess. And fucking beautiful. “What do you want from me, chica? You just trying to push my buttons, or you aiming for something?” I was tired of trying to guess who the fuck she was, let alone what motivated her. The second we landed, I was gonna dump her in one of my apartments above the office and cut my fucking losses. Candle could retrieve her sorry ass.
“You didn’t flinch when he killed Rip,” she blurted.
I didn’t know what I was expecting her to say, but that wasn’t it. And she didn’t say it, she accused it. “Neither did you.” And that should’ve given me a clue who the fuck she was, but I was too busy trying to read what the hell she was hiding behind her locked expression.
“He deserved it.”
“For shooting Candle?” I wasn’t fucking naïve.
“For being an asshole.”
A glutton for punishment, I kept fishing. “Because he knew who you are?”
She didn’t answer.
I gave her an inch and acknowledged her earlier statement. “That wasn’t my first dead body, chica. You know I was in the Marines.”
She didn’t even blink. “What did you do?”
I studied her for a second before answering. “Sniper.” I was proud of my service. I’d protected my brothers. The Marines had trained me well, but I didn’t broadcast that I was a killer. That was between me and God and the US government.
Her eyes bloodshot, her hair disheveled, she stared back. Then she nodded once. Without a word, she turned back to the window.
I didn’t know the first thing about this woman, but I did know this. A silent Kendall Reed was a dangerous slope.