“I know what you’re thinking.” Caleb shifted in the driver’s seat, turning toward her. “You don’t want to get us involved because you don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Damn straight, mister.
“Yes.”
“You don’t know who we are, do you?”
“Friends of Draven?”
“Teammates,” he corrected. “All of us are former military. If there is one thing we do and do well, it’s getting out of shit when the bullets start flying.” He lifted one shoulder and shrugged. “We’re pretty damn good at dodging bullets, too. I promise.”
“What Caleb isn’t, and never has been,” Trev said dryly, “is modest.”
“I’m a Hunt,” Caleb tossed the words back. “We don’t go down unless it’s fighting, and don’t you forget it.”
He doesn’t go down unless it’s fighting!
Well, that’s a shame!
Get your mind out of the gutter, sister. That’s not what he meant, and you know it.
This is not the time to be thinking THAT.
“What?” Caleb peered at her and quirked up one eyebrow. “Tell me what put that pretty blush on your face?”
She brought her hands up to cover her flaming-hot cheeks. There was no way she could talk herself out of this one. “Nothing.”
“Hmm.”
Mortified at where her internal slut went, she could tell he didn’t believe her. Hell, she wouldn’t believe someone who squeaked like she just had, either. She closed her eyes to block out the heat she was imagining in his eyes. Not that it helped much, as her imagination took over, and she could still see him behind her eyelids.
“You have incoming,” Trev warned before she could make a bigger fool out of herself. She had no idea who or what was incoming, but as long as it wasn’t Janek, she’d take it.
“Good.”
He could think it was good that the people she assumed were his friends were arriving. To her, it just meant more people she’d have to avoid as she left as soon as their backs were turned. No matter what they said, there wasn’t a hope in hell she was putting them in Janek's path. Not any more than she already had. These people didn’t deserve that.
A large, jacked-up black pickup, the sister of the one she and Caleb were sitting in, came to a stop in front of them, blocking their way out of the parking spot, and her heart almost stopped.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s the guys.” He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. She didn’t think he realized their fingers were still interlinked. She tugged, and he growled low in his throat. “Don’t…”
Movement through the window drew her attention back to the truck, the men climbing out of it, and the one behind it. Her eyes widened. She’d thought two, maybe three of his friends would come—not eight of them. She sighed.
“It will be okay,” Caleb promised. “Stay here.” He released her hand and got out of the truck, closing her in behind him.
For a minute, a full sixty seconds, she counted in her head and watched him talking to the others. She decided she didn’t want to hide in the car when they were talking about a problem that was of her making. Well, Janek’s making, which was basically the same thing. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and got out of the truck.
At the sound of the closing door, they all spun around, and Rose stepped back from the menace she could feel pouring off them.
Caleb shook himself, scowled at his friends, and gestured to her. “Come here, baby.”
There he went again, calling her baby. What was all that about, and why the heck did she actually like it?
He must be one of those people who calls everyone baby.
That had to be it, she thought as she took one look at all the muscles between her and Caleb and went around the back of the vehicle, squeezing between the wall and the end of the truck and walking to him. She tramped down the uneasy feeling that urged her to run now that she was free of the truck, but she reminded herself that fit and her didn’t belong in the same sentence, and there was no way she could outrun one of them, never mind all of them.
“What’s going on?” the man she recognized as Draven’s boss, Dalton, barked. “Who is following you?”
