And he’s taught all of us enough of those tricks that I know I’ll never forget Quinton’s face, his voice, or his smile.
“Nice of you to join us,” West drawls as he refills his coffee mug and snags a second from the cabinet for me. “You’re lucky Ry’s running late.”
“What?” I scan the warehouse, convinced the former Navy SEAL is fucking with me, but Ryker isn’t here. Inara’s working through some yoga poses on a mat across the room, earbuds firmly in place, but the man who brought us all together? He’s nowhere to be found. “Is he okay?”
West shrugs. “As far as I know. Saw him Thursday.”
Inara rises with the grace of a dancer and pads over to the little kitchenette. “He texted me last night and asked me if I knew of anyone else we could bring in to Hidden Agenda. Maybe he and Dax are finally making good on their plans to grow the business?”
West tosses her a bottle of water from the fridge and jerks his head towards the boxing ring. “Well, Ry or no Ry, we still need to train. Which one of you am I taking down first?”
* * *
At exactly 9:45 a.m.,Ryker strides through the door, looking like he hasn’t slept in three days. I do a double-take, and West uses the opening to drive his shoulder into my abdomen, lunge, and flip me over his bent leg.
“Sloppy,” Ryker says, his voice more gravely than usual.
“And you ambling in forty-five minutes late isn’t?” I ask. I shake off West’s outstretched hand, slap my palms down on the mat, and swing my legs behind me to put a good two feet of distance between the two of us as I jump up.
“Not bad recovery.” West nods his approval, then ducks between the ropes. “Ry, what the fuck? The last time you were late anywhere…wasnever.”
“None of your goddamn business.” He slams his coffee cup down and braces his hands on the counter. “Fuck.”
West and Inara stand side-by-side, a united front, with me, the new guy—despite being here almost three years—well outside of the line of fire. Until West glances back at me with that one arched brow. I don’t know how the man does it. Do they teach that look in BUD/S? The one that says “Do what I say right the fuck now or I’ll kill you without breaking a sweat”?
I join them, and Inara elbows me in the side.“What?”I mouth until I see that she and West are mirror images of one another. Arms crossed over their chests, standing ramrod straight, twin expressions of resolve on their faces.Seriously? Is this some sort of intervention? Oh my God. This is an intervention. A legitimate serious-as-fuck intervention.
Ryker might be in charge of Hidden Agenda, but no one fucks with the SEAL. And Inara? She’s got more long-range kills than any man currently on active duty. So I follow orders, adopting the same stance and expression, and wait.
“Want to try that again?” West asks. “Because family doesn’t keep secrets and then claim it’s nobody’s fucking business.”
Ry scrubs his face with his hands, then slowly and deliberately reaches for the coffee pot. “Don’t ask. Just…give me some space with this.”
“The last time you needed ‘space’ with something, you disappeared, then called Inara fromRussia. I postponed my wedding. Inara had to drive six hours from the middle of fucking Iowa to get to the nearest base with a transport plane. So, no. You don’t get ‘space’ to ‘figure shit out’ with us.”
Ryker turns, and his normally ruddy complexion is so pale, the scars that cover the left side of his face stand out even more than usual. The three of us have to stare up at him—the dude’s only a couple of inches short of seven feet tall, and shit. The look in his eyes is nothing but pure, unadulterated terror.
He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a small piece of paper, and stares at it like it’s in a foreign language—one of the seven hedoesn’tspeak. And then he thrusts it at West.
“Holy fuck.” The SEAL’s voice takes on a reverent tone, and Inara draws in a sharp breath. It takes me a full three seconds to process what’s in the photo.
“Wren’s…?” I can’t finish the sentence. Not when the man who’s never been afraid of a single fucking thing is standing in front of me like the whole world just fell out from beneath his feet.
“Nine weeks,” he says, nodding at the sonogram picture. “That’s…where I was. At the doctor.”
“Is she okay?” Inara asks. “It’s...she’s…healthy?” At West’s pointed glare, she rolls her eyes. “I don’t know anything about this shit. Do you? Either of you?”
I hold up my hands and take a step back. “I was halfway across the world when my sister was pregnant. Didn’t come back until her son was almost two.”
“The doc says Wren’s fine. The…um…” Ry stares down at the black and white picture again and shakes his head.
“Baby?” West supplies.
“Yeah. It’s…’tracking normally’?” Rubbing his bald head, he snorts. “I don’t know what the fuck that means. But there’s a heartbeat. And it was moving around.”
The man’s clearly in shock. I’ve never heard him so uncertain, so out of his element. Wren’s his whole world. So much so that before he met her, he didn’t think any of us shouldhavelives outside of Hidden Agenda. Told me when I joined that I better not fall in love. Ever. Of course, less than a month later, Inara and Royce got together. West and Cam were a couple before West signed on to do this job, so Ry didn’t have a say in that.
We stand around in awkward silence until I clear my throat. “Congratulations, Ryker. Ry. Sir.”
