Page 60 of Down and Dirty

“A whoop-ass weapon.”

“Thank you for the offer, but nay.”

“There would be benefits.”

“As long as I am stuck in this strange land and this strange time, I will train to be with the WEALS, I will survive whatever torture is thrown my way, and then I will go off and kill bad people. And that is that.”

“We’ll see,” Zach said and took her hand in his, lacing their fingers.

She glanced down at their intertwined fingers, then up at him.

“Why didn’t you want to be alone with me today?” He hadn’t realized that he was going to blurt that out. How pathetic did that make him sound? She didn’t answer at first. So of course he blundered on like a needy teenager. “I thought you liked being with me last night.”

She made a snorting sound. “Pfff! I liked it too much.”

That made him feel a little better. “And?”

“I wanted to know how to have an orgasm, not how to set a record for swiving till my eyeballs rolled back in my head.”

Unfortunately, he’d just pulled to a stop at a red light and her voice carried to the backseat.

Zach heard his brother choke in the middle of telling Sammy, “I spy something — cough, cough — red.”

“My father’s face,” Sammy answered.

The snot!

“Didja know my father has a magazine with naked wimmen in it? He hides it under his mattress.”

The sneaky snot!

It was Zach’s turn to choke now. Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw a smirk on Sammy’s face that was pure one hundred proof Dennis the Menace.

“There was this one picture where a lady was bending over and ya could see—”

“That’ll be enough, Sammy,” Zach said. He would have to be even more careful with what he had in the house. “Besides, I think it belongs to Uncle Dan.”

“Yeah, right!” Danny was smirking, too.

“A tattoo,” Zach lied. “On her thigh. That’s probably what Sammy saw.”

“No, I saw—” Sammy started to say, but Danny clapped a hand over his mouth and said, “Haven’t you ever heard that children are to be seen and not heard, short stuff?”

“Who said that?” Sammy demanded to know. “Musta been a grown-up.”

“I am thinking of getting a tattoo,” Britta said.

Oh, boy! He turned to look at her. “Where?”

“On my buttock.”

Friggin’ A! “My name?” he suggested.

“Why would I do such a thing? Nay, I am contemplating either a longship or my favorite sword.”

“What’s the name of your favorite sword? Ballbuster?”

“Ha, ha, ha! My best pattern-welded sword was called Head Lopper.”