Page 9 of Uncharted

“Deal,” I said brightly, finding an odd, almost lingering feeling on my skin from where I’d been held tightly against him.

“Let’s go raid the beer supply,” he said brightly and walked off, whistling a tune of what I had to assume was victory.

Now all I had to do was contact my old college buddy and hope he had a bottle of his homemade tequila left for me to buy. Jake didn’t know it wasn’t a professional I was buying it from, and clearly hadn’t tried to look it up if he didn’t realize you couldn’t find it just anywhere, even in this internet-connected modern day.

Brushing off the lingering warmth on my chest and stomach, I happily followed Jake as my brain finally caught up to what he was humming.

“Is that fucking Battle of the Fates?”

2

JAKE

Xander saw me coming, his eyes narrowing. “No.”

“Aw, come on,” I complained. “You haven’t even heard me out.”

“Because if I hear you out, it’s not going to just be ‘no’ but ‘fuck no,’” Xander scowled. “You got the look of someone with a bad idea, and if it’s bad enough, I’m fucking putting you on work duty.”

I wasn’t surprised by Xander’s attitude; it had been the same from the first time I started working here and it hadn’t changed since. Well, I suppose it had changed a little over the past couple of months. I mean, I’d probably be in a better mood too if I was getting laid more often. And I wasn’t so dense I couldn’t see that Colin offered Xander a lot more than a good partner in bed. I’d yet to see someone handle Xander the way Colin could.

Xander’s eyes narrowed. “What stupid thought just went through your head?”

I thought about sharing how grateful I was to Colin for ‘handling’ Xander but thought better of it. “If I told ya, I’d definitely be fucked for the next week…maybe two.”

“My God, he can actually control his mouth sometimes,” Xander said, setting his bottle of water on the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area in the main building. I could hear Reno and his brother talking in the hallway, and the TV in the rec room that shared a wall with the kitchen, and I thought I’d heard Trevor and Cait talking as well, both quiet. “And here I thought I was going to have to accept you can’t help but say stupid shit. Guess I know better for the future.”

I grinned. “I’ve always been able to do it.”

“And that was the wrong thing to say,” he growled, but I didn’t bat an eye. If Xander wasn’t growling, snarling, barking, or insulting someone, something was seriously wrong. I’d done my time with the Corps, so dealing with hardass leaders who would probably suffer immense pain from saying anything nice wasn’t new to me. It also meant I knew how to look past all that bullshit and see what kind of person someone really was, or at least, to see what kind of leader they were.

Xander was a good boss and a good man. He didn’t put up with bullshit, but his idea of what counted as bullshit was, uh…pretty broad. He always made sure we were on top of everything that needed to be done, and that included keeping ourselves in good physical shape and constantly going over our search and rescue training. Although it was usually me or Mav heading up the training with the guys, depending on what kind of training needed to be done, Xander still made sure people were participating.

He hadn’t steered us wrong yet, and he’d never been unfair, so I wasn’t worried in the slightest. “It’ll be good for morale, which is good for the troops.”

“You’re not troops, you’re idiots,” he said, but there was an absence of the normal edge to his growl that was normally a warning to tread carefully.

Emboldened, I leaned against the counter. “We need to go out.”

“So go out,” he said with a scowl. “Like I give a shit. So long as you aren’t on the clock, I don’t give a fuck what you do.”

“No, like, as a group,” I said, waving my hand around in front of me. “Like…us.”

“I know what a fucking group is, and no,” he snapped.

“Thought you said you didn’t care what we did if we were off the clock?”

Xander narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care what you do as individuals, not as a group. The last time you fucking idiots went out, I had to be the one to go get you because you drank too much. Fuck no.”

“Hey,” I protested. “C’mon now. We were smart by callin’ you instead of tryin’ to drive, right? That’s responsible.”

“Responsible would have been not getting that shitfaced in the first place,” he pointed out, and I had to admit, it wasn’t an unfair statement.

“Look, we can plan all ya want, but those plans aren’t always gonna work. That’s why ya have a back-up plan.”

“I am not your back-up plan.”

“Look, I’ll make sure not to drink too much, or ya know, get someone else to be responsible.”