“I heard you had a busy night last night,” General Grant said to him, and Johnny felt his heart drop all the way to the soles of his feet. It took everything he had not to look at Skeeter, who’d been called by the cops last night, questioning his whereabouts.
Hell, if he got arrested while Grant was in town, he could damn well forget about being part of SDF, and there was a damn good chance he was going to get arrested. He had a call in to Lieutenant Loretta. He’d saved a couple of women from being kidnapped to Mexico, but he’d killed a guy while doing it, and the lieutenant was going to want a full accounting, if not his ass in her jail, before this was finished.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“I heard you and Dax Killian can both be placed at the scene of a cocaine sting set up by the Denver Police Department this morning.”
Oh, shit.
“Yes, sir.”
The old man looked him over again. Everybody else was looking at him, too, Skeeter looking like she wanted to bust the tar out of him for being an idiot.
“If you have any other civilian sins on your head, Ramos, you better confess it all to Lieutenant Loretta, and if you can manage to keep your name out of the paper, you’ll report here to Dylan, Wednesday morning.”
That sounded like good news.
He angled a glance over at Hawkins, who gave him a nod, and although Johnny felt the thrill of that acceptance go all the way through him, he felt the gravity of Superman’s thoughts even more strongly.
He shifted his attention back to Grant.
“Yes, sir,” he said. This was what he wanted, a chance to be part of all this, and that’s what he’d be, one part. The team was the thing, the whole of it. The parts could come and go, but the work of the team was what mattered. It stretched out in the years of missions behind them, and it stretched forward in the years of missions ahead of them, and for a while, if he could keep his name out of the paper, he was going to get to be a part of it.
He would never tell a soul, but in his heart, he was just so goddamned proud of himself, he could bust.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Hey, baby.”
“Hey.”
“This is your idea of fun, right?”
“Not quite,” Esme admitted, feeling the mud and the rain soak into her pants where she and Johnny were huddled together under a makeshift shelter he’d lashed together out of sticks and branches in the middle of the woods. “Actually, I’m kind of a city girl at heart.”
“You don’t like playing Army Ranger?” He sounded surprised.
She shook her head. “I like playing with Army Rangers. I don’t like playing at being an Army Ranger.”
A gust of wind sent another showering of rain into their shelter, soaking her where she was already double soaked.
“Hoo-yah,” he said.
And she punched him, hard, right on the arm.
“Does this mean you don’t want to cook up our MREs and eat dinner out here?”
“Roger that, Ranger boy.”
“You look cute in camo,” he said, and she hit him again.
“I look cute in Vera Wang. You look cute in camo.”
“The hot tub looks nice and warm from here,” he said.
Yes, it did. Quinn and Regan Younger had offered them their home up in the mountains west of Denver, in Evergreen, for a week, while they were in Hawaii, and she and Johnny had jumped at the chance. From where he’d been teaching her survival skills, his specialty, along with a whole lot of weapons skills, demolition skills, communications skills, and even some newly acquired medical skills, they could see Quinn and Regan’s back deck, and the hot tub was definitely steaming.
“If we go back to the house, we could play doctor again,” he suggested. “Or we can stay out here and weather the storm in real Ranger fashion.”
“If I freeze to death, you’re going to have to play by yourself.” It was a warning, nothing less.
“Last one in the hot tub gets to take the other one’s clothes off.”
More rain blew into the shelter, and she started to shiver.
“You always cheat, when that’s the bet,” she said, not really minding the cold too much, not when the mountains smelled so good, so green, and the hot tub was only a hundred feet away, and not when she was in love.
Five months of flying back and forth between Seattle and Denver; trying to maintain a long-distance relationship was taking its toll. When he was gone, he was really gone, incommunicado, and he was never anyplace he could tell her about, off on some mission he couldn’t tell her about, add the distance part of the long-distance relationship, and she wasn’t sure how much longer they could keep it going. And yet, the more she was with him, the more she wanted to be with him. She wasn’t even close to getting enough of Johnny Ramos, so she’d started looking at making some changes, starting with location, location, location, starting with taking over her dad’s office. She’d talked to Robert Bainbridge, and the lease was hers, if she wanted it, if she wanted to go out on her own. Her dad didn’t need the Faber Building property anymore. After the disaster of the Bleak deal, he was finished, and so was her parents’ marriage. At least it looked that way to Esme. Some lines, once crossed, couldn’t be uncrossed.
“Okay, babe, let’s practice our fireman’s carry,” Johnny said to her, scooting out from under the branches and offering her his hand.
“What? You’re quitting?” she said, really starting to shiver now. “You wimp. I was just getting warmed up.”
She took his hand, and just by leaning down, he was able to swing her up onto his back.
“You were just starting to get really cold, sweetheart,” he said, starting down the trail to the house. “It’s hot tub time.”
“And steak. You promised me a steak.”
An hour later, soaking in a steaming hot tub with the rain turning to snow and drifting down around them under a night full of stars, Esme finally pushed her plate away.
“I’m stuffed.”
“You’re gorgeous. Come here,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her over onto his lap.
She straddled him, and his mouth came down on hers in an instantly drugging kiss.
“I love you, Esme,” he said against her lips, pulling back from the kiss just enough to speak.
“I know.” And she did. She felt his love with every call, every e-mail, every letter and gift that arrived in her mailbox. She felt it with every text message that blinked onto her phone, and she felt it every time they made love, but she wanted more.
He was already so hot and hard, and with the warm water lapping against their skin, he held her close and pushed up inside her.
“Johnny…” She melted against him, his name feeling like a benediction, his body feeling like heaven.
He moved inside her, and she leaned back so she could see his face. He was so beautiful, his hair much longer than it had been last summer, dark and silky. She ran her fingers through it, and his eyes came open, his gaze holding hers. She loved watching the pleasure in his eyes, how every move she made on him was reflected in their depths. Sliding down on him, she leaned forward again and took his mouth with hers, her kiss so hot.
His hands moved to her hips, and he held her to him, guiding her in the rhythm of their joining.
She leaned back again, watching him. He was so hard everywhere, his body like a slab of granite to the touch. She dreamed about him at night. Every time she lay down to sleep, her thoughts drifted to this, to him being inside her, rocking into her, and some nights she thought it would drive her crazy not to have him.
“Ironheart,” she whispered, sliding her hand over the tattoo on his chest. He was the angel Nikki had painted, the dark angel, the warrior angel with the bloody knife in his hand. He never talked about his work, but Dax knew, because he’d done it, and Dax talked to her, telling her things without ever telling her too much.