Tessa wasn’t sure why, but she’d agreed to drive them to the diner instead of them taking separate cars. Which meant she would have to go back to the ranch tonight to drop Gil back at his cabin.
Would he invite her in?
Did she want him to?
In front of the diner, she killed the engine and set the Jeep’s parking brake. The saliva dried in her mouth as she looked over at him. “You know… If Pearl sees the two of us in there together, she’s gonna start talking.”
“I didn’t take you as someone who cared about what other people thought.”
“I-I’m not. Usually. It’s just… With this thing with my ex, like I said, it gets complicated. I wouldn’t want to give him any reason to take me back to court for custody.”
“They’re not going to give him custody because you went out on a date.”
“No. Probably not. But… He’s an asshole, remember? I wouldn’t put it past him to try. Even though he’s the one who ran out on us.”
Gil took her hand off the manual shifter and held her hand in his, running his thumb over her knuckles, over the bumps, to the valleys, and back again.
“Look, I don’t want to cause you any trouble.” His voice went soft. “Your son is the most important person in your life. I get that. If you want, you can take me back to the ranch and we’ll call it a night. No harm, no foul.”
His eyes were stark but sincere. He wasn’t blowing smoke. He meant every word he said. Tessa’s heart kicked at her ribs. This man knew what he wanted, and right now for whatever reason, that was her. Yet he also saw her and seemed to understand how hard being a single mom could be.
“Do you have any kids of your own?”
“No. Not yet.” The yet piqued her interest, but that was a conversation for another time. Her stomach rumbled, and Gil smiled. He had one of those smiles that could transform his whole face. He had a short, thick beard, a bump from a break on the bridge of his nose, and dark eyes that drew her in. He had an edge to him she’d seen in other military and LEO boys, but when he smiled like that… it did something sinfully wicked to her insides. She glanced down at his lips and back up at his eyes.
His grin got wider.
“Can I kiss you?” She got the words out before she lost her nerve.
“I’d like that,” he said, though he didn’t move any closer. Instead, he turned Tessa’s hand over and massaged his thumb into her palm.
Her eyes fluttered closed, then opened again. That gentle massage shouldn’t have felt as good as it did. Now if he could go a little higher until he hit that knot between her shoulder blades. That nagging, niggling knot that hadn’t gone away since Bradley had gained visitation rights.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You hold that thought while we eat dinner. If you’re still interested when we’re done, you let me know.”
She gazed back at him, and Gil didn’t break eye contact. He wasn’t anything like she’d expected. “Deal.” She held out her other hand for him to shake and he took it.
“Do you trust me?”
“That sounds ominous.” She went to take her hand back, but he didn’t let go. Despite what she’d said, this was the man who’d single-handedly held off a drug cartel’s armed watchdogs, risking his life, while allowing Quinn, Jenna, and Pepita to escape a deadly situation. A situation that almost cost Gil his life. “Yeah, I trust you.” She didn’t say those words lightly.
He popped his door and released her hand. “Wait here.”
Gil jogged up the steps of the old converted railroad car turned diner. The backside had been blown out and a kitchen added on. Through the windows, she saw that most of the booths were taken as well as the row of stools lining the counter.
It wasn’t long before Gil returned with a large To Go bag. Her heart skipped like a giddy little girl let out for recess.
He climbed in and closed the door behind him. Tessa had been willing to go in with him, but the fact that he understood her hesitation spoke volumes to the type of man that he was.
“Why don’t we head back to the ranch,” he said. “I know a place we can eat that I think you’ll really like.”
She started the engine and backed out of her parking space. “I really appreciate you doing this for me, I—”
“Well, don’t go polishing my knightly armor yet. It wasn’t completely altruistic.” He didn’t crack a smile, but his teasing tone gave him away.
“Ulterior motives then?” Why was she hoping the answer was yes? She turned at the stop sign and sped back toward the ranch.
“I wouldn’t mind having you all to myself. Then there’s the whole bit about not having to update the rumor mill if I decide next week I don’t like you.”
“I can see where that could be a hassle.” She knew he was joking, but the doubts crept in. In all seriousness, she said, “Do you think you’re going to change your mind next week?”
She expected him to deny it, she hadn’t expected him to say, “pull over.”
Where the shoulder widened for a row of mailboxes, Tessa eased the Jeep to a stop. While her foot was on the clutch, Gil popped the Jeep out of gear and engaged the emergency brake.
“Look, between my deployments and my stints undercover, it didn’t leave me many opportunities for relationships, or even much of a chance to date for that matter. It made me very selective with who I wanted to spend time with.”
“Which means?” She wasn’t really getting impatient. She wanted to hear what he had to say, but the smells from the To Go bag where making her mouth water and her stomach grumble.
“The short answer to that question is no. I’m not going to change my mind next week. I don’t ask random women out on a whim.” It might have been the play of the lights from her dashboard that made his eyes look like they’d gone darker, as the conversation got much more serious than she’d ever intended.
“I’m just looking for some fun, Gil. I’m not looking for permanence.”
The corners of his mouth twitched up, but somehow it came off looking like a frown. “Fun is good, too.” The lightness in his words seemed forced, but it was late, and she was hungry so she didn’t push him on it. He bobbed his chin toward the dark ribbon of road ahead of them. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”
Tessa shifted into gear, the knot between her shoulder blades twinged as an uneasy silence splintered and fractured the air around them. She reached for the volume on the radio when her cell phone buzzed.
She pulled it from her back pocket and glanced at the screen. There goes dinner.
“What is it?” Gil asked.
“Quinn and I got called in to fly cover for an op. I don’t have time to take you back. I’ll drive to the airport, and you can take my Jeep back to the ranch.”
Her tires skidded and kicked up loose gravel as she pulled a U-ey and sped in the opposite direction toward Murdock’s municipal airport.
“What’s going on? I’ve been out of the loop.”
She glanced over at him, not knowing how much she could tell him. Technically, he was part of her task force, but she suspected if Special Agent Spinks had wanted Gil involved, he would have contacted Gil as well.
She gave him the cliff notes version. “There’s been chatter of a big arms deal going down. We think The Wolf has moved into our area.”
“Way the hell out here? Wouldn’t it be easier if he was closer to a port?”
“You would think, but the ports are under intense scrutiny. We’re thinking The Wolf’s going to fly the goods in and out. In that case, a remote area works in his favor.”
They lapsed into silence as she sped down the road, her headlights cutting through the darkness. Without lights and sirens, her speed was limited. Quinn must have broken the land speed record because he screeched to a stop and jumped out of his truck moments after she and Gil had arrived.
She handed Gil her keys as Quinn clapped him on the back. “Are you our spotter?”
“He didn’t get the call,” Tessa said. “We can’t take him out on this, without —”
“Screw that, Sterling. Another set of eyes on a cover op never hurt. It’s not like he needs his medical clearance, or even to carry a weapon.”
“Spinks will want to know,” she said, even as the three of them jogged toward the helo. They didn’t have time to jump into their flight suits.
There didn’t seem to be a question of if Gil was willing to go. He beeped her Jeep locked and kept up with them.
“We’ll tell him,” Quinn was quick to assure her, “as soon as we land.”
Gil grinned over at her and climbed into the Blackhawk and buckled into the jump seat behind the pilot’s chair.
Tessa and Quinn ran through their preflight as fast as they safely could. The engine spooled up, and as soon as they received clearance from the tower, they lifted off and banked north and west.
Over the comms, one of the task force agents fed them coordinates to rendezvous with the rest of the team on the ground.
Quinn plotted their course, and Spinks filled them in mid-flight on the rapidly developing operation. Everyone was en route to a location where actionable intel had placed an arms deal going down. They had a guy on the inside of a local gang that was looking to carve a niche as a snitch.
The gang wasn’t satisfied with a little drug running like a lot of the other low-level scum who had moved in to fill the void since El Verdugo’s drug cartel had imploded. This gang had moved on to nastier things—guns and grenades. As much as the task force wanted to stop these guys, they weren’t the ones that posed the most significant threat.
If everything went according to Spinks’ plan, the gun buys might lead them to The Wolf. Mainly because if the scuttlebutt was correct, this guy had amassed the firepower to huff, and puff, and topple small governments, or at least supply the revolutionaries with enough firepower to do it themselves.
Even the most well thought out strategies never went off without a hitch, and as quickly as this operation had been pulled together, Tessa had a bad feeling…
“This is fucked up,” Gil said from behind her over the internal comms, not the open mic to headquarters. There wasn’t any distress or panic in his words, just an observation from a guy with enough life experience to trust his gut.
“Copy that,” Quinn said. “But after months of little or no intel, at least we’re not sitting here with our dicks in our hands waiting for something to happen.”
Tessa made a noise in the back of her throat, not because she was offended, but because Quinn had reminded her what she might have missed if she and Gil had actually made it back to his cabin. It wasn’t often she had a weekend without her son. And yeah, she really needed to focus on what was happening beyond her windscreen.
“You always talk like that around the ladies, asshole?” Gil’s reprimand came through her headset, clear and calm beneath the beating of the rotor blades.
“Present company excluded,” Quinn amended. “Sorry, LT, sometimes I forget I’m in mixed company.”
“I’m not mixed company, I’m your teammate.” To Gil, she said, “I don’t need anyone to run interference for me either, special agent. Someone gets outta line, I’ll tell ‘em.”
Gil’s soft chuckle raised goosebumps on her arms, sounding much more intimate and more arousing than it should have. “Fair enough, lieutenant.”
The way he said lieutenant almost sounded like an endearment. Her stomach had that falling-fifty-feet feeling, although a quick glance at her altimeter told her that their altitude remained steady.
Quinn glanced over at her from the left-hand seat, a stupid grin on his face that told her Gil’s tone hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. Great. Just what she needed was Quinn giving her shit about Gil. At least it was good natured.
Quinn had tried to warn her off Gil, but he’d been unable to hide the respect he held for the man who had helped save his life. Whatever faults Gil might have, whatever internal demons had brought him to the Healing Horses program, Tessa didn’t doubt he was a good man at heart.
“Big Bird, this is Elmo. You got eyes on?” Agent Isaac Lang’s voice came through Tessa’s headset, with an edge to his voice that the crackle and hiss of the radio couldn’t hide. Lang was the lead agent on the ground with eyes on the impending gun deal.
“ETA five minutes,” Quinn confirmed for him.
The night was clear with good visibility. The plan was to keep the helo at altitude and out of sight. They were to keep their eyes on the truckloads of arms while Lang and his men would attempt to follow the sellers back to their hidey-hole.
“We don’t have five minutes,” Lang said. “This shit’s going down now.”
The rendezvous point was taking them far into the foothills where the houses and street lights gave way to rolling hills and trees and the cover of darkness. Tessa lowered her night-vision goggles, NVGs, pitching her world into an eerie green canvas. For some reason, the altered optics always made her think of an underworld of bridge trolls and fire-breathing dragons.
Beside her, Quinn lowered his NVGs as well.
“Sitrep, Elmo,” Spinks ordered.
“I’ve got two—no, make that three enclosed trucks. White. No identifying marks. We’re attempting to place trackers now. I thought this was supposed to be—”
At the same time Lang cut out, bursts of light flashed far ahead between the trees.
“Fuck. They’ve gone hot,” Gil said, indicating shots being fired.
From the overwhelming spray of light coming from one direction and the intermittent, controlled fire coming from the other, Lang and his men were outnumbered and outgunned.
“Get me down there.” Gil had slipped into a harness and tethered himself inside the helo. He slid open both rear doors, armed with an AR-15 he’d retrieved from a rack in the back.
“Command, this is Big Bird, request permission to assist.”
“Negative. You’re on overwatch—”
Quinn switched the comms and Gil’s mic went hot. “Forget overwatch. Our men are going to get slaughtered if we don’t get down there.”
“Who the hell let you on that bird, Brant?” Spinks hollered.
Tessa was going to pay for allowing Gil on the mission. Probably with her job. But there wasn’t anything she could do about that now.
“Man down,” Lang reported. “They’ve got cop killers. I’m going in.”
Cop killers. Armor piercing rounds. Those bastards didn’t fool around.
“Put me down. Now.” Gil didn’t leave any room for argument. One more guy might not make any difference, but then again, one more might. Tessa glanced at Quinn. Quinn nodded his agreement. After all, if they were going to disobey direct orders, both of their asses could be canned. She set the helo down in a clearing about one kilometer, one klick, away from the shooting.
“Coming your way,” Gil told Lang. He ditched the harness, tossed on a bulletproof vest and clipped on a mobile radio. The armor wouldn’t help him if he got hit with an APR, but it was better than nothing.
As soon as Gil was clear of the rotors, Tessa lifted off again. She switched to the internal comms, so only Quinn could hear her. “I hope he knows what the hell he’s doing.”
Running a klick in the dark and over rough terrain got Gil’s blood pumping and his heart thumping, as the steady drip of adrenaline seared his veins. Up ahead, more shots were fired, but the tempo had slowed. Headlights from one of the trucks came on. Gil ducked, and a bullet thumped into the tree right where his head had been.
Two trucks roared by, and Gil let them go. He didn’t want to give up his position. From his location behind the tree, he could make out Lang holed up behind the rear axle of the remaining truck. One of the task force guys had taken cover to Gil’s right behind another tree, and two others had found cover in a ditch.
On the ground, out in the open, was the agent who’d been shot. The man slipped his hand up under his vest, and said, “He shot me. The fucker shot me.” The man groaned, pulled out his hand and stared at the blood. He chuckled. More pain, less humor. “Motherfucker. My wife is going to be pissed if I die.”
“We’re not going to let you die,” one of Lang’s men said, Joel Cook, Gil thought. “We’re going to get you out of there.”
Gil spoke into his radio, “Lang, coming up on your six. Don’t shoot.”
Over the radio, Lang told his men to hold their fire.
“Coming to you, buddy,” Gil said. “Cover me.”
Lang peeked around the bumper of the of the truck and laid down suppressive fire. Gil ran over to Lang and pressed his back against the rear wheel. “What’s the plan.”
“I gotta get Rivera before he bleeds out. They’ve got two guys behind that shack, one in the trees at about ten o’clock, and one I haven’t seen for a while. I think he took off, but I can’t be sure.”
Rivera tried scooting backward, shoving at the ground with the heels of his boots. A shot rang out, the bullet hitting inches from Rivera’s right boot. Rivera stilled.
“I can’t wait any longer. You guys cover me,” Lang said. “I’ll pull him behind that rocky outcrop.” Into his radio, Lang gave the orders. His men were to concentrate their fire on the shack, and Gil was to make sure the guy in the trees kept his head down. Lang counted down, and when he hit zero, Gil and the rest of the men started firing.
Lang sprinted in a half crouch over to Rivera and hooked his hands under Rivera’s arms. Lang struggled as he dragged the dead weight toward the rocks. Gil cursed under his breath. Rivera was a big man, Gil should have been the one pulling him to safety.
Gil’s AR-15 hit empty as Lang got Rivera behind cover. Gil dumped the empty mag and slapped a new one home. Lang shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a blowout kit, a first-aid kit designed to treat bullet wounds. A bullet rent the air, and Lang fell. Gil yelled into his radio, “Did any of you see where that came from?”
From beneath the back end of the truck, Gil watched as Lang writhed on the ground. “My legs. I can’t feel my fucking legs.”
Over the comms, someone said, “The shot came from that rise at Lang’s nine o’clock.” Meaning a position to Lang’s left. From Gil’s vantage point, the truck blocked his view. It was probably the guy Lang thought had run off. But instead of running off, the asshole had circled around and flanked them. Gil clicked the talk button on his radio, “Hang on, buddy. I’m coming for you.”
“Stand down,” Lang said, “No one is going anywhere until someone gets that motherfucker.”
Lang and Rivera were screwed, and Gil wasn’t sure why the shooter hadn’t wasted his teammates already. What was he waiting for?
Lang and Rivera were pinned down. If they moved around to the other side of the rocks, they would be in the direct line of fire from the guys behind the shack, yet staying where they were would likely get them killed. Lang’s best hope for survival was for Gil to get the guy who’d ambushed Lang to surrender or end him.
At that point, Gil didn’t care which.
Gil slid under the truck. With his rifle cradled in his arms, he crawled to the truck’s right front wheel, the healing muscles from his old bullet wound bitched and complained and generally gave him hell like a bitter ex-wife on a rampage. The smell of gunpowder filled his nostrils and his ears rung from all the shooting.
From his new position, Lang and Rivera were directly in his line of sight. Lang had rolled to his side and applied pressure to Rivera’s wound while trying to hold pressure on his own. Rivera was no longer talking, but the man’s moans of pain set Gil’s teeth on edge. If they waited too much longer, they’d be taking both guys out in body bags.
Into his radio, Gil hissed, “One of you guys try to talk to this guy. I’ll see if I can locate his position.”
“This is the Bison County Task Force. Drop your weapon, and come out with your hands up,” Cook said.
Cook was one of the newer guys that had joined the task force shortly before Gil had been shot. From the direction of Cook’s voice, he’d moved to a better vantage point as well.
A shot rang out and the tire Gil had been hiding behind hissed and went flat. The bullet pinged off the steel wheel and zinged past his head with inches to spare.
He returned fire. A double tap. A body hit the ground with a soft thud. Over his radio, he heard, “Target in the tree has been neutralized.”
“Someone needs to secure those guys at the back of the shack,” Gil ordered back.
“We’re on it,” that from Hugh Fisher, one of the guys who’d taken cover in the ditch.
Two shadows rose from the ditch and ran from cover to cover, making their way toward the shooters who had taken up positions behind the shack. No shots had come from that direction for a few minutes. Had those men taken off for the hills while they’d had the chance? A distinct possibility.
On the way to the shack, one of Lang’s men knelt next to the guy Gil had shot, then kept moving. Dead, Gil figured. That left one more.
“Come out now,” Cook ordered. “Unless you want to be dead like your buddy over there.”
“You’ve got ten seconds. Come out, or we’re taking you out. Your choice.”
Not standard negotiating protocol, but Rivera and Lang were bleeding out, they didn’t have the time to mess around.
“Nine, eight, seven—”
“I want—”
“You shot a cop. You don’t get to negotiate,” Gil hollered. “You come out, or you get dead. Don’t matter much to me. Tick-tock, asshole.”
“Five, four, three.”
One of the agents slapped a new magazine into their duty weapon.
“Two, one—”
“Okay, okay.” There was a clatter as what looked like an AK-47 hit the ground.
Gil rolled out from beneath the truck and got to his feet, the end of his barrel aimed at the guy’s head as Gil stood.
“The back of the shack is clear,” Fisher said over the radio. “They must have taken off. Want us to pursue?”
“Negative,” Gil said. “It’s clear out here, come on back.”
The shooter stepped out, his hands on his head. “On your knees.” Gil’s aim didn’t falter. When the shooter complied, Gil said, “Cuff him.”
“Motherfucker,” the guy screeched out when Cook yanked they guy’s arms behind him and cuffed him.
“What’s his problem?” Gil asked.
“Looks like he sprung a leak,” Cook said. “A shame it doesn’t look fatal.”
Cook patted down the shooter and hauled him to his feet. Gil shouldered his weapon and hurried over to Rivera and Lang. Rivera had lost consciousness. Gil felt for a pulse, it was light, thready.
“Someone give me a hand over here,” Gil called out.
Lang’s blood-covered hand gripped Gil’s arm. “I can’t feel my legs, man. Holy fuck, I’m never going to have sex again.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” Gil couldn’t say what he really thought. He couldn’t say that Lang was probably right. He pulled off his outer shirt and held it against Lang’s lower abdomen. “It’s just a flesh wound.”
Lang’s chuckle came out strangled, and his lips pulled back in a grimace. “Flesh wound. You’re such a prick.”
“Don’t you forget it.” Even in the dark, Gil couldn’t miss the pool of blood dripping down Lang’s side. He loaded Lang’s wound with Quick Clot from the kit he found in one of the pockets of Lang’s tactical pants hoping to buy his friend some time.
Fisher dropped to his knees beside Gil and held pressure on Rivera’s wound while Gil did the same for Lang. The bullet had struck low, beneath the bottom edge of Lang’s ballistic vest, and buried itself deep into Lang’s belly. With no exit wound, and Lang’s inability to move his legs, Gil was concerned that the bullet had lodged itself against Lang’s spine.
“Medevac is on its way,” Fisher said, “but only one chopper was available.”
As Fisher relayed the news, Gil heard the whompa-whompa-whompa of the medevac’s rotor as the chopper flew in. Rivera was worse off, but Lang wasn’t fairing much better. He’d started losing consciousness and he no longer grimaced as Gil held pressure on his wound. They didn’t have time to wait for the medevac to come back.
“Cook,” Gil hollered. “Have Sterling on standby, we’ll evac Lang to the trauma center ourselves.”
Tessa flopped down in the chair beside Gil in the waiting room at the trauma hospital in Idaho Falls. “How are you doing?”
Not worth a damn sprang to mind, along with a few other honest words that might make Tessa, and especially Spinks, question his ability to do his job. “Fine.”
She gave his hand a squeeze but didn’t hang on. Not with the rest of the guys waiting around. She wouldn’t want anyone to know that something was brewing between them, and Gil couldn’t blame her.
In his mind, there was no work conflict with him leaving the task force, but she didn’t know his plans. Besides, he knew how much harder the women had to work to prove themselves to their teammates. He wouldn’t want to make her professional life any more challenging for her than it already was. But to say he didn’t want to wrap her in his arms and lose himself in her would be a damned lie.
And that wasn’t the remnants of an adrenaline stiffy talking either.
“That must be hard.” Tessa leaned in, her voice soft to keep it from carrying.
“What?” He glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at his crotch like he’d suspected. Jesus Christ. He needed to get his mind out of the gutter and off all of the delicious, delectable, devilish things he wanted to do with Tessa if he ever got her naked.
Now wasn’t the time.
Anytime you cheat death is a good time, his body was quick to remind him.
Maybe, but he hadn’t been the one shot this time. He hadn’t been the one clinging to life as the helos motored to the trauma center at max rated speed. Rivera and Lang had.
“Saving your friend’s life.”
“That was the training.” Uncle Sam had made sure he knew more than basic first aid. He could start an IV, administer plasma expanders, and manage sucking chest wounds at least until someone more qualified came along. Luckily, the task force helo was sometimes used for rescue work and was well equipped for medical emergencies. “The harder part would have been watching him die.”
Tessa stood and held out her hand. He took it and allowed her to pull him to his feet. After coming off the adrenaline dump, his legs hung from his body thick and heavy as tree stumps. It was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other.
He didn’t ask her where they were going. It didn’t matter. He’d probably follow her through the gates of hell if she’d let him. None of the other agents in the room seemed to notice them leaving or that his hand engulfed hers. Or if they did, they were too caught up in their own heads to say anything.
She led him into one of those single, unisex wheelchair accessible bathrooms and closed and locked the door behind her. “Strip.”
He arched a brow at her. “Excuse me?”
“You’re covered in blood. Take your clothes off. We need to get you cleaned up.”
He didn’t really need help, but if a beautiful woman wanted him to undress, who was he to argue? Still, he hesitated.
She didn’t.
She tugged his bloodstained undershirt shirt from the waistband of his jeans and pulled it over his head. The bathroom had a plastic chair in the corner. She pushed him down onto it and yanked off his boots. Then she made quick work of his jeans, taking out his wallet and keys and handing them to him.
“You want to keep these?” She held up his clothes.
Even if he could get all the blood out, they’d never get clean enough. Not in his mind at least. “Toss them.”
There was nothing sexual about what she was doing but tell that to his super-charged body. He’d just thought the adrenaline had thoroughly wrung him out. He’d been wrong. The hairs stood up on his arms as if she’d run her tongue down his torso and his dick struggled against the virtual straitjacket that was his underwear.
She bobbed her chin toward his boxer briefs. “Those too.”
He glanced down at his gray briefs that had become soaked with blood when he’d helped carry Lang to Tessa’s helo. Even after several hours, they were still damp. He hitched his thumbs in his waistband, then stopped.
“What?” Tessa said. “Don’t tell me you’re shy.”
“Hardly.”
“Then off with them. Come on. Chop-chop.”
Even though what was now happening beneath a thin cover of cotton had absolutely nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with Tessa, he said, “I should warn you. Adrenaline sometimes has this… uh… effect on guys—”
“Yeah, yeah, Brant, I deployed with a bunch of men. Trust me, I know more about adrenaline boners than any woman should. I know how it works, you don’t have to worry about me thinking you’re attracted and want to jump my bones.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Her dark brown eyes caught his, her pupils expanding. She swallowed hard, then made a rolling motion with her hand, telling him to hurry up.
“Fine,” he said. “It’s not like I didn’t warn you.”
He lifted and shucked his underwear in one quick motion, balling them up and shooting them into the trash can for two points. It wasn’t like he’d ever wear them again.
Her eyes went to his crotch, then darted away. “Yeah, well, you’ve seen one penis, you’ve seen them all.” The words came out right, but her bravado and bluster were gone. A blush rose to her cheeks.
“Did you have a plan beyond getting me naked?”
Her eyes traveled up from his junk, up, up, up his long torso and finally met his eyes again. “What?”
“A plan. Do you have one? Or am I supposed to streak through the halls of the hospital?”
“I—” her voice squeaked, and Gil had to hold back the grin. He was a big man. He was a big man everywhere. She may have seen penises before, which for some stupid reason made him oddly jealous, but she hadn’t seen his.
“I have a plan,” she said. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She left, then popped her head back in. “Maybe you should lock the door. You don’t want to give some little old lady a heart attack if she stumbles in here.”
“I’ve got it,” he said. “Little old ladies aren’t my thing anyway. I prefer a woman who can control a stick.” Did he just say that? Her face turned red again, so he must have.
He locked the door behind her, needing to get his head on straight. He was an adult, not some horned-up hound that had slipped its leash and was out on the prowl.