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“Who are you really?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Dang, this guy messed her up. She never blurted stuff out like that.
“Just a guy doing a job. You can call me Beau.”
“Lambo’s your field handle, right? Let me guess. It’s short for Lamborghini and not Lambert.”
“Correct.” His eyes briefly lit with approval.
Hah. She’d nailed it. “You got a rank, soldier?”
“Yes.”
And, on cue, he went all caveman on her and didn’t share said rank. It irritated her enough that she refused to ask him what his rank actually was. Major Jackass. That was his rank.
“With all due respect, Beau, why in the hell are we here? Wherever here is.”
“Torsten didn’t tell you?” he replied sharply.
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking.”
“Come in and close the door. You’re letting in mosquitoes. And if I have to be in an enclosed space with you, please take a shower. You really do stink.”
“Screw you,” she said mildly.
His gaze snapped to hers, hot and willing. Her breath caught. Realizing belatedly what she’d just said, she rolled her eyes and stepped inside.
He held out her rucksack and she snagged it without comment as she passed by him, heading for the bathroom. She locked the door, stripped and turned the water on as hot as it would go. It was strange and disturbing knowing Lambert was right outside while she was in here, naked, like this.
Hyperawareness of her escort skittered across her skin, and it made her jumpy. It wasn’t that she was a prude. Far from it. But she could still feel all those acres of yummy muscle against hers. Smell his deodorant.
No amount of vigorous scrubbing erased the feel of him off her body. And, truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to forget the sensations that had torn through her. They had been...amazing.
Irritated at whatever head game he was playing with her, she blasted the water, letting it pound her muscles until the water ran cold—which actually felt pretty good, too. Only then did she reluctantly pour the freebie bottle of shampoo over her head and scrub her hair blessedly clean. She soaped down her body, rinsed off and stepped out of the shower feeling like a new woman.
She toweled off and then stared down at the filthy mess that was her clothes. There were no clean ones in her rucksack, which held only combat and survival gear. She sighed and used the bar of soap in the bathtub to give her tank top, cargo pants and underwear a scrub and a rinse. God. How did women in the past wash all their clothes by hand like this?
She wrung out the garments as best she could, then pulled and plucked the soggy clothing onto her body. Oh, Lord. Beau was gonna love the wet T-shirt look. It didn’t help that her nipples were puckering with cold underneath her damp sports bra and thin tank top. Bracing herself for his disdain, or at least a rude stare, she stepped out into the room...and was startled to find it empty. Where had he gone? Out for food, hopefully.
She guzzled down a bunch of sulfur-tasting water using the plastic cup by the sink and combed out her hair. She was startled to see in the mirror that it had grown out to nearly her shoulder blades in the past few months. More startling was the deep tan she also was sporting. It made her gray-green eyes look even lighter and brighter than usual.
She towel-dried her hair and pulled it up into a high ponytail. It was going to go full poodle puff on her, but there was no help for it. Without a round brush or straightening iron, no way was she corralling its natural curl.
Using the motel’s blow-dryer, she worked at drying her clothes right on her body. They were still damp, but no longer clammy, when the door opened abruptly behind her and she spun, brandishing the blow-dryer like a six-shooter.
“Gonna take me down with that thing?” Beau asked drily.
Rats. No grocery bags or other sign of human sustenance. She would take calories right now in pretty much any form she could get them.
“I’m de-stinked,” she announced. “Any chance there’s somewhere nearby where I can grab a bite of real food?”
His cell phone rang just then and he fished it out of his jeans, answering tersely with, “Go.” He listened for a moment. Then, “The package is almost delivered. Understood.” He hung up.
She stowed the hair dryer in its wall mount and turned back to him. “Are you a drug dealer, or am I the package?”
“You would, in fact, be the package.”
“Can we please feed the package?”
He jerked his head for her to follow him and headed outside. She noticed this time as she passed him that she was about six inches shorter than he was. She was not quite five foot eight, which made him a little over six feet tall. He probably had sixty pounds on her in weight, even though at a glance he looked lean. She’d developed a discerning eye for the muscle density of special operators in the course of her recent training.
He moved past her with deceptive speed for a guy with a bum leg and reached for her car door just as her hand moved toward the handle. He opened it with a flourish and she looked up at him, startled.
“Don’t get used to it. I won’t coddle you or get any doors for you after tonight. But let the record show my mama didn’t raise a heathen.”
“Duly noted,” she replied, bemused as she slid into her seat and he closed the door. He went around to the driver’s side and in seconds was backing out of the lot. He threw the Jeep in gear and took off down the road. A gas station next to the motel appeared operational, along with a titty bar that looked like a total dive. Oddly, a bait shop was open, too. Apparently, night fishing was a local thing.
Beau turned off the narrow asphalt road onto an even narrower dirt road, and she was pretty sure she would start hearing banjos any second.
They banged along the terrible road for maybe ten uncomfortable minutes before a building on high stilts came into sight ahead with a half dozen muddy trucks parked in front of it. Another half dozen shallow-bottom boats were tied up at a dock behind it.
“We’re here,” he announced.
“Where’s here?”
“At the best steak joint in the Bayou Toucheaux.”
She salivated at the mere mention of steak. He led her up a staircase to a rickety wraparound porch. The weathered building looked as if a stiff breeze would blow it over.
She followed Beau into the dim, smoky interior. Any fire marshal worth his salt would have a stroke at the plentiful cigars and flaming grill filling the wooden structure with smoke. Four rednecks in sleeveless shirts and baseball caps bellied up to the bar, and several couples sat at tables in the middle of the room.
“’Eyy, chère,” one of the rednecks at the bar slurred as he spotted her. The guy strolled over to her, flashing a smile that had about one tooth for every three available slots. “You new come to dee parish, oui?”
Beau took a step forward, injecting himself between her and the drunk. “She new come to the parish with me.”
“Bah. Femme like dat wan’ de real man. Not girlie boy wit’ de pretty face...” The drunk trailed off, peering at Beau closely. “Lambert? Beau Lambert? Dat y’all?”
“Farty Lambert?” one of the other drunks behind the first one hooted? “Y’all done growed up. Got yo’self some muscles ’n’ all. Shee-it.”
Clearly Beau had some sort of history with these yahoos. Based on the taunts, she gathered he’d lived here as a child. Rough place to have come from if the poverty she’d seen so far was typical.
The other three drunks closed ranks behind the first one. “Li’l Farty Lam-bear? I’ll be damned. Never thought to see yo’ face round he-uhh no mo’,” one of them slurred.
Tessa’s entire body tensed. She knew that tone of voice from her own childhood. It belonged to a bully. One pumping himself up to inflict pain on someone weaker than he was. A bully enjoying his victim’s fear. Oh, this was not going to go well.
Anger at a bunch of big, strong jerks picking on someone else rolled through her, hot and sharp. God, she hated bullies. She sized up the four men quickly. She and Beau could totally take them. Teach them a lesson—
Check that. Not only was it strictly forbidden for special operators to lose their cool in public and particularly against civilians, but failure to control anger was also a big, fat disqualifier for joining them. Anger clouded the mind. Impaired judgment. Still. It was hard to rein in the urge to remove the rest of these jerks’ teeth.
As for Beau, he’d gone still and silent beside her. As in totally hunting-predator still and deeply, unnaturally silent. Menace poured off him like sublimated carbon off a block of dry ice. Surely, the four drunks weren’t so far gone that they failed to sense the threat emanating from him.
The first drunk gave Beau a hard shove. Nope. Too far gone to realize Beau was not a man to bait and threaten anymore. Little Farty Lam-bear had grown up into a stone-cold killer.
Beau stepped back up beside her after the shove. He spoke quietly, calmly. “Walk away from me, Jimbo. And don’t ever lay another hand on me. This is your only warning.”
The four drunks hooted with laughter. She thought Beau had gone a little pale, the only indication that these assholes actually bothered him.
“Easy, Beau,” she murmured low. “They’re not worth it.”
“Stay out of this, Tessa,” he muttered back. “This has been a long time coming. If they pick a fight with me, I’m within my rights to defend myself.”
She winced. It wasn’t a good idea for anyone to pick a fight with a trained Special Forces operative like him.
On cue, Jimbo took a clumsy swing at Beau. For his part, Beau dodged the meaty fist in negligent disdain, reaching up casually, gently even, to grasp Jimbo’s fist. The big drunk dropped to his knees, yelping.
Beau leaned down and spoke in a low, almost caressing tone, “You think you can mess with me like back in the good old days, Jimbo? Take my girl? Humiliate me in public? Think again, my friend.”
“Screw you,” Jimbo growled.
Beau just laughed quietly and tightened his grip until the guy on the floor howled with pain.
“Need me to help kill him?” she asked under her breath.
Beau glanced up at her. His stare was flat. Emotionless. He looked like Death incarnate.
Which, of course, he was.
“Maybe you should cut him loose,” she murmured. “I’m starving, and I don’t want to get kicked out of here.”
Beau released Jimbo’s hand, or more precisely, he released the unfortunate thumb bent back nearly to the guy’s wrist. The Cajun surged to his feet, right fist cocking back as he rose.
Mistake.
Beau moved so fast Tessa barely saw him slide past his foe. But all of a sudden Jimbo was facing her, and Beau was behind the guy, forearm around Jimbo’s neck, and the drunk was rapidly turning an ugly shade of purple.
She spoke calmly and slowly. “Beau.” She waited until he made eye contact with her to continue. “Toothless, here, has learned the error of his ways in trying to sucker punch you. Haven’t you?” she asked Jimbo.
The drunk tried to nod within Beau’s grasp but only managed to bug his eyes out a little more.
She glanced back at Beau. “How about you turn him loose so we can eat our dinner?”
He hesitated, but then nodded tersely and turned Jimbo loose.
The Cajun bent over at the waist, gasping and coughing. Tessa leaned down beside him and spoke coldly. “You’re welcome. And for the record, he could’ve snapped your neck like a twig if he actually wanted to kill you. Walk away from Beau and don’t ever mess with him again, or next time, I will let him break your neck.”
Jimbo glared at her, spitting out something under his fetid breath about crazy bitches and their homicidal pretty boys. Whatever. She was more concerned about Beau.
She straightened and turned, coming face-to-face with him. “You okay?” she asked under her breath.
“Yeah. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She stared at him, startled. He sounded utterly normal. Casual. The incident was a stark reminder of just how lethal these guys could be when crossed. They killed with cool, calculated precision. No anger, no emotion, just efficient violence in the blink of an eye.
“How long have you been waiting to do that to that guy?” she asked low.
“Awhile,” Beau replied shortly.
She knew a thing or two about having old scores to settle.
Jimbo stumbled back toward his equally dentally challenged buddies, grumbling about jealous bastards who refused to share the hot chicks. At least somebody thought she was attractive. Of course, she still had all her teeth. By that measure alone, she was probably smoking hot to those losers.
Beau still stood rooted in place. Maybe he wasn’t so unaffected, after all. She reached out to touch his elbow lightly. “Ready to eat?”
He shook himself a little. “Yes. You?”
She smiled. “Show me the meat, big guy.”
His eyes glinted at her double entendre, but he didn’t rise to the bait.
He glanced across the room toward a grill that was actually an oil drum split in half with metal mesh over the two halves. Beds of charcoal filled the drums. “’Ey, Marie,” he called out.
A large woman wearing a New Orleans Saints jersey and standing by the grill turned around, wielding a long pair of tongs. She bellowed back, “Grab a table and yell out what y’all want. Damn waitress didn’ show up t’night.”
Tessa sank into a chair opposite Beau at a table for two, studying him closely. He had reacted the same way she would react if one of her mom’s boyfriends tried to rough her up nowadays. She would go postal on his ass.
Beau scowled back at her as he caught her intent regard on him. Didn’t like being psychoanalyzed, huh?
“Where do you know those guys from?” she asked.
“Everyone in these parts knows the Kimball brothers. I’m surprised all four of them are out of jail at the same time.”
“Are they petty criminals or into bigger stuff?”
Beau shrugged. “They deal drugs. Run guns. Extort protection money from local businesses. Rumor has it they’ve killed a few folks who got in their way or refused to pay.” He added sardonically, “They’re just smart enough to stay one step ahead of the law. The sheriff puts them away for small stuff anytime he can catch them. But so far, they’ve avoided arrest for the more serious felonies everyone knows they’ve committed.”
She eyed the big men across the room, memorizing their faces for future reference.
“How do you like your steak?” he asked, his voice a bit too tight. Predatory intensity rolled off him, and frankly, it turned her on like mad. Not that she would ever admit to him that she was secretly a bit of a Spec Ops groupie.
“Earth to Tessa, come in. Your steak?”
“Rare,” she answered, mentally shaking herself. Get a grip, girlfriend.
“Pink rare or bleeding rare?”
“Marie can just walk my steak past the flame and call it good.”
Beau called out, “Two steaks. Biggest ones you’ve got and rare as a virgin in a whorehouse.”
Guffaws filled the room. The Kimball boys glowered, however. Their heads came together angrily as they muttered amongst themselves. She made a mental note to keep an eye on that bunch as the night progressed and the level of whiskey in the bottle in front of them went down.
