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Shades of suspicion turned Briggs’s narrowing eyes into a treacherous tint of blue. “Who wants to know?”
She swallowed, feeling suddenly surrounded by dangerous men—a protective band of brothers—who had to be part of Mr. Reardon’s pararescue team. No other explanation for why they’d be so physically daunting.
She refused to wilt. Her chin lifted. So did the man’s. Which rattled her like a box of banging gavels. Never let them see you sweat. She applied the courtroom principle to her body language.
“I do.” She straightened her shoulders but softened her poker face and stuck out her hand, hoping he’d take it.
“And you are?” he asked as he shook her hand.
“Valentina Russo. My friends call me Val.”
His eyes flashed recognition. His fingers snapped in the air. A slow grin came to his face. “The woman who crashed into his bike.”
She licked parched lips. So they’d heard her name. Couldn’t be good. Especially since the emphasis landed on her crashing the bike rather than Vince. “Yes.”
“I’m Airman Briggs. But you can call me Nolan.” Thankfully, his demeanor softened.
She nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
“What can we help you with?”
“I just wanted to be sure he’s okay. Understandably, the hospital wouldn’t give out information when I called last week.”
Nolan didn’t respond.
She plucked nervously at her earring. “I haven’t been able to get him off my mind.”
Nolan grinned. “The bear you sent in there? Or Vince?”
Gentle humor in his eyes broke her nervousness. She loosed a laugh, which was more relief. “Vince.”
Nolan nodded slowly and appeared to ponder her deeply. “How’d you know where to find him?”
“Apparently your PJ team holds celebrity status in these parts. I asked around town and was sent to the B and B. A lady named Sarah directed me here.”
“Did you say Sarah?” Nolan looked at the older man on their team, who set his clipboard down and came close. His face reflected acute interest in the conversation.
“Yes. She guided me here, saying I’d probably find Vince here.”
The redheaded teammate snickered. “Guided, wow. Sounds like something someone would do with an airborne missile.”
Val stared at him. “I’m sure Sarah meant no harm by guide—I mean sending me here.”
The older man grinned. “Relax, ma’am. Sarah’s my fiancée.”
Nolan smiled. “Vince is tough. He’ll be all right. No permanent injury. But I think it’d be better for you both if you didn’t come around him.”
The man whose tag identified him as Petrowski, and who’d proudly proclaimed Sarah as his fiancée, moved to stand alongside Nolan. “Least, not right now.” A slight grin smoothed rigid lines from his face.
“It’s been a week since the wreck. You think he’s still that angry?” Val asked.
“Now, now. Calm down, airman. I’m just the messenger,” came from inside the back room. Sounded like the sheriff’s voice. Only a little higher-pitched. Just then a growl gurgled from the room. The next instant the stuffed bear whizzed by her, hitting the opposite corridor wall.
Nolan grinned at her. “Apparently so. Give him another week. At least.” His face grew serious. “He really loved that bike.”
Which she’d learned from Eagle’s Nest’s mechanic was damaged beyond repair.
Nothing is beyond repair in Your eyes, God. Not things. Not people. Help me at least give him part of his bike back.
Maybe she should follow through with contacting Vince’s sister and have her try to use its salvaged parts to rebuild Vince’s bike. How wide was the rift between her and Vince? Would the sister even be willing?
If so, it would likely take most of Val’s savings to do this. Savings she’d been counting on to buy a van and rent a facility to entertain the at-risk youth she’d moved here to help. Oh well. She’d just have to be more creative in thinking up alternate fun activities.
Her insurance would probably cover most of the cost of a new bike, but it was doubtful that it would stretch to the custom rebuilding. If it did, the insurance company would want to choose the repairman rather than letting Val use Vince’s sister. If not, she’d just have to pick another place to take teens prone to trouble. Continue the work her aunt had started then grown too ill to finish.
Not to mention she had a hard phone call to make.
Her dad would blow his bad toupee when he found out she’d wrecked the car he and Mom had bought for her when she’d passed her bar exam. A ridiculously expensive car that symbolized prestige and privilege. An image she hadn’t enjoyed growing up under. He’d think she’d wrecked it on purpose. Ludicrous, but such was the way with her often eccentric and unreasonable father.
“Anything else?” Nolan’s voice clashed into her thoughts.
“Maybe. I wonder if you could tell me how to reach Vince’s sister.”
Nolan’s raised his brows. “Lady, you really do have a death wish, don’t you?”
The looks on the rest of the men’s faces said the same. The worst possible thing she could do was contact Vince’s sister.
The stern warning in Nolan’s eyes suggested doing so would be like tossing gasoline on the flame of Vince’s rage.
“But that’s the only hope of rebuilding his bike like his brother had it. The officer at the scene, Stallings, said she designed the bike Vince’s brother hand-built.”
“She did. But that was before the brother’s death and subsequent rift that ripped their family apart. Trust me. You’d be better off to walk away from this altogether.”
One flash of memory of the deep void of emptiness and pain in Vince’s darker-than-midnight eyes as he lay on the wet asphalt, and Val knew that walking away from this was exactly opposite of what God was asking her to do.
Trust Me.
Only it wasn’t Nolan but God impressing this upon her. An inner voice. Remembering the battle in Vince’s face as she’d prayed. Tiny sparks of hope in the most tortured eyes she’d ever seen.
She’d looked deeper.
And God had allowed her to see.
And Vince had been too momentarily unguarded to stop her. What she’d seen was a little boy wounded by life and growing up into a hard and cold brooding man who refused to feel or even act as though he could feel. That kind of ultra self-protective pain.
She saw it in the faces of abused and neglected children she lived her life to help. And in the dullness coating the eyes of teens nearly too late to help.
And she’d seen it in Vince’s eyes.
“I’m sorry. But I can’t walk away. Not from this.”
Chapter Four
She had some nerve.
Vince stormed from the back room. His team tensed. Petrowski stepped between him and Miss Distraction. Mass distraction rather. A weapon of mass distraction. Yeah. That’s what she was.
And he wanted no part of her.
Vince didn’t care why she’d come.
Only cared to see to it that she didn’t come back.
He let incisive anger fly from his eyes as he surged purposefully toward her.
Fear came alive in her face, making him pause momentarily. Her expression slammed memories back of seeing his sister’s face like that when their dad came crashing home in one of his drunken rages. Vince halted, unable to unleash the verbal lashing his tongue longed to give a hot moment ago.
As if sensing his sudden calm, his team inched away, except for Joel and Aaron, who no doubt hung out either from curiosity or at the risk of seeing if they’d have to step in and referee.
Vince unclenched his fists. “Why are you here?”
“I—I came to say I’m sorry.”
“You already did. About seven hundred times. Doesn’t change anything.”
“What can I say to that?” She raised her arms loosely and let them fall hard at her side. “I just hoped it would make a difference this time.”
Pure frustration. Not put on.
Honest. Tough. Vulnerable.
How she was all three at the same time, he had no idea. He just knew she was.
He notched his chin up. “What do you want from me?” He’d said it so calmly, the surprise in her eyes mirrored how he felt inside.
Thick black lashes on gorgeous gray eyes fluttered. “I—I don’t—I’m not sure.” Backing toward the door, she eyed the clock behind him. “I’m sorry that I came. I didn’t mean to make matters worse.” She turned and fled as fast as her high heels would take her.
She looked back only once. Regret sliced through him. Her trembling hands told him he’d scared and humiliated her.
Same way his old man used to do to him and his siblings. And he got the idea Miss Distraction was like his sister in the way of tears. Rarely did Victoria Reardon cry.
Vic. How he missed her.
Double remorse slugged his gut.
Once for his sister, Victoria.
Once for Valentina Russo.
A protectiveness normally reserved for his sister rose up in Vince for Miss Distraction. He started after her.
Petrowski’s strong arm swung out, blocking him. “No. She’s upset. Let me go.”
Knowing Aaron operated more diplomatically, and not wanting to scare Miss Distraction further, Vince planted his eager feet to the floor and nodded.
On Aaron’s way to the door, he paused to peer at Vince. “You didn’t hear Stallings explain her reason for the accident, did you?”
“No.” In fact, he hadn’t wanted to hear. So he’d poked his iPod nubs in his ears and jammed up the volume on his rip-your-ears-off hard rock.
But the terse look in Petrowski’s eyes told him he needed to know.
Vince shifted. “What?”
“Her aunt toppled down stairs on a medical scooter. Miss Russo received word of the accident seconds before entering that intersection.”
Compassion trickled past the hard earth of Vince’s anger. “She all right? The old lady, I mean?”
“Not sure yet. Stallings said she’s in surgery again today. So the young woman’s understandably under intense pressure right now. Last I heard the aunt was swinging between grave and critical condition.”
Petrowski didn’t need to say the rest. That Vince needed to go easy on her.
Sorrow settled in. “Aaron, I didn’t know, didn’t try to. I’ll make it right.”
Halfway out the door, Petrowski nodded. “I know you will. Mad as you are, your true colors can always be counted on to come through.”
That statement stunned Vince. Mostly because he didn’t see himself that way and didn’t feel he deserved the grace and understanding riding Petrowski’s words as he headed to the lot.
In fact, he’d been a complete jerk to Miss Distraction. And for the first time since the wreck, he felt a wiggle of wrong about it.
Vince moved to watch Petrowski leaving out the massive wall of windows that offered a breathtaking panoramic view of the sky he loved to languish in.
An inviting brilliant blue today, it canopied the vast acreage of Refuge Drop Zone’s grounds. It housed miles of public and private areas in which they did things as a team for hours each day. Things ranging from rigorous exercise to practicing nighttime military HALO jumps and daytime training to all-out fun with leisure landings.
Adjacent to that closed-off area resided the acreage where they conducted classes meant to train novice skydiving patrons proper body mechanics before they learned to solo or tandem skydive.
The space between Miss Distraction and Petrowski closed rapidly as Aaron sprinted to catch the woman, still rushing across the large lot to her car. She was liable to break her ankle wearing those spiked heels in the gravel part beyond the enormous asphalt section.
It had cost Joel a huge chunk of his savings putting that asphalt in when he’d bought the place after their team stationed in Refuge. Now the team was raising and saving money to help Joel pave the rest.
Why had Miss Distraction parked so far from the building? For exercise maybe? He could tell she did that regularly, too, because a woman didn’t get those shapely legs and toned arms solely by being a desk jockey. Not that he’d noticed. Really.
Miss Distraction indeed.
His nickname for her held sudden duplicity. Sure his sarcastic mind had made it up initially because her distraction was the cause of his disaster. But, watching her move in ways he couldn’t help but appreciate as a man…Miss Distraction took on a whole new meaning.
Vince grew aware of the increasing weight of his teammates’ gazes. Choosing to ignore them rather than contend verbally or mentally with what their curious and knowing expressions insinuated, he went to the back room and grabbed his helmet and the keys to his old bike.
“Where you going, dude?” Chance stepped inside the doorway.
