Man in Black

Prologue

Black Knights Inc., Goose Island, Chicago, Illinois

Fisher Wakefield was blown away.

Not an entirely unexpected outcome given his chosen profession. As a decorated Delta Force grunt turned super-secret government defense contractor who ran missions so black they never received a code name or crossed the desk of some high-ranking official in the Department of Defense. On a good day his chances of getting turned into chunky salsa were hovering somewhere around fifty/fifty.

It wasn’t an IED that took him out, however. Nor was it a 50-cal, a hand grenade, or a rocket launched from a bazooka.

It was a woman.

The woman.

She didn’t end him with an arrow to his heart or a round to his brainpan, however. She ended him with a dress.

No, it’s not a dress,he thought, feeling his heart rate kick up at the same time his breathing went shallow. It’s the pinnacle of dresses. The dress that every dress before it has tried to be and every dress after it will fail to be. The dress to end all dresses.

Black satin. One of those necklines that looked like the top half of a heart. And a slit up one side that bordered on being indecent. Probably was labeled indecent in some of the more conservative parts of the state.

It held her breasts high when she appeared at the top of the stairs. Sighed open to reveal one mile-long leg as she placed her hand on the rail and stepped onto the first tread. And it moved with her like a second skin as she made her way down from the second floor of the old menthol cigarette factory that was headquarters for the custom motorcycle shop known to the world as Black Knights Inc.—and living quarters for the clandestine group of operators who worked out of it.

She walks in beauty like the night…

Lord Byron’s famous line drifted through his head. He chastised himself for falling back on an old cliché when he had so many other gems to choose from.

Like Maya Angelou’s… I am woman. Phenomenally. Or William Wordsworth’s… She was a phantom of delight when first she gleamed upon my sight.

Both poems were appropriate. Both described the woman and her impact. But neither worked as well as Byron’s. Because Byron’s compared a lady to the night. And that fit her to a tee.

Her hair was as black as a moonless sky. Her skin was as pale and as bright as the stars. And when she smiled at him, particularly anytime she’d smiled at him lately, it was as hard and as sharp as a sickle moon.

“Careful. You’ll be catching flies.”

He realized he was gaping like a catfish trapped on a mudbank when Britt Rollins reached over and knuckle-bumped the bottom of his chin.

Britt was a former Army Ranger and an adrenaline junkie who liked jumping out of airplanes, climbing mountains, and racing dune buggies across the desert even when he wasn’t on a mission.

Britt was also Fisher’s best friend.

From the day they’d met inside a windowless basement room in the Pentagon—the day they’d been tasked with abandoning their military contracts and signing on to answer to none other than the president herself—they’d been cronies in crime. Bosom buddies. Or, as Britt liked to say, wingmen for life.

But where Fisher moved through the world with as much irreverence as possible, Britt seemed perpetually on the hunt for the next most-dangerous thing. Where Fisher was lucky to make a grilled cheese sandwich without setting the place on fire, Britt could whip up a crab boil or a bowl of shrimp and grits as easily as breathing. But most glaringly, where Fisher was deliberate and planned, Britt was haphazard and impulsive.

Their differences meant they made a good team. Where one was weak, the other was strong. And that had saved their asses more than a time or two.

Being teammates, best friends, and brothers by choice instead of blood, meant they also didn’t bullshit each other.

Which is why Fisher didn’t prevaricate when he answered, “Either I’ve died and gone to heaven…” He had to clear his throat. The hoarse grate of his voice reminded him of Humvee tires crunching over rough terrain. “Or I’m in hell.”

“Gotta be the former.” Britt’s Lowcountry accent dropped the R sounds off the final word until it sounded more like fahmah. “Because only angels look like that.” The ex-Ranger’s voice was filled with awe as his eyes remained glued to the dress.

And the woman in the dress.

When something venomous and prickly legged unfurled in the center of Fisher’s chest, he reminded himself Britt loved Eliza like a kid sister. Same as the rest of the Knights.

Er…same as everyone but me,he corrected, shifting his stance when his blood surged south in the normal reaction to seeing a beautiful woman wearing something that hugged every curve and slithered over every line.

Normal, but frustratingly unwelcome.

He and Britt had been working on their custom Harley choppers, Britt running a shammy over the chrome on his handlebars and Fisher finishing the job of changing out his headlight, when their office manager/live-in chef/and all-around girl Friday appeared on the upper landing. Now they stood motionless, mesmerized by the graceful sway of her hips as she carefully navigated the metal staircase in strappy, high-heeled shoes that showed off her fresh pedicure.

The paint on her toes was a sinful, ruby red. It matched the lipstick staining her mouth.

Fisher was amazed at how subtle a woman in seduction mode could be. No detail was too small. No element was overlooked. Everything was done for one purpose and one purpose only…to attract and hold the male gaze.

Sure as shit is holdin’ mine.

Of course, she could be wearing a circus tent and rain boots and he’d still be unable to look away. Because Eliza Meadows was…

Well, the poem says it all. She’s as beautiful as the night.

As mysterious, wondrous, and magical too.

Also…Britt was right. If anyone had earned their place beyond the pearly gates, it was Eliza with her soft heart and generous spirit. With her honesty and integrity and world-record patience when it came to working and living with a group of stubborn, arrogant, high-handed fighting men.

Too bad she’s spent the last four months datin’ the biggest bag of dicks this side of the Mississippi, he thought sourly.

All his softer sentiments were crushed beneath the weight of the venomous, prickly legged thing stretched to its full height inside him.

Eliza was the upper crust yin to his grits-and-gravy yang. She was a boarding school socialite. He’d grown up so poor he couldn’t have jumped over a nickel to save a dime. She could look at the impressionist paintings in the Chicago Art Institute and tell the difference between a Monet and a Renoir. His idea of fine art was the faded, velvet picture of dogs playing poker that had been nailed to the wall behind the sofa in his cousin’s house.

In short, he and Eliza had nothing in common.

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

Which meant she’d never been his. But, more importantly, never would be his. So there was no reason for him to be jealous of the high-haired son of Senator John McClean.

And yet, he thought, his breath getting trapped in his lungs when she stepped off the bottom tread and sashayed her way across the shop floor in his direction, here I am. Jealous as a cock pigeon over his hen. And provin’ the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

He blamed the venomous, prickly legged monster he’d inherited from his father for the sneer that spread across his face and the fact that the first words out of his mouth were caustic instead of complimentary.

“That man of yours ever consider takin’ ya out for a scoop of ice cream? Why’s he always makin’ ya get all gussied up? What’s he tryin’ to prove?”

Her beautiful mouth, painted that scrotum-tightening red, flattened into a thin line. “Why do you insist on giving me grief for that?” She cocked a hip to give her balled-up fist something to perch on. The move caused the slit in her dress to slide open, revealing that one pale, perfect leg.

A leg that, in the wee hours of the morning—and sometimes right smack dab in the middle of the day—he imagined trailing his fingers over. Trailing his lips over. Trailing his tongue over.

“Maybe ’cause ya provide me with such a wealth of material on the matter.” He grinned and then immediately reconsidered his words. Hitching his chin to her exposed leg, he slowly let his gaze travel up her hips and waist to settle on the mounds of flesh left bared by the dress’s lowcut neckline. “Or, in the case of tonight’s outfit, it’s probably more fittin’ to say such a decided lack of material.”

Since his eyes were drinking in the lovely lines of her decolletage, he didn’t miss the deep flush that stole up from her chest to stain her neck and cheeks. He followed the color until his gaze clashed with hers.

Her dark eyes, which she’d inherited from her Greek mother, slanted up at the corners to give her a slightly feline appearance. They were usually filled with a warm, inviting light. But right then, they were as hard and as cold as gunmetal.

Guilt whispered in his ear. He ignored it. And when she squared off against him like a prize fighter facing a big-fisted opponent, he thought for sure she was using her feminine appeal to drive him wild.

No way she doesn’t know how sexy she is standing there like that. Nostrils flarin’. Purse clutched in a curled fist. Teeth bared in a snarl that makes a man want to fill her mouth with?—

“Charlie can wear a pair of jeans and eat ice cream with the best of them.” She cut into his thoughts.

Good thing. His thoughts hadn’t been headed in a direction he was particularly proud of.

She glanced over his faded Levi’s and standard-issue Hanes tee with a derisive sneer. Despite that, he felt the path of her gaze like a physical touch. Every inch of his skin heated in response.

“But he can also rock a tuxedo,” she added, “eat caviar, and stand in a room full of this country’s most powerful people with his head held high. Not too many can say that.”

She punctuated the last word by tossing her dark hair over her shoulder. Most days she wore it slicked back in a bun or pulled tight in a ponytail. Tonight it was long and loose, falling in thick, shiny waves around her shoulders. Begging for the touch of a man’s fingers.

To keep from reaching out, he shoved his hands deep in his pockets. The fingers on his right hand automatically curled around the cold steel of his favorite harmonica.

“I’d be more impressed if he’d accomplished all that on his own,” he scoffed while waving a dismissive hand. “Given he was born with a silver spoon stickin’ straight out of his mouth, it’s a smidge less admirable.”

“Oooh.” The pulse in her neck beat fast in fury. “Why do you hate Charlie so much? Is it because he makes the world a better place through acts of charity instead of acts of violence?”

Like you.

She didn’t say those last two words.

He heard them, nonetheless.

The truth was, he’d have traded places with Charles McClean in an instant. To have been raised by a powerful father who supported all his dreams and aspirations instead of an abusive asshole who’d ignored him in the best of times and emotionally and verbally abused him in the worst? To have been given the choice on what he wanted to do with his life instead of being forced into military service because the only other options for making a living in Nowhere, Louisianna, had been cooking meth or dealing cards on the riverboat casino?

To have Eliza?

To have been worthy of her?

He said none of this, of course. Instead, he barked a laugh that rang with cynicism. “That’s a mighty high pedestal ya got him on, doll face. Careful. If he ever loses his balance, the fall will be long and the landin’ will be hard.”

“Annnnddd, I’m out.” Having decided he wanted no part in their sparring, Britt vamoosed himself toward the back of the shop and busied himself with the V-twin engine sitting atop a bike lift.

When Fisher turned back from watching his best friend’s cowardly retreat, it was to find Eliza’s gaze still hard and cold on his face. The air around her seemed to vibrate with animosity.

It was sexy.

She was sexy.

But, more than that, she was smart and funny and kind, and he liked her. Like, liked her liked her. And it rankled more than he’d ever willingly admit that she’d never given him the time of day.

Well…that wasn’t exactly true. There’d been a brief moment when he’d thought…maybe. But no.

“What makes you so sure he’ll fall off?” she demanded. “Some people have no trouble balancing on those high pedestals because they belong up there. Also”—a muscle ticked in her jaw—“stop calling me doll face. You know I hate it.”

Ignoring that last bit, he cocked his head and regarded her. “They always fall off. In the end.”

“Sounds like projection to me.” She bared her teeth in a snarl just as Peanut, the fat, notch-eared tomcat who was part mascot and part benevolent ruler at Black Knights Inc. padded over and began making figure eights around her bare ankles.

The act of rubbing his chubby body and crooked tail against her skin had the cat’s motor turning over. And his purr was loud enough to compete with the rumbling engines of the custom bikes lined up like chrome-coated soldiers behind Fisher.

I get it, he thought. I’d be purring too if I was lucky enough to be touching her.

He’d purr. And then he’d growl. And then he’d sink his teeth into?—

“Is that why you can’t keep a woman around for more than a few days?” She ignored Peanut’s antics. “Because you so quickly disabuse them of any misplaced notions you might actually want them for more than what they can offer you in the bedroom?”

She was baiting him. He knew it as surely as he knew those cliched stories about the rich girl falling for the guy from the wrong side of the tracks were only true in low-budget rom-coms and cheesy romance novels.

“Why would I care about findin’ Mrs. Right when there are so many Miss Right Nows eager to take a ride on?—”

“Stop.” She lifted her hand, palm-out. For a brief moment their wills clashed right along with their eyes. Then her combative expression dissolved into one of weariness. “If all our conversations are going to end with us getting angry at each other, I think it’s best if we stop talking altogether.”

As much as he hated what’d become of their interactions, the thought of not talking to her at all filled him with sadness. And…fear?

But that was silly. How could he be afraid to lose something he’d never had to begin with?

“Easier said than done seein’ as how we live and work together.” He gestured around the old factory with its three-story ceiling, line of gleaming custom-made Harleys, and wide garage doors that they threw open when the weather was nice.

“It’s a big space,” she countered. “Plenty of room to avoid each other.” With a saccharin smile that didn’t reach her eyes, she added, “Let’s start now.”

Before he could get in another word, she bent to give Peanut’s whiskered cheek a scratch. It was enough to have the cat’s yellow eyes rolling back in his head. Then she straightened and breezed by him, heading for the front door.

The smells of too-strong coffee, grease guns, and metal shavings were momentarily replaced by the sweet scent of her perfume—spring rain on a bergamia tree. And his nostrils flared wide as he watched her straight back and heart-shaped ass with the still, silent concentration of a stalking cougar.

He searched his mind for a pithy retort but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound childish. Left with no recourse, he was forced to let her have the last word.

After she gave the handle a twist, the large door opened with security-tight beep and a hiss. Then she was gone. A raven-haired siren disappearing into the hot summer night and leaving him feeling cold and desolate by contrast.

When the door swung shut behind her, he glowered at Peanut. “Why do ya always have to rub your kitty privileges in my face?” he asked under his breath.

The mangy feline slow-blinked in answer before flopping onto his side, lifting a leg behind his head, and dutifully going about the business of making sure his testicles were squeaky clean.

It was the kitty equivalent of a giant middle finger.

“Boy howdy, partner.” Having recognized the skirmish had ended, Britt walked over to clap a hand on Fisher’s shoulder. “You and Eliza been oil and water from the start. But now you’re more like fire and kerosene. You can’t seem to be in the same room without one or both of you blowing up.”

It was true. Although…for a while there they’d found some common ground, pulled their punches, and called a truce. It’d been a short-lived thing though. Little more than a handful of days. And then Charles McClean had waltzed into the picture with his Ivy-League education and Gucci loafers, and everything had gone back to the way it’d been before.

No, Fisher silently corrected. It’s worse.

Their previously good-natured ribbing had taken on a decidedly caustic turn. Where once they’d jabbed and jibbed, now they slashed and burned.

“Some folks just weren’t meant to get along, I reckon,” he told Britt, feigning an indifference he didn’t feel.

“Mmph.” The ex-Ranger tossed the shammy over his shoulder so he could cross his arms and regard Fisher with a curious cant of his head. “You think that’s because she’s shinier than a silver dollar and you’re as country as a bowl of grits?”

“Nah. If that were true, she’d give you as much grief as she gives me. You’re as country as I am.”

“Not so.” Britt lifted a contradictory finger. “I’m as Southern as you are. But not nearly as country. Charleston is a teeming metropolis compared to the mud bottom you grew up in.”

Fisher couldn’t argue. His place of birth was literally a one stoplight town. Little more than a wide patch in the road where everyone knew everyone, and the only difference from person to person was whether they attended the Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian church on Sunday morning.

“It’s simple,” he explained. “She’s the closest thing we have to American royalty, and I was born so poor I couldn’t even afford to pay attention. We’re like two magnets with negative charges. We repel each other.”

“Well, now.” Britt scratched his chin, his fingernails scritching over his beard stubble. “You hear the contradiction in what you’re saying, right?”

“No.” Fisher shook his head at the same time he spied the television hung on the wall between the two large rolling garage doors. It was tuned to the security feed and displayed the scene playing out at the front gate.

He gritted his teeth hard enough to crack the enamel when Eliza slipped through the gap in the wrought-iron gate only to be caught up in Charles McClean’s wide, waiting arms.

The man had parked his shiny gray Mercedes S-Class by the curb. Its chrome bumper and flawless paintjob screamed money. The generational kind. The trust fund and investment portfolio kind.

Fisher couldn’t help thinking there was something profoundly wrong with anyone who would lay down that much cash on a car that could so easily be demolished by the next city bus.

Kinda like the six-figure motorcycle you ride?

The better angels of his nature always reared their ugly heads at the most inopportune times.

No,he silently argued with them. Which, yes, he realized meant he was actually arguing with himself. It’s different. First of all, Mardi Gras is a rolling advertisement for Becky’s business. Rebecca Knight, aka the loveable Becky, was the wunderkind motorcycle designer whose mechanical miracles kept the Black Knights’ covers intact. Second of all, I didn’t pay for Mardi Gras. He’s a benefit of the job. And third of all…

Well, third of all, it was just different.He and Charles McClean were night and day, black and white, so opposite in all the ways that mattered he refused to hear words to the contrary. Even if those words were whispered inside his own head.

“In one breath you’re saying you and Eliza couldn’t be more different.” Britt pulled him from his musings. “You know, her with her champagne taste and you with your beer pocketbook. In the next breath, you’re claiming you’re similarly charged magnets that can’t help pushing each other’s way. So which is it? You’re so different you can’t get along? Or are you so alike you can’t get along? It can’t be both.”

Since Fisher had no way to contradict the logic of Britt’s argument, and since he sure as shit wasn’t going to admit the truth, which was that he found himself picking fights with Eliza to keep from sweeping her up and kissing the daylights out of her, he shrugged. “Don’t know and don’t care. All that matters is I have a night off. And since ya brought up my beer pocketbook, how d’ya feel ’bout joinin’ me for a game of cornhole and a coupla Goose Islands?”

“I feel like you’re putting a period on the conversation because you know I’m right. But I also feel like you’re speaking my language when it comes to brews.” Britt tossed the shammy over his chopper’s handlebars. “And since arguing with you will get me nothing and drinking with you will get me drunk, I choose door number two. Lead the way.”

Britt was hot on Fisher’s heels when he made his way toward the short hall that led to the kitchen. His peripheral vision clocked the image of Charles McClean—heretofore known as Captain Dickless—planting a long, lingering kiss on Eliza’s mouth before she ducked into the Mercedes’s passenger seat. And fantasies of ending the frat boy in bloody and painful ways danced through his head.

Some of what he was thinking must’ve been written across his face because Britt took one look at his profile and whistled. “Damn, man. Evil thoughts are like chickens. They come home to roost.”

“You sayin’ ya like the idea of our Eliza out with a man who’s never turned a wrench or fired a weapon? A man who couldn’t protect her from a rabid squirrel much less the kind of enemies we might have lurkin’ ’round?”

Britt’s expression turned censorious. “Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining. You don’t dislike McClean because his hands are smooth or because his wallet is fat. There’s something else going on with you. I can’t put my finger on it precisely, but I got my suspicions.”

Ignoring his best friend’s conjectures, Fisher doubled down. “I’m just sayin’ I think the world would be a better place with fewer rich, white, yacht-ridin’ assholes like Captain Dickless.”

If he’d known how prophetic his words would turn out to be, he would’ve kept them to himself.