13. Boone
BOONE
I’ve been shot at in two different countries, blown sideways by an IED, and once spent sixteen hours keeping a man alive with pressure, morphine, and prayer while the rest of the team fought through terrain that wanted to kill us, but I’ve never been in more trouble than I am right now.
I’m in the kitchen scrambling eggs in the cast-iron skillet when the bathroom door opens. I turn and look because Wren’s the one who’s in there, and I’m a weak man.
I’m not prepared for the fact that she’s wearing one of my flannel shirts.
She’s barefoot, and her hair is loose and messy from sleep. My shirt hangs down to her thighs, where I catch glimpses of the bottom of pink pajama shorts as she hovers in the hall like she’s unsure whether or not to come out into the living room.
“Morning,” she says. Her voice is rough, and there goes another part of my sanity.
“Morning.”
The eggs hiss in the pan, but they’ll have to fend for themselves.
Wren tugs at the hem of the shirt self-consciously. She has the cuffs folded over a few times to shorten the sleeves. “I didn’t have a robe.”
The bottom of the shirt brushes against bare skin on her leg, but I manage to bring my eyes back to her face like a man with superpowers. “No complaints from me.”
Her cheeks turn pink, and that does not help.
The shirt is buttoned, but I catch a glimpse of thin fabric at her chest that’s cut low. Her pajamas must be skimpy, and suddenly, I’m imagining what they look like, or, more importantly, what her body looks like in them.
My hand grips the edge of the island counter, and she notices. The woman notices disturbed animal trails under deadfall and the age of new leaf growth on different types of trees, so of course she notices when a grown man needs to grip a butcher block for strength.
Her gaze drops to my hand, then lifts to my face, and I turn back to the stove before I can do something reckless, like close the distance between us and find out if her mouth is as sweet as it looks.
“You want coffee?” I ask.
“Yes, please.”
“How do you like it?”
“With cream, if you have it.”
“We have it now.” I keep my eyes on the eggs, because her voice is coming closer, and that’s only going to make things harder for me.
“Now? Did you buy cream while I was sleeping?”
“And tea, and yogurt, and those little oranges you had in your motel room.”
“Thank you.” She smiles, and I feel it like a warm touch on my chest.
My weak-willed eyes drop down to her thighs again, and I feel their effects somewhere else.
While I put her eggs on a plate with some bacon, she pours coffee for herself. We move around each other carefully, as if there are trip wires in the kitchen and neither of us wants to take a wrong step.
Rhett comes in from outside, and his eyes go immediately to Wren and to the shirt she’s wearing. When he looks at me, his expression doesn’t change, but I see the flicker of amusement behind his eyes.
Wren says good morning to him as she takes a seat at the table. She pulls one knee up under her, the hem of the flannel shirt slides higher, and Rhett and I both freeze.
She looks around the kitchen. “What?”
“Nothing,” Rhett says.
“Absolutely nothing,” I add.
Wren looks at us over the rim of her mug with suspicion in her eyes. She knows we’re full of shit.
When she’s halfway through her breakfast, her phone rings. She looks at the screen, and her face goes serious. “It’s my supervisor.” She stands to take the call, walks slowly over toward the other side of the room, and paces by the fireplace.
Rhett and I can’t help but overhear her end of the conversation, especially when she asks, “What kind of compounds?”
After a long pause, she says, “Consistent with narcotics packaging or processing residue,” as if she’s repeating it back.
Rhett’s jaw locks, and I stop breathing for a second. It’s not a surprise at this point, but the confirmation still hits hard.
Wren’s free hand curls at her side. “I understand. … No, I’m at a secure location.”
Secure location. Our cabin. A flash of possessiveness moves through me, and it feels satisfying.
Cade comes in and immediately spots Wren on the call. His eyes take in her bare legs next.
“Yes,” she says into the phone. “I’ll stay put. No additional fieldwork without coordination.”
Damn right.
Her supervisor says something else, and Wren’s shoulders stiffen.
“I know,” she says. “I will.”
She ends the call and stands still for a moment, looking out the front window.
Outside, a jay screams like something being murdered, but none of us moves until Wren turns around.
“The preliminary lab screen came back positive for narcotics residue. My supervisor is contacting the DEA field office immediately.”
Rhett nods slowly. “That changes things.”
“It changes the jurisdiction,” she says.
I keep my voice gentle even though I feel like breaking something. “You okay, Wren?”
She lifts her chin. “Yes.”
It’s a lie, but I’m not going to call her on it.
Later in the day, when Wren’s out on the back porch, working on her laptop, Rhett sits at his computer, making phone calls to clients.
He reschedules the first one with the calm, level voice of a man who could tell someone their truck was on fire and make it sound like an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
The next call lasts longer.
“Yes, ma’am. I understand.” After a pause, “No, safety is the issue.” Another pause. “We’ll refund the deposit or apply it to a later date. Your choice.”
When the call ends, he crosses out the date in his notebook, then looks over at me, where I’m standing in the doorway.
“Everything okay?” It’s clearly not, but the question comes out before I think better of it.
Rhett stares back at me without answering.
“You’re doing the face,” I say.
“I only have one.”
“Not true. You have the command face, the disappointed big brother face, the someone-moved-my-tools face, and whatever this is.”
He arches a brow. “This is my trying-not-to-murder-my-brother face.”
“Ah, classic.” I step inside and lean against the doorframe. “Don’t know how I could have forgotten that one.”
His mouth twitches briefly, then returns to its scowl.
I glance at his screen, where there’s a financial spreadsheet open. “How bad?”
“Manageable.”
“Rhett.”
He exhales through his nose. “For now.”
We have a cushion, but we don’t have unlimited room to turn away clients while a cartel, or whatever the hell this turns out to be, uses the wilderness as their own private highway.
“You okay, Prime?”
He closes the laptop and gets to his feet. “No, but we’re handling it.”
That’s Rhett. He’s always moving ahead. It doesn’t matter if it’s grief, debt, war, danger, or love. He takes the weight, calculates the load, and keeps walking.
I want to make a joke, but I don’t.
That night, I cook dinner, because the alternative is Rhett’s competent but uninspired grilling. Cade would be satisfied eating cold rations from a pouch for days on end, but the occasion calls for comfort food.
When everything’s done, the four of us sit down to meatloaf with brown sugar sauce, mashed potatoes with a generous amount of butter, and fresh biscuits, because Wren seemed to really enjoy them the first time she was here for dinner.
Tonight, when she takes her first bite of potatoes, she closes her eyes for a second, like it’s a small, private pleasure. My blood turns hot, and it has nothing to do with the stove.
“That good?” I ask.
Her eyes open, and she catches me watching her. “I’m trying not to embarrass myself.”
“By enjoying the food?”
“By making noises over it.”
Cade coughs into his hand, and when Wren realizes what she said, her cheeks flush with color.
“Wren,” I say softly, and her eyes meet mine. “When you want to make noises over something I give you, you go right ahead.”
Rhett’s fork hits the table.
“Jesus,” Cade mutters.
Wren’s mouth parts, and for a moment, nobody moves. Then her eyes drop to her plate, and she speaks in a careful, even tone. “The food is delicious, Boone.”
Rhett picks up his fork and points it at me. “Don’t make me regret letting you cook.”
“You’d starve without me.”
“I can grill.”
“You can apply heat to protein.”
“It’s edible.”
“So are MREs, but there’s a reason Cade isn’t in charge of meal planning either.”
Wren laughs, and the sound carries through the cabin like music.
It appeals to all three of us in an instinctive way, and Wren notices.
Her laugh fades, and her hand tightens on her fork.
Rhett looks away because he has more discipline than either of us.
Then Cade glances down at his plate, but I keep watching Wren because she’s beautiful, and I can’t pull my eyes away.
After dinner, we play cards because we need something normal to do.
My brothers and I have played cards at tables, on rucks, in barracks, in the dirt, in the back of transport vehicles, and under ponchos in the rain. Poker mostly, often with whatever rules we could invent to separate tired Rangers from their cash.
Wren sits at the table with a mug of tea and watches Rhett shuffle. “Do you play a lot?” she asks.
“Only when we’re bored,” I say, “or tired, snowed in, pissed off, avoiding sleep, or trying not to talk about our feelings.”
“So most of the time,” she says.
Rhett deals her in without asking.
She looks at the cards but doesn’t pick them up. “I don’t know if I should gamble with men who shared a womb and a Ranger team.”
“Smart,” Cade says.
“We’ll go easy,” I say.
She slides the cards to the edge of the table and picks them up. “No, you won’t.”
“No,” Rhett says. “We won’t.”
She smiles at that, then proceeds to win the first hand with a pair of queens and an expression so bland I almost miss it.
After a few more hands, she’s leaning in, her eyes bright with the thrill of competition. I’m sure she’s tracking discards and calculating odds, but she won’t admit it. She calls Cade’s bluff once and looks so pleased with herself that he stares at her for several seconds without blinking.
Rhett watches her like he’s watching a new variable enter a battlefield. I watch her like a man discovering religion.
She’s not just smart out on the trail, doing her job. She’s sharp everywhere. Sharp enough to be dangerous.
I get the impression she enjoys being underestimated. She smiles when she wins, but it’s not a smug smile. She looks satisfied, and it makes me want to put that expression on her face in every way a man can.