as well. I’m going to work for a private company. Blade, too.”
“You guys going merc?”
“Tremaine Industries isn’t a firm of mercenaries. Owen Tremaine’s hiring former Red Teamers. He wants the three of us. I’ll talk to you about it when I get out there. Until then, I’d feel a lot better if you went up to Mandy’s to see what’s going on.”
What the hell. What did he have to lose? He’d have work, a place to sleep. A chance to find normal again. A chance to heal. The sooner he got better, the sooner he could go back for his son.
“Fine. I’ll head out today.”
“Thanks, bro. I owe you.”
Rocco had a flash of the afternoon Kit and Blade pulled him out of the pit he’d been stashed in after the explosion. He’d spent seven years in the Hindu Kush, four of them observing the infamous warlord, Ghalib Halim. No one else had come looking for him. No one thought he’d survived the blast-except for his two buds. Hell, he’d been Red Teaming so deep and so long, no one else even knew he existed. They’d given him a canteen, an MRE, and an M16 that day, then the three of them had taken the cave where Halim was holed up, executing a kill order that had been years in the making.
“No, Kit, you don’t owe me. We’re a long way from even.”
“Rocco?”
“What?”
“Try to keep it together, feel me? I want an update in a few days.”
“Roger that.” Rocco dropped the connection.
Wind slipped past the low ranch house and curled around Rocco’s legs, carrying a feminine whisper of ragged words. The late May morning bit like a winter day. He shoved the door shut on his old Ford pickup, letting its creak announce him. A slow look around the decrepit property showed him a barn in an advanced state of collapse, two large, overgrown pastures, a small, older farmhouse screaming for a new roof and a paint job, a steel building, and a larger ranch house that looked about a century newer than the little farmhouse.
Rocco shoved his thrift-store cowboy hat on his head and made his way to the steel building where he could hear a woman’s frustrated mumbles. She had a weed whacker gutted on a counter and was leaning over it with a screwdriver. She still hadn’t heard him.
“So-do you get off torturing small engines or did that one just make you mad?” he asked, standing at the entrance to the big, cluttered workshop. The woman jumped about a foot, then sent him a glare over her shoulder. She looked away and swiped the back of her hand across both eyes. Then, drawing a deep breath, she came over to him as she shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.
Light fell across her face. Rocco was unprepared for the effect she had on him. Her skin was pale, smooth like cream, freckles sprinkled lightly across her nose. Her cheeks were rosy with the day’s crisp air. Straight gold-red hair the color of copper wire hung in loose streams over her shoulders. Her eyes were large and very green, like emerald cabochons. Her dark lashes were spiky with moisture. Had she been crying?
Rocco ignored that likelihood, focusing instead on the fact that good old Kit had given him a poor description of his half sister all these years. She wasn’t anything like a redheaded, freckle-faced monster. As she looked at him, those green gemstones narrowed.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a voice so melodious he shivered.
“Kit sent me. Said you had a job opening.”
Mandy took one look at the man standing before her and silently cursed her brother. She’d told Kit she needed a handyman-barely a couple of hours ago-and he sends her
The man was silhouetted against the stormy sky, which deepened the shadows in the hard angles of his face. He had dark-brown hair that curled a little at the edges of his hat brim. His beard, filling in from several days of not shaving, did little to gentle his jaw or obscure the shallow cleft in his chin. His lips were rounded and sensuous, though the lines bracketing his mouth gave him an edgy look. His nose was straight and narrow, flared slightly at the nostrils. His eyes were black. His gaze, obscured somewhat beneath the wide brim of his cowboy hat, was cold. Ancient. Impossible to read.
Her senses went on high alert. If Kit hadn’t vouched for him, she would send him packing. She should anyway. He was every inch a warrior. She studied his eyes, trying to get a feel for what type of worker he would be, but she couldn’t see past his stony expression. Wolf Valley Therapeutic Riding Center was to be a place of sunshine and healing, not the dark shadow world of a haunted soldier.
“Oh, no. No. No, Kit.” She shook her head
The man leaned against the side of the shed and let his grin out, flashing white teeth against his olive complexion. “You’re a fan of his too, huh?”
“I thought he was going to send a friend over.”
“I am a friend.”
“No. You’re a Green Beret.”
The man’s face hardened. “I’m out of the service. I wasn’t Special Forces.”
Mandy frowned. “With all that’s going on around here, I don’t need you to take a job you’re not going to keep. It’s hard enough to get anyone to stay as it is, but putting an adrenalin-junky in a low-level handyman’s position won’t fly. Thank you for coming all the way out here. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
“Well now, sweetheart,” the man drawled, “you didn’t hire me, so you can’t fire me.”
Mandy squared her shoulders as she met his steely gaze. Adding him to the mix of everything else that was happening was like holding a flame to a Molotov cocktail. A plain bad idea.
“I want you to leave.”
“Negative.”
“Mr-” What had Kit said his name was? “Whoever you are-”
“Rocco Silas.”
“You’re trespassing. How about I call the cops?”
Rocco quirked a brow at her. “How about you do that?” he agreed. Kit’s sister glared at him. He sent her another grin just to see the flush rise on her skin again. Sun broke through the stormy clouds, streaming through the air to brighten a circle about her, igniting the highlights in her hair until it was the color of wheat washed in a red sunset. It fascinated him. It was as changeable and dramatic as the woman herself. Yanking her flaming mane around one side of her neck, she reached into her pocket and withdrew her cell. She hit one number, then lifted the phone to her ear.
If she was calling the cops, he didn’t like the fact that she had them on speed dial-or rather, that she had a need to have them on speed dial.
“Your Neanderthal’s here. Call him off, Kit.”
Rocco took advantage of her preoccupation with the phone call to give her a thorough look-over. Her jaw was a tempting line that ended in a narrow chin. Her neck was slim. Her shoulders looked thin and feminine in her jean jacket. Beneath it, she wore a top that emphasized a nice rack and a sleek ribcage. Her shirt was longer than her jacket, flaring out over her hips. Her legs were long and slim, her jeans tight enough to accentuate the toned muscles of her thighs. He stared at her legs, realizing she stirred something in him that had long been dormant.
Christ, this was not going to be an easy assignment. He had not expected to be attracted to Kit’s sister. It was a distraction he could do without right now.
He cut her arguments short as he pulled the phone from her and held it up to his ear. “We’re cool, Kit. I got this.” He shut off the phone and handed it back to her. “Tell me where I can put my gear.”
Mandy glared at him, sorely tempted to tell him exactly where he could put his things.
Silence settled between her and Rocco, broken only by the wind that whined as it curled around the toolshed’s entrance. It caught her hair again, tossing it in front of her face, toward her brother’s friend. She didn’t look away from him as she drew it over one shoulder, didn’t miss the way he tracked the path her hair made across her
