Page 176 of The Wild Card

“Yeah.”

She lifts off me and the disconnect is—

I don’t have a word for it. Wrong is close. Criminal is closer. My whole body revolts, every nerve ending firing a protest so loud it drowns out my tactical instincts. Emmie gasps and grabs my shoulder, her legs shaking, and the look on her face—flushed, frustrated, borderline devastated—is a mirror of everything I’m feeling.

“I was right there,” she says, and her voice cracks on it like she might actually cry. “Right. There. Crew, I was—”

“I know.” I press my forehead to hers, both of us breathing hard. My hands are on her thighs and hers are on my chest and I’m having to physically override every instinct in my body telling me to pull her back down and finish what we started. “I know, baby. Me too.”

She closes her eyes. Opens them. Squares her jaw in a way I’d find incredibly attractive if I weren’t busy having a crisis.

“How long do we have?”

I calculate. Robert will unload slow—he’s methodical, takes his time. Linda will want to rush to the porch, but she’ll follow his lead and probably grab her bags first. Maybe a cooler, whatever else she packed, because Linda Marshall doesn’t do anything without provisions.

“One minute. Maybe two tops.”

She rolls off me and immediately wraps herself in the sheet, like being naked in our own bedroom is suddenly a liability. Which, given the circumstances, it kind of is.

I stand up. Also naked. Also dealing with a, uh, logistical problem that is going to take a minute to resolve on its own, and I don’t have a minute.

Cold thoughts. Think cold thoughts. Alaska. Transfer paperwork. Lieutenant Daniels in a swimsuit.

That last one does the trick. Horrifying, but effective.

Emmie is tearing through the dresser, pulling out clothes at random. “Where are my—I can’t find—Crew, where is my bra?”

“You weren’t wearing one.”

“Exactly! I need one now because my mother will absolutely notice if I’m not wearing—” She stops mid-sentence, yanks open another drawer, and pulls out a sports bra. “This’ll do.”

She shimmies into it, then drags on leggings and a flannel over my t-shirt—the Bureau one she stole, which she apparently considers hers now. She’s buttoning the flannel wrong but there’s no time to mention it.

I pull on sweatpants and grab a clean shirt from the closet. Yank it over my head.

“The hickey,” she says, freezing.

“What hickey?”

She points at my neck. I touch the spot and wince—it’s tender. I cross to the mirror over the dresser. There it is. Purple and damning, just above my collar line.

“When did you—”

“Last night. Second round. You weren’t complaining at the time.”

“I’m not complaining now, I’m just—your father is going to see this.”

“It’s a bug bite.”

“Em.” I lift one brow.

“It could be.” She nods. “From a very aggressive Oklahoma bug.”

“Right.” Oklahoma bugs. Very different from Texas bugs.

Through the window, I hear Linda’s voice drift up from the driveway, bright and unmistakable, “Oh, Robert, look at it! It’s even cuter than the pictures! The porch—he built that porch himself, you know.”

Robert, unloading the trunk: “You’ve told me.”