Page 27 of Kane (Ghost Ops #4)

Chapter Nineteen

Daphne was driving him crazy.

And she wasn’t supposed to. He was supposed to have a handle on this attraction.

Yet every time he went to talk to her lately, every time he tried to steer their relationship—well, not a relationship, but a friendship—back to the boundaries he understood, she hit him right between the eyes with a metaphorical sling shot.

Like rock, meet forehead; down he went. Then he floundered and tried to figure out what the fuck he needed to do to steer them off the rocky shore of sexy town. Before they crashed and burned on the boulders of this is a bad idea beneath the surface.

Before he found himself willing to do or say anything to get her beneath him.

Because if he did that, he wouldn’t stop until he’d lost interest. Because he always lost interest, even when he wanted there to be more than just sex.

Then what? It’d be awkward as hell around here, especially if they didn’t agree on calling it quits.

And if they didn’t agree, and he hurt her because he was done, the guys would be pissed at him, and he’d be an asshole in the eyes of everyone he cared about.

He dragged his attention back to researching the modified Glock and found nothing.

Once the fucker had ‘disappeared’ at sea, there was no trail.

Which there wouldn’t be with professional traffickers involved.

But whoever’d put that trigger in—and he was still working on the assumption Dima Smirnov had not made the mod himself—had to know the gun was hot.

Maybe that’s why the diamond was impossible to track down.

It could be a trafficker marking meant for the illegal trade.

Kane reassembled the Glock and put it in the safe.

He hated to tell Ghost he couldn’t find anything, but it was the truth.

They needed more information from Diana Corbin about other guns in the missing shipment.

That might help, or it might not. Why the fuck they were being asked to do it in the first place irritated him like a splinter in a finger.

Painful, annoying, but not life-threatening.

At two, he headed into the meeting room at the front of the building to brief a group of ladies who’d signed up to learn about self-defense. The class would meet four times over the course of two weeks and they’d learn a variety of techniques to keep themselves safe from predators.

It was a mixed group, from women in their twenties to their seventies. They smiled and nodded at him, some of them batting their eyelashes. He winked and smiled and made jokes, but his heart wasn’t in it today.

All he could think about was what Daphne had said. Sometimes all we want is a really good orgasm.

Of course he knew good orgasms were key, and he prided himself on providing them. But she’d also said not every woman wanted or needed a commitment, and he’d spent his adult life operating on the assumption they did. Which, quite frankly, was a little embarrassing in retrospect.

How many of the women he’d dated had been secretly laughing at him when he’d given them his spiel about having a good time and not wanting a relationship?

Probably more than he realized. Women tended to be more subtle than men, and now he imagined them gazing at him indulgently, wishing he’d get on with it so they could have sex and go to sleep. Instead, he’d been giving the speech about having fun and not getting serious.

By the time six o’clock came and the range closed for the day, Kane was doubting everything he’d ever said to every woman he’d ever slept with.

Which was a lot, though nowhere near as many as his teammates thought.

Sometimes when they thought he was going out with a woman, he wasn’t.

Sometimes he went by himself to the river and sat on the dock, watching the water and the birds flying along the shore.

He’d done that a lot since moving to Sutton’s Creek. He wasn’t sure why. Dissatisfaction with the direction of his life? Unhappiness? A vague emptiness that no amount of meaningless sex could fill?

Fuck all, he was not cut out for this soul-searching bullshit.

“Hey, you coming to watch?” Blaze said, interrupting Kane’s personal pity party.

“Watch what?”

Blaze shook his head. “Your fiancée. Targets. Remember?”

He really wished he’d thought of something to say to Fader besides telling the man he and Daphne were getting married.

Because he’d had to tell his guys, just in case the asshole came back, and now they wouldn’t let up.

Daphne mostly rolled her eyes at them, but it bugged the shit out of him that they found it so amusing.

“Coming.”

When he stepped onto the range, everyone was there.

Ghost, Blaze, Chance, Seth, and Ethan. Daphne leaned against the table of the shooting bay, arms crossed, legs crossed, red hair wound onto her head in a big, fluffy bun.

She shot him a glance and looked away. He felt the absence of her gaze like a physical ache.

Daphne put her ear protection on, then turned and picked up a Glock 19 she must have chosen from the rental weapons. Her fingers were long and elegant as she slammed the magazine home in the grip.

“Everybody ready?”

The guys all glanced at each other. Everyone had their hearing protection on. “Ready,” Ghost said.

“Double tap.”

The target was set at twenty yards, like last night, and Daphne squeezed off two shots.

Then she stabbed the button to bring the target sailing back to her.

As it got closer, the guys started to murmur.

Daphne had hit the bullseye dead center and then put another into the target’s forehead. They were both kill shots.

Kane felt something like excitement and pride start to fizz in his veins. Not that he had anything to be proud about. He hadn’t taught her. But damn, she was amazing.

“Now I’ll put a ring around the center. Eight shots.”

She sent the target back, lined up her shots, and rapid fired eight of them into the target. When she brought it back, the holes ringed the one in the center. It wasn’t a perfect circle, which he knew would bug her, but it was damned impressive.

“Holy shit,” Blaze said. “That’s really fucking good.”

“Good?” Kane replied. “It’s more than good. It’s fantastic shooting.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hold onto your shorts there,” Blaze said, patting the air with his hand. “I wasn’t insulting your woman. I’m complimenting her.”

Daphne ejected the magazine, cleared the weapon, and lay it on the table. Then she slipped off her hearing protection and sized them up. “First of all, I am not Kane’s woman. I know y’all find it amusing that he told the creep we’re engaged, but I’m not amused.”

“Sorry,” Blaze muttered. “He’s just so fun to annoy.”

“Agreed,” Daphne said. “But I think he had good intentions so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop giving him shit about it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Daphne pulled in a breath. “Second, I’m sorry I didn’t mention the shooting thing when you hired me. I didn’t think it was important because you weren’t hiring me to work the range or teach.”

“It’s great shooting,” Ghost said. “Really great. But you’re right. It’s not what we hired you to do. You ever want to work the range side, you can. But if you prefer to stick with booking classes and appointments, and doing the office accounting, I got no problem with it.”

Daphne dropped her chin a fraction, as if she’d been worried and now she was relieved. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. The only thing I’m going to say about it is with shooting like that, you should be proud.

And if you ever wanted to teach a women’s class, I think they’d find you inspiring.

But that’s up to you and nobody’s going to force you into it.

Okay, moving along—it’s Friday. Who’s joining me at the Dawg for prime rib? ”

Everybody was. Kane had forgotten it was Friday but when Daphne said she was going, he jumped into the fray and said he’d be there too.

They locked up and walked outside to get into cars.

The sky was black to the west. They weren’t expecting a tornado, but severe thunderstorms were possible.

Looked like one was on the way if the sky was any indication.

“You want to ride with me?” Kane asked Daphne as he caught up to her in the parking lot.

She stopped and turned, hands on hips. She’d put on big sunglasses that ought to make her look like a bug but were actually pretty on her face. He itched to take that mass of red hair down and spear his hands into it, see if it was as soft as it looked.

These fucking thoughts about her were getting more frequent and he didn’t like it. But how to make it stop?

“I’m going to the house to change first. It’s hot and I want to wear something cooler. I’ll catch up to you.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to do that, Kane.”

He’d given her the spare key and the alarm codes, with Ethan’s approval, so he didn’t technically need to go with her. “Do you want to go alone? Fader was here today. If he knows what you drive, he could see it parked at the house, come knock on the door. You want that?”

He hated the fear that crossed her face but he needed her to think. “No, of course I don’t. Come on then. It’ll only take me a few minutes.”

He followed her the short distance to the house and parked his Yukon beside her Santa Fe. The sky was darker now, and the wind picked up as he opened his door and stepped out onto the gravel.

“Better hurry,” he said as they went to the front door. “That storm’s moving fast. If we don’t get on the road soon, we’ll have to wait for it to blow over.”

He opened the door and Daphne ran upstairs to change. Kane waited, looking out the window as the darkness spread across the sky. Lightning cracked in the distance and a boom of thunder sounded a few seconds later. Upstairs he could hear Daphne bumping and thumping around the bedroom.