Page 31 of Gryphon

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“Explain it to me.”

25

And for just a moment Holly wished she could but, “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

She looked at Mike. Really looked at him. Even slouched and pissed off, he was about the handsomest man she’d ever been with. Not just his features, which made for very easy viewing, but his kindness. “That’s what I have no experience with.”

“What?”

“Kindness.”

Mike squinted at her.

“You. Kindness. I don’t even know how to deal with that. With Tad I don’t have to think. He’s easy.”

“I bet.”

“Not that way. We share a warrior’s background and vocabulary. That’s what makes him easy. We’re just talking.”

“Oh, sure. That must be why he laughs at even your lamest jokes like you’re the entire cast of Saturday Night Live. He also hasn’t left your side for one second in two days.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. He hadn’t?

Mike, being Mike, read the question on her face. “Never more than a foot away. He’d take you down in a heartbeat if you gave him the go ahead. Assuming you haven’t already.”

“Well, I haven’t and I won’t. I don’t want him. He’s just…” Holly covered her face and kept it covered as she spoke. “You know what Andi did to me the day before everything went sideways?”

Mike kept his silence.

“She called me on my shit. Not woman to woman. Not even soldier to soldier. She did it Spec Ops warrior to Spec Ops warrior. She was always so chill and mellow. Didn’t even know she had it in her.”

“Former Night Stalkers pilot, Hol. Even I guessed that one, though I admit she didn’t pull it out very often.”

“I suppose. Anyway, she crawled right up in my face the way no one ever does.” She needed to shut up—right now. Because Andi had been all over her case about—

“About what?”

“You.” Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut? She waited. Then some more before asking, “What? No answer to that one?”

“Depends on what she said,” he kept his voice soft. Goddamn kindness. What guy ever listened? It was unnatural.

Holly shook her head, she wasn’t ready to go there. So? “Then there you are, going after Klara like there’s no tomorrow and—”

“Will you drop the Klara shit!” Mike’s shout echoed loud enough in the small cabin to make her ears hurt. “You want to know what happened with her? Fine. This gorgeous, smart, funny woman—who is not a daily royal pain in the ass—makes me the offer. The come-on smile, the dropping shoulder with the slight turn that accentuates a woman’s breasts to perfection especially ones as nice as hers, the artfully unthinking but oh-so-practiced hair swish, the personal number,” he yanked out his wallet and flung the card at her.

It smacked her in the nose and tumbled into her lap. She glanced down long enough to see the handwritten Privat. Then looked up again in shock as Mike continued to rage. That was very new.

“The whole bit! And you know what happened? Do you? No, you don’t. So I’ll tell you…nothing. Absolutely nothing! My pulse didn’t jump. My nerves didn’t tingle or whatever it was they do when the hunt is on. I didn’t think about how nice it would be to get naked with her in front of a stone fireplace after a day schushing along some Nordic ski track filled with evergreens and silence. None of it happened. There should have been heaven-sent lightning bolts with the way that woman looks. Instead I shook her hand and said thanks. That’s just wrong in so many ways. Especially, while you were getting all cozy with Tad bloody Jobson.”

“I wasn’t…” But Holly couldn’t finish the sentence. Did Mike know what he was saying? The same thing that Andi had chewed her out for months ago. How close had she just come to pissing away the longest relationship in her life?

The best in her life. Period.

There wasn’t a question mark there, and there bloody well should be. A big one! Size of a big red Roo—two meters and ninety kilos of kicking, biting kangaroo-question mark! One as tall and broad as Tad Job—she winced. She’d come up with worse analogies, though she couldn’t think of one at the moment.

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