Ricochet (Renegades #3)(23)
Author: Skye Jordan

“I don’t care what you think.”

“That you’ve got this sweet thing”—he gestured to her head to toe—“all dialed in. The guys here see you the way Troy sees you—as a little sister. And that keeps you safe. Because if they knew what a nuclear bomb you were in bed, you’d never have any peace. Your life would be nothing but complication after complication. Isn’t that right?”

She crossed her arms. “Don’t you dare analyze me after one night. You don’t know anything—”

“I know”—he lowered his voice and stepped closer, now only six inches away—“that any man who’d had you give his cock a chocolate massage, then watched you suck off every last trace of it like a lollipop, wouldn’t be able to think of anything else when they looked at you.”

Dread, shame, excitement, and lust collided and tangled. Just having him close, just hearing his voice made her full and achy.

“Don’t Nathan. I can’t…do this here.”

“Does remembering make you wet?” he asked in a whisper, like he was telling her a secret. “Because remembering the way you begged for more makes me hard.”

“This.” She pointed to the floor between them. “This right here. This is exactly the kind of complication I can’t have. This is why I chose someone I didn’t know to sleep with.”

“Baby, neither of us did any sleeping last night.”

Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Rachel startled and backed away from Nathan, turning toward her desk. Jesus, she had to pull herself together. She was fraying like a torn rope.

Rachel kept her back toward the trailer door as it opened, straightening a stack of papers on the shelves behind her desk. She took a slow deep breath, closed her eyes, and exhaled in a controlled stream.

I’m okay. I can handle this.

“Hey,” Wes said. The sound of his voice relaxed her shoulders. “Wes Lawson,” he introduced himself to Nathan, and they shook hands. “You must be Ryker.”

“That’s me. And you’re the engineer?”

Wes’s million-dollar smile lit up the trailer. “That’s me.”

“Good to meet you.” Wes released Ryker’s hand and lifted the tube he carried in the other. “You’re gonna like what I’ve got in here. Blueprints for that devil you’re going to help us take down. You’re coming to Jax’s house tonight with everyone, right? So we can talk everything over in detail?”

“Jax’s house?” Rachel asked, the previous night’s alcohol, sex, and lack of sleep finally catching up with her. “Who’s everyone?”

“You know,” Wes said, “everyone. We’re barbecuing. Talking business.”

Rachel’s temper snapped. “First you guys send me on a wild-goose chase at the airport, then you spring Na—Ryker on me without any notice, now there’s some working dinner at Jax’s I know nothing about. What the hell is going on around here?”

“That’s my fault.” Jax’s voice coincided with his heavy footsteps and the jangle and clank of gear as he entered the trailer. His dark hair was stuck to his sweaty forehead and dirt streaked his face.

He introduced himself to Ryker, and the men shook hands.

“Bentley Chamberlin, right?” Nathan asked.

“Once upon a time,” Jax said with that smirk he got when someone brought up his past Oscar-winning success. “Just Jax now.”

“My team and I love your movies.”

Rachel fought the roll of her eyes as she crossed her arms. She adored Jax and admired his acting abilities, but nothing annoyed her more than people who buttered up the famous so they could say they associated with them.

“Thanks,” Jax said easily.

“But then, we are out in the middle of a sixty-four thousand mile desert,” Nathan added with a shrug and a smirk. “We’re pretty easy to please.”

Jax, Wes, and Troy burst out laughing, and Troy shoved Nathan’s shoulder. The grin that lightened Nathan’s face made something inside Rachel tighten and swell uncomfortably, and she looked at the floor.

“You’re gonna fit right in, dude,” Wes said.

With everyone but Rachel.

“Jax.” She purposely softened her voice to round out the rough edges so she didn’t sound like a bitch. But her internal and external pressures were mounting. I can’t be effective if I don’t know what’s going on. Troy says you got a call from Townsend? And that Ryker is formally consulting on this job. I have to clear that with Precision”—her mind pinged between the risk-assessment company and the insurance company—“and I don’t even know which risk assessor they’re assigning yet, which is a problem when Cinematic will only work with certain assess—”

“We agreed on Josh Marx.”

Rachel’s stomach made another uncomfortable flip. A flood of turbulence overwhelmed her. “What?”

“Sorry, Rach. I got the call an hour ago while I was still up there.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Or I would have told you sooner.”

She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose to keep from throwing a fit…or storming out…or just quitting on the spot. She was that flustered.

Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

One, two, three, four, five…

“Jesus Christ,” she finally spat out without reaching ten. “Josh Marx?” She gestured toward Nathan without looking away from Jax. “Are we seriously going to add someone new to the team when Josh is nearly impossible to satisfy with our normal crew?”

“Uh…” Nathan started, “I’m not—”

“We don’t have another option, honey,” Jax said. “You’ve done a damned good job of exhausting every last one, and Townsend’s job ran long, so he can’t do it. And you know we have to get this started…like, yesterday.”

Rachel’s mind tumbled. This was the biggest stunt she’d managed to date. A freaking huge deal for Renegades as a company.

“Maybe I’m a little more uptight than you guys,” she said, “but you can’t throw anyone into the position and expect it to fly. I don’t know anything about Ryker,” she said his last name purposely, meeting his gaze directly, which only earned her a smirk. “His background. His experience. His credentials.

“With another adjuster, that wouldn’t matter, but with Josh… Of the half-dozen specialists you could have chosen for this job, this job, Jax, when you knew ahead of time you were planning on consulting Ryker, why Josh?”