Noah crossed his arms, surprised. “How’d you know about that?”
“You’ll learn there is no keeping a secret in Rowe’s family. And especially when it comes to Ian. Those men love him something fierce.”
“He’s lovable.”
“So the date went really well, then?” Andrei chuckled. “Good for Ian. I could tell he liked you at Lucas’s.”
“Nah, it wasn’t like that.”
Andrei stared at him with probing dark eyes a long time before he nodded. “Fine then. I thought not. Come on. I’m supposed to give you a weapons training session.”
Noah had barely enough time to sort through Andrei’s apparent belief that he and Ian were a poor match before being slammed with the idea that he actually needed weapons training. He snorted. “We have met before, right? You know I’ve been in the Army all my adult life. Former Ranger even. There isn’t a lot I don’t know about weapons.”
“Right?” Andrei shook his head. “I think it’s Rowe who needs the stress relief. He nearly bit my head off.”
Noah didn’t know what to say to that, but his gut twisted up in knots because it was his fault Rowe wasn’t dealing well with their situation.
Andrei suddenly grinned. “He didn’t say what kind of weapons training. I got an idea.”
Thirty minutes later, Noah whooped and held up his target. “This one won’t be eating any more brains.” He winked at Andrei through the hole his bullets had made through target’s head. “I’ve never seen zombie targets.”
“Rowe ordered them.” Andrei pulled his in and pointed.
Noah cracked up when he saw the happy face right in its center mass. With weapons and targets in hand, they walked over to a weapons cleaning and storage area. Andrei quickly showed him how to mark the usage of ammo and the fact they were the last ones to use those particular guns before they started to clean their weapons.
“Have you worked for Rowe long?” Noah asked, his fingers moving over the metal with a practiced ease.
Andrei shook his head. A few stray tendrils slipped from where he’d pulled it back to crowd his eyes. “Just a few years. I was training to be a professional MMA fighter when I blew out my knee in the cage.”
“Damn,” Noah whispered, pausing to look at the younger man. Rowe wasn’t the only one walking around the company with a dream-ending injury. “You couldn’t come back from it?”
“Thought about it.” Andrei paused for a minute, his long fingers tightening around the gun for a second. “But the injury would have been common knowledge. Every fighter would have been aiming for my bad knee for an easy takedown. One or two rough matches and the knee would get fucked up bad enough that I wouldn’t be able to walk. Wasn’t worth the risk. I was lucky Rowe found me. So instead of beating the crap out of people for a living, I’m protecting them.”
“And beating the crap out of the people threatening your clients.”
Andrei snorted. “Every job has its perks.”
Noah matched his smile, feeling the last of the lingering tension ease from his shoulders. He liked talking to Andrei. The man had this easy-going nature to him, as if there wasn’t much that could actually get under his skin. That kind of mellow demeanor helped him to push his worries about Rowe to the back of his brain.
“Do you ever miss it?”
Andrei looked over his shoulder at Noah as he slid home the lock for the weapons cage. “The cage?” He grinned and there was a little self-mocking in that look. “For the first year working here, yes. Every fucking second.”
Noah chuckled. “But not now? What changed?” But even as the words left his mouth, he knew the answer. Andrei met Lucas.
“Found something that means more to me than being the best fighter in the world.” Andrei turned and pushed back a stray, damp hair from his cheek. “Besides, Rowe lets me ‘train’ with the new recruits whenever I’m feeling restless.”
A loud laugh jumped from Noah’s throat. “Gee, thanks for the warning.” A new tension crept into Noah’s frame as he noticed that Andrei stood with his arms folded loosely over his wide chest, a speculative look in his eyes. He caught the bodyguard doing that a few times while at Lucas’s penthouse, and each time it preceded something particularly insightful coming out of his mouth. The man was good at playing the role of the watchful guardian, sinking back into the shadows until you nearly forgot that he was there, but he was and he was taking in everything that happened around him. Noah wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Andrei saw.
“You need to give him more time,” Andrei said softly after nearly a minute of silence.
Noah didn’t need to ask who Andrei was talking about and he didn’t really want to know how Andrei even knew. For just a second, sympathy filled his dark brown eyes, showing Noah that he understood. And Andrei probably did. He couldn’t imagine loving someone like Lucas Vallois was particularly easy.