Dalton laughed gruffly. “Ah, West, I didn’t know she was your girl. My apologies. We’ll go.”
Rhett was off him a second later. Both his hands were on his weapon now, not aiming at anyone specifically, but Kinsley knew that if he needed to take them out, he’d do so in a second, without a blink of an eye. The trained soldier was coiled, ready.
Dalton jumped to his feet and brushed off his jeans. “Still a quick bastard, I see,” he said, grinning at Rhett. Then his gaze swept over Kinsley, roaming from head to toe. “Didn’t realize you were a claimed woman. Too bad, princess. We could’ve had fun.”
“Go home, Dalton,” Rhett warned. “Last chance.”
It occurred to Kinsley why Rhett didn’t correct Dalton’s assumption that they were together, and it had nothing to do with caring for her. If Dalton thought she was with Rhett, a Stoney Creek detective, he likely wouldn’t come back. Which was fine by her. She didn’t want Dalton to come back. Ever.
Dalton gave Rhett a slow smile before returning those cold, hard eyes to Kinsley. She found something so unsettling about him but couldn’t quite pinpoint the reason.
Before she could figure it out, he was gone, his men following behind him, and finally, Kinsley could breathe again.
“Are you all right?”
Kinsley forced a nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”
But she wasn’t okay. She was anything but okay. It had been two months since she’d seen Rhett. Everything she felt for him hit her like a punch to the gut. And she realized the greatest threat to her hadn’t left the bar but was standing right in front of her.
Chapter 2
Kinsley was all warmth, affection, and so much…brightness. Rhett could barely breathe as they stared into each other’s eyes, reminded of all the ways she wrecked him. Two months had gone by since he’d touched her, and every minute, every second, had been a struggle to stay away from her.
She quickly regained her composure like she always did, but he had to force himself to look away first. If he stared too long, he got lost in the intensity between them. Rhett couldn’t allow that. For her sake. He was a soldier, not a civilian. He belonged on the battlefield, not living in a small town or playing house with anyone. And through the years of watching Kinsley grow up, he knew she wanted the husband, the 2.2 kids, the walks in the park, the movie nights. Rhett could barely sit in one place for longer than twenty minutes before he got edgy.
The rumble of motorcycles roared on the other side of the door and Rhett gritted his teeth. Dalton Greeves, and the others with him, belonged to the notoriously dangerous RED DRAGONS motorcycle club. It wasn’t often that Dalton and his men came into Stoney Creek. They had no business there. And Rhett hoped this wasn’t a start to something, especially considering Dalton had put his focus on Kinsley.
When the motorcycles were all but a soft rumble now, Rhett noticed the silence in the bar. He took in the customers, all sitting at their tables looking in his direction. Most were pale. Some looked ready to bolt. “It’s all right,” he told the crowd. “I’m police. You’re all safe, and they won’t be coming back tonight.” He glanced at the pretty singer onstage and nodded her on.
She quickly moved toward the microphone and got right back into the song that obviously had been interrupted, filling the bar with her velvety voice.
To settle the crowd, Rhett holstered his weapon and slid onto the stool. When his gaze met Kinsley’s again, he found that the connection they’d had a minute ago was now gone. “Any idea why they were here?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Being aggressive pricks is my guess.”
The slight movement of her shoulder drew his attention to her body. Her beauty stunned him, every damn time. Her blue eyes were like no other color he had seen in his life. Bright against her chocolate brown hair. But what he liked most about Kinsley was her strength. She had her shit together.
Just then, Benji, the guy Rhett still could never get a read on, sidled up next to Kinsley. “I leave for one second to stock the fridges and all hell breaks loose.” He examined her, a little too intimately if Rhett had anything to say about it, before sliding his arm around her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, her face ashen.
Rhett stared at Benji’s arm, willing it to burst into flames. Benji’s affection only reminded Rhett how bad he was with people. He should have comforted her. Christ, he should have done a lot of things, but getting anything right aside from being a soldier and a detective wasn’t in his nature. He stayed put, arms resting on the bar, not getting any closer to Kinsley than was absolutely necessary. He did not trust himself to keep his hands to himself. “They won’t come back,” he told her, hoping to reassure her. “This is what the gang does. They come in, rattle people up, and leave.”
“They better not come back,” she said, stepping out of Benji’s arms. “The last thing I need is a bunch of hooligans scaring off my customers.” She placed her hands on the ice bin in front of her and drew in a long, deep breath, and with that single breath, she seemed to shed the remainder of worry shadowing her.
She looked very much like the in-control, sexy woman that Rhett had found when he came home from the military. Kinsley had always just been Boone’s younger sister. The cute, feisty kid who stood up to bullies on the playground and got into more trouble than her older brother did. Rhett had once pulled her off one of the biggest guys in high school as she clawed out to hurt him for spreading lies about one of her friends. She’d always been a spitfire, but when Rhett left for the military, she’d still been a kid. When he came home, he discovered that she’d become a woman, a gorgeous one at that, and she drew him right in. For years, he fought his attraction to her, but she was simply unforgettable. And yet, he couldn’t be more wrong for her.
Rhett knew how to hunt and how to kill. He knew h
ow to make sure a woman left his bed satisfied. But he didn’t know how to love her. Not in the way she should be loved. And even if he wanted to, which he wasn’t sure he did, he was too far gone.
To make the boundary between them as clear as ever, he slid off the stool and said, “If they come back, let Boone know.”
He wasn’t lost to the tightening of her lips before she said to Benji, “If anything comes up, just call, okay?”
Benji nodded then gave her a quick hug. “Go and enjoy the rest of your birthday.”
Her birthday. Yeah, Rhett knew all about it. He’d spent the last week trying to avoid all the conversations regarding today that Remy and Peyton kept trying to get him involved in.