9
KID
Crunch.
The noise yanked me right out of my nice little train of thought. By pure instinct, I whipped around as I slung my rifle around my back.
Before I raised it, however, I saw that the noise had come from none other than the woman I was supposed to be protecting. Victoria, dressed in very short shorts and a T-shirt tight and sheer enough for me to see her bra and the outlines of her full breasts beneath, stood before me chewing an apple.
I hated that she looked so damn good. The shorts were doing her all kinds of favors, her curvy legs on full display. For a second, before I got my head together, all I could think about was how much I wanted those legs wrapped around me.
“Someone’s jumpy.” She took another bite of her apple.
“Trust me, that wasn’t jumpiness you saw. If you’d come up on an untrained person carrying a rifle who was jumpy, you’d have a few rounds of five-fifty-six in you right now.”
“Charming,” she said. “Tell me, do you talk to all the women you look after like this? Threatening them with blowing their heads off if they startle you?”
God, she was already being a pill.
“No threat, Princess. Just telling you why it’s not a good idea to sneak up on a man with a gun.”
Another bite. There was something about the way she was eating that apple, something that was vaguely aggressive. I didn’t like it one bit.
She chewed, not saying a word as she turned her attention to the woods.
“Uh, something I can help you with?”
She flicked her eyes to mine for a moment.
“I wanted to go for a walk. Your men inside said that in order to do that, I had to go with you. So, here I am but I don’t want to talk. Now, can we move on?”
I chuckled, imagining the conversation that had likely taken place inside between her and the guys when they’d told her she couldn’t go out alone. No doubt that hadn’t gone over well.
“You’re more than welcome to tag along,” I said. “But I’m not a tour guide. We go at my pace, and you stay close. Understand?”
That got an eye roll. “Fine, fine.” She took one more bite of her apple, then pulled her hand back to pitch the thing into the woods.
“Wait!”
I reached out and plucked the apple from her hand. Her eyes flashed with surprise.
“What’s wrong? Is there someone out there?”
“No,” I said, glancing down at the apple. “You were getting ready to throw this thing out when there’s still plenty of meat on it.” I bit into the apple, which was tart and crunchy. “That’s the stuff.”
She regarded me with horror, and I could sense right away that she wasn’t used to people eating after her like that.
“You just ate my apple? With my spit all over it?”
I shrugged, gesturing with a roll of my shoulders for us to move on.
“Trust me, when you’ve spent your whole adult life in the military, you get over things like that pretty damn fast. You should see some of the stuff I’ve had to eat during jobs. Or back when I was a kid.”
She cocked her head to the side as she walked next to me. “As a kid? What do you mean?”
“I was born during the Georgian Civil War in the early nineties. I was young enough to not remember what the war was like, but I damn sure remember growing up in the aftermath. Food was hard to come by at times. Most of my early memories, until I was put into foster care in the states, were of rummaging through trash cans trying to find food to eat.”
I took another bite of the apple.