Hell on Wheels (43 page)

Talk about a no-no of epic proportions. Especially if he didn’t fancy the idea of finding one of Bill’s size-eleven biker boots shoved up his ass.

Once they reached the first set of glass doors, she pulled a thick pair of pink coveralls off a hook on the wall. Balancing first on one foot then the other, she stepped into the coveralls and zipped them up before snagging a bright purple stocking cap from a second hook and pulling it over her head.

She looked ridiculous. And feminine. And so damned cute.

He gritted his teeth and reminded himself of three things. One, she was way too young for him. Two, if things worked out, then despite what she thought now,
he
was going to be
her
boss. And three, he’d made a promise not to—

“How much money are you thinking of investing?” she interrupted his thoughts as she pushed through the double doors and into the vestibule.

As much as it takes…
“We’ll talk more about that later.” He held his breath, waiting to see how she’d respond to both his authoritative tone and his answer. It was a test of sorts, to determine if they had any hope of working together.

She regarded him for a long second, her brown eyes seeming to peer into his head. Then she shrugged, “Suit yourself.”

When she opened the outer door, he once again had to dip his chin against the icy wind. The three of them slogged through the snow to the small, enclosed cargo trailer hitched to the back of his Hummer, and he fished in his pocket for the keys with fingers already numb from the cold. Once he opened the trailer’s back door, she didn’t wait for an invitation to jump inside.

He and Bill were left to follow her up and watch as she walked around his restored bike before squatting near the exhaust.

“You do all the work yourself?” she asked.

The bike he’d been so proud of thirty minutes before seemed shoddy and unimaginative by comparison.

“Yes,” he admitted, amazed he actually felt nervous. Like maybe
she
wouldn’t want to work with
him
.

“Your welding is complete crap,” she said, running a finger along a weld he’d thought was actually pretty damned good. “But it’s obvious you’re a decent mechanic, and that’s really what I need right now, more decent mechanics. Plus,” she stood and winked, “it might be nice to have a big, strong dreamboat like you around the place day-in and day-out. Something fun to look at when my muse abandons me.”

He opened his mouth…but nothing came out. He could only stare and blink like a bewildered owl.

Holy hell, was she
flirting
with him?

He was saved from having to make any sort of answer—
thank you, sweet Jesus
—when Bill grumbled, “Cut it out, Becky. Now’s not the time, and Boss is definitely not the guy.”

“No?” She lifted her brows, turning toward Frank questioningly.

And now he was able to find his voice. “
No
.” He shook his head emphatically, trying to swallow his lungs that had somehow crawled up into his throat.

“Well,” she shrugged, completely unflustered by his overt rejection, “you can’t blame a gal for trying.” She offered him a hand. “I’m in, partner. That is, once I know exactly how much you’re thinking of investing.”

“Bill will get back to you with the specifics,” he hedged, taking her hand only briefly before releasing it, more eager to get the hell out of there than he’d care to admit.

Again she did that head-tilt thing. The one that caused the end of her ponytail to slide over her shoulder. She regarded him for a long moment during which time he thought his heart might’ve jumped right out of his mouth had his lungs not been in the way. Then she shrugged and said, “Fine. Go ahead and do that whole mystery-man thing. I don’t really give a rat’s ass as long as you’re good for the green.”

And with that, she hopped down from the back of the trailer.

He moved to watch her traipse through the snow to the front door of her shop. Only once she disappeared inside did he turn to Bill. “You sure she’s trustworthy enough? She seems a bit impulsive to me.”

Impulsive and arrogant and bold and…way too cute for her own good.

Bill smiled, crossing his arms. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, Becky’s as steady as they come. We can depend on her to keep our secrets. You have my word.”

“And what about the hierarchy? How’s she going to react once she realizes I’m the one calling the shots?”

Bill clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and chuckled. “I have no doubt you can handle her, Boss.”

Uh-huh
. He wished he shared Bill’s certainty. Because there was one thing he could spot from a mile away, and that was trouble.

And Rebecca Reichert?

Well, she had trouble written all over her…

Chapter One

Three and a half years later…

Pirates…

Wow. Now there’s something you don’t see every day.

That was Becky’s first thought as she ducked under the low cabin door of the thirty-eight foot catamaran named
Serendipity
and stepped into the blazing equatorial sun. Her second thought, more appropriately, was
oh hell
.

Eve—her longtime friend and owner of the
Serendipity
—was swaying unsteadily and staring in wide-eyed horror at the three dirty, barefoot men holding ancient AK-47s like they knew how to use them. Four more equally skinny, disheveled men were standing in a rickety skiff tethered off the
Serendipity’s
stern.

Okay, so…
obviously
they’d been playing the oldies a little too loudly considering they’d somehow managed to drown out the rough sound of the pirates’ rusty outboard engine motoring up behind them.

“Eve,” she murmured around the head of a cherry Dum Dum lollipop as her heart hammered against her ribs and the skin on her scalp began crawling with invisible ants. “Just stay calm, okay?”

Yep. Calm was key. Calm kept a girl from finding herself fathoms deep beneath the crushing weight of Davy Jones’s Locker or under the more horrifying weight of a sweaty man who didn’t know the meaning of the word
no
.

When Eve gave no reply, she glanced over at her friend and noticed the poor woman was turning the color of an eggplant.

“
Eve
,” she said with as much urgency as she could afford, given the last thing she wanted was to spook an already skittish pirate who very likely suffered from a classic case of itchy-trigger-finger-syndrome, “you need to breathe.”

Eve’s throat worked over a dry swallow before her chest quickly expanded on a shaky breath.

Okay, good. Problem one: Eve keeling over in a dead faint—solved. Problem two: being taken hostage by pirates—now
that
was going to take a bit more creativity.

She wracked her brain for some way out of their current predicament as Jimmy Buffet crooning, “Yes I am a pirate. Two hundred years too late,” wafted up from inside the cabin.

Really, Jimmy? You’re singing that now?

Under normal circumstances, she’d be the first to appreciate the irony. Unfortunately, these were anything but normal circumstances.

The youngest and shortest of the pirates—he wore an eye patch…
seriously?
—flicked a tight look in her direction, and she threw her hands in the air, palms out in the universal
I’m
unarmed and cooperating
signal. But a quick glance was all he allotted her before he returned the fierce attention of his one good eye to Eve.

She snuck another peek at her friend and…oh no. Oh
crap
.

“Slowly, very slowly, Eve, I want you to lay the knife on the deck and kick it away from you.” She was careful to keep her tone cool and unthreatening. Pirates made their money from the ransom of ships and captives. If she could keep Eve from doing something stupid—like, oh, say flying at the heavily armed pirates like a blade-wielding banshee—they’d likely make it out of this thing alive.

Unfortunately, it appeared Eve had stopped listening to her.

“Eve!” she hissed. “Lay down the knife.
Slowly
. And kick it away from you.”

This time she got through.

Eve glanced down at the long, thin blade clutched in her fist. From the brief flicker of confusion that flashed through her eyes, it was obvious she’d been unaware she still held the knife she’d been using to fillet the bonito they’d caught for lunch. But realization quickly dawned, and her bewildered expression morphed into something frighteningly desperate.

Becky dropped all pretense of remaining cool and collected. “Don’t you even think about it,” she barked.

Two of the men on deck jerked their shaggy heads in her direction, the wooden butts of their automatic weapons made contact with their scrawny shoulders as the evil black eyes of the Kalashnikovs’ barrels focused on her thundering heart.

“You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight,” she whispered, lifting her hands higher and gulping past a Sahara-dry knot in her throat. “Everyone knows that.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched Eve slowly bend at the waist, and the unmistakable
thunk
of the blade hitting the wooden deck was music to her ears.

“Look, guys,” she addressed the group, grateful

beyond belief when the ominous barrels of those old, but still deadly, rifles once more pointed toward the deck.
That’s the thing about AKs
, Billy once told her,
they buck like a damned bronco, are simpler than a kindergarten math test, but they’ll fire with a barrel full of sand. Those Russians sure know how to make one hell of a reliable weapon
—which, given her current situation, was just frickin’ great.
Not
. “These are Seychelles waters. You don’t have any authority here.”

“No, no, no,” the little pirate wearing the eye patch answered in heavily accented English. “We
only
authority on water. We Somali pirate.”

“Oh boy,” Eve wheezed, putting a trembling hand to her throat as her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me, Evelyn Edens!” Becky commanded, her brain threatening to explode at the mere thought of what might happen to a beautiful, unconscious woman in the hands of Somali pirates out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Eve swayed but managed to remain standing, her legs firmly planted on the softly rolling deck.

Okay, good.

“We have no money. Our families have no money,” she declared. Which was true for the most part as far as she was concerned. Eve, however, was as rich as Croesus. Thankfully, there was no way for the pirates to know that. “You’ll get no ransom from us. It’ll cost you more to feed and shelter us than you’ll ever receive from our families. And this boat is twenty years old. She’s not worth the fuel it’ll cost you to sail her back to Somalia. Just let us go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“No, no, no,” the young pirate shook his head—it appeared the negatives in his vocabulary only came in threes. His one black eye was bright with excitement, and she noticed his eye patch had a tacky little rhinestone glued to the center, shades of One-Eyed Willie from
The Goonies
.

Geez, this just keeps getting better and better.

“You American.” He grinned happily, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Wowza, she would bet her best TIG welder those chompers had never seen a toothbrush or a tube of Colgate. “America pay big money.”

She snorted; she couldn’t help it. The little man was delusional. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but it’s the policy of the U.S. government not to negotiate with terrorists.”

One-Eyed Willie threw back his head and laughed, his ribs poking painfully through the dark skin of his torso. “We no terrorists. We Somali pirates.”

Whatever.

“Same thing,” she murmured, glancing around at the other men who wore the alert, but slightly vacant, look of those who don’t comprehend a word of what was being said.

Okay, so Willie was the only one who spoke English. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.

“Not terrorists!” he yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “
Pirates!
”

“Okay, okay,” she placated, softening her tone and biting on her sarcastic tongue. “You’re pirates, not terrorists. I get it. That doesn’t change the simple fact that our government will give you nothing but a severe case of lead poisoning. And our families don’t have a cent to pay you.”