Becky had built choppers for each new Knight during their first year of employment. And as was the case with all her custom bikes, each machine received a name.
Hunter had dubbed his ride in honor of his great-grandfather. A man he’d heard stories about but had never met. A man whose timepiece, called a “canteen watch,” he’d worn with pride every day since he’d saved it from being pawned by his DNA donors.
Walter Jackson had been a WWII veteran. A member of the Underwater Demolitions Team tasked with clearing harbors of obstructions and ordinances. And a hero.
The only hero in Hunter’s long line of lackluster ancestors and—
He realized he hadn’t laid on the throttle fast enough when Grace pinched his thigh.
“Is there a switch I can flip for emergency speed?” she yelled above his bike’s engine noise.
Stifling a grin, he hit the gas.
In an instant they were through the gates, across the paved grounds, and idling in front of one of the two large garage doors that opened to the shop floor. With the push of a button on the key fob in his jacket pocket, the door curled up on its rollers.
He didn’t wait until it folded back completely. He held on long enough to make sure he didn’t lop off their heads before he gave Canteen Green another hit of fuel and they rolled inside the old factory building.
The lights blazing in the shop and the pungent smell of freshly brewed coffee told him Eliza, BKI’s secretary, hash-slinger, and all-around Girl Friday, was already up and at ’em. And the scent of bacon frying in the kitchen had his stomach growling with interest.
Grace was off the bike before he could cut the engine. Her mouth slung open as she stared up at the soaring ceiling and then around at the line of sparkling motorcycles before she blinked and shook her head.
“Who are you?” she asked once he’d switched off the bike and toed out the kickstand.
He couldn’t pass up the opportunity. “I’m Batman.”
Her mouth flattened. “Never mind.” She yanked off her helmet and tossed it to him. “First things first. Bathroom?”
He pointed to the hallway past the metal stairs. “Second door on your right. If you hit the kitchen, you’ve gone too far.”
“If I hit the kitchen, I might have to use the kitchen sink because I don’t think I’ll have time to turn around.” With that, she took off like the hounds of hell were baying at her heels.
He hadn’t imagined it three years ago. There was something there between them. A spark or a chemical connection or…like recognizing like. Whatever it was, it felt good to experience it again.
Sam rolled to a stop beside him and cut his motorcycle’s engine. “What am I seeing?” Sam pulled off his helmet. “Is that…? Are you smiling?”
Hunter was quick to wipe his expression clean. “Nah. Just some sort of facial spasm.”
Sam snorted. “Call it what you want. But that look in your eye?” Hunter found himself staring at the blunt tip of Sam’s pointer finger. “It’s lust. Pure, unfiltered, and high-octane.”
Hunter made sure Grace had disappeared down the hallway before he frowned at Sam. “That obvious, huh?”
“If you were a dog, you’d be panting.”
He pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair in a futile attempt to mitigate helmet-head. “And here I thought I was being subtle.”
Despite Grace’s wiggling, or maybe because of it, he’d spent the entire ride from Indiana to Chicago supremely aware of her breasts pressed against his back. Of her feminine warmth curling around him. Of her fingers locked together a mere inch above the part of him the dream of her had rendered hard and hungry.
Sam swung off his ride and hooked his helmet over a handlebar. “She’s not your usual type.”
Hunter hitched a leg over Canteen Green’s leather seat before stowing his helmet and resecuring the extra dome to the bike’s sissy bar. “I have a type?” He was genuinely intrigued. He’d never thought of himself as having a type.
Unless female and willing count as a type, he thought.
“Yeah, man. Sexy. Sultry. A little superficial. The kind of woman more prone to carrying designer handbags than handguns.”
Hunter frowned. He supposed Sam was right.
When he went on the prowl for…er…companionship, he did tend toward a particular brand of woman. The kind who cared more about the casts of reality TV shows than she did about climate change. The kind who didn’t waste time digging beneath his surface because the surface of things was all she cared about. The kind who’d never tempted him with anything beyond a night of frivolous—and sweaty—fun.
Grace, with her clunky shoes, face free of makeup, mind like a steel trap, and depths so deep a man would need a submersible to explore all of her was the yin to his usual one-night stand’s yang.
Maybe that’s why he found her so fascinating. That her preferred personal currency was the contents of her gray matter and not the cut of her clothes or color of her latest manicure.
Grace Beacham was just so…authentic. A breath of fresh air to a man who’d realized the stuff he’d been sucking into his lungs was stale and uninteresting.
Before he could respond to Sam’s observation, she reappeared at the end of the hallway, relief plastered all over her face.
“That was a close one,” she said with a shiver.
Her golden hair was matted to her brow with sweat, but the ends were wild and windblown. Her boxy, dove-gray suit was covered in mud. And there was a smudge of dirt, or maybe it was grease, on her right cheek.
But as she marched across the shop floor, purpose in every step, he decided he’d never seen anyone more beautiful.
Grace didn’t have the wildly arching eyebrows or the exaggerated lips that had become the fashion. Her eyebrows were a medium brown and straight, which made them that much more fascinating when she drew them together in a scowl or arched one high in intrigue. Her mouth was wide, prone to pursing, and upside down—her top lip being slightly fuller than the bottom. And her nose wasn’t small and pert; it was long and straight.
In short, Grace’s features were animated and interesting and real. The kind of beauty that didn’t hit a guy in the face, but instead grew on him the longer he looked at her.
Then there was her body.
Hot damn.
In the four days they’d worked together on that assignment in Michigan, it’d become clear she was built like the proverbial brick shithouse. Her untailored suit jackets couldn’t hide the heft of her breasts—but he’d been charmed by the way she pulled the front of her shirts away from her body in an attempt to do exactly that. Nor could her terribly functional slacks disguise the flare of her hips. And when, at the end of their mission together, he’d seen her in a red sequined cocktail dress? Not to put too fine a point on it, but he’d nearly swallowed his own tongue.
He could remember thinking, Stand aside, Kat Dennings. Grace Beacham is in the house.
When she stopped in front of him, looking expectantly toward Sam, he had to shake away the thoughts of the past so he could focus on the present.
“Right.” He nodded and gestured toward his partner. “Grace Beacham, let me introduce Samuel Harwood.”
Grace and Sam exchanged a handshake and the usual “good to meet yous” before Grace turned back to Hunter. She opened her mouth and he thought for sure she was going to circle back around to the whole who are you question. So he was happy when Eliza appeared at the mouth of the hall, interrupting whatever Grace had been poised to ask by saying, “I thought I heard the shop door roll open.” She rubbed her flour-covered hands on her apron.