Rome’s words slammed into him.Fuck.He thought he’d been imagining things—it had been a lifetime since he even thought about women other than Ellory.
“You know if you have a crush on Jolie, it goes nowhere, right?”
Archer met his stare. “I don’t have a crush.”
“There’s no future in it. You’re Blackout now—a dead man walking. There aren’t any girlfriends. No wives or kids. You don’t get to ride into the sunset on a snowmobile.”
Archer stacked the books in his bent arm.
“I was briefed when I signed my Blackout papers.”
He didn’t have a crush on Jolie either.
He did have some hero’s urge to protect her because he’d once been alone in a place he didn’t understand. But Rome wouldn’t get it.
“I’m giving her reading material. Not a promise of a future,” he said.
He adjusted his grip on the books and set off through the dark. Rome was on his six.
But the dark had always been something he handled on his own.
* * * * *
Jolie didn’t mean to be hovering near the door, but she found herself there anyway, waiting for someone to return with something to read. She wasn’t even sure she could focus, but flipping pages would keep her hands busy.
She’d cracked the door and closed it again. The sounds of the base felt unfamiliar. The rough male voices carried through the alien bunker—military base, she reminded herself—echoing and too loud, even if it was obvious they were joking around.
Everything made her feel more on edge. She was more at home with the shriek of alarms in the Chicago streets.
A brief knock made her jump, and she whipped toward the door. “Come in.”
Archer walked in carrying a stack of books and magazines. A feeling hit her so fast it caught her off guard.
She didn’t understand the sense of relief tingling along her fingertips at the sight of the man. She barely knew him. And yet…the second he walked in, everything felt more under control, including her emotions.
Confusion flooded in. She didn’t have any ties to this man. She shouldn’t be feeling anything but suspicion that he could take off his skin at night and phone his home planet using telepathy.
Unwilling to let him see all these thoughts on her face, she dropped her gaze to what he carried.
He crossed the room in those long, confident strides—muscles rolling on his spine and over the carved planes of his ass she shouldn’t be noticing—and set the pile on the table near the bed.
“You didn’t have to get so many. A few would have been enough.” She drifted closer to see what these men deemed girl books.
“I had orders.” A note of amusement in his tone made her look up at his face.
Which was a mistake because now her attention was fixed on strong features that were pretty damn perfect. He had the face of a model with a straight nose, angled jaw stubbled with a black beard and lips that looked as hard as the rest of him. And his dark blue eyes…
They held secrets that could draw a woman in, and suddenly she knewexactlywhy she was drawn to him.
Archer was a bad boy.
She’d always had a thing for guys like him, but she steered clear of them and focused on being a great sister and a good friend to Stina when she fell for the wrong type.
To cover her discomposure, she sorted through the stack—a couple coffee table books of photography and several wornmagazines. Her fingers stilled on a paperback, the cover making her pause.
She stared down at the man in a kilt with broad shoulders and dark hair and entirely too much confidence to be standing there half-dressed like it was a personality trait.
She skimmed the model’s face—straight nose, angled jaw—and her gaze lifted to a face she’d studied only moments ago.
