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“Got it…” she’d wheezed to her teammate, Eli.
“Yes!” Elijah, who had also served in the Navy before losing his leg in combat, had done an improvised happy dance on the field.
“You don’t quit, do you?” Beneath her, Kyle had grinned. There’d always been something about his warm gaze, so earnest yet so perceptive, as if he could see into her very soul.
“Not unless I’m forced,” she’d replied, hoping her voice didn’t quiver like it often seemed to when he was near. She was with Nick—they were engaged—but that didn’t keep her body from responding to Kyle. “Why?”
“You remind me of someone,” he’d said, his expression going soft.
“I do?” she said, her heart catching in her chest. Whoever it was, it must be someone truly important to him, given the warmth and affection on his face.
“Yeah. Duchess.”
“Who’s that?” Natalie whispered, not wanting to break the intimate moment. “An old girlfriend?”
He shook his head, chuckling. “My prize 4-H calf. Had to put her down after she got caught in a fence, poor thing. Good little heifer, though. Always came through in the end.”
A cow? The guy has the nerve to compare me to a cow?
Nick, who’d come over to help them up, snorted. “Nice one, bro.”
Kyle had laughed so hard there were tears running down his face.
Natalie punched him hard in the chest, then took her fiancé’s hand to climb to her feet. “You’re an ass.”
“What?” Kyle had stood, brushing off his jeans. “I loved that cow.”
Jerk.
“Natalie?” Kyle called again from behind the shower curtain. “Are you ogling me?”
Some things never changed.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She tapped the toe of her sneaker on the floor. “What intel has your team gathered on Arrieta?”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a real mood killer?” Kyle asked, shutting off the water. “Hand me a towel.”
“Please.”
“What?”
“Hand me my towel,please,” she said. “That’s the proper way to ask.”
“Since when have we ever been proper about anything, Duchess?”
“Stop calling me by the name of your old cow.”
“I loved that calf.”
“So you said.” She reached for a towel. “Now, say please, or no towel for you.”
“Give me the damned towel, Natalie, or I will give you an eyeful you won’t soon forget.”
She’d never been one to back down from a dare, even if it was in her best interest to surrender. “I haven’t heard ‘please’ yet,” she replied.
Kyle whipped open the shower curtain.
From the top of his wet hair, down the tanned length of his neck, to his cut torso, she couldn’t seem to get enough of him. She’d gotten the full view earlier, but seeing him soaking wet intensified the image, drawing attention to the cut of his muscles, the power of his frame. Her gaze followed a drop of water as it slid down his chest, over his washboard abs, along his happy trail to the nest of dark curls surrounding his erect manhood.
