About That Kiss: A Heartbreaker Bay Novel Read online

  But Archer showed up in his doorway, dressed to go.

  Dressed meaning armed to the teeth.

  And Joe knew he was not done with work.

  “Need you,” Archer said.

  Which was how Joe found himself also armed to the teeth and heading out with the guys. The client they were serving was a big commercial property contractor who’d hired Hunt Investigations because expensive pieces of equipment kept going missing from a renovation project in a financial district building. A week ago, anticipating the next heist, Joe and Lucas had hidden a transmitter on each of the remaining expensive pieces of equipment at high risk of being stolen.

  Sure enough, tonight the transmitter had alerted them to a piece of equipment on the move when it shouldn’t have been. They raced to the job site, where it all went down surprisingly fast but dirty. They found the equipment foreman himself stealing the small backhoe loader by literally driving it off the job site. They hauled him out of the machine, but at the last moment he must’ve realized this was the end for him. He objected by pulling a knife from nowhere and nearly gutting Joe. When that didn’t stop the takedown, the dickwad then produced a grenade.

  A fucking grenade.

  Joe and Lucas both dove for it. Lucas shoved him out of the way and opened the trash chute. Joe was able to grab the grenade and throw it in. The explosion was contained—well, mostly. Neither Lucas nor Joe got fully clear and took unintended twin twenty-five-foot flights through a sheet of drywall, landing hard on a stack of demo wood.

  All of which had to be explained to more than one responding agency, and that ate up another few hours.

  After, Joe sat shirtless on the table in the staff room of their office with Archer checking him over to get a better look at the knife wound in his side. “This needs stitches.” His tone was harsh and he wasn’t particularly gentle when he wiped at the cut with an alcohol pad.

  “Just stick a Band-Aid on it,” Joe said.

  Archer spent a minute cleaning off the blood before speaking. “It wouldn’t have been the end of the world to go to a hospital.”

  Yeah, it would have. Joe had spent far too many hours in a hospital. His job was dangerous so there’d been his own visits here and there, but that wasn’t what had gotten him. It’d actually been all the time he’d been in waiting rooms. In his earlier years it’d been watching his mom waste away, then later hoping his dad would come out of his various surgeries okay. Then more recently waiting on Molly and her surgeries. If he never set foot in another hospital again it would be too soon. “Just stitch me up like you did last time.”

  Archer swore beneath his breath. “Lucas would be better. His hands are steadier.”

  “Or Reyes,” Lucas said from his perch on the couch. He had a few scrapes and bruises, but nothing major because he was indestructible and maybe also a superhero. “Reyes has smaller hands.”

  Reyes was standing at the window playing a game on his phone, his thumbs racing at the speed of light, though he slowed down enough to show Lucas his “smaller” middle finger. Reyes was also covered in blood. Not his—their bad guy’s. Setting the game aside, he came to Joe and looked him over. “I could do it. I’d give you a badass scar too.”

  “No,” Joe said to Archer. “He’ll do something stupid like make the stitches in the shape of a heart just to fuck with me.”

  Lucas just grinned but got up when Archer gestured for him. He too bent over Joe critically, making him feel like a bug on a slide. “Yeah,” Lucas said. “You definitely need stitches.”

  “No shit,” Joe said and sighed with acceptance. “Just do it already.”

  Lucas exhaled a short breath, which for him was the equivalent of an exasperated sigh. He retrieved the necessary items from Hunt’s medical kit—more extensive than most urgent care’s medical kits—and set about closing the gash in Joe’s side.

  Molly walked in during this and stilled. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” Joe said though he was sweating bullets because goddamn, getting stitched hurt like a son of a bitch.

  “You’re not fine!” Molly said and glared at Lucas. “What are you doing to my brother?”

  “Archer,” Lucas said. “Get her out of here.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Molly said.

  But Archer stepped in front of her.

  She dodged him and came up next to Lucas to look Joe over. “Oh my God.” She gripped Lucas by the front of the guy’s shirt. She was five-foot-two. If you asked her, she’d tell you she was five-foot-four, but she was full of shit. Lucas was over six feet and yet he let her yank him down so that they were nose-to-nose.

  “Be careful with him,” she said.

  Jesus. “I’m fine!” Joe said.

  Neither Lucas nor Molly looked at him, still nose-to-nose, they just stared at each other, some sort of weird, angsty chemistry going on that Joe couldn’t read.

  “Did you hear me?” Molly asked Lucas.

  “Woman, the people in China heard you.”

  “Does he need a hospital?” she asked.

  “No,” Joe said.

  Archer slid an arm around her. “He’s going to be fine, I promise. Just a little scratch. I want you to wait outside—”

  “I need to stay here.”

  “Archer,” Lucas said again.

  Archer nodded and spoke directly to Molly. “What you need, what we all need, is that bottle of Scotch you keep in your bottom drawer. Can you get that for me?”

  Molly looked at Joe and he managed to give her a smile and a nod. She then looked at Lucas.

  No words were exchanged, just another odd, inexplicable beat. Finally, Molly let out a breath and vanished.

  Lucas stopped stitching to watch her go.

  “Hey,” Joe said. “Are you staring at my sister’s ass?”

  Lucas blinked. “What? No.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “There’s no way in hell that Lucas is dumb enough to stare at my office manager and your sister’s ass,” Archer said. “Right, Lucas?”

  Since this wasn’t really a question and Lucas clearly knew it, he nodded and got back to stitching.

  It took twelve stitches, and when Lucas was done he cracked the cold pack from the box and handed it over. Joe held it to his throbbing side and hoped it would keep the swelling down. He had plans for the night.

  “You want to tell me what the fuck happened back there?” Archer asked.

  Joe shrugged. Or started to but then stilled because shrugging hurt like a son of a bitch. “What happened was that we got the job done.”

  Archer shook his head. “I haven’t seen anyone get the drop on you like that in years.”

  Joe could deny it, but Archer was right. He’d been distracted and had lost his focus long enough that the guy was not only able to pull a weapon on him but actually do some damage with it. He couldn’t even remember the last time that had gone down.

  Archer just looked at him for a long moment. “Remember when someone got the drop on me and I was shot?”

  “Last year, yeah,” Joe said. “I remember distinctly because Elle nearly killed us all for letting you get hurt.”

  “My mind wasn’t on the job. How many times has that happened?”

  “Never,” Joe said.

  Archer nodded and waited for Joe to catch up.

  “Shit,” Joe said. “You think I screwed up because my mind was on Kylie?”

  “There he is,” Lucas said. “I was starting to worry he had a concussion.”

  Joe blew out a breath. “Shit,” he said again.

  Archer snorted. “Man, Elle so called this. I should never have bet her. You just cost me a hundred bucks.”

  Reyes started sing “Another One Bites the Dust” beneath his breath.

  Lucas was looking horrified at the thought of Joe letting his concentration down over a woman. “Aw, man. You should’ve just let the guy stab you in the gut. It would’ve been less painful.”