Unstoppable by Laura Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

to get the very last spoonful. He glanced up at her with those impossibly blue eyes. “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    Nothing was right. He was leaving soon, and this was going nowhere.
    Kelsey got up and felt his gaze on her as she retrieved a couple of beers from the minifridge.
    Gage raised an eyebrow. “Drinking on the job?”
    “I’m done for the night.” She used the cuff of her sweatshirt to twist the cap off her bottle. “Here’s to silver-bullet assignments.”
    He gave her a look she couldn’t read. Then he twisted his cap off and clinked bottles with her.
    Kelsey made a mean bowl of soup and she liked Miller Genuine Draft. All the more reason for him to get his butt back out there in the rain.
    And he would. Eventually. He planned to do some reconnaissance tonight while she was asleep. But for now sitting inside her messy camper and watching her put away dinner felt just a little too good.
    And so he stayed. And watched her. She’d changed into boxer shorts and a sweatshirt and he tried not to notice how good her legs looked without any shoes on. Gage forced himself to look away and wondered, again, what the hell Joe had been thinking sending him out here. Did he realize what he was asking? It was like sending a man across the desert and then asking him to guard a glass of water.
    Gage cleared his throat. “Guess we needed this rain, huh?”
    She gave him an amused look over her shoulder. Shit, had he really just teed up a conversation about the weather?
    “It’s okay, I guess.” She got them two more brews and joined him back at the table. “Not a problem for the dig, but I doubt it will help our search-and-recovery effort.”
    It was a good point. A very obvious one, too. And when he got back to San Diego, Gage really needed to hit the bars with his buddies and brush up on some of his conversation skills.
    She was sitting beside him now, looking at him. The only light in the place came from a battery-powered lantern across the room, and she was half in shadow.
    “Are you ever planning to tell me about this favor you owe my uncle?”
    He untwisted the cap from her bottle and slid it to her. Then he twisted the cap off his. “What favor’s that?”
    She tucked a lock of that auburn hair behind her ear and smiled. “The one that gives him the right to put you on seven days of babysitting detail?”
    Gage took a sip, stalling. He rested the bottle on the table. “He can put me on any detail he wants. He’s my CO.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but you’re off duty. You said you were on leave.”
    Gage shrugged. “Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.” It was a lame answer, but that’s all she was going to get. He wasn’t about to sit here and rehash the worst night of his life. He wasn’t going to sit here and tell her how he’d spent the past three months fighting depression and how he could easily be out of a job right now if her uncle hadn’t intervened.
    “O-kay. I guess it’s off-limits.” She looked away, obviously stung by the brush-off, and he felt mean. She checked her watch. “It’s getting late, anyway. I should get to bed.” She started to stand up and he caught her arm.
    “Joe Quinn’s the best Texas hold ’em player I ever met. You play?”
    She looked at him as if he’d just asked her if she was a terrorist insurgent. “Are you kidding?”
    “No.”
    “He taught me when I was, like, seven or something. I’ll kick your butt.”
    “Doubtful.” He reached under the table and retrieved a deck of cards from his seabag.
    “Oh, sure. Like I’m going to let you provide the cards.”
    He made a show of peeling off the cellophane, relieved that the awkwardness had disappeared. “It just so happens I picked up these cards a week ago.”
    “Where?” she asked.
    “You always this suspicious?”
    “Joe taught me to gamble, so yes.”
    “O’Hare Airport.” He removed the jokers and shuffled the deck. When he was finished he let her cut the cards.
    “What are we betting?”