“Shit.”
He tossed his cellphone on the polished surface of the wooden table, a tangled ball of emotions lodged in the pit of his stomach.
Across the table Hauk sipped his tequila and studied Rafe with a lift of his brows.
At a glance, the two men couldn’t be more different.
Rafe had dark hair that had grown long enough to touch the collar of his white button-down shirt along with dark eyes that were lushly framed by long, black lashes. His skin remained tanned dark bronze despite the fact it was late September, and his body was honed with muscles that came from working on the small ranch he’d just purchased, not the gym.
Hauk, on the other hand, had inherited his Scandinavian father’s pale blond hair that he kept cut short, and brilliant blue eyes that held a cunning intelligence. He had a narrow face with sculpted features that were usually set in a stern expression.
And it wasn’t just their outward appearance that made them so different.
Rafe was hot tempered, passionate, and willing to trust his gut instincts.
Hauk was aloof, calculating, and mind-numbingly anal. Not that Hauk would admit he was OCD. He preferred to call himself detail-oriented.
Which was exactly why he was a successful sniper. Rafe, on the other hand, had been trained in combat rescue. He was capable of making quick decisions, and ready to change strategies on the fly.
“Trouble?” Hauk demanded.
Rafe grimaced. “The real estate agent left a message saying she has a buyer for my grandfather’s house.”
Hauk looked predictably confused. Rafe had been bitching about the need to get rid of his grandfather’s house since the old man’s death a year ago.
“Shouldn’t that be good news?”
“It would be if I didn’t have to travel to Newton to clean it out,” Rafe said.
“Aren’t there people you can hire to pack up the shit and send it to you?”
“Not in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
Hauk’s lips twisted into a humorless smile. “I’ve been in the middle of fucking nowhere, amigo, and it ain’t Kansas,” he said, the shadows from the past darkening his eyes.
“Newton’s in Iowa, but I get your point,” Rafe conceded. He did his best to keep the memories in the past where they belonged. Most of the time he was successful. Other times the demons refused to be leashed. “Okay, it’s not the hell hole we crawled out of, but the town might as well be living in another century. I’ll have to go deal with my grandfather’s belongings myself.”
Hauk reached to pour himself another shot of tequila from the bottle that had been waiting for them in the center of the table.
Like Rafe, he was dressed in an Oxford shirt, although his was blue instead of white, and he was wearing black dress pants instead of jeans.
“I know you think it’s a pain, but it’s probably for the best.”
Rafe glared at his friend. The last thing he wanted was to drive a thousand miles to pack up the belongings of a cantankerous old man who’d never forgiven Rafe’s father for walking away from Iowa. “Already trying to get rid of me?”
“Hell no. Of the five of us, you’re the . . .”
“I’m afraid to ask,” Rafe muttered as Hauk hesitated.
“The glue,” he at last said.
Rafe gave a bark of laughter. He’d been called a lot of things over the years. Most of them unrepeatable. But glue was a new one. “What the hell does that mean?”
Hauk settled back in his seat. “Lucas is the smooth-talker, Max is the heart, Teagan is the brains, and I’m the organizer.” The older man shrugged. “You’re the one who holds us all together. ARES would never have happened without you.”
Rafe couldn’t argue. After returning to the States, the five of them had been transferred to separate hospitals to treat their numerous injuries. It would have been easy to drift apart. The natural instinct was to avoid anything that could remind them of the horror they’d endured.
But Rafe had quickly discovered that returning to civilian life wasn’t a simple matter of buying a home and getting a 9-to-5 job.
He couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped in a small cubicle eight hours a day, or returning to an empty condo that would never be a home.
It felt way too much like the prison he’d barely escaped.
Besides, he found himself actually missing the bastards.
Who else could understand his frustrations? His inability to relate to the tedious, everyday problems of civilians? His lingering nightmares?
So giving into his impulse, he’d phoned Lucas, knowing he’d need the man’s deep pockets to finance his crazy scheme. Astonishingly, Lucas hadn’t even hesitated before saying “yes.” It’d been the same for Hauk and Max and Teagan.
All of them had been searching for something that would not only use their considerable skills, but would make them feel as if they hadn’t been put out to pasture like bulls that were past their prime.