It Wasn't Me - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,2

me,” Hammer muttered.

I grinned at the man that had once likely thought the same thing about me.

“Did you say the same thing when you trained me?” I asked.

Hammer’s eyes came to me, and something hard and unyielding crossed his features.

“Jonah,” he said. “When you came to me, you weren’t normal. You were already hard. You were already grown up. I’m fairly sure that you never even went through that stage.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the kid who was once again back on his feet and heading our way, this time at a much slower clip.

“Probably not,” I admitted.

I’d grown up fast out of necessity, and it was a long time later that I finally realized that it was okay to let loose a little.

By that point, I was an adult and couldn’t get away with things like I would’ve been able to if I’d done them when I was a kid.

“Right,” Hammer said when the kid finally arrived with the shirt. “Thanks again for helping.”

Hammer took the shirt without saying a word, and I shrugged it on, wishing that I’d specified that it be a shirt that actually fit—oh, and was a solid color.

Hammer started to laugh when he read what was printed on it.

“Who the fuck did you get this from?” I asked the kid.

The kid swallowed.

After having spent quite a bit of time with him this week in the weapons class, I knew that with his stuttering, it might take him a bit of time to get the words out.

But he surprised me by blurting it all out in one sentence, not one hitch to be heard.

“There was only one man here today that is your size,” he apologized. “You’re freakishly large, and it’s hard to find someone that had something that’d fit. That was in the man’s car. It’s his workout shirt.”

I looked down at the shirt, then back at the kid.

“You’re secretly laughing your ass off inside right now, aren’t you?” I accused.

The kid swallowed hard, scared shitless of me.

“No, sir. Of course not.”

My lips twitched.

“He so is,” Hammer said as the large motors of the plane started to power up. “Get out of here, motherfucker.”

The kid took off, and I turned to Hammer.

“Were you talking to him or me?” I asked curiously.

Hammer’s mouth twitched. “You. The kid’s not got all his brain cells working. We did the gas chamber this morning.”

I laughed and offered Hammer my hand. “Thanks for noticing I needed a few days.”

He rolled his eyes. “You were the one to get me out of the bind, not the other way around. Trust me when I say that it was all my pleasure in getting you here. I fuckin’ hate teaching that class, and you saved me a week’s worth of headaches, paperwork, and dealing with bullshit.”

I imagined that I did.

“Anytime.”

With that, I tossed him the box of parts, then walked up the steps of the plane that two soldiers were holding open for me.

As soon as I passed through the door, it closed and sealed behind me.

I nodded at the pilot who was standing at the entrance, waiting for me to get on.

“Thanks for getting ‘er fixed up,” he called as I passed.

“No problem,” I said. “Try not to kill us on the way home.”

The pilot snorted. “I’ll do my best.”

I walked to the seat that my box was resting in and felt something inside of me tighten when I saw the woman that’d given me the stink eye when I’d told the joke earlier.

Her eyes were closed, so I used the time that it took her to open them to study her face.

She looked like that woman off of that country band, Little Big Town. The blonde with the fuckin’ curls.

Curls on top of curls.

The woman’s face was surrounded by them, and I wondered how the hell she ever got it tamed enough to fit it into a regulation bun.

Her face was beautiful, in an unsuspecting kind of way.

She had long, dark eyelashes, beautiful bow-tie lips, and dimples.

She had motherfuckin’ dimples.

Dimples that disappeared and reappeared as she clenched and unclenched her jaw.

The way she was clutching her hands so tightly in her lap led me to believe that she was a nervous flyer.

Great.

And when those eyes finally opened, and I got a look at the beautiful greenish/blue hue, I felt my stomach drop.

God, she was beautiful.

A goddamn knockout.

“You’re in my seat,” I said.

She frowned and looked at the seat holding my box of shit.

“What’s wrong with that