“Look, I need to get some clothes. Do we have time before we’re wheels up?”

Why was it endearing when she said ‘wheels up’ like one of the guys instead of some boring civilian verbiage like take off? No, her jargon slinging shouldn’t be endearing. It was a warning with bright flashing lights. She’d seen too much, done too much, and didn’t have someone like him or Roman to tell her to keep her butt safe.

He nodded, not ready to jump into that argument. “We got time. Not a lot. But enough.”

“Good. Fire up that GPS, and show me the closest Walmart.”

“Can do.” He paged through the list of shopping centers and saw Midland Galleria. Anything galleria had to be nice, right? “Let’s go here.” He selected their destination, and the direction-wielding lady in the GPS scolded them to make a U-turn at the nearest intersection.

“That’s not Walmart. I need quick, cheap, throwaway clothes.”

“Come on. We have some time. Let’s explore.”

“We should shop and get back to the safe house.”

“You turn in your woman card or something? You don’t want to shop?”

“I don’t want to—”

“Look at it this way: I still need time to cool down. You don’t want me to pop your buddy, do you?”

“You’re calm, Cash. Cool-collected-Cash. It took you about fifteen seconds to power down to lazy cowboy.”

“Lazy?” Nothing about this morning had been lazy.

She laughed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. It looked as soft as he remembered. Her laugh warmed him from the inside, as if they were sitting fireside under the covers.

“You know what I mean. Chilled out, nothing’s ever wrong,” she said. “But seriously, we need to head back soon.”

“Relax, Nic. Dude will be there when we get back, and if we’re running late, well, they can’t leave without us.”

Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up at the Galleria. It was everything he wanted, though he didn’t know why he cared. Signing up for a shopping trip would be classified as out of character. Hell, maybe he did know why. Taking care of her wasn’t out of character, even if he was years out of practice. It once topped his list of favorite activities, and what a list that was…

She parked and waltzed in, not noticing anyone noticing her. She rocked his sweatpants and gym shirt, making them the sexiest things he’d ever seen. Even barefoot with a limp, the woman carried her head high, walking straight into the hoity-toity store.

Catching the raised eyebrows of sales clerks as he followed Nicola in, Cash gave them I-see-you-watching-me waves of his hand. No doubt, he was a sight to see. Black eyes. Swollen lip. Gun holstered on his hip. Sure as Kathy Lee and Hoda were about their Wednesday wine selections, he knew they flavored the water cooler gossip with a shot of, “oh my god, did you see that?”