Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) (3 page)

Jack pulled away and ran his hand through his shaggy hair, trying not to think about how good her touch had felt. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said with a laugh.

Before he could censor himself, his dumb mouth opened. “Where is Kai?”

She studied him with big inquisitive eyes, the corner of her mouth tilted up in amusement. “Where’s the blonde?”

Blonde? Ah, that babysitting job he’d been guilt-tripped into during James’s wedding. Gorgeous woman, no two ways about it, but Jack hadn’t even noticed her. Elle was all he had seen. Her and her date, Kai, grinning like a fool, his hand on the small of Elle’s back.

He’d wanted so badly to chop off that hand. The whole arm, actually.

“Forgot her tied to your bed?” Elle continued. “That’s the problem with gagging your dates; they can’t scream and one forgets they are there.”

“You speaking from experience, pet?”

“No one would ever forget I’m in their bed.”

He looked into her eyes. No, of course not. Any man with blood in his veins would kill for that memory. Instead, he answered, “I bet. You’re that obnoxious.”

She didn’t take offense, tapping condescendingly on his chest. “Not the right word, buddy. But I’ll forgive you. Everyone knows T-800s have limited vocabulary. Besides, this must be overwhelming for you. Wifeys and babies all over the place.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with that.” Which, under normal circumstances, was true.

“Really? I thought you’d be another of those commitment-phobic guys.”

“No.”

That seemed to surprise her. “You want to marry?”

“Sure. I just would never marry someone like you,” he said, his tone hard.

Now was when she would smack his face and leave in a huff. Lord knew it wouldn’t be the first.

Elle burst into laughter. “You’re so full of yourself. What makes you think I would marry you? You aren’t husband material. You are…fucking material.” She whispered the last two words, covering Jonah’s barely month-old ears, as if the baby could understand. “At best. And that remains to be seen. You might not be good at that either. Not that I have the slightest interest in finding out.”

“You are lying, pet,” he blurted out.

Her expression was deceptively sweet. “Do not call me pet.”

“Do not lie, pet.”

“I’m not. Given up on bad boys, sweetie. And you are as bad as they come.”

Then she stood up and, still chuckling, walked away from him, leaving him stunned and with the mother of all hard-ons tenting his pants.

In spite of everything, he felt a smile breaking over his face.

Yep, he needed to get the fuck out of Alden and away from her. Pronto. Before what little mind he had left melted.

Chapter Two

One week later, Florida

“Don’t worry, Marlene,” Elle said into the cell phone as she walked through the airport dressed in her old uniform. “No one noticed I’m not you.”

“Not even the guards?” her friend asked from the other end of the line.

“Especially not the guards. You know how they are.” A smile, a soft glance, and a bigger-than-usual sway of her hips, and no one looked at her airport ID. Why would they? They knew her. She’d worked at the Miami airport for a year after moving to the Eternal Sun Resort to keep an eye on her mom. Whoever knew her didn’t look at her ID, and whoever didn’t know her didn’t realize she wasn’t Marlene. “Relax, everything is under control.”

Elle had done as they’d agreed: she’d borrowed Marlene’s ID card, signed in with it, and taken her shift while her friend was driving back from visiting her sister in North Carolina.

“Thanks, Elle, you saved my life. Damn Joshua. I don’t know why he wouldn’t let me change shifts with another flight coordinator. What did it matter to him who dispatched flights as long as someone did it?”

Stick-up-his-ass Joshua was a shitty, slimy boss. It didn’t help that he had a crush on Marlene and she hadn’t accepted his advances. Asking him to give her an extra day off for the trip had been a no-go. So was getting him to approve a shift change, even if it was no skin off his nose.

“I just was at the office picking up the documents for the first two flights, and he wasn’t there. Donald was, but he won’t say a word. He’s on vacation after today, so he won’t see Joshua,” Elle explained as she opened the door of the car assigned to her and turned on the engine. “As a matter of fact, he thought I was you at first. Oh, and so you know, my head hurts from these damn braids. Couldn’t you wear something more comfy? I have this unstoppable need to scratch my scalp.”

Marlene was a hairdo junky. She currently braided the left side of her hair tight to her scalp, and so did Elle.

“The itch will go away. Then it will feel weird when you take them out. I’m sorry I’m ruining your break. You came for three days. The last thing I wanted was to make you work while you are down here.”

“No sweat. I love catching up with the guys. Besides, your corporate flights are a walk in the park compared with my two-hundred-passenger tourist ones.” Or maybe it was the Boston weather that made everyone cranky, because in Florida even the regular flights were a piece of cake. “And I’m not on vacation; I’m just arranging some paperwork for my mom while she’s on a cruise with Ron.” If anyone should be grateful, it was Elle. She hated taking time off, and running her mom’s errands hadn’t taken as long as she’d expected. “Are we still on for tonight?”

“You bet,” Marlene answered. “The old gang together. We’ll burn up the streets!”

Elle laughed. Yep, Marlene was a hot package.

“Good. I gotta go,” Elle said. “I’m in the car. Or I’ll be late.”

Elle couldn’t see her friend’s face, but she was sure she was grimacing. “Please don’t wreck the car during my shift.”

“It wasn’t my fault. The driver of the pushback wasn’t watching.”

“Maybe he didn’t see you since you were driving like a maniac?”

Elle chuckled. “Okay, maybe I was a bit over the speed limit. But don’t worry, I’ll stick to the rules now that I’m you.”

After they said good-bye, she drove to the parking spot assigned for her first flight. The plane was already there, and the fuel she’d ordered was being pumped into it.

She walked on the tarmac toward the private jet. It was early in the morning, but the sun was blinding so she put on sunglasses and hurried on. Man, she’d forgotten how hot it was in Florida, even in April.

Her cell beeped. A message.

Girlie, Mr. Asshole will be flying from Logan in two days. You’ll be back in Boston?

Mr. Asshole had gotten a restraining order on her when she’d called him out on his shit, so it was her moral duty to be there every time he planned to fly. To bother him and delay him and generally speaking pester him. The arrogant twit always asked for special treatment, so his name came up on their lists beforehand, allowing Elle to be ready for him.

Sign me in for that shift
she texted back.

Whatever shift it was, she would make it work, and she would be there.

He thought the world revolved around him because he was worth more than the Queen of England. Elle didn’t have an issue with rich people, but she despised entitled assholes.

As she finished supervising the catering, the passengers arrived. Three men. She quickly glanced at the documentation. Joaquín Maldonado was listed as the owner of the jet and the one who had handled the red tape and scheduled the flight to Cuba. Two of the men looked like security detail, from the way they moved and scanned the surroundings, so the one in the middle had to be Mr. Maldonado.

“Good morning, Mr. Maldonado. Everything is on schedule. We don’t expect any delays today.”

“Good,” he said, and without a second glance, headed for the plane.

The security detail stayed behind, near the stairs.

“Marlene Cabrera,” one of the guys said, looking at her ID.
“Bonito nombre para una bonita chica.”

A pretty name for a pretty girl, she thought he said.

She nodded, but remained silent. And that was why studying Spanish would have been a better choice than Italian, especially considering how big the Spanish-speaking community was in Florida. Marlene’s parents were Cuban, and she spoke Spanish fluently. The two girls did look similar, and the hairdo and sunglasses helped, but Elle couldn’t fake the language skill.

Fortunately, he didn’t ask anything more. He turned to the other man and continued their chat in Spanish too fast for her to understand. After the pilot arrived, Elle handed him the preflight briefing documentation. They were all set to go when a big black car stopped near the one from the airline. The driver opened the back door and a man in his late sixties or early seventies, dressed in a suit, stepped out.

“Last-minute passenger,” one of the bodyguards told her while his boss and the newcomer shook hands. “Now we are ready for takeoff.”

Well, they might be ready for takeoff, but she wasn’t. The newcomer wasn’t on her passenger manifest. There were only three passengers on it. Mr. Maldonado and the security detail. Elle checked her watch. When dealing with last-minute changes, they were supposed to drive back and print an updated copy, but only for big things. This was small potatoes. Besides, going back to the office, never mind how fast she drove, would risk losing their assigned slot, and that would not only piss the passengers off, but it would mean changing all the flight documentation, weather report included. Too many waves that would raise questions for poor Marlene afterward.

She sprinted up the stairs and to the cabin.

“All in order?” the captain asked.

“Yes. Let me add something.” She reached for the passenger manifest and wrote “+1pax” to it. “There. All ready. Have a safe flight, Captain.”

They took care of takeoff procedures and she watched the plane fly away.

Okay, one flight dispatched. Four to go.

* * * *

Elle walked across the grass at the Eternal Sun Resort, more than tipsy, wobbly even though her heels were in her hand, when she noticed the two grandmas sitting in the garden of the common area.

“Look who’s doing the walk of shame,” Violet said, smiling.

Elle reached them and plopped into a chair. “It’s not the walk of shame unless you’ve spent the night with someone. Besides, it’s five o’clock. Too early for the walk of shame.”

Violet glanced at her companion and they both chuckled. “In our time, anything after ten was the walk of shame. Heck, the death march of your reputation.”

“Mine died long ago,” Elle said.

“Nonsense, dear,” Violet answered, patting her on her hand. “All of us here know you’re golden.”

Mrs. Nicholson nodded too.

Elle loved these two grandmas. She’d gotten to know them pretty well during her time at the Resort. “Not sleeping tonight?”

“Old people don’t sleep. Not when they’re supposed to, anyway. And you? Still having trouble with it?”

Elle shrugged. “Getting better,” she lied, not that she was fooling anyone.

Mrs. Nicholson poured her a glass of iced tea. “Here. Did you have a nice time?”

“Yes, but I forgot how hard they party down here. I’m dead. And drunk.” Not dead or drunk enough as to be able to sleep, though. Not yet. “So, what are we watching?”

“Same old, same old.”

The three of them had spent many a night awake, watching the local TV channel these grandmas loved; the one that ran local news and forensic police shows.

“Great handiwork,” Mrs. Nicholson complimented Violet, pointing at Elle’s braids. “You still have the touch.”

Violet nodded. “Yes, fifty years working as a hairdresser. No arthritis, no cataracts can stop me. Muscle memory. Ingrained forever. When I die, you’d better hire a fantastic hairdresser for me. I have the names of a couple in the top drawer of my dresser. Don’t cut any corners, or I’ll come back and haunt you forever at night.”

Mrs. Nicholson turned her wrinkly eyes to Elle, a smile on her thin lips. “Like now, then.”

Violet waved her friend off. “So, dear, tell us, how come you’re coming back alone? Men should be fighting to walk you home.”

“I’d rather pay the cab fare. Less trouble. And you just want to snoop around my dates.”

“You can’t blame us. Seeing you beat the shit out of that rude man was the most fun I’ve had in a long while.”

Elle smiled at the memory. It had happened soon after moving to the Eternal Sun. Leave it to her to meet the state’s biggest son of a bitch on the very first day. It never failed. She was a magnet for asshole bad boys who believed the sun rose and set between their testicles. On the flip side, no matter how tough they pretended to be, their balls were as susceptible to knee kicks as anybody else’s. “I’m much tamer nowadays.”

“You seeing anyone?”

At the shake of her head, both grandmas frowned. “How are things going with that young man from James’s wedding? The big, scary one who scowled at you as if he was going to eat you.”

Elle chuckled. “Jack. And ‘as if he was going to murder me’ would be more accurate. He hates me.”

Mrs. Nicholson and Violet looked at each other and then both said, “Nah.”

That would mean so much more if the lovable grannies weren’t legally blind.

“I haven’t seen much of him since then. He’s been busy.”

His presence at Jonah’s christening had been a surprise. That he’d been his rude self hadn’t.

She’d also stopped sending him e-mails because he wasn’t undercover anymore. After all, she’d just wanted to keep him up to date. At least, that’s what she’d told herself to justify writing to him. Be that as it may, it had become such a habit she didn’t realize how much she enjoyed it until she decided not to write anymore. Going cold turkey had been damn hard. She missed it, even though he hadn’t answered, not even once.

“So you are not seeing each other?” Mrs. Nicholson asked, interrupting her thoughts. “His loss. Have I ever told you about my grandson?”

Elle laughed. Only one or two million times. Playing at matchmaking was the official sport at the Eternal Sun Resort. James had complained about it often enough, but he had no clue how bad it got, especially when you lived with the crazy seniors as she had for a year.