Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) (8 page)

Jack shook his head. “Why didn’t you tip off the police he was smuggling drugs?”

“Already did that once. He got arrested and his ass probed. I try to mix it up,” she answered, winking at him. “You know, to keep it entertaining.”

Louise laughed. “You’re diabolical.”

Just evening the odds.

“When you get off? You could come for a beer. The Borg too,” Louise said.

“She’s off already,” Jack answered for Elle and then turned to her. “No beer. Now let’s go to your office.”

“You could wait here.”

“Not a chance in hell,” he said with a snort. “You’re not ditching me again.”

Damn. He’d read her. Although she was sure the security checks wouldn’t have stopped Jack from charging in to drag her ass out. Then again, him chasing her on the tarmac would have been a sight to behold.

She gestured for him to follow her. She might as well get it over with, because this was a battle she wasn’t winning. “Let the record reflect that I’m doing this just to humor you and to avoid a scene. I’ll arrange some time off, if you agree to get off my back with my other activities. Oh, and if Biggs is back, I will be back too. Non-negotiable.”

“This is not a democracy. We already had a deal in place. A deal I didn’t need to make. Don’t tempt your luck.”

She rolled her eyes. How generous of him.

The second she got to her locker, she was so debugging her bag.

As she walked into her boss’s office, she heard Jack say, “And get it in writing.”

God. This…partnership of theirs was going to end up very badly. Murderously so.

* * * *

“We’re taking my truck,” Jack said, staring at Elle’s ride. There was no way he was getting into that slick, tiny sports car.

“Why?”

He looked at himself and then at the car, which barely reached his waist, and cocked his eyebrow. “Why do you think? Not to mention it’s fucking girlie.”

She patted the hood of the car. “Don’t listen to him, René, you’re very masculine. The Borg is being mean on purpose.”

René. Of course she’d named it. So fucking Elle. And that sports car was so her too. A hot little package. A tease.

He’d observed while she’d smiled at her boss and managed to get time off without any notice whatsoever. The supervisor had given her five personal days so she could go right away and had agreed to file the paperwork for family leave with the human resources department. All that at an airline famous for being notoriously understaffed on the best of days. Elle got absolutely whatever she wanted from men, which Jack couldn’t stand. She’d played with that Biggs too. By the look of it, he was a complete asshole but that didn’t take away from the fact that she was putting him through the wringer. Toying with him. Just for fun.

Too bad Jack didn’t seem to remember that when she was close and her scent was all over him, filling his nostrils and driving him mad with lust.

“We could take separate cars,” she suggested.

Right.

“Come on, my truck is over there.” He would get René later on.

When they made it to his ride, she whistled. “Cool. Can I drive?”

“Nope. As long as I’m around, I’m driving and you’re riding shotgun. And that’s the best of the scenarios, because if you piss me off too badly, you’ll be sitting in the back.” Or on the roof. On second thought, forget the roof. She’d actually enjoy that.

“Spoilsport.”

“Besides,” he continued, “you drive like a homicidal maniac.”

“I do not.”

Jack shook his head, ignoring her. “Can’t understand how they let you drive at the airport.”

“I had to pass an exam to get my airport driver’s license.”

Which she probably got by smiling and fluttering her eyelashes. His expression might have been too evident, for she added, “And I passed it fair and square. I may drive a bit fast, but we flight dispatchers are busy people. We have places to go, planes to get to.”

“People to run over,” Jack muttered as the engine roared on their way out of the parking lot.

She chuckled, not taking offense. “That too.”

“Next time that fucker Biggs is going to fly, you should put him in a boarding bus and play Mad Max with him.”

“I might.”

“You are making that bastard’s life miserable just for fun.”

“I have my reasons.”

“Which are?”

“None of your concern. About today’s schedule,” she said, changing the subject. “I need to go to Rosita’s to supervise prep, but before that, there’s somewhere I need to be at six o’clock.”

“Where?”

“At the square in front of the train station.”

“Why?”

“I’m meeting somebody, but it will be just five minutes. You can go home and wait for me there. Or head to Rosita’s.”

“Let me make something perfectly clear to you, pet. Wherever you’re going, I’m going with you, or you aren’t going at all. Pick.”

“Okay,” she grumbled while her cell chimed and she read the message. “Don’t say I didn’t give you any options.”

He frowned, but she didn’t seem forthcoming and Jack welcomed the silence. Being around Elle was so exhausting. She was always talking about something or on her phone and on the go. He was sure he’d spoken more the past twenty-four hours than in the last month.

“Damn, I got a run in my pantyhose. This job is a killer on hosiery,” she said. “Don’t look.”

Fantastic. That was the equivalent of saying “don’t think about a pink elephant.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her squirming in her seat. “What are you doing?”

“Taking my pantyhose off. I can’t go around with a run on them as big as a freaking highway, can I?”

Crap. Shit. That was exactly what he needed. Elle lifting her hips, pulling her pencil skirt up, and shimmying out of her stockings. As if his poor dick wasn’t in enough pain already.

He kept his eyes on the road, his jaw clenched, his knuckles white from clutching the wheel.

Being undercover always played a number on his libido, but one look at Elle and he was standing at full salute, ready to go—dying to go, actually—his cock throbbing and reminding him he’d gotten no action in almost a year.

“Done,” he heard her say.

Jack threw a glance her way. Yep, her gorgeous, tanned legs were bare and she was straightening her skirt. She dumped the tightly bunched pantyhose into her purse. Then she rummaged around, grabbed something, and after opening the window, threw it away.

A small, black, button-shaped thing. His bug. He turned to her. “I saw that.”

She held his gaze, amused, not the least sorry. “Oops. It slipped.”

Cheeky, his pet.

Her cell beeped and she started texting again. In between texting, she reached for the radio and flipped the channels until she found one with something that sounded like music from the fifties.

“Yeah,
Grease
,” she said, and began singing “tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far,” while typing something on her cell. Jesus Christ, talk about multitasking.

They hit traffic on their way downtown, arriving with just a few minutes to spare. By then, Elle was tapping her knee nervously, her phone beeping constantly. Getting on Jack’s last nerve.

“We’re here; now what?” he asked, parking.

“We’re on the wrong side. We have to be at the corner of Fifth and Palmer.” She jumped out of the car and rushed ahead, dodging people.

“Slow down,” he growled, catching up with her.

“I’m going to be late. I should have driven. You’re frigging slow. A yellow light means speed up, not slow down.”

Sure. If it had been up to her, they would have run half the red lights.

That he was an excellent getaway driver, he kept to himself. “Risking one’s life when it’s not absolutely necessary is unacceptable.”

She didn’t hear him, or if she did, she totally ignored him and kept blabbing, trying unsuccessfully to make headway. “Next time we’re taking René. I told you the I-15 was no good.”

Jack grabbed her by her belt loop, bringing her to an abrupt halt and turning her around.

“Jack, what the hell are—”

He took her mouth, hard. “Calm down. Shut up and follow me.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, her luscious lips shiny from him ravishing them. “This is becoming a habit already,” she muttered as he navigated the crowd much more efficiently. “Very unflattering.”

No shit. Very unflattering—not for her, but for him. He didn’t seem to be able to stop kissing her. Twenty-four hours and he was already breaking all sorts of rules. No physical contact, the most important, had gone out the window. As if he didn’t have trouble enough keeping it down when she was around.

He got her to the corner where she was supposed to meet God fucking knew who as the train-station clock struck six o’clock.

“Now what?”

“Now we cross the street,” she stated.

What the fuck? They’d just come from that direction.

She was toying with him.

“Pet,” he growled, “I will not be played—”

But he couldn’t continue because the light turned green, and when people started crossing, loud music blasted from speakers whose location he wasn’t able to pinpoint.

We’re your Weather Girls

Suddenly, everyone around him burst into dance, Elle included.

Fuck. He was in the middle of a flash mob. Talk about going unnoticed.

Of course Elle would be in a flash mob. Why wouldn’t she engage in one of the most useless activities in the world?

He moved a bit aside, as the dancers got it on, their choreography very elaborate and coordinated as the song went on about raining men and umbrellas and God knew what else more.

People were exiting their cars and other surprised passersby were clapping their hands to the rhythm of the song, all of them singing along.

Jack felt like he was in a fucking movie. He would have been more comfortable in the middle of a bombardment.

… every specimen! … rough and tough and strong and mean…

At those last words, Elle searched Jack’s eyes, their gazes colliding.

She had that irritating smirk on her face. Daring him. And then she winked at him.

Jesus, she was gorgeous. With those expressive eyes and that long dark hair. The hourglass figure, the boobs, the ass. The long legs. The cheekiness.

And that uniform. With that ridiculous yellow scarf around her neck and that skintight, formfitting short jacket. The skirt riding high on her thighs while she danced. Sexiest stewardess he’d ever seen.

Jack reached for the antacids in his pocket. Man, now that he was with her twenty-four seven, his ulcer was acting up and he was running out of pills.

He stood there, spellbound, soaking her in. Every one of her movements. It didn’t help that she seemed to be dancing just for him. Oozing sex appeal and that in-your-face disposition of hers, the one that made his cock so hard he could hardly breathe.

She was all that he would ever want in a woman. Except for that attitude of hers. That would ruin everything. It would drive him crazy. He could never trust her, and she would never be happy staying in, making a home for him. Her priority would always be her work. Her agenda. And he was playing with fire. She affected him just by being close to him. Not good.

She must have noticed his frown, because she gestured at him and pouted. And the more he frowned the more she pouted until she just burst into laughter, never breaking a step.

When the music ended, the flash mob dispersed as fast as it had formed. Traffic was still stopped, passersby clapping and whistling.

Elle walked up to him. “Now let’s go, Borg. I’m expected at Rosita’s. We are a bit late, but I’ll change out of this uniform and into the one for Rosita’s in the car.”

He reached for his pills. Man, he was so fucked.

Chapter Six

“Two-minute sprint. Rev up to one-oh-five.”

Joaquín Maldonado huffed, watching the small screen on the stationary bike, stuck on 85 rpm.

“Come on, come on. Abdomen hard,” Lars, his personal trainer said. “Keep pedaling. Piece of cake.”

Piece of cake twenty years and twenty pounds ago.

There was a knock on the door and Nico, Maldonado’s right hand, walked in. “You wanted to see me?” he asked over the loud music.

Maldonado nodded and motioned for Lars to leave.

“Slow down but don’t stop pedaling or get off the bike. Your heartbeat would spike,” he warned. “You need to continue pumping oxygenated blood into your legs.”

Like he could get off by himself with all the wires Lars had strapped on him to monitor his heart, and those damn shoes that locked into the pedals.

“When you recover from the cycling, we’ll do some weights.”

Damn Swede, fucking worse than the Gestapo.

“One of these days I’m going to shoot him. Let’s see how he recovers from that,” Maldonado grumbled after Lars left.

Nico smiled, but didn’t say anything.

“Kill please that damn music,” Maldonado ordered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. “It’s driving me nuts.”

Nico turned it off. “Death metal. It’s a Scandinavian thing.”

Who the fuck thought pedaling to death metal was a good idea? That shit didn’t even have a rhythm. Salsa, bachata, mambo; that was something one could pedal to.

Wouldn’t it be ironic that after relocating to Florida for security reasons—mainly to avoid getting shot by any of the thousand hired guns of rival cartels—he’d die here of a heart attack, at the hands of this vigorexic asshole?

“We have a problem. Police got a search warrant and have impounded the jet.”

Nico stilled. “The jet is clean. I personally supervised it.”

“I’m sure it is. What worries me is the why. Was everything taken care of?”

By everything he meant everyone. Nico didn’t need explanations.

“I was told so by your men. Pilot, driver, the chick at the airport. The middlemen were disposed of too. Everyone who could have tied Aalto to the jet is gone.”

“Well, those morons missed someone. My sources tell me the police have a witness linking me to Aalto’s murder.”

“Do we have a name for that witness?”

Maldonado shook his head. “You know what to do.” That witness could not be allowed to live; Maldonado had enough headaches as it was without this new threat.