Jacked Up (Bowen Boys #4) (9 page)

Nico nodded.

Damn Aalto and inflight snacks.

He’d planned to make the politician see reason. If the old fart couldn’t be swayed with money, then he’d resort to blackmail and show him all the footage he had on his kinky extramarital escapades. Convince him how beneficial it would be to forget about his latest proposal and support a less radical path. Unblock the port. Then the bastard had choked on the olive he was eating when Maldonado had shown him the pictures.

“Let me, boss, I got this,” Emiliano had said as the man was turning blue.

He’d yanked him up and attempted to Heimlich the shit out of the politician. Which he did, managing to break his neck in the process.

Old people broke so damn easily. Especially when the Heimlich maneuver was done wrong and the poor bastard was shaken like a rag. In Emiliano’s defense, he did get the olive out of Aalto’s throat.

Pity they had miscalculated and his body hadn’t hit the Atlantic Ocean. He would have been lost forever. But no, another mistake in a long line of mistakes.

“Nico?” he called as the man was walking toward the door. “I want this handled fast and quietly.”

“Of course. I’ll take care of it myself,” the Russian answered.

Maldonado had always followed his instincts, and getting Nico to work for him had been a jackpot.

If he’d been on the plane, things would have gone differently, and they wouldn’t be in their current predicament. But he’d been supervising the labs and dealing with shit back home while Maldonado was left with incompetent imbeciles who not only snuffed the only hope of resolving their logistical issues but were incapable of cleaning up their own messes.

He should have listened to his gut feeling and shot Emiliano when they were just kids. Family brought nothing but trouble.

“What about the last shipment?”

“Still stuck in the port. Paperwork hasn’t come through yet. Controls have tightened.”

Damn. Counting the one the police intercepted at open sea, that was the second shipment they’d lost in ten days. “Business is suffering. We need to deliver the product and get paid for it.” They couldn’t afford more losses. He was beginning to be strapped for cash. Suppliers had to be paid. Funding that never-ending territory war back at home wasn’t cheap. “Payment is overdue. I can try buying some extra time but this situation better resolve quickly.”

They needed to find more effective ways to move the product. Especially now that Aalto was gone and with him the possibility of using the old bastard’s kinkiness to Maldonado’s advantage.

Maybe his successor would be more agreeable. Thank God there were so many ready to take Aalto’s place. Politicians were like cockroaches: they were never in short supply.

* * * *

It was two in the morning and Elle was sitting in his truck, humming and swaying to the music on the radio. More of that fifties-sounding, great-balls-of-fire shit. All after her stint in the police station, the red-eye from hell, working her shift at the airport, hurrying around Boston for a flash mob, and being at Rosita’s over seven hours playing the perfect hostess. Jack was dead on his feet just from keeping up with her and she was fresh as a rose, humming and swaying. At two a.-fucking-m.

“Well, thanks for the ride. You going now, right?” she asked as he parked in front of her house, in a quiet residential area on the outskirts of Boston.

“Wrong. I’m staying here,” Jack said, gesturing toward the house.

Elle frowned. “You could plant another bug on me. I promise not to get rid of it. Them, if you want.” She lifted her arms, like a martyr. “Wire me. I surrender.”

“My place is across town.”

“And now that we’re on the subject, where’s your place?” she asked. “I would love to go take a look.”

“We are not on the subject.”

“Don’t tell me you already have a wife and a couple of kids there.” He held her scrutinizing gaze and kept quiet until she spoke again. “Either way, you can’t stay at my house. Don’t you have anything else to do than stalk me? What about that biker bar of yours? Aren’t you needed there now that you’re back from doing whatever it was you were doing in Florida?”

“I was saving your ass in Florida. And I’m not stalking you. I’m watching over you.”

“There seems to be a very fine line between stalking and watching over.”

“I don’t understand fine lines, pet.”

She snorted. “No shit.”

“You’re a good one to talk.”

“I do understand about fine lines,” she said, a saccharine smile on her face. “I just don’t give a damn.”

He stared at her for a long while. “If I have to stay in the car, I will. In a residential area like this, all the neighbors will see me and call the cops, and probably your mom and sister as well, but we can play it that way if you want.”

He’d noticed how she’d avoided answering Rosita’s phone. She was trying to dodge someone and his money was on Tate.

Elle caved. “Okay, come in if you must. The house is big enough that we don’t have to see each other. But keep in mind I’m doing you a favor. If my neighbor Mrs. Copernicus spots you, and she will, she’ll bring a thermos and sit with you. They take neighborhood watch very seriously around here. And they are very nosy and chatty.”

Fuck, no, please.

He’d had enough of that at Rosita’s. Thank God people seemed to understand he didn’t want to socialize and left him be. Not before bothering the shit out of him for a while though.

He gestured to the pink house. “Copernicus is that one, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

Because when he’d picked the lock to get in earlier that day, he’d bumped into her on his way out. He’d been swearing and looking mighty pissed, but the lady hadn’t even blinked. She’d smiled, handed him a plate full of cookies, and informed him that she’d seen him and Elle arriving and that the Coopers left a spare key under the second flowerpot from the right. No need to break and enter, she’d added.

“Met her already,” he answered curtly. “Cookies on the table. The spare key under the flowerpot I confiscated.”

“Oh, how romantic. You’ve barely kissed me, and we’re already exchanging keys.”

As if. She was getting the key to his place like fucking never.

He hoped his glare spoke volumes, but Elle didn’t seem to mind or care. She threw him an air-kiss and, smiling, opened the front door.

After dumping her stuff on the table and taking one cookie, Elle headed for the kitchen, opened the freezer, and took out a gallon of ice cream.

At fucking two thirty.

“Midnight snack. You want?”

He shook his head. How she could be hungry when they’d eaten a feast at Rosita’s once the last diner had left, it was beyond him.

She sat on the sofa, tucked her legs under her ass, turned on the TV, and began scooping ice cream.

At fucking two thirty.

Jack frowned. “You’re not tired?”

“Not yet.” She waved around. “I’ll give you the grand tour later, but basically what you see is what you get. You can park your things in the guest room upstairs. It used to be Jonah’s, so no fear of frilly anything.”

“You live alone?” he asked, looking around the huge Victorian house.

“Most of the time. Whenever Mom is back from Florida, she stays at Ron’s. She seems uncomfortable being here with him. She blushes.” Ron was Tate and Elle’s mother’s boyfriend. Nice quiet guy if Jack remembered correctly from James’s wedding.

What wasn’t clear to him was why Elle lived in the family home, surrounded by what must be painful memories. Then again, this was a perfectly good house. No reason to go empty forever.

“No Bowen wall of fame here?”

“Still shocked about that pic, right?” Elle asked, chuckling.

Fuck, yeah, he was.

Rosita’s was full of pictures, ranging from very old, beginning-of-the-twentieth-century shots of Italian immigrants to the US to recent ones, featuring the Bowens prominently. Jack had been standing in front of that particular photo for a long while, not sure what he was seeing. “What is that?”

Elle had walked to him and giggled. “That’s Cole’s wedding. The centerpiece of my Bowen collection. Such a pity I wasn’t there to take more shots.”

“Where the heck—”

“Las Vegas. During a
Star Trek
convention.”

That at least had explained the aliens. Amazing that Cole had allowed Elle to hang it. Things must have changed a lot since the last time he’d seen the oldest of the Bowens.

Jack wasn’t sure yet whether to be amused or horrified.

“The marker on James and Tate’s wedding picture; your handiwork, right?” he asked.

“How did you guess?”

Side by side with Cole’s
Star Trek
wedding photo from hell there had been one of James and Tate’s wedding party. Jack’s face had been covered with black marker and someone had written “top secret” near it.

“I figured you would want to protect your identity,” she continued, scooping more ice cream and then licking the spoon. As if staring at her at Rosita’s swaying her ass hadn’t been bad enough, or trying not to watch as she changed out of her airport uniform in his truck, now he had a ringside view of her gorgeous mouth playing with her food. “I guess getting new fake passports and changing names must be a drag. And cost a mint. I have a close-up the photographer took of us while dancing at the wedding reception. I personally think we look amazing, but I can’t hang a picture with half of it crossed over with marker. I’m waiting for you to be a normal civilian so that your face can be publicly revealed.”

She was making fun of him. As always. People gave him a wide berth. Grown men had trouble holding his stare and this tiny woman was laughing at him.

“Why don’t you have a man?” he blurted, suddenly irritated.

“I do have plenty of those.”

“No, you don’t. You have half-assed, no-balls, no-dicks, wet-behind-the-ears kids with barely any stubble who worship at your feet and agree with you about everything. I meant a real man looking out for you. Getting in your face when it’s needed.” Which, as far as he could see, was all the fucking time.

“Oh, they have balls. And there’s nothing wrong with their dicks, I can assure you. Besides, I don’t need a man getting in my face.”

He begged to differ, but that conversation was a lost cause if he ever saw one.

“And that?” he asked, gesturing to the sentence on the kitchen door.
Believe in the impossible
, it read. He’d noticed inspirational stickers on every door he’d seen so far.

She shrugged. “Good to remember.”

For the first time the entire night, Elle seemed down. He’d been praying for her to stop blabbing and be quiet, but now that she was, it didn’t sit well with him.

“So what other moronic activities you take part in that I need to be aware of?”

Her eyes brightened. Her lips quirked up. Yeah, much better. “I keep busy. But don’t worry, we aren’t having another flash mob until the next month.”

Oh, he wasn’t worried. Much.

“You need to cancel all that shit.” No more running around for stupid flash mobs. “And get rid of those braids,” he added, pointing at her head. “I don’t like them.”

She let out a soft snort. “Let’s see what I can do. And about my schedule, I’ll keep to just the bare necessities. Swear.”

She lifted her hand, those angelic eyes and that damn smirk on her face not boding well with him. He felt his ulcer acting up. He’d dealt with lowlifes and criminals all his life and not a glitch. He’d met her and gotten a fucking ulcer.

He reached into his pocket and took another antacid.

Mullen needed to get his ass in gear and catch Maldonado soon, or Jack’s insides would burst into flames.

“There’s no food in your kitchen.”

“There’s ice cream.”

“What I said. No food.”

She threw a glance at him and asked, “You were joking in the plane, right?”

He pondered for a second. “Yeah, I didn’t neutralize any hijackers.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, between giggles. “I meant what you said about wanting a Pilgrim as a wife.”

“Nope. Totally serious.”

“You’re in the wrong century. Heck, the wrong millennium.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why a bread-baking wife?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “Is it because you can’t cook? Because that’s why God created takeout. You just stick the menus on the fridge door, have a phone handy, and you’re set.”

“Of course I can cook.” Rather well, actually. Nothing fancy or gourmet, but he could create an edible meal from almost anything. He’d had lots of experience. He’d grown up on that. “Did I tell you already I prefer my women silent?”

Elle broke into laughter. “I prefer my men with a working brain. We can’t always win, can we?”

Smart-ass. Beautiful, sexy, exasperating smart-ass.

He caved. “I want someone that will have my children, and whose priority would be taking care of her family. Not someone who just wants to have fun and run around, flaunting herself and probably cheating on me the second I step out the door.”

He knew before he closed his mouth that he’d spoken too much.

Elle smiled, realizing that too. “Ahh, so that’s why you said you didn’t want someone like me. Because you think I flaunt myself and cheat? You think I’m a whore.”

“I didn’t use that word.”

“Didn’t have to, Borg. You’re spot-on about one thing, though. I’m anything but silent. In bed or out of it. Not that you’ll ever get to experience the ‘in’ part. The other, all the screaming and yelling I do outside, I’m going to give you plenty. I suggest you save yourself a world of pain and aggravation and take on another super-secret assignment and disappear.”

“I don’t think so, pet,” he growled, planting his feet onto the sofa table and looking at the ceiling. “Despite whatever you need to believe, you are a witness to a crime, and Maldonado plays in the big leagues. He will not hesitate to cut your throat. The second I think your cover is blown, I’m pulling you out and into hiding. And I don’t want to hear a word from you.”

Silence.

Oh, miracle.

Jack turned toward her and to his utter surprise found her sleeping. No wonder she hadn’t given him one of her clever comebacks. Even when she fell asleep, she always had the last word.