Rhea pulled her weapon out from the holster at her back, then ejected and checked her clip. “You got that much right.” She slammed the clip back in and switched the safety off. “You want a ten-second head start or can I just shoot you now?”
Tee shook her head at Ace. “Why must you always torment her? One day, she really is going to shoot you and I just might authorize it.” Tee turned back to her with a warning stare. “Put it away, Rhea.”
Grumbling, she reactivated the safety and complied.
“Ah, she wouldn’t shoot me anyway, Tee. She’s just covering her infatuation for me by being a hard-ass.”
Rhea stood up to confront him. “You know, Ace, you’re not nearly as irresistible as you think you are.”
“Sure, and just how many times have you dreamed about having me naked and in your bed?”
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Rhea counted to ten in her head and forced herself not to rise to his baiting. But the worst part of it all was that he was right. She did find him physically attractive, but the minute he opened his mouth, she wanted to gag him.
“Oh, yeah,” she said sarcastically. “You set my entire world on fire. Oh, baby; oh, baby. I must have your hot bod. Why don’t we just strip naked and do it right here in the cube?”
Hunter Wesley Thornton-Payne stuck his handsome, albeit pompous, blond head up over the wall of the cube beside Rhea’s. “Jeez, people. Could you cut the crap? You know some of us are actually trying to work over here.”
“Since when do you work on anything other than your stock portfolio, Payne?” Carlos Selgado asked in his accented voice as he popped up over Rhea’s other wall to glare at Hunter. “Some of us are enjoying the fireworks.”
“My name is Thornton -Payne,” Hunter corrected.
Ignoring him as he always did, Carlos looked over at Tee. “If Rhea is really going to get naked, can I bump off Ace and take over his case?”
Tee gave them all a withering glare. “Agents, down, or there will be a vicious virus that attacks the payroll system and locks you all out of the loop. It’s called the Pissed-off Tee Virus and it could make it so that none of you get paid for at least six weeks…maybe more.”
Carlos and Hunter immediately vanished.
Tee turned back to Rhea and Ace. “You two, play nice.”
Rhea scoffed. “Play nice? I’d rather pet a scorpion, bare-handed.”
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That devilish grin returned to Ace’s face as he raked her with an appreciative stare. “I’ll show you my stinger if you’ll show me yours.”
She screwed her face up in disgust. The man was truly a reprobate.
“Hey, Carlos,” he called, “you used to do a lot of work with scorpions. How do they mate, anyway?
You know they got those stingers and claws and—”
“Enough with the mating rituals of scorpions,” Rhea said from between clenched teeth. “Why don’t we discuss the praying mantis instead? You know, the female rips the head off the male. She’s a wise woman.”
Ace wagged his eyebrows at her. “Yeah, but what a way to go, huh? If you’ve got to die, it’s always best to go out with a good bang.”
Tee cast a withering stare at them. “Yo, Marlin Perkins and crew, let’s get back on topic here.”
Ace leaned nonchalantly against Rhea’s desk and folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, we’ll get back on the subject now and save the banging for later.”
Rhea just continued to glare at him. This was one of those times when she really hated this man.
But then Thadeus “Ace” Krux was a man of many talents. He could scale a building in a manner to make Spider-Man proud. He could drive better and faster than Jeff Gordon and Mario Andretti combined. He could construct a lethal bomb from an empty Coke bottle, a piece of tissue, and simple household cleaners.
Most of all, he could render any woman on the planet speechless at first glance.
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It was a hell of a combination that was deadly to any woman’s defenses. He had the sleek, seductive movements of a beast in the wild. The smile of Don Juan and the intelligence of Einstein, all of which was packaged into the body of a Bowflex ad model.
He was the epitome of everything she found desirable in the male species….
And everything she despised.
His calm, cool, rationality bordered on dispassionate. His arrogance knew no bounds, and his ego…
Someone really needed to take him down a few notches.
Since he seemed to live for no other purpose than to torment her, he was completely distracting to her peace of mind.
“So has she racked him yet?” Joe asked as he joined them.
Barely in his thirties, Joe was young to hold the position of senior director for such an important agency, and yet Rhea couldn’t think of anyone more suited to controlling the motley, often illegal bunch that made up the BAD task force.