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.