Now I’m sitting on a private jet headed to Kentucky. Having brought his young wife Harlow along, Rafael views this trip as a vacation. Dino and I are working, though.
I hate flying. Hate heights, actually. I’ve overcome the phobia behind the fear, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still hate bouncing around in a deathtrap thousands of miles in the air.
“I hate flying too,” Harlow says, sitting next to me.
Even smiling at her, I doubt she hates flying as much as I do. The blonde beauty is smiling too damn much to be scared.
“I love going home to see my family,” she adds when I remain silent. “When was the last time you visited your family?”
“I’m about to turn thirty, and I left home at eighteen. You do the math.”
“Rafael said your mother was a bitch.”
“He's too kind.”
Harlow and I are friends along with Troy’s woman Darla and my former co-worker Saskia. Girl time is new for me, and I really want to make it work. The problem is chicks talk about their feelings a lot more than guys, and I’m not a feelings type of gal.
“Don’t you have anyone you miss from home?” she asks, so desperate for us to share something in common.
“I miss my old dog, but he’s probably long dead.”
Harlow just had her nineteenth birthday. Even married and living in a new city, she’s young in a lot of ways. I don’t blame her for thinking I’m a depressing bitch. If we reversed our roles, I’d think the same thing.
During the flight, Dino walks past us five hundred times, and I can’t imagine he really needs to use the restroom. Either he’s doing drugs or trying to piss me off. The guy isn’t an addict, so I can assume Dino’s being a pest.
As soon as Harlow joins her husband in the back, Dino takes her empty seat.
“Alone at last, partner,” he says, flashing his perfect, white smile.
“What do you want?”
“An hour with your legs in the air.”
“Sounds awkward. No thanks.”
“The pleasure will be worth any pulled muscles, Apples.”
His nickname for me is aggravating, but slapping him hasn’t made him give it up. I’ve learned to accept he’s just this fucking annoying. What he lacks in personality, he makes up for with a thick head of nearly black hair, full lips, and rich brown eyes. Plus a lean, muscular body I look forward to using and tossing aside.
Waving off his presence, I mutter, “I bet I can get the same pleasure from a vibrator with less mess and pain, Tortellini.”
“I like when you call me that,” he murmurs.
I force myself to look into his smoky eyes. “Promise your sexual deviance won’t get me killed on this mission, and I’ll consider giving my vibrator a rest for one night.”
“Don’t you worry about getting killed,” he says, winking at me. “I’ll have your back.”
“Yeah, but you’ll just be looking at my ass.”
“Probably, but I've got great peripheral vision.”
Refusing to smile since any encouragement only empowers his smug nature, I sigh. “We’ll see. Now leave me alone so I can read.”
Dino stops talking. His silence doesn’t mean he changes seats, so I’m forced to spend the rest of the flight awkwardly ignoring the man very obviously watching me. By the time we land, I nearly bolt out of my seat and out of the plane door.
“She’s just really professional,” I hear Rafael telling Harlow when I rush past them. “Minka can’t wait to get to work.”
I leave them to their teasing and hurry to where the cars wait. A massive, blond biker stands next to one of the SUVs. He stares at me from behind mirrored glasses.
“Are you the help?” I ask.
“I’m Vaughn. I don’t know if that’s the same thing.”
Stepping closer, I size up the handsome biker. “There are two cars here. I want to be in the one that doesn’t include the Italian guy coming in this direction. If you make that happen, I will give you money. Hell, I’ll give you my first born kid. Do you understand?”
“Are you under the impression that we don’t speak English in Kentucky?”
“No, of course not. My bigotry is towards bikers, not Bluegrass State residents.”
“Oh, in that case, I’ll take the money,” Vaughn says, opening the back door of his SUV. “No offense to your first born kid, but I’m planning to make plenty of my own.”
“Good to know, stud. Please play interference with me and that one.”
Sliding into the backseat of the SUV, I pretend to be busy. A part of me worries Vaughn will stick Dino in my SUV as punishment for the biker insult. He doesn’t, though, and I hand him a hundred dollars once we’re on the road.
“City folk,” he mutters.
Rafael rides in the second SUV with Dino while I play girlfriend with Harlow.
“I’m not going to Cooper’s office,” she says. “You knew that when you picked this SUV, right?”
Frowning, I hear Vaughn snickering up front. “Where are we going?” I ask Harlow.
“I’m going to see my family. Wanna hang out?”
“Rafael and Dino are meeting with Cooper right now, though.”
“Yep.”