“I’m not leaving.” Bobbi folded her arms across her chest and speared Jax with a glare.
Despite her anger, her body did that thing it always did when she was near Jax. It pulsed with desire. She felt her nipples hardening, and she couldn’t help but let her eyes rove admiringly over his incredibly body. Mine, all mine. The broad shoulders, the curving biceps, the flat, hard stomach…all hers.
“Fine,” he shrugged said wearily. “I give. You win. She’s in there.” He nodded his head at a closed door. “Why don’t you girls go hang out with her, and your brother and I will hang out here? We’ll make coffee later. We have a crew coming in to relieve us at 7 a.m. She doesn’t speak any English, I’m afraid.”
“All right,” Bobbi said. Something was bothering her, but she wasn’t sure what.
She and Pixie opened the door and walked into the next room. A pretty girl with wavy dark hair, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, sat on an old sagging bed, listening to music on her headphones and typing on a tablet computer. She waved at them when they walked in, then went back to her computer.
Pixie and Bobbi sat on the other side of the bed in silence for a few minutes.
“Of course, you’re not technically cleared for bodyguard duty,” Bobbi said to Pixie.
“Oh, don’t start. Tyler’s been teaching me Krav Maga. And I fight dirty. And I always have your back.”
“Really? What’s it like wrestling on a mat with him?” Bobbi grinned wickedly. Tyler and Pixie had been attracted to each other since they first met, but they were taking their sweet time acting on it.
“None of your beeswax.” Pixie looked flustered. “Let’s get back to that whole bodyguard thing. You know you can’t get rid of me; I’m not going to let you have all the fun.”
“You’re supposed to be our expert on breaking and entering. On picking pockets. I feel badly, bringing you along on assignments where there’s potential danger.”
“Well, actually, I usually just find a way to tag along, so it’s not really your fault. Besides, I know the drill. If shit goes down, I dive behind the bed, you shift and rip their throats out.”
“Jeez! Language! We’re sitting in a room with a princess!”
“Oh, whatevs, she has her headphones on. Besides…she doesn’t look like a princess.” Pixie cast a doubtful look over at the young woman.
Bobbi glanced over at her, and caught a glimpse of the computer screen, and suddenly it hit her like a thunderbolt. She knew what had been troubling her ever since she and Pixie broke into the apartment.
“Those sons of bitches!” she hissed, jumping to her feet.
* * * * *
Jax and Heath ran for thirty blocks without stopping. As soon as Pixie and Bobbi had shut the door to the bedroom, they’d shifted, slunk quietly out of the apartment, and run for it as soon as they hit the sidewalk. As they ran, Heath’s jaws were firmly clamped on a bag of clothing for them to change into.
Finally, they came to a halt. They were out of the warehouse district and in a residential neighborhood, at Dominick’s house. The two of them trotted behind a hedge in his front yard, and shifted back in to human form. They pulled their clothes on, glancing behind them to make sure that Bobbi wasn’t in hot pursuit.
So far, they seemed to have pulled off their ruse.
“My sister is seriously going to kill us,” Heath said.
“I know how to distract her when she’s mad,” Jax said smugly.
“Hey. This is my sister we’re talking about,” Heath said, looking appalled. “I don’t actually want to picture whatever it is you’re talking about.”
“Adopted sister. And you know this is for the best,” Jax said.
“Yeah, you say that now,” Heath muttered. “When we get back, even in my bear form – my sister is seriously capable of putting the hurt on me.”
“Quit your whining and take it like a bear,” Jax said, as Dominick stepped out onto the porch, car keys dangling from his hand. He shut and locked the front door of his small wooden bungalow house.
“Are you ready?” he asked them.
“I was born ready,” Jax said.
“Cliché, dude,” Heath said.
“Dude is cliché. Do people actually talk like that in Arizona?” Jax glanced over his shoulder one final time to make sure that Bobbi wasn’t following them.
“Do you think that she’s figured it out yet?” Heath asked, ignoring Jax’s jab, as they climbed into Dominick’s car.
“Oh, yeah. Figured it out, plotting her revenge…Dominick, drive fast.”
“Really? Scared of a girl? Who’s the pussy here?” Dominick snorted in contempt, as he headed for their destination, a private airstrip an hour outside of Playa Linda.