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But I can’t hold back the low laugh in my chest as I watch her look me over with disdain. “Sugar, you’d burn me to charcoal with that look if you could.”
Pressing her peach-pink lips flat with considerable effort, she glares. Planning my demise, I suspect. It would probably make her day, hell, maybe even her year, if I combusted on the spot.
“Try not to shoot me in there,” I say with a dark grin.
Good thing I’m wearing a bulletproof vest or she might just make that silent threat a not so silent bullet to my chest.
“Stay out of my way, then,” she snaps as she checks her clip for ammo and slams it back into her pistol one more time.
“You always so angry, Sprite? It’s really not healthy to carry that kind of energy around, you know?”
I purposefully use the nickname I know she hates, just for the fun of teasing her.
Her eyes go wide, then turn into furious slits. “I said, DO NOT call me Sprite.”
Damn if she isn't hot as hell when she’s like that. All bristly like a wildcat. I bet she’d claw the hell out of me if I got her off.
I’m grinning, with a barrage of dirty thoughts in my head, as I grab the oh shit handle over the SUV’s window. We take a tight curve like we’re in an Indy car race.
She glares and mutters something in her native tongue as she barely escapes getting thrown into my lap.
I laugh some more. Even though I wouldn’t be laughing if she did land on me. I’d probably be growling.
She straightens herself in the seat and snarls.
I shrug a shoulder. “I didn’t do it. Mario Andretti up there is the one with the gas pedal.”
Andre’s might not be in the Andretti family, but he’s our team’s unofficial driver. God help us all.
Marshall, the boss man, shifts in the passenger seat, causing the leather to creak as he adjusts his shoulders. The man’s a tank. And as serious as one too. He flicks his wrist and checks his watch again. “Four minutes out.”
As the minutes tick down, the air around us begins to crackle with tension. The teasing mood vanishing. Shit’s about to get real.
The road noise is the only sound in the SUV. Until the Sat phone rings.
“Talk,” Marshall says into it.
As we listen to his side of the call, I twist my neck, cracking the tension out of it.
Simona drops her voice, and with a satisfied sound, says, “I knew you’d be scared. You can back out now and make my day.”
Yeah. Right.
I lean down slowly and put my mouth right by her ear. “When I crack my neck, it’s because I’m ready. And you better be over your shit in about two minutes because we need to be a team when we go in there to rescue that girl. Remember how this works?”
She turns her head away from me. “I hate doctors. You’re all assholes.”
I unholster my pistol and check the clip. “Handy assholes. But yeah, a lot of us are assholes. I like to think I’m only 50%.”
She’s not impressed. Which I expected. Simona’s had it out for me ever since the clinic. Then she heard I was joining the team for some special operations and she went full on attack mode.
All, supposedly, because I have M.D. on my diploma.
What she doesn’t know is that I’ve always liked a challenge.
That’s where I thrive.
Making her like me is going to be fun.