“This is howsheflirts,” Austin shouted. “She thinks she’s bad at it, but actually she has me very— Well, let’s just say it works on me. However, this is not how you should flirt, and generally speaking, if a woman threatens to murder you, she means it. Except for Savannah. When she’s talking to me.”
Then she heard the spitting sound of the rifle, twice. And Roy’s howls and clanking faded to nothing.
The two tranqs she’d shot Roy with back on the mountainside had lasted a couple of hours.Well, fuck me very much,she thought. That’s not good. Not good at all.
Anthony twisted around to stare over his seat at Austin. “You don’t make any sense,” he said.
“That’s because Savannah and I don’t make any sense, on paper,” Austin said. “But we just work, somehow, don’t we, baby?”
“Well, now you’re just trying to piss me off. Don’t worry, I’m adding it to my list.” But Savannah was smiling to herself as she drove.
She loved the banter with Austin.
And she loved how he managed to be protective of her without making her feel diminished at all. The men she’d grown up with were usually too intimidated to make a move. They’d let her know very clearly that they saw her as a dude who just happened to be born without a dick and balls. Some men tried to go the opposite route, out-machoing her to the point where they were abusive and threatening.
But Austin was different. Austin openly admired her for what she was good at. Even when he was teasing her and giving her a hard time.
Was it possible that there could be something more? Was it possible that after they dropped off this mark, after she collected the money and saved the restaurant, she and Austin could somehow work out?
Austin had made it sound as if he was never going to come back. Was that because he thought that Roy would kill him? Or did he just have no interest?
She realized that the answer was painfully important to her.
She’d never seen Austin flirt with a girl. For the few months he’d been living in Greenville, she knew that plenty of women had pursued him, and he’d chased them all off with a snarl. But Savannah – he’d always looked at her like she was a meal that he wanted to devour, slowly. And he’d come to her house to spend time with her right before he went on what was probably going to be a suicide mission. He could have any woman in Foxhaven, any woman in Greenville…hell, any single woman on the west coast, but he’d chosen her.
Did that mean that Savannah was something special to him?
Well, there was no point at all in discussing it right now. Not in front of Anthony and Roy. Not when they were in a truck with a murder machine who was primed to explode at any moment.
