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A warm buzz of attraction spread outward from her core at the devilish glint in his green eyes. “You never know…” She gave him what she knew was a flirtatious smile.
* * *
“Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for takeoff.” The pilot’s voice crackled through the plane’s PA system.
Spencer clicked his seatbelt into place, then glanced over at Toni as she did the same. Even this early in the morning, dressed in jeans and a plain pink T-shirt, she looked fantastic. Not that he had any business looking, not really. He was here for the mission, nothing else. Except the more he told himself that, the less it rang true.
He liked her, more than was probably wise. For her part, Toni seemed oblivious to his presence today. She’d met him at the private airfield with far less luggage than he’d expected, and they’d waited together for nearly an hour with no complaint on her part while their pilot ran through his preflight checklist, then finally allowed them to board. Now, she sat across from him on a plush leather bench seat with her legs tucked beneath her and her dark hair slicked back into a sleek ponytail, glasses on, lost in whatever she was doing on her laptop. She looked so damned sweet it made his teeth ache. Part of him longed to pull her over into his lap and kiss her silly.
The rest of him wanted to run for the hills. The kind of wham-bam, white-hot relationship he was imagining with her rarely worked out. Then again, it wasn’t like other kinds of relationships had paid off for him either. Too fast, too far away, too hot, too cold—he’d run the Goldilocks relationship gamut enough times to know better. Still, that didn’t stop him from checking her out and daydreaming. He was a straight, healthy male, after all. Thankfully, his phone buzzed in his pocket and distracted him. He pulled it out to see a message from Kyle.
Boarding flight at Reagan now.
Arriving in Jubail 05:30 local time tomorrow.
Even though this was technically Spencer’s mission, the team was coming to Jubail, too, to be on hand if Spencer succeeded in tracking down Toni’s father or figuring out how he was involved in this SHEEPSKIN organization. After spending the previous afternoon going over every inch of the plane and even sneaking in to search Toni’s office when she was elsewhere, he hadn’t found anything to clue him in to Coran Williams’s current whereabouts. He texted back to Kyle:
Sitting on tarmac, waiting for takeoff. Will message again upon arrival.
He’d started to put his phone away when it buzzed again.
Spencer pulled it back out and snorted at the new text, this one from Scotty.
Private flights are for pussies.
On the heels of that message came another, this time from Gage.
You owe me fifty bucks.
Spencer sighed and shut off the device before jamming it back into the pocket of his jeans. He and the guys had played poker well into the night the evening before, and he’d unwisely bet Gage he couldn’t sneak a C-4 pack and his handgun past the TSA checkpoint. Spencer should’ve known better, especially considering Gage had helped design the new safety protocols the TSA agents were now following and therefore knew every potential flaw in them, but he’d had one too many beers and his mind had been far too preoccupied with a certain brunette who was strictly off-limits.
Besides, needling Gage was fun these days, with one of the romance novel covers his girlfriend, Anna—a photographer and cover designer for Coran Williams Publishing—had shot of him finally hitting the virtual shelves this week. Spencer couldn’t remember ever laughing as hard as he did when he saw an oiled-up, plastic-sword-wielding Gage decked out as a Viking marauder.
He chuckled just thinking about it.
“What are you laughing at over there?” Toni asked, drawing his attention to her once more, not that it had ever gone far.
“Nothing.” Spencer settled back on the bench seat for the nearly fourteen-hour flight ahead. “Funny text from a friend.”
“Hmm.” She closed her laptop and pulled a blanket around herself. “Well, you better get some sleep. Things will be hectic once we arrive.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She hurled a pencil at his head, and he ducked to avoid it. “Hey now. I’m pretty sure the tossing of sharp objects within the fuselage is a violation of safety laws,” he teased.
Toni stuck her tongue out at him, then pummeled her small airplane pillow with more force than necessary. Given this was his first trip on a private plane, he’d half expected everything in here to be plated in gold. Instead it was brown leather and all-purpose dark carpet.
He wondered if she went for simple on purpose to contrast with her father. Coran Williams wasn’t known as a style maven, but the man did love to flaunt his wealth, at least from what Spencer had seen in the tabloids. Homes around the world, an art collection to rival most museums, fancy sports cars galore.
Spencer closed his eyes, hoping to get enough rest to avoid jet lag, only to open them again moments later as Toni cursed and changed positions. He watched her fuss and cuss for several seconds, then quirked a sardonic brow in her direction. “Problem?”
“No. Yes.” She punched the pillow again and scowled. “I can’t get comfortable.”
“And you think beating up the pillow will help?”
She flipped him off in response.
Every time Spencer thought he might be about to drift off, a muttered oath or a violent pillow punch from Toni would jolt him back to wakefulness. Finally, he unclicked his belt and waggled his fingers at her. “C’mon.”
