“I’ve never had a heart attack, so I wouldn’t know.” She grimaced. “But I can assure you, once a month, for about thirty-six hours straight, if I don’t have the pain meds, I want to crawl in a hole and die.”
He winced. “That’s gotta suck.”
Her expression was one of resignation. “It’s life. And the key to happiness is to roll with the punches.”
“Is that the key to happiness? And here I thought it was staying away from assholes at all costs.”
“Impossible,” she scoffed. “There are too many of them to avoid altogether.”
“Especially in your line of work, I reckon.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You really do hate lawyers, don’t you?”
He slid her a quick glance before admitting, “I used to think so. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Oh, be still my heart.” She pressed a hand to her chest. He had to force his eyes away from her ample cleavage. “Two compliments in the span of ten minutes. Careful, you might just turn a woman’s head.”
Camilla D’ Angelo’s smile was so wide and full of teeth that it made him wonder if it made her jaw hurt. And damned if he didn’t find himself grinning in return.
That is until her smile had him thinking about her mouth.
And her mouth had him thinking about her tongue.
And her tongue had him thinking about the kiss they’d shared the night before.
He’d been completely toasted by that point, so the recollection was fuzzy. But he seemed to recall the eager way she’d gripped his shoulders. The feel of her luscious breasts pressed against his chest. And the glittering invitation in her eyes as she’d stared up at him.
The moment his mouth had touched hers? He would swear he’d felt something deep inside him lock into place.
No, he silently insisted now. You were drunk and imagining things, hearing an echo from the past.
He ignored the small, quiet voice inside his head that called him a liar. He ignored it because the last time he’d felt that sensation, as if one of his missing puzzle pieces had snapped into its rightful spot, he’d ended up falling ass over teakettle in love.
And lord knows, I’ll never do that again.
Chapter 10
12:54 PM...
“What’s that?”
Carter glanced away from surveying the flotsam that remained from the crash of the amphibious plane. As much as the thought of seeing a dead body turned his stomach, he was really hoping to spot one. You know, to make sure everyone aboard the aircraft really had died. “What’s what?” he asked Robby.
“That.” Robby pointed toward the horizon.
Once again, it took Carter a few seconds to see anything beyond the glare of the sun atop the waves. But when he finally spotted what Robby gestured toward, an immediate sense of foreboding crackled at the back of his brain.
“Where are the binoculars?” He spun in a circle, his eyes pinging desperately around the speedboat.
No, no, no. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.
“Here.” Robby pulled the binoculars from around his neck and passed them to Carter, who wasted no time pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head and lifting the magnified lenses to his eyes. It took him a couple tries to adjust the magnification, but the instant he did, he let loose with a low, vicious curse.
“What?” Kenny questioned. “What d’ya see?”
“Survivors,” Carter snarled. “They fucking made it.”
He stabbed a finger in the direction of the island—which was little more than a glimmer of white and a wash of green to the naked eye.
“All of ’em?” Kenny asked, looking annoyingly unperturbed by this shitastic turn of events. The fucker was supposed to have blown them out of the damned sky, not knocked out their tail section, leaving them enough plane left so they could ditch and survive.
Kenny had assured him he knew just where to plant the explosives “And if I fuck it up, which I won’t, they’ll still crash and die.”
So much for that theory, Carter thought now, trying to smother the anger that burned through his veins. “I don’t know,” he admitted carefully. “I didn’t count heads. See for yourself.” He passed the binoculars to Kenny.
With a nonchalance that made Carter want to scream, Kenny lifted the magnified lenses to his face. After a moment, Kenny muttered, “I only count two people on the beach and neither one is your cousin. I think— No. There she is in the trees.” Lowering the binoculars, he nodded. “Yup. They all survived. Damn.”
Damn didn’t quite cover it. Which was why Carter let loose with, “Goddamnit. Goddamnit!” as he stalked toward the helm, prepared to fire the engines.
“Wait a minute.” Kenny frowned. “What’s the plan?”
“We have to go over there and kill them. Duh.”
“Did you forget that they’re Navy SEALs?” Robby squeaked.
They’d considered and discarded about a hundred different ways of offing Carter’s cousin. But they’d finally settled on driving down to Key West, waiting for Mia to make a trip there from Wayfarer Island, and then turning her plane into a firebomb on her return flight, because that had been the only plan that didn’t include them potentially having to come face-to-face with a bunch of Navy SEALs.
But this is different, he thought.
He voiced that exact sentiment aloud. “No, I haven’t forgotten. But this isn’t Wayfarer Island or Key West we’re talking about. They don’t have access to their weapons here. They don’t have anywhere to run and hide. We can take them all out from a distance with Kenny’s gun.” He motioned with his chin toward the matte black weapon lying on the console.
“Hang on.” Kenny patted the air, his heavy brow wrinkled. “Let’s think about this. I thought your whole thing was you wanna leave behind no trace. Blowing four people to smithereens will leave behind a fuck-ton of traces.”
“Our whole thing, as you call it”—Jane sniffed—“is to kill them. Period. End of story.”
There was a cold gleam in her eyes that Carter recognized. It had made its first appearance on a stormy night eight weeks ago when he’d gone to tell her he wanted to quit. That she didn’t pay him enough to continue to put up with her bullshit.