that to my sister, Kate, and she’ll likely scratch your eyes out.”
Bravo for Kate. Laura was squarely in her corner.
“I take it your sister’s a card-carrying feminist?”
“My sister is a woman who believes she can do anything as well as a man.”
Wide-eyed, Laura asked, “Isn’t that the same thing?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he nodded curtly toward her suitcases. “You want me to put those in the back?”
She gave him an obliging smile that she knew set his teeth on edge. “If you don’t mind.”
Muttering something she couldn’t catch beneath his breath, Michael tugged the suitcases to the back of the truck. She waited patiently by the closed passenger door while he placed them inside. It didn’t take him long to get the hint. With a long-suffering sigh, he came around to her side and yanked the door open.
“Thank you,” she said.
She realized her mistake the minute she faced the truck. In her zeal to play Ruby to a T, and to push Michael’s buttons, she’d forgotten that it was a long way up into the passenger seat. Her skirt was short. And tight. Laura felt Michael’s gaze burning along her legs as she climbed into the cab with as much decorum as possible.
Her temper was boiling and her cheeks hot by the time she’d settled herself comfortably.
“Enjoy the view?” The words were Laura’s, but they were said in Ruby’s teasing manner.
“A gentleman never looks,” he replied, deadpan.
“I thought we agreed on Saturday that you’re no gentleman.”
He allowed himself a smug smile. “We did, didn’t we?”
On that infuriating remark, he closed her door. A minute later he was behind the wheel.
“Buckle up.”
While she did just that, he picked up a sheaf of papers from the seat.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“A map.”
“A map?”
He nodded. “I got it off the Internet. It gives us door-to-door directions to our destination.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
He studied the page for a second, then, sounding distracted, replied, “What can’t you believe?”
“You’re a man. Men don’t read maps.”
“That’s a highly sexist remark.”
“It’s also the truth,” she stated.
“No, it’s not.”
“What is the truth, then?”
“When a man sets off for an unknown destination, he always consults a map. What he doesn’t do is ask for directions if he gets lost. Trust me, Ruby, if we lose our way, I promise to drive around for hours until we find it again.”
Laura gave her head a rueful shake. She’d wanted things back to the status quo, and back to the status quo they definitely were. Boy were they ever.
At least now the impulse to throw herself into his arms had passed. Unfortunately, it had been replaced by the urge to wrap her hands around his throat.
Chapter 3
Two hours into the drive, Antonio handed the wheel over to Ruby.
As had been the case during his spell as driver, they rode in silence, without even the radio to dispel the tension between them. At some point he would have to ask her about Joseph, but now was too soon. Way too soon. If he tried to pump her, she’d only grow even more closemouthed, if that was possible. Not to mention that his probing would inevitably raise her suspicions.
They were going to be alone together for the next several days. He had to use that time wisely. What he needed to do was engage her in small talk. Small, civil talk. If such a thing was possible between the two of them.
He needed to get her to relax. If she relaxed in his company, maybe then she would let her guard down low enough to reveal something of value. He would just bide his time and wait. He was good at biding his time and waiting for the proper moment.
Still, even to him, two-plus hours of silence was biding one’s time just a tad too long. There was a huge difference between waiting for the proper moment and wasting the time at hand. Especially when, on a job like this, even one wasted second could mean the difference between life and death.
“Well, what do you think?” he finally asked.
She glanced over at him. “About what?”
“My truck. How does it handle?”
She smiled. In that brief, unguarded, upward curl of her lips, he glimpsed the first honest emotion, other than her displeasure with him, that he’d seen on her face since their gazes had first met across the crowded auction floor. If only she would smile like that always, instead of bestowing that forced, brittle tilt of her lips that passed for coyness.
She made quite a picture in her short, tight skirt, and even tighter top. Her long legs seemed to stretch to eternity, and her equally long arms seemed made solely for wrapping themselves around a man’s neck. She was, quite easily, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Everything inside of him even remotely related to his Y chromosome responded to that beauty.
Then she spoiled it all by speaking.
“How does it handle? Like a man’s cheeks after a close shave.”
Antonio’s awareness of her was swept away on a wave of irritation. And women accused men of being single-minded. Didn’t she have at least one thought in her head that didn’t relate to sex?
While sex had been the ultimate goal of all of his relationships, the women he’d been involved with had, without exception, expressed an avid interest in something besides themselves. Those varied interests had made for some lively and interesting debates. He’d enjoyed their company, enjoyed spending time with them both in and out of the bedroom.
Ruby O’Toole really had no substance, he realized, wondering at his disappointment.
“It has great power on these hills,” she said, then paused. “You’re into power, aren’t you?”
He felt his brow furrow. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” she replied with a shrug.
He hated it when women said that, because he knew that their “nothing” definitely meant something. Forget about Ruby relaxing with him. He was beginning to think it would take a strong sedative to get him to relax with her. Either that, or he’d have to get blinding, stinking drunk. At this juncture
