Fugitive Heart - By Bonnie Dee Page 0,68
remember the last time you did anything even approaching romping.” For as long as he could recall, Tiffany had been attached to technology like her USB cord was some kind of umbilicus. She had the translucent skin tone and caffeine addiction to prove it.
“Can you please stop being an idiot for five minutes and go take care of our problem?” Graff asked.
“I was about to.” Asprey used his stiff movements to exaggerate a swagger. “Do you think I should do slick mobster or Texas Ranger?” When Graff didn’t answer right away, Asprey swiveled on one leg and pretended to pull a gun out of a holster. “Texas Ranger, I think. That thar woman won’t be able to resist the ol’ Asprey charm.”
Graff sighed and got up from his chair, gently adjusting it so he faced the opposite direction of the door. Asprey made a face. His brother never appreciated his talent for accents. His brother never appreciated him, period.
As he passed, Asprey ran his hand over the upholstery of his brother’s chair. Soft, buttery yellow silk rippled under his fingertips.
“Don’t. Touch. Louis,” Graff said through his teeth. “Unless you wash your goddamn hands first.”
Asprey leaned down and licked the chair, careful to duck when the heavy leather tome his brother had been reading sailed past his head. He covered his laugh with a tsking noise. “Didn’t you say that book was a first edition? You should be more careful.”
And then he practically skipped away before Graff threw something heavier—like a hammer or one of the steel katanas they’d recently acquired. The only thing he could be sure wouldn’t be thrown was Louis, their authentic eighteenth-century Louis XV chair. It was Graff’s prized possession, his baby.
It was also the only piece of furniture in the entire twelve-thousand-square-foot hangar, if you didn’t count a few folding chairs and the worktables heaped with Tiffany’s computers and the bulk of their stolen goods.
Asprey thought about grabbing one of the shotguns leaning against the wall by the door, but changed his mind at the last minute. It was early afternoon, and the woman traveled alone. Chances were she’d gotten lost or had a flat tire somewhere in the vicinity. Even he couldn’t botch this one up.
As the woman drew nearer, Asprey leaned against the corrugated metal exterior of the hangar and donned his most disarming smile, squinting into the rare patch of sun. The shorts she wore were as infinitesimal as distance had promised, and she carried a red jug in one hand, a clear sign that her tank was empty and she was in need of a little assistance.
“Do I detect a damsel in distress?” he asked as soon as she came within earshot.
One of the woman’s brows rose, but she didn’t say anything, so Asprey took her reticence as an invitation. In addition to the world’s smallest shorts and her odd choice of footwear, everything about her attire was eccentric and playful and invited perusal. Her hair was a short tangle of loopy brown curls, and there were a few brightly colored feathers worked in, dangling over her shoulders and making it look as though she might take flight at any moment. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, fresh-faced and glowing with the exertion of hiking all the way to their quiet, secluded hiding place.
But it was the legs he kept going back to. This woman obviously worked out.
“Are you done?” she asked, using the toe of her boot to scratch the back of her calf.
“Sorry,” he said, not feeling nearly as sheepish as he should have, given the situation. He blamed months of sleeping on a mattress next to Graff in their makeshift apartment in the office above the hangar. All that stuff in the movies about dashing thieves and women being wooed by his outlaw ways were a crock. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a date, let alone near a pair of legs like that.
“So…what can I do for you?” he asked. She wasn’t a very forthcoming visitor, that was for sure, content to stand there trying to stare him into a state of discomfiture. Good thing Asprey was impervious to the disdain of others. As the least impressive and most likely to screw up member of his family, that sort of thing came standard. “Are you running on empty?”
“Only temporarily,” she said. “I was hoping you might be able to help me get on track again.”
Her smile, crooked and mocking, seemed familiar. His awareness of