“So?” Wolf prompted Alex. “What’s got you so fidgety?”
“That second helping of biscuits and gravy is partly to blame,” she admitted dolefully, pressing a hand to her chest where the first warning signs of heartburn were threatening.
Or maybe that’s just my body’s reaction to being this close to Mason.
Wolf shook his head. “Between you and Mason, I swear.”
That had her chin jerking back. She glanced at Mason, but his face revealed about as much as a blank page. His no-talking game was on point. But it was nothing compared to his no-expression game. Which was singularly annoying since most times she’d give her left boob to know what he was thinking.
“Between me and Mason what?” she asked Wolf.
“Y’all are the only two people I know who ask what’s for lunch when you’re still eatin’ breakfast. Peas in a pod and—”
“Keeping you people on topic is like herding cats,” Mason quickly cut in, his thick Boston accent apparent in every syllable.
Whatwasn’tapparent was his frown. It was tiny. Fractional even. But Alex saw it and knew its source. It was that wholepeas in a podthing.
Since she’d offered him her V-card, he’d been touchy about any and all conversations involving the two of them.
“Monsieur Monosyllable speaks!” She threw her hands in the air. “Hallelujah!”
Glaring at her—and really, the man could glare with the best of them—he ground from between clenched teeth, “Only when I got something important to say.”
She didn’t have to feign affront. Her affront was Grade A prime. “And what’sthatsupposed to mean? That I go around spewing verbal diarrhea? I’ll have you know a study showed that a person speaks about 16,000 words a day on average. SoI’mnot the weird one.Youare.”
“Children, children!” Romeo patted the air again, looking exasperated. “What did I just say about breaking up fights between five-year-olds?”
Mason continued to stare at Alex. She tried to hold his gaze, but it made all her girl parts giggle. So she did the mature thing and stuck her tongue out at him.
He looked so startled, she had to laugh. That just made him glower all the harder.
“Oh-ho!” She pointed at his face. “Look how grumpy you are. Do you need me to get you a lollipop?”
“Does your level of joy go up in direct proportion to my blood pressure?” he growled at her, his accent making the end of the sentence sound more likeprahpawtion to my blood preshah.
“No.” She didn’t know what possessed her, but she threw an arm around his massive shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “It’s just that being a smart-ass is how I hug.”
When she pulled back, she expected to see ayou annoy meexpression wallpapered over his face. So she was shocked to see something darkly hungry instead.
Was Kate Upton standing behind her?
She glanced over her shoulder. Nope. No Kate.Huh.But when she turned back, she found his hungry look gone and was left wondering if it’d ever been there at all. A second later, she decided that even if ithadbeen there, she’d probably been mistaken about what it meant.
Maybe hewashungry. Or gassy. Or simply bored. Maybe he had a headache. A backache. Or was daydreaming about piles of BLT sandwiches.
It was just a look,she convinced herself.I’m not going to be the girl who reads a million and one emotions and motivations into a look.
And…okay…truth time. She’d lied when she told him she’d packed away all her nonplatonic feelings. In fact, right at the moment, she could easily envision him wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat, a smile, and—
“Alex?” When Wolf snapped his fingers in front of her eyes, she realized she’d momentarily forgotten where she was.
“Right.” She had to clear her throat. “As I was having that second helping of biscuits and gravy, it occurred to me we might be thinking about Captain Vargas and theSanta Cristinaall wrong.”
Romeo’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“According to the evidence we copied from the archives in Seville, Captain Vargas’s plan was to sail back to Havana. Barring that, he was supposed to take shelter behind Wayfarer Island.”
“Right.” Wolf nodded. “Which is where LT and Olivia found the hilt of Vargas’s cutlass.”
