Page 37 of Angel In Armani

“I understand that.”

“Do you?” she said. “Have you ever actually had a problem in your life that you couldn’t fix by doing your rich-guy thing and fixing it all with cold hard cash?” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice and didn’t entirely succeed.

“My rich-guy thing?”

Her hands tightened on the controls. “Wave your black Amex, watch everyone jump to do whatever it is you want and solve all your problems.”

“I think you’ve been hanging around with the wrong rich guys,” Lucas said. He sounded annoyed now.

She still didn’t look. “I don’t generally hang out with rich guys.”

“Oh, so you just stalk them to observe their obnoxious Amex-waving behavior?”

“I fly them places. That presents plenty of observational opportunities.”

“And plenty of opportunities to make sweeping generalizations. I’ve never waved a black Amex at anyone in my life.”

“No, but I’m sure you’ve had plenty of people leaping to do whatever you want.” And quite possibly most of them were women. And ouch, that sounded bitchy even in her head. Why was she being hard on him, anyway? If she didn’t care what Lucas Angelo did, she shouldn’t care who he did it with.

“Less than you might think.”

She snorted. “You’re a surgeon. Doesn’t that mean you have whole teams of people doing what you tell them to every day?”

“No, it means I work with a team to get the outcome we want.”

The outcome he wanted, that was. “Isn’t the outcome where you get to be just a teeny bit godlike and put someone back together again? That sounds like snapping your fingers and getting what you want.”

“I don’t think ten hours of painstaking surgery counts as snapping my fingers.”

Ah. No. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude.” But she wasn’t really sorry. For one thing, her irritation seemed to have burned away some of the fog of heat he’d ignited. She could think again. Control it again. Tame the tiger, so to speak.

“Bad day?”

Bad year. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. “Long day,” she said. “But I get to fly again and that means it isn’t bad.”

“You haven’t flown since your chopper got damaged?”

Was that an olive branch? Regardless, she would go with it. “No.”

“Kind of risky to have only one helicopter, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes. But we don’t have one. We have two. The other one is wrecked. My dad had a crash about a year ago.”

“I read about that. Why isn’t that chopper fixed?”

He’d read about it? Had he been doing a little Internet research of his own? Best not to go there. “Because insurance companies suck. The official investigation cleared my dad but they kept stalling. With the A-Star, another aircraft damaged it so things should be sorted out faster.” She didn’t want to mention the part where they had spent most of the payout for her dad’s helo—once they’d finally gotten it—on his medical bills.

“And is your dad okay?”

“His leg was pretty badly smashed up but he’s getting there.”

“Is that why you’re not in the army anymore? You came home to help your dad out?”

“Yes. Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” The story of how she’d joined the army in a fit of grief-fueled insanity after Jamie’s death was just too complicated. As was the part where she’d been happy enough to have an excuse to leave it.

There was a long pause. Then, “Why not?”

“Because talking about it doesn’t change anything. It is what it is.”

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