Page 6 of Legendary

“Two hours for what?” he asks absently.

“You have two hours toBrillopad off any incriminating video images. After that, you are eating a hot meal, drinking a caffeine-free soda, and getting some goddamned sleep.”

“I don’t need to sleep. I—”

“Give it up, Eli,” I cut him off. “You look like a raccoon with those dark circles under your eyes.”

He stands up from the computer. “I’m not tired,” he says, stomping his foot like a misbehaving kid fighting bedtime.

I fight back a smile. “You’re sleeping tonight. No arguments. We have too much to get done tomorrow for you to slip into one of those nap comas you take when you’ve kept yourself awake with caffeine and energy drinks too long, and your body finally gives out.”

“I’m. Not. Sleeping.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he tilts his head up at me defiantly. “I don’t trust you not to wait till I fall asleep and run off with the money in the middle of the night.”

I could be offended that Eli just told me he doesn’t trust me, but I know he’s just huffing and puffing. Instead, I recognize Eli’s accusation for exactly what it is—opportunity.

Now, all I have to do is bait the trap.

“You don’t trust me?” I laugh. “Between the two of us, you’ve stolen way more money with a few clicks of your fingers than I ever will.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“You tell yourself that, sweetheart,” I respond, enjoying the faint blush that spreads across his cheeks at the name. “Maybe you’re so insistent on not sleeping because it’syouwho’s planning to slip out in the middle of the night with a bag full of cash.”

“I’d never do that to you,” he snarls back at me. His face flushed, dark eyes flashing, and his body practically vibrating in frustration.

God, I love it when he gets like this.

All that seething, combustible intensity, and it’s all directed at me. Warming me. Calling me to tame it—to make it mine.

For the thousandth time, I imagine what it would feel like to reach out and touch him. To feel the heat of his skin, the pulse of his muscles under my hand. Some men might want their touch to soothe him—to calm the mix of logic, emotions, needs, and desires that constantly roil and battle each other beneath his skin. Not me. I’d touch him to amp up his frustration—to fire up that battle into a war until desire became the no-holds-barred winner.

I take a step back from Eli to give myself a little distance from him before my heated thoughts turn to action. I have a goal in sight and I don’t need to be sidetracked from it. Time to get back on point.

“Well, since we’ve established that we’re both untrustworthy,” I reach in my jacket and covertly pull out the item I’d taken from the police cruiser before we’d ditched it because I thought it might be useful.Damn, had I been right.“Then the only way both of us are going to get a good night’s sleep tonight is if we both have a little assurance that neither of us can steal the money while the other is sleeping.”

“And how exactly are you going to manage that?” Eli asks with a bratty huff.

“Simple solution,” I say, and using the speed I’d learned from picking pockets, I have the handcuffs around both our wrists and locked before Eli can react. I hold up our joined wrists. “We’ll just stay handcuffed together until morning.”

Chapter5

Eli

Tennessee

“Simple solution,” he says. A flash of silver goes around my wrist, and then I hear a click. He raises our suddenly joined hands up for me to see. “We’ll just stay handcuffed together until morning.”

For a minute, I just stare at our imprisoned wrists and take in what just happened.

The bastard. I knew he was up to something. Jeb always has an up-to-no-good gleam in his eyes, but when he’s really planning trouble—like today at the credit union when he decided to hold an impromptu robbery, or just now before he slid the handcuffs around my wrist—there’s a certain spark to his eyes. From now on I’m going to treat it similarly as I would a snake rattling its tail.

I yank at the handcuffs, hoping that they’re the joke kind and will come off with a simple tug. They don’t. I yank again.

“Get the key and take these handcuffs off of us,” I demand in an amazingly even tone, considering the circumstances.

“I don’t have the keys,” he scoffs, like keys to the handcuffs he just locked us in would be a ridiculous thing to possess.

I take a deep, calming breath and carefully ask, “Where are they?”

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