Relentless Read Online Free Page B

help me. I hate sitting around waiting, don’t you?”
    Yeah. One of the things at the top of his list. He shifted in his seat so he could straighten his legs, and she moved her feet to give him more room. “You can stretch out some more if you like.”
    “I’m good.” As good as it was going to get, anyway. He’d let the flight attendant take his suit jacket and cane, and had rolled up his sleeves in deference to the stuffinesson board, despite the air blowing down on him. It wasn’t cooling his unwelcome attraction to Miss Magee any.
    She looked up at him, eyes earnest behind her black-framed glasses. Her breath smelled sweet from the Diet Coke she was drinking. Thorne didn’t drink sodas, but he wondered absently what it would taste like on her tongue if he kissed her. Which, of course, he was absolutely not going to do.
    Curling her legs up under her on the wide leather seat, she pitched her body closer to his. Her closeness, and the subdued lighting in the cabin, made the situation far too intimate and made Thorne want to bury himself in her heat and cinnamon scent. She licked her unpainted mouth as if she were reading his thoughts. “Were you in an accident?”
    “Yeah.” I accidently walked into Boris Yermalof’s boning knife. He watched the attractive flight attendant bringing around coffee. It was natural to think of the Russian when he was on his way to London and talking about Egypt. The bloody Russian was the reason Thorne had been banished to Seattle in the first place. The chase through Egypt eight months ago had ended in Israel, where his two partners had been brutally butchered, and when Thorne had avoided being gutted like a fish, it was more by accident than design. Everyone considered his survival a miracle.
    He resented being put in a holding pattern when all he wanted to do was track Yermalof down and do unto him as the Russian had done unto Thorne’s partners. Twiddling his thumbs wasn’t Thorne’s thing. Babysittinga deluded big-eyed cutie while he served out his sentence was proving more challenging than he had time for. The fact that he was supposed to be recuperating didn’t make it less of a problem.
    Isis predictably asked, “Was it a c—”
    Without turning to look at her, he said unambiguously, “I don’t talk about it.”
    “If there’s anything I can do…?”
    “No.”
    The flight attendant smiled and flashed her cleavage over the small tray holding china cups. The rich scent of Sumatra eradicated—for the moment—the smell of Isis’s skin. Thorne turned to glance at her.
    “Do you want coffee?” He wasn’t a man who chatted. He didn’t want to be her friend, and he didn’t want to fucking bond . London. Hopefully he’d find something that would satisfy her. He’d go back to Seattle, where the weather suited his mood, and she could go… wherever the hell she wanted to go. None of his business.
    “No thanks. I probably shouldn’t have drunk those two Diet Cokes.” She reached up and turned off her overhead light, then pulled the thin blanket across her lap, up over her chest. “I want to sleep so I’m fresh when we arrive.”
    She was plenty fresh. He took a coffee, ignoring the woman lingering at his side until she pushed off. “Good idea,” he told Isis. The coffee was hot and black. Not French press, but drinkable. He drank it in two gulps, then placed the cup and saucer on the wide space between their seats. It wasn’t a wall, but it marked his space from hers.
    Isis wiggled down in her seat, curling up to get more comfortable, her elbow pushing his cup dangerously close to the edge as she shifted, trying to balance her head on her hand.
    Mentally shoring the barriers, he moved the cup after all.
    Now he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t looking at her instead of the discarded cup. Eyes closed, Isis was close enough for him to see the way her long lashes cast shadows on her creamy cheeks, and feel her warm breath against his upper arm. She didn’t