Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(27)

“Put it away,” she ordered me. “We’re moving now.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” I shot back maturely.

“Away.”

I scowled and touched my nose gingerly before complying with her request. “Has it occurred to you that brawling with me while I’m operating a motor vehicle is slightly more dangerous and apt to get us all killed than my texting?”

“Just leave it in the holster while you’re behind the wheel.” Allison narrowed her eyes and pointed one finger in my direction.

“I love it when you get all domineering,” I told her, allowing my voice to turn low and throaty at the end. I grinned at her and wiggled my eyebrows suggestively, marveling at how easy it was to slip back into playful banter with her. Like not a minute had passed.

Allison was not amused. “How about when I spank you like the spoiled brat you are? Do you love that?”

I made a show of closing my eyes, letting my head loll back, and moaning softly. “Don’t tease me. It isn’t nice.” That earned me a hard punch on the arm and a glare, which made me laugh.

“Uh…Ryan?” Allison said in a small voice.

My insides flipped at her tenor, and I was immediately wary. She did know I was only kidding…right? “What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“Your nose.” Her tone was just this side of apologetic. She pointed, as if I couldn’t be trusted to find my nose on my own. “It’s bleeding.”

I touched my fingers to my upper lip and discovered she was right. “Wonder whose fault that is?”

“Whose?”

“You’re kidding.”

“What?”

“You really don’t see how you might’ve had something to do with this?”

Allison shrugged lightly, but I could see she was struggling not to smile. “I plead the fifth.”

“I’m sure you do.” My tone was wry. I made a faint gesture with my now-bloody hand before returning it to its previous task of trying to catch the crimson flow. “You’ll find some napkins in the glove box.”

With an expression that was an odd mixture of amusement, wistfulness, and contrition, Allison grabbed a couple and handed them to me so I could clean myself up. “How long?” She sounded concerned.

“How long what?” I was busy trying to wipe my nose, assess the damage in the mirror, and drive at the same time.

“Since you were sick? How long?”

Bloody nose momentarily forgotten, I turned my head to gape at her. “Huh?”

“You always get a bloody nose easily right after you’ve had a sinus infection. So I was wondering how long ago you’d been sick.”

I was shocked she even remembered but tried not to show it. “Are you trying to blame this mess on something other than you and your flailing limbs of fury?”

Allison snorted. “Call it shared culpability if you like. I refuse to accept all responsibility for this situation. But if you were recently sick, it wouldn’t take much.”

“Hmm. I only admit it because I want you to know I’m tougher than that, and it’d take more than that pop you gave me to really hurt me.”

Allison smirked. “Of course. You’re a total badass.”

I laughed, and she looked at me expectantly. “What?”

“How. Long.”

“Oh. About three days, I guess.” I was concentrating much harder than necessary on weaving in and out of traffic on the FDR. “Maybe four.” I was oddly touched she recalled something so trivial about me. Especially since I’d been under the impression she’d completely purged everything about me from her memory. A lump began to form in my throat, and I tried to swallow it.

Allison sniffed and glanced in my direction. “You’d better not get me sick,” she said, her tone threatening. She pointed one finger at me as she gave me the command.

“How the hell do you think I’m going to get you sick?”

“You’d just better not.”

“Well, don’t kiss me, then,” I shot back, regretting the words the instant they were out of my mouth.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Allison fished her BlackBerry out of its holster in response to the vibration that even I could hear in the weighty silence filling the car.

My face immediately warmed, and the slash of regret that sliced through me was agonizing. I hadn’t been expecting her to kiss me, of course, but would it have killed her to want to? Even a little? I inhaled deeply and let out a heavy sigh. I hastily resumed wiping my face with the napkin in an attempt to hide my expression. Fortunately, Allison didn’t appear to notice. She was completely consumed with reading and then answering an email on her BlackBerry, leaving me to wallow in my own unpleasant thoughts.

“How many post-standers do we have for the LZ again?” Allison’s eyes were glued to the device in her hands as her thumbs flew over the keys.

I wracked my brain, trying to remember how many bodies the scheduling guys told us we could have for the landing zone we used for Marine One. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the answer. “How many did we ask for, or how many did we get?”

“Those numbers are different?”

I nodded, speeding up in order to pass a slow-moving car in the right lane and then returning to that lane quickly so we didn’t miss our exit. “They always are, out there. But we can use NYPD detectives on the outer-perimeter, nondiscretionary posts. I’ll show you. It isn’t a big deal.”