by Shandi Boyes
“You have an apartment on Hector?” Regan asks Josie. When Josie smiles and nods, Regan adds on, “And Alex was planning to measure the cabinets the day we bumped heads?”
“Uh-huh. Did you see the toolbelt he swears when doing carpentry? Rawr.”
I glare at Josie. She may as well strap on a dildo and take me for a ride. She just fucked me over. The tiger roar was too much. Skilled hands—yeah, Regan could have accepted that. Helping out friends—yep, what nice guy doesn’t? But wearing a toolbelt underneath a suit—un-fucking-likely. A moron with half a brain knows this, so there’s no way a woman as smart as Regan will fall for Josie’s on-the-spot ruse.
I’m forced to eat my words when Regan mumbles, “Ah. . . and here I was the whole time thinking he was happy to see me.”
I want to say, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t just my gun digging into your ass that afternoon.” Instead, I settle on, “I arrived at Hector with the intention of helping out a friend, left with the threat of eye dismemberment.”
Regan splays her hands across her cocked hip. I really wish she wouldn’t. It amplifies the perfect swells of her curves. I don’t know why I believed I’d ever be strong enough to look past my attraction to her. I should have manned up and requested a transfer to another unit the instant she breezed back into my life, as distance is the only way I am guaranteed not to lose my job when it comes to this woman.
Taking my silence as annoyance, Regan mumbles, "Cut me some slack, Alex. You crowded the elevator panel like a twenty-one-year old's first time at a strip club. Then you said apartment 34."
“You said apartment 34?” Josie intercepts, her voice high with shock.
“Yeah. So?” I reply, acting like it’s no big deal.
Josie’s eyeroll is nowhere near as sophisticated as Regan’s. “Everyone knows the apartments on Hector don’t have any number fours. It’s bad Fengshui.”
I would respond to Regan’s pompous glare if I could take my eyes off Josie. Who the fuck is this woman? She started our date as a demure wallflower who spoke when spoken to and ended every reply with a question. She leaves as fierce and impenetrable as Regan.
Josie gives me a look. It's a look that reveals more than words ever could. Just like my family, her family has been in the Bureau for years. Unlike my family, it isn’t just the male members doing their bit for society. She’s one of us.
No. Fucking. Way.
Hearing my silent denial, Josie winks before faintly nodding, as if to say, Yes. Fucking. Way.
Is that why our plans altered? The one lie Josie didn’t deliver tonight was our change of location. We had every intention of dining at a burger and wings joint a few miles out of town. It was only after Josie took an unexpected call did she request a switch up.
When suspicion consumes me, I take a step back. Does she know Regan is on the FBI’s radar? If so, why is she pushing us together? She can’t be acting on Theresa’s “do anything and everything to get my man” stance, or she would have initiated contact hours ago. But what other reason would she have to change our plans from a twenty dollar a plate meal to one that made my eyes water while scanning the menu?
I answer my own question when a man with jet black hair and blue eyes pops out of the elevator next to ours. He darts across the marbled foyer, his brisk steps shadowed by a large, Maui looking man.
“Mark, hi,” Josie presses a phone against her ear, “you’re waiting outside?”
I’m trained to notice the lack of illumination from her phone screen when she pivots to face the door the blue-eyed man just darted through. Regan isn’t as clued in as me. She floats back a few paces, giving Josie privacy she doesn’t deserve.
“I’ll be right there. Just give me a sec to say goodbye to my friends.” She pulls her cell away from her ear and slides it into her clutch purse. Rookie mistake. All good agents know you push the end button to make your call look legitimate.
“Mark is waiting outside for me. Little twit locked himself out of our apartment. It was lovely seeing you again.” Her words come out in a flurry, her eagerness to leave uncontained.
"Play nice with this one, Alex. I like her spunk. If you don't snap her up, the Bureau might," she mutters in my ear when she leans in to press a kiss to my cheek.
Her comment annoys me more than it pleases me, but I’m left void of a retort when her focus returns to Regan. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Regan. No matter what this klutz does tonight, I still want that bottle of wine.”
Regan smiles, then nods. She’s uncomfortable with Josie’s overfriendliness, but it’s growing on her. “I’ll have a bottle or two delivered to you later this week.”
Josie is so eager to hunt down her target, she nods before practically sprinting out of the lobby. She's lost in a sea of foot traffic within seconds of dashing through the revolving glass door.
Confident her ruse has no chance of being broken, my eyes drift to Regan. She has an odd expression on her face. It doesn’t reflect joy or humility. In all honesty, she looks a little constipated.
Noticing I’ve spotted her odd expression, Regan straightens her spine. “So you’re not just an accountant who dabbles in cabinetry on your days off; you go on dates with married woman while wearing holey jeans and shoes only teenage boys should wear.”
I quirk my lips before doing a halfhearted nod. Unamused by my blasé reply, Regan rolls her eyes before pushing off her feet.
For some stupid reason, I follow after her. "Admit it: you would have hammered my outfit whether I was wearing dress shoes or flip flops."
“Flip flops would have gotten you tossed out of the restaurant, saving Josie the embarrassment of being seen with you looking like. . . that.”
“Hey!” It’s lucky her voice is laced with cheekiness, or my ego would have been insulted. “Josie likes my casual look.” So do you; you’re just too afraid to admit it. “She said I reminded her of Nate from Gossip Girl.”
“That wasn’t a compliment,” Regan advises with a giggle.
My strides cease. “It wasn’t? Why?”
I’m not acting daft; I seriously want to know. Wasn’t Nate one of the rich guys? If so, shouldn’t that instantly make him top shit?
“Nate was a pathological liar who had an inability to love,” Regan explains.
“Gossip Girl fan?” I ask, shocked by her quick-witted reply.
She shakes her head. “No. I’ve never watched an episode. I’m just good at studying people for who they truly are.” She stops walking to rake her eyes down my body. “Hmm. Now that I think about it, Josie’s assessment was fairly accurate.”
She friskily winks before continuing for the door.
Chapter Twelve
My snappy remark stumps Alex for barely a second. His frozen state doesn’t last long enough to weaken the energy bristling between us the past ten minutes, but it gives me a moment of reprieve.
I'm so shocked, my mouth is bone dry from the number of times it was left hanging open in the elevator. Alex can't be an accountant. Nothing against them, I love my accountant, Jerry. He claims my excessively priced dresses and shoes as a tax write-off since it's my job to look presentable, but the portion of his stomach that sticks out the bottom of his polo shirt is hairier than his head. He drinks orange juice from the carton and talks when his mouth is full. He's a grommet.
Alex is not.
Seeing him tonight undid all the hard work I’ve done the past two months. You have no idea how impossible it was for me to decline Isaac’s numerous offers to run a background search on Alex when I failed to find him. I may have even ridden the elevator at my apartment building at the same time every day the past two months just in hopes of seeing him again.
I’m not desperate!
Well, I am, just not in the way you’re thinking.
I want to know why he spied on me. I get Isaac’s persona can be overwhelming, and he may have regretted his abrupt departure, but he could have manned up and entered the room as stealthily as he did the first time
. He didn’t have to hide behind the curtain like a weasel.
His lack of assertiveness was why I sent the bottle of wine to his table instead of behaving like the pathetic ass I was in the elevator.
Josie was nice—bat shit crazy—but nice nonetheless. I should have never lumped her in the same pile of shit I wanted to rain down on Alex. I don’t know why annoyance was the first thing I felt when I saw him again. He’s a stranger who aided me after he hurt me. That makes us even. He doesn’t owe me anything, and I owe him sweet fuck all—right?
Right. Then why did I want to gouge out Josie’s eyes every time she laughed at Alex’s corny jokes?
Tequila.
I should have listened to my mother. No good comes from a final shot of tequila. If I had stopped drinking when I said I would, my every step wouldn’t be shadowed by a man I’m dying to see nude. Can you be charged with indecent exposure if your clothes are removed involuntarily?
My head emerges from naughty clouds when a gruff voice says, “Let me.”
Not waiting for a response, Alex snatches my coat from the doorman's grasp, then jerks his chin up, requesting for me to spin around. He barely touches me when he drapes my coat over my almost bare shoulders, but the spark of electricity shooting through me makes it seem so much more. The zap is so strong, my heart jump a few beats.
“How far down are you parked?” Alex asks as his eyes scan the populated street.
When I fail to answer him, he returns his eyes to mine. “Did you use the valet?”
“No,” I say with a shake. “I walked.”
“You walked?!” My ears ring from his furious roar. “In that?!”
His eyes drop to my scarcely concealed cleavage. Before I can laugh at his absurd reaction to my favorite LBD, he yanks me forward by the lapels of my coat before he does up the buttons. He grumbles several times under his breath, but I can’t hear a word he's speaking. I’ve once again been rendered stupid by costly cologne and the scent of a hot, virile man.
“I need to breathe,” I garble when Alex fastens the top button of my jacket. “No one uses all the buttons on a trench coat. They are there for symmetry—not comfort.”
“Not now, they ain’t,” he fires back before curling his hand over mine and marching for the exit doors.
I try to put up a protest, but a man as strong and sturdy as him is too much of a challenge. So, instead, I use words. “What are you doing?”
He ignores me. It should piss me off more than it excites me, but for some reason, it doesn’t. I have a fondness for blushers, but taming a wild, beast of a man is a challenge every hot-headed woman loves. He wasn’t on a date, much less carrying a weapon the last time we met, so I’m free to explore the brutishness pumping out of him.
See—you should always put down the last shot of tequila. It makes you stupid.
Alex hails a taxi before dropping his eyes to mine. They don’t have to wander too far. With the heels on my boots lifting me the extra four to five inches he has on me, we stand at a similar height.
“In.” He nudges his head to the taxi idling next to me.
After undoing the top three buttons of my jacket, I snarl, “Ladies first.”
Anger blisters across his face, but shockingly, he holds in his retaliation before sliding into the back seat of the taxi. Mojo killer! Peeved at his deficient backbone, I clamber in after him.
We only travel a few feet before the reason I decided to walk smacks into Alex. The traffic in Ravenshoe on Fridays is the worst of the worst. We’ve barely crawled an inch.
“Are you ready to call defeat yet?” I ask a short time later.
Alex mutters a curse word under his breath before digging his wallet out of his pocket. After throwing a handful of bills at the driver, he requests for him to pull over.
I laugh when we scramble onto the sidewalk. We’re literally half a block from the restaurant. After yanking me to his chest to ensure I’m not knocked over by a bicyclist zooming down the sidewalk, Alex scans the street. “Which way is your apartment building?”
“Ah. . . I think it’s that way.”
I twist my neck to the left, truly unsure. My uncertainty can’t be helped. Alex’s body is extremely firm, even firmer than his head that cracks open skulls with nothing more than a measly bump. He works out. That’s not an assumption. It's a fact. You can’t have a body like his without putting in an effort. My six mile run every morning ensures I can’t be mistaken.
When Alex curls his arm around my shoulders to guide me in the direction I nudged, I raise my eyes to his. “I don’t recall requesting a chaperone home?”
“I don’t recall needing permission to be a gentleman,” he snaps back.
My abrupt chuckle startles a couple standing next to us. After a whispered apology, I return my focus to Alex. “You’re being a gentleman?”
As we sidestep a homeless man begging for change, Alex makes an affirmative noise with his lips. His hum switches to a groan when I break away from his stride, spin around, then make a dash for it. I watch his reflection in the shop window. I swear he looks five seconds from throwing me over his shoulder and stomping to my building like a caveman. The only thing stopping him is the realization that I’m not fleeing. I’m merely bobbing down to hand the homeless man a twenty dollar bill.
“You shouldn’t give them money,” Alex cautions when I return to his side.
“Why? Because he’ll spend it on booze and cigarettes?” My voice is full of attitude. . . until the homeless man proves Alex right. My jaw quivers when he throws off his blanket and races into the closest liquor store.
“Save it as a life lesson.” Alex grips my elbow, impeding my mad stomp to the ass-peddler. I worked hard for that money. Perhaps not as hard as some people, but I still earned it. It wasn’t handed to me.
After a few more steps, Alex suggests, “If you truly want to help the homeless, donate to shelters. Whether it's an hour of your time or a monetary amount, they’ll put your generosity to good use.”
The knowledge in his tone slicks my skin with sweat. It also keeps my mouth shut for the next several blocks.
“I swear to god this place is a minefield. The town planner should be shot,” Alex grumbles when we pass the same pizza shop for a third time in a row.
I could put him out of his misery, but watching him sweat as he “takes charge” is too enticing. Once he finishes throwing around his authoritativeness, I’ll advise him my apartment building is half a block up. Until then, he can keep sweating.
“That’s cheating,” I mumble when he seeks directions from a cab driver grabbing a slice of pizza.
They only interact for a few seconds, but it's long enough for me to realize my ruse has been unraveled. Alex’s jaw is ticking more now than when a group of men on a bachelor party asked if I could be their stripper. They already had one in tow but were more than eager for another. I swear, Alex nearly burst a blood vessel in his hand from how fast he clenched his fists.
When Alex’s eyes drift from my apartment building to me, I push off my feet and make a dash for it. I weave through standstill traffic without any fear for my life. Alex is on my heels thirty seconds later.
“You play dirty.” His growl ruffles the fine hairs on my neck more effectively than the air-conditioning when I take off my coat. Add the full-blast AC to a three-mile trek through a human jungle, and you have a sweaty disaster. I can't remember the last time I've been this sweaty. . .
My inner monologue trails off when disappointment takes its place. I had no problems flicking the bean until a pompous, egotistical asshole walked into my life. Now, I can’t achieve half the thrill. You’d think Alex’s panty-wetting face would be sufficient to get me off, but no, for some frustrating reason, my body doesn’t want to play pretend. It wants the real deal.
Ugh! An accountant! Seriously, you could do so much better, I scold myself before entering the waiting elevator car.
I whip around so fast, I give myself whiplash when a pair of teen
age shoes scuffle across the silver tracks of the elevator car.
“What are you doing?” I ask Alex, my voice brimming with snarkiness.
I’m not angry at Alex. I’m peeved at my lack of libido. Whether it's done by my own accord or with the assistance of a handsome suitor, I’m a sexually promiscuous person. The drought I’ve been crawling through the past two months hasn’t just made my vagina depressed, it’s made me an irrational, aggravated bitch.
If Alex enters this elevator, he better be packing heat, because concerns about being shot down by a man carrying an actual gun may be the only way I’ll handle him and his schmexy scent at the same time.
Alex’s head flops to the side like a little puppy when it’s in trouble. “I’m making sure you get home safely. Elevators are magnets for creeps. Who knows what you’ll be subjected to between here and your penthouse?” He smirks, acting smug.
His smile is wiped straight of his face when I ask, “Who said I’m going to my penthouse?” Pretending his balk didn’t create an earthquake in Japan, I add on, “Don’t act shocked. No woman on the planet goes to this much effort to eat and sleep alone.” My overemphasis of certain words ensures he can’t mistake what I’m referencing.
“Then I’ll make sure you get to the apartment you’re visiting.” Alex’s words fly out of his mouth like daggers as jagged as his final step into the elevator.
“Perhaps you can follow me to his door? You know, to protect me from the boogeyman hiding in the shadows.” The snark in my tone shocks me. Clearly, extreme horniness is more detrimental to my sanity than tequila shots. I’ve never been so unhinged.
It doesn’t help that Alex’s attitude is fed by my arrogance. “Uh-huh. That’s precisely what I’ll do. I might even stay outside his door until you’re done. Boogeymen don’t disappear when the sun rises, Rae. They just find a new shadow to hide in.”
He twists his body to face the elevator panel, hiding his flaming-with-anger face from my view. He shouldn't bother. I can feel the tension radiating off him. It makes his scent more masculine and pulse-quickening delicious.