Undercover: An Out of Line Novel

by McLaughlin, Jennifer

  And that had been the real problem.

  5

  Hernandez

  I side-eyed Marie as best as I could without taking my eyes off the road. After all, I had precious cargo with me, and I wasn't about to take that responsibility lightly, no matter how pretty she was. "What?"

  She glanced at me in surprise. "Huh?"

  "You're biting your lip and fidgeting, which means something is on your mind, but you don't want to say what. I assure you anything you would say about my dead parents isn't going to upset me. They were out of my life long before they actually died." I merged into the left lane to pass a slow moving truck. "So spit it out."

  She stopped fidgeting immediately. "Did you learn that in training?"

  "Driving?"

  "No," she said impatiently. "Reading signs of when people have something to say but aren't saying it, and stuff like that."

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say that she was right, and I'd learned that people who don't want to talk bite their lips, but that would be a lie. Not everyone did that, but Marie did. "No. I learned it because I've known you for years, and I pay attention."

  She blinked, licking her lips.

  That small motion, that wetting of tongue on flesh? It did shit to me. Shit Marie didn't want to do to me. She'd made that very clear, so I'd never make a move on her.

  But if she ever changed her mind, if she ever gave the slightest indication of wanting to give us a go, there would be no holds barred. She was my dream girl, had always been my dream girl, and Finn knew the way I felt about her. Carrie, too…

  Which is why they never let it fucking drop.

  "I was just going to ask…" She licked her lips again, and I bit back a groan. She was killing me. This whole weekend was going to kill me, and I damn well better get a raise out of it when it was all said and done. "…if you don't mind my asking, that is."

  "I'm an open book."

  She snorted. "Sure you are."

  With her? I could be. "Your question?"

  "Who raised you and your sisters?"

  I smiled. "My grandmother. Well, she's not really my grandma. I just call her that, because she took us in when we had no one else, and she treated us like family."

  "Oh, that's nice."

  "She's nice." I slid back into the right lane. "She was my grandfather's neighbor at the time. When he passed, she took over our care, refusing to even consider that we should go to a group home. She sold her home, moved into ours, and raised us."

  "Wow." She smiled, playing with a piece of hair. I missed the blonde. "She sounds great."

  "She is. She's been ill lately, but she seems to be doing better."

  She worried the edge of her seatbelt. "What's wrong with her?"

  "Not sure. Cough. Fever. Aches. I thought it was pneumonia, but doc says it wasn't. Finn is going to look over her and Sarah's mom while we're away. I've been staying by her bedside, making sure to keep her cool, but her fever finally broke Thursday morning, so I felt okay leaving her. I almost turned down the case, though."

  She lowered her head, staring at her lap. "I'm glad she's better. She sounds lovely."

  "The loveliest person I know."

  Marie was a close second.

  A sad smile took over her lips—lips I'd had countless dreams about tasting. If she kept licking them and biting them, I'd never stop. "I bet."

  "How about you? Are your parents in the picture?" I asked.

  Funny, that we were just now talking about this, after knowing each other for so long. Though, in all fairness, we never really talked. Sure, we hung out in groups, and we carried on conversations, but as a general rule, she avoided me as much as possible and kept her distance.

  Until now.

  "Too much so," she admitted.

  "How's that?" I asked dryly.

  She sighed. "They constantly get on my case about settling down, and marrying a nice Catholic boy, and having a few kids they can play with, and to be just like them."

  I was a Catholic boy…but not a nice one. "Is that so bad?"

  "It is when I grew up watching them barely like one another while fighting about my father's affairs when they thought I was asleep. She stayed, she always stayed—probably because of me. But even when I moved out, she stayed, so who knows? Guess she thought he was worth crying herself to sleep over every night," she paused, shuddering. "Every. Single. Night."

  I whistled through my teeth. "Damn. That must've been tough."

  "It's why I used to avoid anything and anyone who could make me feel something real, and why I dated the guys I did." She tucked her hair behind her ear nervously.

  "Until now."

  She looked at me, biting down on her lip. "I'm ready for something real. Ya know?"

  "Y-Yeah." My heart thumped against my ribs because for some dumbass reason, her words translated inside my head to mean that she was telling me she was ready for me, and that was the stupidest thing I ever thought I heard. "I hope you find it. You deserve to be happy."

  "Thanks," she said softly. "So do you."

  I shrugged.

  "Is it just me, or does it sound like we're on our first date?" she asked, laughing and picking up her coffee.

  It looked like a good idea, so I did the same. "I guess we kind of are, huh? We don't usually hang out alone."

  "Yeah, I guess not," she said, taking a sip.

  The way her lips touched that cup…

  "It's good, in a way, to do this. It'll make us more natural together if we know this stuff. More like a real couple," she said into the silence.

  Nodding, I took a sip of my own coffee.

  She glanced out her window. "Maybe we should kiss."

  Yeah, I choked on that coffee.

  Lowering the cup, I coughed hard, my lungs struggling to pull in air to replace the liquids filling them. As I struggled to breathe, she sighed and took the cup out of my hand, setting it safely into place. "Well, that was awfully dramatic."

  I finally pulled myself together, hitting my chest and letting out one last hack. "You can't just say shit like that when a man is drinking, Marie."

  "Usually when he's drinking is the best time to say something like that," she shot back wryly, blue eyes sparkling.

  "Alcohol, maybe."

  "I'm serious, though." She gripped her knees, shifting slightly. "If we're going to be a couple, shouldn't we get that out of the way, so it doesn't look obvious?"

  Hell, no, we shouldn’t kiss. Not unless she wanted me to continue kissing her right out of her fucking clothes. "I don't think we need to take things that far," I said calmly. "We're going after an embezzler, not a foreign spy."

  She continued as if she didn't even hear me: "I mean, when people are intimate, you can just tell, you know? They have a certain level of familiarity with every touch. You can tell if they've kissed. They lean into each other, and there's no uncertainty. They already know what the other one tastes like. Don't you think people will see that we don’t?”

  She had a point. After all, I'd been the one to tell her we had to be more natural around one another, and that we had to act like a "real" couple. Some small part of me wanted to use this as an excuse to rediscover what she tasted like, to find out whether her body would meld to mine in all the right places like I thought it would.

  But it was that same small part that had me saying, "No. Absolutely not. No way."

  Her nose scrunched up. "But—"

  "No." I tightened my grip on the wheel. "It's a bad idea to cross that line, and you know it."

  She rolled her eyes. "It's just a stupid kiss, hardly worthy of drawing a line."

  Just a kiss I'd been dreaming about getting a second shot at since she turned me down.

  "If and when I kiss you again, it'll be because you want me to—no, because you need me to. Not for a fucking show," I said as calmly as possible.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. I tried not to notice what that did to her visible cleavage, but I was a man, not a pries
t. I damn well noticed. "I hate to break it to you, but I'm never going to ‘need' you to kiss me."

  "Then we'll never kiss again," I said, shrugging.

  Uncrossing her arms, she looked out the window again. "Whatever."

  We drove in silence for a while, long enough that I thought the topic was over.

  Until…

  "So you're okay with living with me for a weekend, and sleeping in the same room as me, but when it comes to kissing me…that's just too much for you?"

  I stiffened. "It's not too much."

  It's not enough.

  "Then why—?" she stated stubbornly.

  I cut her off. "Because I don't fucking want to, okay?"

  "O-Oh." Her cheeks flushed, and I realized how my words sounded, but it was too late to take them back now.

  What I was trying to say was that I didn't want to kiss her under false pretenses, but the way I said it implied something else entirely. I was torn between letting her think I wasn't interested in her like that, and setting her straight. "Marie—"

  "Don't." She waved a hand, laughing. "It's cool. I get it. I'm not your type."

  She was so wrong about that it was beyond funny.

  "That's not news to me." She laughed again. "But, you know, I wasn't asking for a real kiss. Just a way to break the ice, so to speak. So I thought…but it's whatever. It's not like I wanted to kiss you or anything, you're not my type either. You're, like, the opposite of my type. Obviously."

  Something twisted painfully in my gut. "Obviously."

  "Glad that's settled, then." She nodded once. "No kissing."

  I stared at the truck in front of us. It was a beer truck. I almost wished it would break down so I could ask the driver for some. I'd need it once we hit San Francisco.

  We drove for an interminable amount of time without speaking a word until my ringing phone broke the silence. I glanced at my radio in relief for the break from uncomfortable silence, then pushed the answer button on my steering wheel. "Hey, Captain."

  "Are you on the way to the convention with your friend?"

  Friend might be too generous of a word at this point in time. I glanced at Marie. She still stared out her window stiffly, ignoring me and my rejection of her suggestion. "Yes, sir."

  "Thank you for your generous agreement to take on this case, and your willingness to travel to do so. I appreciate the initiative such measures require and will remember this come September."

  Ah, those were the magic words I wanted to hear. That's when evaluations took place. I switched to the left lane. "Thank you, sir."

  "And remember, this might seem like a fluff case, but this man should be considered armed and very dangerous until proven otherwise. Don't let his pocket protector and ability to crunch numbers trick you into letting your guard down. If we're right, he's one of the biggest embezzlers this state has seen in years and has half the police force in his pocket. If, at any point, you feel you need back up, contact Grant, and only Grant. No one else can be trusted."

  I nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "If you need him, let him know via text. He'll be down the road at the Marriot. He doesn't want to be on site so you can keep your cover and avoid any unintentional slip-ups."

  "Okay. Same phone number as before?"

  "Yes." Captain covered the phone and spoke to someone else. "I have to go, but keep in touch. I want progress updates, and if anything big happens, let me know immediately."

  "Will do, sir."

  We hung up, and Marie finally looked at me again. "What's in September?"

  "Evaluations."

  She nodded, understanding lighting her eyes. "Oh, that explains it."

  Pressing my tongue to my cheek, I got back in the right lane. For some reason as I turned the wheel, her perfume hit me, and I inhaled it hungrily. She smelled like roses. I didn't even like roses, but on her? Delectable. "Explains what?"

  "Why you're willing to go away for the weekend with me." She cleared her throat. "What are you going for? Promotion or raise?"

  "Most likely, a raise." I swallowed. "But—"

  "I hope you get it." She glanced out the window.

  Something got stuck in my throat. Perhaps it was an apology for making her think I didn't want her, or for making her feel it was such a hardship to spend some one on one time with her. Apparently, somewhere along the way, in my attempt to make sure I didn't make her uncomfortable with my unwanted advances, I'd made her think I didn't like her at all. The reality of it was that I wanted her too much, and couldn't trust myself not to break my golden rule of never trying to change a woman's mind about what she did or didn't want.

  I refused to be that guy, so I kept my distance.

  But in doing so, I'd made her think I disliked her. The question of the hour was, was she better off thinking that, or should I tell her the truth?

  6

  Marie

  Talk about embarrassing.

  That's what I got for going outside of my comfort zone and trying something new like asking Joseph to kiss me. It's just that he had been going on and on about playing the part of lovers, and it seemed logical that lovers should know what each other tasted like, right?

  Ugh.

  We'd been driving for hours in tense silence now, only breaking it every once in a while to commiserate about horrible drivers, or how pretty the scenery we flew past was. We stuck to safe topics and didn't bring up kissing again, but that offer of mine hung over us like the smog in Los Angeles, thick and inescapable. It was that boring topic that led to me asking: "What's the end goal, here? To get him to have a fit of honesty, and admit to stealing cash from his clients? How likely is that?"

  Joseph snorted. "Not likely at all."

  "So, what, then?"

  "I don't need a confession, though that would be great." He rubbed his jaw. "I need an opportunity to get to his personal laptop. I have a warrant, and a drive that will copy every file he has or has had on it, as well as every conversation via chatrooms and messages on the dark web."

  My jaw dropped. Forgetting to look aloof and cool, I asked, "There's actually a dark web? It's not just something in movies and books?"

  "Of course there is. How else would criminals get business, or find places to hide their stolen money that even the feds don't know about yet?"

  I pursed my lips. "Word of mouth?"

  "Not anymore." He laughed. "Now it's basically a Craigslist approach, with codes and anonymous users. They think they found his post where he asked for information on the best off-shore bank to funnel his influx of cash, but he covered his tracks too well. If I can get that drive in his laptop and copy all his files—"

  "Then you'll have proof."

  He nodded.

  "How do you intend to get close enough to his computer, and how will you distract him long enough to avoid getting caught?" I asked slowly. After all, that seemed kind of risky.

  What if he got caught?

  "I'm not sure yet." He lifted a shoulder. "I'll figure it out when I'm there. More than likely, though, I'll sneak into his room when he's boring you with his blathering about numbers, stocks, and trades."

  That seemed like a good plan, but what if his speech ended early, and he came back to his hotel room earlier than planned? What if he left a guy in his room with his computer? What if he brought his laptop with him? There were too many variables that could end up with Joseph hurt, and that wasn't a chance I was willing to take.

  We needed something we had more control over. Something like… "How long will it take to transfer the data?" I asked in a rush.

  "Depends how much data is on there. Most of the time, it takes three to five minutes." He side-eyed me. "Why?"

  My heart picked up speed. "He's single, right?"

  "Widowed. His wife died of cancer recently. But I don't think dating criminals is a good way to change your life," he said, his grip shifting on the wheel almost restlessly.

  "Duh," I said, rolling my eyes. "Maybe we can tag-team him. I can pull out the c
harm, ask him out for a drink, and you can slip into—"

  "No," he said flatly.

  I continued on as if he hadn't spoken. In my opinion, he hadn't. "—his room while I make sure that he doesn't leave too early by making him think he has a chance at me."

  "Hell no."

  I crossed my arms. "Why not?"

  "You're not getting anywhere near him. You are to draw absolutely no attention to yourself at all, and you are to avoid being even remotely intimate with this man." His jaw ticked. "Am I clear?"

  I laughed. I couldn't help it. "Are you seriously trying to boss me around, and thinking I'll allow it because you're my fake boyfriend? That's so cute."

  His nostrils flared as he pulled into the parking lot of our fancy Hilton hotel. "Damn it, Marie—"

  "Oh, look how nice this is," I said, opening the truck door and stepping down. My legs were shaky as I put my weight on them, not because of the furious man behind me, but because I'd been sitting for hours.

  Or so I told myself anyway.

  A valet held the door steadily open for me, and I smiled at him as I stretched. "Thank you, kind sir."

  He inclined his head, his gaze sliding over me appreciatively. "Ma'am."

  Joseph came around the side of the truck, his angry gaze settled on my bare legs and the dude who'd been admiring them. When I'd stretched, my pencil skirt rode up a bit, and some inner instinct told me he knew exactly how much it had, down to the millimeter.

  After I raised my brows at him, he turned away to supervise the men loading our stuff onto a gold cart, and then handed his key to the valet. As he spoke to the man, his gaze slid back on me, and I had a feeling there would be hell to pay for my refusal to listen to him.

  Good. Bring it on. I liked the heat.

  After we were all loaded up, he placed his hand on my lower back and propelled me after the man wheeling our stuff. It was my first instinct to pull away to a safer distance, but then I remembered it was go time, so instead, I leaned into him as if I couldn't wait to get him alone in our room. I was fully committed to the role now that we were here, surrounded by people we needed to convince. Every hesitation I had about being his "girl" faded away, and I slipped into character without a second's warning.