I mulled that over for a second. A little jumbled, okay, and maybe not super logical. I could dissect his explanation later, at home over another glass of wine. Dissect it until I ended up calling one of my less toxic friends to chew it over obsessively, probably, but details. After all, I’d promised myself some overanalysis. Why not lean into it?
Bottom line, he’d fucked up and wanted to make it up to me. My chest had that too-tight feeling again. “So you asked me out because you were sorry?”
“Yeah, but I also wanted the chance to make a second impression. Although I kind of fucked that up too, didn’t I?”
He sounded genuinely sorry as he said that, like he actually regretted not impressing me. Like he’d hoped to do better.
God, everyone had their insecurities, didn’t they? Even ridiculously tall, hot, muscular guys with cool leather jackets.
In high school, my mom had always told me that even the cool kids were just as worried about what everyone thought of them as I was, probably even more—they simply hid it better. Maybe she’d had a point. Then again, moms nearly always had a point.
“I didn’t throw my drink on you.” I glanced up, and I found him looking down at me, almost smiling. Not quite. But not scowling. Go me. “But the night’s still young.” I waggled my eyebrows, and the smile crept up to reach his eyes, which gleamed in the glow of the streetlight we’d walked under.
“I’m not coming home with you, even if you invite me,” he said, but he was still smiling a little. “You deserve better.”
My feet stopped moving, and I stood and stared up at him.
“What did you just say?”
He stopped too, a puzzled frown driving out the smile. “That you deserve better?” My head spun a little, the streetlight’s off-white glare dissolving into streamers. “You know, better than some guy who came on to you in a park and then took you on a terrible date trying to pressure you into putting out?”
Alec had his hands in his jacket pockets, the bastard. My hands still felt like lumps at the ends of my arms, like I needed somewhere to put them, like my whole body had shifted subtly out of place.
I didn’t recognize this feeling—and then, at last, it hit me. Attraction. Real, honest attraction, and not just the one-night-stand kind. Maybe Alec hadn’t made the greatest first impression, at least beyond making me want to roll over and beg. But he’d paid for our drinks, and tipped generously, and held the door, and—if I wasn’t going to value myself, he apparently meant to do it for me. I must’ve misunderstood him earlier. He seemed to be as uncomfortable with a real date as I was, and he’d probably just fallen prey to the same kind of verbal fuck-up I’d practically trademarked.
“Walk me the rest of the way home, then.” I found myself smiling sunnily up at him, and he blinked, looking a little dazed. Maybe the streetlight was too glary for him, too. “And then tomorrow you can call me. For a do-over, okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a little husky. He cleared his throat. “I’d like that.”
As we started walking again, I slipped one hand through his arm, not feeling awkward about it at all. We didn’t talk the rest of the way home, and when we got to my building he stepped away the second I took my hand off his elbow. But I was still smiling as I headed upstairs, his parting “I’ll call you tomorrow” echoing in my ears.
Usually I assumed a guy didn’t mean it when he said that to me, and most of the time I hoped he didn’t, anyway.
This time felt different.
6
Alec
The way Gabe had smiled at me the night before, that lovely, sweet smile he’d offered when he’d given me another chance, kept coming back to me all morning. The memory left me a little aroused, yeah, but a lot…something else. Something harder to define, and a lot harder to handle, since my erection at least had an easy solution.
Gabe couldn’t be involved in the smuggling operation. I didn’t want him to be, which made my conclusions slightly suspect, but I’d spent enough years as an agent to trust myself.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t know about it, or suspect it, or be an accessory in some small way, but a criminal mastermind he was not. And not because he didn’t have the mind for it—no one who got through a master’s degree in physical biochemistry that fast and with grades that spectacular could possibly be stupid. He had me outclassed by a couple dozen IQ points, I had no doubt.
His expulsion from his doctoral program had me more than a little curious, and a chemist tangentially related to a drug case came with a little suspicion attached.
But I had to trust myself, or I couldn’t do my job. And my instincts were screaming at me that Gabe might be the sort of guy to be influenced by others, and he might not have a lot of self-confidence—okay, understatement of the year, there, despite his looks and charm and brains—but he didn’t have either the motivation or the lack of moral judgment to be the kind of criminal I’d been sent here to find.
A few more reports had trickled in as I drank my coffee, showered, shaved, and fucked around in the gloomy motel room. I’d pulled the curtains back to reveal overcast skies, and my quick trip to the coffee shop had been a muggy, damp misery. The room felt close, dim, and confining, but I sat down with my laptop and forced myself to read.
Gabe’s more detailed financials weren’t shocking. Basically, he had tons of money, both liquid and in trust. His father, Mark Middleton, had inherited Middleton Marine from his parents, and Gabe’s mom had come from money and sat on the board of her family’s telecom company. No shortage of funds that would drive Gabe to finding new sources of income.
And no evidence of serious debts, or an addiction to gambling or prostitutes or fast cars or anything else that could soak up a fortune like Gabe’s and leave him scrambling.
My own analysis of the evidence so far—which included a few partial photographs provided by the Canadian authorities, taken of boats they were fairly sure had left Canada with shipments of contraband—suggested Middleton as the likeliest provider of transport. Lake Champlain had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of private docks, suitable for a smaller boat like the ones Middleton Marine operated and manufactured. Middleton employees owned both of the locations where these particular smugglers had been scared off. Of course, those people had all been out of town and, when questioned, convincingly horrified that their property had nearly been used to commit an international crime.
I wasn’t convinced.
Then again, I mistrusted nearly everyone on principle, a trait which had gotten me into my current career and state of perpetual singledom.
I drained the last of my latte and tossed the paper cup into the bin by the desk. I’d finished with my email. I’d read everything that had come in so far.
I had nothing to do, in short, but brood over the Gabe-as-a-person problem, as opposed to the Gabe-as-a-possible-criminal problem—since I could pretty much dismiss the latter.
Christ, I wanted him. And I couldn’t have him. Even though I’d moved on from suspecting him directly, he represented my best possible chance of quietly and obliquely investigating his family’s company. Telling him the truth had crossed my mind, more than once—usually right on the heels of adjusting my erection after another flash-memory of his brilliant smile and the way he’d linked arms with me, a tacit and tactile sign that he’d decided to forgive me for taking him out on what had to be one of his most awkward dates of all time.
But family loyalty tended to outweigh abstract considerations like the law, especially when there wasn’t anything obviously dramatic going on, like a serial killer on the loose. Fentanyl killed more people than serial killers did by orders of magnitude, but that didn’t mean Gabe would be willing to think of someone he knew and liked and trusted as an accessory to murder.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. And as long as I was misrepresenting myself and essentially using him, that put him off-limits.
Completely. Damn it.
Although honestly, his willingness
to be talked into taking me home with him made him even more off-limits than my investigation did.
And I could have. I knew it. Gabe was, for lack of a better word, easy. He’d basically admitted it.
Which wasn’t a bad thing in and of itself, or wouldn’t have been—if I’d gotten the feeling that Gabe slept around because he really enjoyed it. I’d met lots of guys who had a different partner nearly every night, and they loved the hell out of it. Betrayed commitments aside, and thank you Kris for giving me that particular complex, I was all for it. Why not have as much fun as you could? Jesus, I only wished I could have that much fun.
Unless it wasn’t fun. Unless you were lonely, and didn’t think much of yourself, and had, say, been recently kicked out of a university where you were building a life and a career and felt like you had nothing going for you but your bank account and your gorgeous body, and lived a life that was supposed to be fun in the abstract.
Profiling wasn’t my specialty, but it didn’t take an expert, or a genius, to see Gabe’s insecurities, standing out all over him like the neon sign at Vino and Veritas. Especially when I had the benefit of a thorough background check to fill in the gaps.
My phone buzzed, and I picked it up, expecting a message from Jenna, or maybe a grumpy cat meme from my sister. She usually included some kind of super subtle reference to the meme being about me, like, Put ur face on a grmpy cat meme and no one noticed.
Gabe’s name appeared instead.
Hey! I know you said you’d call later, but do you want to come over for lunch? Ordering sushi.
I took a moment to appreciate the fact that Gabe used fully spelled-out words and real punctuation in his texts. Jesus, I’d gotten sick of my sister making fun of me for that. At least I had company.
Before I could reply, another message popped up:
Or not sushi, if you’d rather eat something else! :)
A second later:
That wasn’t meant as innuendo, sorry
And then:
I mean, if you want to take it that way… :)
And finally:
Sorry. It’s really just a lunch invitation. Do you like sushi?
I blinked, trying to recover from the whiplash. I did like sushi. I’d really prefer to be eating him, as he’d accidentally implied, confirmed, and then denied all within five seconds. But that wasn’t on the table, literally or figuratively.
Either way, I couldn’t think of a more perfect opening to start winning my dishonest, ulterior way into his confidence than lunch.
Feeling like every kind of asshole, I sent back:
I like sushi. I’m not picky, so order whatever you like, only two of them. I’ll be there in half an hour?
His thumbs-up emoji appeared a few seconds later.
I probably had enough time to jerk off before I left. And hopefully I could take the edge off enough that he wouldn’t be able to see how much I wanted to eat dessert.
Gabe opened the door wearing cutoff jean shorts—the operative word being short—a green Burlington University Bulls t-shirt, and a shy, tentative smile. He’d clearly gone the same purposely-casual route I had. Just having lunch! his clothes seemed to say. No seduction here, no sir, not at all. Except that his long legs and the way that shirt draped around his body screamed seduction.
Or maybe that was just my response to him. I should’ve taken the time to jerk off twice.
“Hi,” Gabe said, and stepped back. “Um. Food’s not here yet. How are you?” His cheeks went hot pink.
“Good. You?”
We stared at each other for a minute. Yep, still awkward.
And still aroused. The curve of his neck and shoulder where it emerged from the oversized shirt had me mesmerized.
“Well!” Gabe said brightly, his face still flushed. “Something to drink?”
I ended up following him into the kitchen and accepting a beer, which he’d pulled out from behind the milk and a bottle of orange juice. Like maybe he’d gone to the store earlier this morning and bought the beer then, long before lunchtime.
Impromptu lunch invitation, my ass.
And I really, really wanted not to be flattered and touched. I failed.
Gabe leaned up against the kitchen counter as I propped my shoulder on the kitchen doorframe and took a swig of my beer. The kitchen matched the rest of the place, at least what I’d seen so far: lots of hardwood and fancy granite and shiny chrome appliances. It also bore all the signs of someone having cleaned up in a hurry, with a pile of papers on the kitchen table that looked like several stacks all heaped together, and streaks across the counter where it’d been wiped down too quickly to get it perfect.
He toyed with his own beer, taking a sip without enthusiasm. He’d definitely gotten it just for me. It wasn’t a brand I’d have bought; clearly he’d gone for the most expensive six-pack in the store without having a clue what beer-drinkers looked for, or what I’d ordered the night before.
“So I—” he began, at the same time as I said, “Thanks for—”
We both broke off into silence.
“You first,” Gabe said, with a low little laugh that made me smile automatically in response. Christ, I never smiled when people laughed. Usually I was totally immune.
“Thanks for inviting me over. I really would’ve called you, y’know.”
“Yeah,” Gabe said softly, looking down at his beer bottle. He’d started peeling the label. “I’m sure you would have.”
All of a sudden, nothing felt more important to me than making sure he believed it. My case—fuck my case. What case? Fuck.
I crossed the kitchen until I stood right in front of him, not quite close enough to touch. Close enough to feel that little frisson of heat or static electricity, or whatever it was you felt when you came into proximity with another human body, one you wanted to touch.
Slowly, he tipped his head up, enough to look at me. Enough to show me his rosy lips, slightly damp from his last sip of beer and way too tempting.
“I would’ve called you,” I repeated. “This afternoon. I didn’t want to seem too pushy.”
Too late, I realized how that sounded. He’d texted me in the morning. His blush came rushing back and his gaze skittered away.
“Or desperate,” he said with a brittle little smile.
“Or desperate,” I agreed. “But desperate’s for the guy who screwed up the date the night before. Not for the guy generous enough to let him off the hook and invite him over for lunch.”
Gabe looked up at me through his eyelashes. Had he figured out what that did to my blood pressure? Probably not. He seemed weirdly naïve for someone who obviously slept around a little bit. Like he had no idea how attractive he really was, or how to use it, even though he seemed to think it was all anyone noticed about him.
“You’re a lot nicer than I expected.”
I let out a bark of a laugh, a little rusty-sounding. It’d been a while since I used it this often. “I don’t get that very much, honestly.”
His eyes crinkled as he laughed in turn, shaking his head. “Should I dump my beer over your shirt? Would that help you feel more comfortable?”
His lips, fuck, and those eyes. They really weren’t any color I could define. Blue mixed with green, with little threads of pearl gray. I started leaning down without even meaning to, the heat of his body like a magnet drawing me in.
The doorbell buzzed, and I jumped back like it’d somehow reached through two rooms and electrocuted me.
“Oh shit, lunch,” Gabe said, his voice a little high. He set his beer on the counter with a thunk and practically ran out of the kitchen.
No kissing, Alec. I took the opportunity of being alone for a minute to tug my shirt down, hoping it’d cover a multitude of sins, and then followed Gabe into the other room.
Gabe
Watching Alec eat sushi had to be one of the most pornographic experiences I’d had in years. I wasn’t any kind of foodie, much to the disappointment of my parents, who’d tri
ed to teach me the social value of appreciating fine dining. I didn’t care about food one way or the other, really. It either tasted good or it didn’t—but honestly I could’ve lived on quesadillas and peanut butter sandwiches and an occasional apple pretty much indefinitely. Maybe I’d grown up as a rich, spoiled kid, but enough all-nighters in a lab burned the need for fancy food right out of you, if you ever had it to begin with.
So watching people eat didn’t figure into my turn-ons as a general rule.
But Alec approached his meal with a focused, precise intensity that had me squirming in my seat. The way he handled chopsticks with those long fingers had me fantasizing about all the ways they could handle me. He had such big hands.
I managed to eat my own caterpillar roll without dropping anything, but only barely.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the day?” He set his chopsticks down, much to my regret. I’d hoped for a few more minutes of seeing his fingers manipulating them before I had to make my brain function enough to talk. “What’s your usual weekend routine?”
My usual weekend routine…as opposed to my any-other-day routine? It was the weekend? Oh, God, I really needed to get a life. A real life, not this pointless round of meaninglessness.
Keep the existential crisis on the inside, Gabe. No one finds that attractive after you graduate from high school.
I shrugged. “No particular routine. Sometimes I go out, I guess?” Yeah, way to make myself sound exciting and interesting. And shit, shit, shit, he’d probably asked me that because he wanted me to suggest something for us to do. Wait, had he? Or was he fishing for me to tell him I had plans, so he could escape after we’d finished eating?
Undercover (Vino and Veritas) Page 6