“Ican’t believe you’re making me do this,” Nash said as a makeup artist dabbed powder across his brow. Out of patience, he dodged her hand. “Can we be done? Please?”
I was perched on the counter in his office, enjoying the hell out of his discomfort under the heat of the photographer’s lights.
For the past few days, I’d been the one suffering discomfort, being forced to move in with him…temporarily, I reminded myself. But that meant in the meantime, me, my clothing, my makeup, even my damn houseplant were now living in Nash’s apartment.
For the last forty-eight hours, I’d slept in Nash’s bed, brushed my teeth at his sink, and gotten dressed in his bathroom. Then I’d sat at his table and eaten the breakfasts and dinners he made me.
I drew the line at pooping while he was home. To be safe, I’d temporarily cut back on fiber.
To be honest, minus my fear of sharing a bathroom, the living situation hadn’t been as weird as I’d expected. But that was probably because most of our quality time was spent naked and the rest of it was working out details of the Nash’s-fake-memory-recovery-to-lure-Duncan-Hugo-out-of-hiding plan.
The makeup artist packed up her gear and hustled out of the room. I slid off the counter and approached Nash. He was in uniform and scowling, a combination I found utterly appealing.
“Need I remind you? This was your idea,” I said, running my palms across his broad chest. He’d been putting weight back on, steadily adding muscle to his frame. And I’d noticed him using his bad shoulder with fewer grimaces. My heart had given up on its nervous PVCs for the most part, and I wondered if earth-shattering sex was some kind of miracle cure-all.
“My idea was to spread the word that my memory was back. Not shout it from a national online magazine with a goddamn photo shoot,” he complained.
“Poor baby. But we have to make sure the news spreads far and wide in case Duncan is in hiding across the country.”
“How did Stef even pull this off?” Nash demanded, tugging irritably on his collar.
“He’s got a PR firm on retainer. Naomi called him, he called them, and here we are.”
“Remind me to drop a weight plate on his foot at the gym next time I see him.”
I grinned.
“What?”
“I kind of like it when you’re surly. It’s cute,” I confessed.
“I’m not surly and it’s not fucking cute.”
“Okay. You’re broody and it’s sexy.”
His jaw ticked as he pondered that one. “I can live with that.”
“Are you worried?” I asked, cuddling up to him.
Nash slid his fingers into the back pockets of my pants. “He’s unpredictable. I could be putting myself out there as bait and he could still ignore me and go after someone else.”
“Knox isn’t going to let Naomi or Waylay out of his sight for the foreseeable future. You’re the one who’s going to be drawing Duncan’s attention. You’re the biggest threat. He won’t be able to resist trying to finish the job.” I shook my head and closed my eyes.
“What?” Nash asked.
“I can’t believe I’m comforting my live-in lover with the fact that the man who tried to murder him once will make a second attempt,” I said. “Nothing about this situation is normal.”
“Live-in lover?” he repeated.
“Boy toy? Man friend? Emotional support fuck?”
“Boyfriend,” Nash decided. He grinned when I winced. “For a badass, you sure spook easy.”
“I’m not spooked,” I lied.
“You think I can’t tell when my girlfriend is panicking?”
“Now you’re just being a Nashhole,” I complained, stepping out of his grasp. “Let’s table the labeling of whatever this is until after.”
He leaned against his desk, still grinning. “I like knowing I can rattle you.”
“Yeah? Well, I like it better when you’re freaking out over cosmetics and a photo shoot for a national magazine.”
He winced. “Now who’s being mean, Meana?”
“Here, have a mint,” I said, handing him one of the wrapped candies I’d snagged from the restaurant’s host stand on our first date.
“I don’t want a mint. I want…” He trailed off as the wrapper crinkled in his hand. He frowned down at it, lost in thought.
“What?” I asked.
He shook himself. “Nothing. Just felt like I was remembering something.”
“About the shooting?” I prodded.
“Maybe. It’s gone now.”
“If you’re a good boy, I’ll take you for ice cream,” I offered, changing the subject.
His fingers hooked into the waistband of my pants and tugged me closer.
“Your pepper spray is digging into my stomach,” I warned him.
“How about instead of a photo shoot and ice cream, I sit you on my desk and spread those long, sexy legs of yours wide? I’ll go down on my knees and kiss my way up your thighs.”
A delicious shiver worked its way up my spine as he slid one hand lower to cup my rear end. His hand was warm, the grip possessive.
“You’d be begging me for it until I’d take my tongue and—”
“Okay! Sorry for the delay. I’m locked and loaded.” The photographer didn’t seem to notice that my knees had quit functioning or that Nash was glaring at him with the heat of a thousand suns.
“Rain check?” I whispered.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with a hard-on?” he growled in my ear.
I glanced down and grinned. “Hide it behind your pepper spray. And your flashlight. And your Taser. But whatever you do, don’t think about me screaming your name when you go down on me.”
“Fuck.”
Nash suffered through twelve whole minutes of photos—most of them with a barely disguised erection—before pulling the plug on the shoot like a grumpy man bear. It was six minutes longer than I thought he’d last.
I shifted Piper in my arms and pulled out my phone.
Me: You owe me $20. Nash just gave the photographer the boot.
Stef: Damn it! I thought he’d make it to fifteen.
Me: Sucker. Venmo me. Also, thank you for arranging this while you’re busy doing whatever it is you do in New York. I owe you.
Stef: You can repay your debt by feeding me intel on Jeremiah.
Me: Aren’t you in contact with him?
Stef: Of course I am. I just want to know if he’s lifting weights like a sad, sexy panda while I’m gone.
“Hey. You wanna get out of here?” Nash said, poking his head in the door of his office. His face was scrubbed clean of the makeup artist’s powder. He looked exactly like an all-American hero. Piper thought so too if her tail wagging was any indication.
“Where are we going?” I asked, slipping my phone into my bag and putting the dog on the floor.
“To see a girl about an ass,” he said cryptically.
“After you,” I said, gesturing for him to walk ahead of me. I admired his posterior in those sexy as hell uniform pants as he led the way into the bullpen.
“Did they take any pictures of your face or was it all ass?” Nolan asked, shrugging into his jacket and following us out the door.
“Bite me,” Nash said.
It was a beautiful fall day for a drive. Nash cued up a country playlist and off the three of us—plus Piper—went in his department-issued SUV. I focused my attention on the updates in the WhatsApp group. Naomi and Sloane were taking their assignments seriously.
Sloane had recruited a tiered network of spies on the lookout for Hugo and his henchmen.
Naomi and Waylay had their first jujitsu lesson scheduled for this evening. Knox and Lucian had ordered seven million pounds of security equipment that they would be installing this week.
“Fun field trip, Chief,” Nolan said from the back seat.
I glanced up and saw the women’s correctional facility looming in front of us.
“Figured it was about time I had a sit-down with her,” Nash said, eyeing the prison through the windshield. “Anything I need to know before we go in?”
“She won’t talk if Nolan’s in the room, and she has a crush on you.”
“Tina? On me?” Nash looked like I’d just whipped out a badminton racket and slapped him in the face with it.
“It’s the butt, isn’t it?” Nolan asked.
“Mine or hers?”
“Come on, Chief,” I teased. “You know that every female in Knockemout loves to watch you leave a room.”
Nash’s ears were turning an adorable shade of pink.
“Can we please not talk about my ass?”
“We can stop, but I don’t think you’re gonna shut the whole town up, Studly Do-Right,” Nolan warned.
Muttering under his breath, Nash got out of the SUV and tossed his keys to Nolan. “Stay here and keep Piper entertained. We’ll be back.”
“Try not to get shanked,” Nolan called out.
I stiffened when Nash slung his arm around my shoulders as we headed across the lot.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We’re working,” I pointed out.
“And?”
“And it’s not professional of us to be hanging on each other, making out.”
“I think we’re gonna have to revisit your definition of making out.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, hating how bitchy I sounded.
Nash pulled me to a stop just shy of the entrance. “You’ve been busting my balls all day, and when you aren’t busting my balls, you’re turning me on. And when you’re not doing either of those things, you’re locked away in that head of yours thinkin’ deep thoughts. Now, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you’re still in a tailspin over the whole extended sleepover thing.”
“I’m not in a tailspin.”
“Did you know you overemphasize words when you’re freaking out?”
“I do not.” Okay. He had me there. I’d never spent enough time around a man for him to detect my tells before. This was annoying.
And now I was doing it in my head. Great.
“Listen to me, baby. You freak out all you want. I’ll still be here when you’re done. It’s an extended sleepover. That’s it. You’re not locked in a dungeon. You’re not being held against your will. You’re just keeping your clothes in a different closet. We’ll deal with the real decisions after. Okay?”
I was nodding with overemphasis now. Baby steps. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”
“Good girl. Now help me crack Tina like a walnut.”
I shook my head to clear it. “Fine. Let me think. She likes that you were always nice to her. She said you never treated her badly even when you arrested her.”
“Then why’d she let her boyfriend put a few rounds in me?”
“She says she didn’t know until after the fact. And I’m wondering if Hugo may have decided to start with you because Tina had heart eyes for your ass.”
Nash looked over his shoulder. “Is it really that nice?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Tina strolled into the room with her usual attitude but came to a halt when she spied Nash next to me. Hastily, she brushed her hair out of her face and then approached the table with shoulders-back-boobs-out posture.
Nash did not glance at the bust line beneath the khaki prison garb, but he did smile. “Hey, Tina.”
“Chief.” Tina’s laceless shoe met the leg of her chair and she stumbled, catching herself against the table.
“You all right?” Nash asked.
“Fine as fuck. I mean, yes. I’m fine.” The tough girl trying to be strong enough to resist falling for the cute guy. I didn’t care for the obvious parallels.
“Nash has a few questions for you,” I said.
Tina’s eyes came to me as she sat. She looked startled as if she hadn’t realized I was in the room. “Oh, uh, hi, Lona.”
“It’s Lina,” I said, shooting Nash an I-told-you-so look.
He cleared his throat. “Tina—”
“Look, I didn’t know nothing about him shooting you,” Tina said. “Least, not beforehand. And I laid into him after. He said he did it to make his dad start takin’ him seriously. Why people give a shit about their parents’ opinions I’ll never know. Waste of time if you ask me.”
This coming from a woman with two delightful parents who wanted nothing more than for Tina to find happiness…and stop acting like a criminal.
“I appreciate that,” Nash said.
She bobbed her head. “Like I said, I had nothin’ to do with that.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Dunno.”
Nash leaned in and Tina mirrored him. “Do you have any idea where he would go if he needed to hide out but still wanted to stay close?”
“Told her I never met the guy, but whenever he needed a new place, he always called Burner Phone Guy,” Tina said, nodding at me without taking her eyes off Nash. “He’d hook us up with a place to crash or find Dunc a place to stash the cars he was stealing.”
“How would he pay Burner Phone Guy?” Nash asked.
“Cash. He’d put it in one of those media mail boxes from the post office and send it.”
“You’ve been real helpful, Tina,” Nash said, making a few notes on his pad before putting the pen down.
“If you have any questions about that night in the warehouse, ask Waylay. Kid’s got one of those memories like a trap. Don’t ever mention going for ice cream unless you’re serious about takin’ her ’cause it’s all you’ll hear for the next two years of your life if you change your mind.”
And just like that, I was back to not liking Tina.
Nash and I got to our feet.
“We appreciate your time,” Nash said.
Tina looked panicked for a second and then a sly look crossed her face. She slapped Nash’s pen off the table like a cat. “Oops. I dropped your pen.”
Nash went pale and looked at me for assistance.
“You’re closer,” I said.
I barely managed to choke back a laugh when he crouched down, keeping his rear end far away from Tina.
“You have yourself a good day,” he said, pocketing the pen.
“See you, Tina,” I said, then followed Nash as he kept his ass to the wall and skirted toward the door.
We found Nolan and Piper sitting in the sunshine on a strip of grass playing tug-of-war with Piper’s stuffed police dog.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Nolan offered.
Nash reached down to ruffle Piper’s fur. “Hugo’s unidentified henchman might be less of a henchman and more of a property manager or real estate agent. He got paid in dirty cash through the mail.”
“Mail fraud. Nice.”
“I’ll have my researcher narrow down the search of known associates by those with a connection to real estate,” I said.
“Your turn,” Nash said to Nolan.
“I got hold of an old friend in the Bureau. And no, I’m not sharing his name. But he had some insider knowledge he was willing to share. Says the anonymous intel is coming in through the mail, addressed to Special Agent Idler. It’s handwritten notes on Anthony Hugo’s operations. Nothing huge yet, but so far it’s all checked out. The not-so-anonymous sender has hinted that he’s got more where that came from in exchange for an immunity deal.”
“That lines up with Grim’s intel. Sounds like Duncan Hugo wants to work with the feds if it means getting his father out of the way and taking over the family business,” Nash said.
“Should I be worried about our national security if there are this many leaks at the FBI?” I wondered.
“Nah. It’s probably fine,” Nolan said with a wink.
I opened the WhatsApp chat to fill everyone in on our progress.
“Oh good. Knox and Lucian installed more cameras on the building exterior and added some to the interior. They’ll be adding window and door sensors tomorrow and Lucian left a tracker that looks like a condom for you at the station,” I read.
“I don’t know about you guys, but all this forward momentum is makin’ me hungry,” Nash announced.
“I wouldn’t say no to an open-faced hot turkey sandwich,” Nolan said.
“Hey, Nolan. Tina dropped a pen just to watch Nash pick it up,” I tattled as we got in the car.
