I wanted to rage at the captain, and at Nathan, too. I wanted to tell them both in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t there for their entertainment, that I was a cop who had earned her stripes and who deserved better than to play babysitter to an entitled billionaire.
But I didn’t say anything. Instead I let the heat rise in my cheeks, my pulse pound in my ears, and my hands shake behind my back as I held in every ounce of anger surging through me.
For the greater good, I told myself. Once you do this, everyone will look at you differently. You’ll be a hero, Sandra. It all sounded like lies.
“Detective,” the captain said, lowering his voice. “You can say ‘no.’?”
For a moment, I let my rage get the better of me. “Can I, sir?”
Captain Pierce nodded. “Yes. You can. Mr. Hale strikes me as the type of man who’s used to getting what he wants. He’s playing a game here, and he’s not afraid to make people uncomfortable or unhappy to get his way. We both know he’s not going back to his house after what happened today, whether you agree to this or not. If this is going to be a problem for you, detective, then I wouldn’t hold it against you if you said ‘no.’?”
That gave me pause. I lowered my eyes, considering the Captain’s offer. If he was right, the absolutely best case scenario was that it wouldn’t reflect poorly on me. I’d go back to my job exactly how I left it, Nathan would become someone else’s problem, and I could refocus on other parts of my life that mattered much more than some billionaire’s welfare.
But an image flashed in my head, or rather a series of them: Nathan’s impossibly green eyes; his lazy, lopsided grin; the way he’d stepped in at the last second and potentially saved me from a thug with a gas can and biceps that could have snapped my spine like a twig.
No, that wasn’t right—there was no “potentially” about it. If Nathan hadn’t shown up at that moment, that guy was going to put my training to the test. Even if I took him down, one of his men was almost certainly going to kill me and set the whole place on fire, maybe not even in that order.
The sad fact of the matter was that I owed him one. I tried not to think about how, strangely, I didn’t really mind. A small part of me was looking forward to a few days shacked up with Nathaniel Hale. I had to take a moment to push that thought straight out. This was all a game for Mr. Hale, and if I didn’t assert myself all I’d ever be is the girl he bent over his desk whenever he wanted to. That chapter of my life was over now. I wanted to stay safe inside my web of lies where Nathan’s compelling stare couldn’t reach me.
Right, so I owed him one. We’d go with that.
“No,” I told Captain Pierce. “I mean—yes. I’ll do it. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Captain Pierce looked both surprised and almost impressed. “Fair enough, detective. Pack only what you need.”
I nodded, then stepped out of his office and into the hall. My stomach was churning with the implications of what I’d just done—upended my entire life for a man who probably wouldn’t even appreciate it—when I nearly ran face-first into Nathan’s warm, hard body.
“Jesus!” I yelped, clutching at the collar of my blouse as though it would help the breath return to my lungs. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Nathan looked down at me, grinning from ear to ear. “Sorry about that, detective. It’s probably the shoes.” He lifted a foot, showing me the soles. “My company has been importing them from Japan where this guy, this designer, Shinji Watanabe, started a brand new line of samurai-inspired fashion. His footwear collection is largely based off traditional Japanese designs, and this is his take on the jika-tabi, soft-soled shoes that give you tactile connection with the ground…. and… uh…”
I stared at him. Not a single iota of me cared one bit about his fancy goddamn ninja shoes. Two seconds with this guy and I was already ready to shove one of them down his throat.
He must have seen the look on my face, because he quickly summed up:
“Anyway, they don’t make much sound. So that’s probably why you didn’t hear me.”
“Well, I imagine I’ll be hearing a lot of you very soon, not to mention seeing,” I said, moving past him. He fell into step beside me. “Your demands have been met. I’ll be your handler for the next seven days.”
“I thought it’d be for the best,” Nathan explained, handing me a Starbucks cup with my name across it. “You know, we made a pretty good team back there. And besides, it’ll look good for you—the woman who took down the Irish mafia and convinced billionaire Nathan Hale to testify,” he added, spelling out the headline with his free hand while using an overblown radio-style voice. “And besides… I wasn’t really sure who else I could trust.”
I sniffed the contents of the cup through the little opening in the lid. Whatever it was smelled sweet. I took a tentative sip and nearly melted. Mocha anything was my jam. How the hell did he know?
“That’s only if it all goes as planned,” I reminded him, quickly taking the steps down to the lobby. “Hopefully there won’t be too much more excitement. But I gotta ask,” I whirled to face him once I hit the bottom, “did you come up with our cover story, too?”
Nathan paused two steps above me, clutching his own Starbucks cup to his chest like a shield, like it would protect him from my question, and possibly from me. He hadn’t stopped grinning since he saw me come out of Captain Pierce’s office, but I watched the corners of his mouth curl even more mischievously.
“No,” he said. “Scout’s honor—I would’ve never picked a name like Candy. I think somebody thought he was being funny.”
I felt my own lips betray me, pulling into a faint smile. “And the other thing? I’m supposed to play house as your girlfriend?”
He shrugged and took a long drink from his cup. “That might have been my idea,” he said calmly. “Besides, you said it yourself, I don’t have a girlfriend right now. I thought I’d treat myself.”
I already wanted to throttle him, but when I realized he wasn’t going to elaborate further, I simply rolled my eyes and turned away.
“Right. Well, I’ve got to go pack for our little vacation at the Peachtree Overlook.”
“The Peachtree Overlook, huh?” Nathan called out behind me. “Sounds like a nice little place.”
I could have corrected him, but I only smiled. Nathan had inflicted quite a few surprises on me today. It was only fair that I got to inflict one on him.
Chapter 3
“You can’t be serious.”
I couldn’t stop smiling as Nathan and I pulled into the parking lot of the Peachtree Overlook, which must have looked like a dump compared to the estates he’d lived in his whole life. His mansion just outside the city wasn’t his family home, and given that it was meant for only one person, I couldn’t begin to imagine what the house he’d grown up in had looked like.
“This is it,” I told him, trying to keep the demented glee out of my tone as I parked the old sky blue Honda the department had lent me in one of the narrow spots. The car was an auction vehicle, a prize seized from a dealer or some other low-level criminal who couldn’t afford anything better.
It was all part of the plan to make Nathan and I look like a couple just barely keeping our heads above the poverty line. Those were the kinds of people nobody saw, the ones who weren’t homeless, but who stood one small disaster away from losing everything. Nobody wanted to talk about those people, because that meant they’d have to acknowledge they existed and might need help. And nobody wanted to be inconvenienced enough to actually help them. It was easier just to forget about them and move on.
Nathan was, quite clearly, one of those people. As I killed the engine and stepped out of the car, he kept staring at the apartments with a wrinkled nose and slack jaw. There was nothing but contempt in his eyes for the place. I couldn’t resist making a remark.
“You know, some people would be damn grateful to live in a place like this.”
I’d expected him to scoff and say som
ething about how he wasn’t one of them, but instead, he only sighed and opened his door, muttering that it would have to do.
We took our duffel bags stuffed with only our necessities out of the trunk and lugged them up the stairs to the second floor. Our room was 213, situated in the perfect spot in the middle of the hall where we had a view of the stairs, the lot, and partway around the corner from our living room window. It would make keeping an eye on the activity outside our apartment easy enough, and I immediately felt my nerves settle.
If you need anything, just holler, Captain Pierce had said. As close together as these units were, I figured the other officers would have no problem hearing me.
“Do you want to do the honors?” I asked Nathan, offering him the dirty bronze key to our new home.
He smiled at me and plucked the key from my hand. “Sure, Candy,” he answered, but his smug grin faded a moment later when we saw what lay in wait for us inside.
Captain Pierce had failed to mention that this unit was an efficiency. The bedroom—if it could even be called that—was right on the other side of the living room and separated only by an old floor screen with tattered cloth panels. The kitchen had about six inches of counter space on either side of a Fifties-style stove beneath a microwave stained yellow from a previous tenant’s tobacco addiction.
At least, I hoped it was a tobacco addiction. Anything harder could leave a place coated in the kind of nasty things you definitely didn’t want to touch.