“I’m not sure yet,” she admitted, realizing she needed to talk this out a bit. “I’m pretty sure there’s an agenda. But I’m uncertain what she’s luring me to . . . at best she might want to be a sugar baby,” she mused aloud. It didn’t ring exactly true, but it wasn’t impossible. Charlotte was too relentless for a casual attraction. Alex would be on the lookout for any clues that she was out to be taken care of financially.
Stephanie was quiet, probably debating how to o er her two cents without crossing the line. She trusted her and valued her opinion, but they didn’t often discuss Alex’s
personal life. To be fair, there hadn’t been much to discuss for a while.
“I trust you know what you’re doing but playing with fire doesn’t usually end well.”
It was a measured warning, one Alex knew enough not to need. But as she drove down the road, dark except for a spotlight hanging over the sign welcoming her home to Horse Country, she thought about a performer swirling a flaming baton. It wasn’t all third-degree burns, right?
“We have Ms. Lazarus in the morning,” Stephanie said as she returned to business. “She’s ready for her final screening.”
Alex didn’t need reminding. In the fifteen years she’d been doing her job, she’d only had a handful of female clients. Most of those had been connected to male partners whose idea it was to engage her services. Only three had ever come to her on their own. Ms. Lazarus, a stunning woman in her sixties, was one of the three and not easily forgotten.
“I have a good feeling about her. Let’s arrange for her to meet Tony if all goes well. I think they’ll click, and he might be able to keep up with her.”
Stephanie laughed. “I hope so. She was rather disappointed when she learned there was a limit on how many times she could see him.”
When they finished coordinating, they said good night, and Alex was left alone with her thoughts as she pulled up to her massive iron gate.
As she waited for it to lumber open, her thoughts drifted back to Charlotte’s eyes. There was something wild behind them. Something incongruous to how she came across on
paper. Alex found herself itching to discover what lay beneath any possible facade. A curiosity she hadn’t felt in some time.
CHAPTER 11
SWEAT FLOODED CHARLOTTE’S BACK, making her tank top stick uncomfortably to her searing skin before pooling along the waistband of her compression leggings. The calendar said it was September, but the punishing sun and nearly hundred-degree heat said otherwise.
Charlotte pumped her arms harder, forced her legs to move faster, and ran like she was being chased by an axe-wielding maniac. It was a trick she used when she needed to get her ass in gear.
She pushed despite knowing she was o target. Blaming the wine she’d drank the night before for her dehydration, Charlotte willed herself to dig deep and finish her mile and a half sprint through the park.
With a wicked stitch cutting painfully into her side, she let herself crumple into the thick, prickly grass. She checked her watch to confirm what she already knew.
Too slow. Damn it .
The 1.5-mile run was her strong suit. If she wanted to score the maximum number of points for it, she needed to shave forty seconds o her usual best, something she’d only
managed to do a few times. When she took the FBI fitness exam for real, she wouldn’t be allowed more than five minutes rest between exercises. She tried to recreate those constraints every practice. Sometimes it was more painful than others.
Her watch beeped again. Charlotte rolled onto her chest with a groan. It was time to do as many push-ups as she could in a minute without pausing even once. For full points, she needed to bang out at least forty-five. Shaking and close to throwing up, she managed thirty-two before landing flat on her belly.
It took considerable e ort to roll onto her back on failing biceps and an aching core. When her watch beeped again, signaling rest time was over, she ignored it and stared up at the cloud-streaked sky as she panted. She didn’t have a 300-meter sprint or a minute of sit-ups in her.
Worn out, she listened to the sounds of a kids’ soccer game in the distance and waited until her heart stopped pounding and her muscles solidified from their gelatinous state. As she did, she thought about dinner with Alexandra the night before.
Despite months of trying to lay on her charm and being certain there was s
ome attraction between them, Charlotte hadn’t been positive that Alex was interested. It so often felt like a game. Like she was just mildly curious at how far Charlotte would go, but it was impossible to read how serious she was.
Her stomach fluttered at the memory of dark eyes peering at her over the rim of a wine glass. Did she look at everyone
like that? Like she was trying to divine their future? Or maybe their past.
There was something di erent about last night. An authenticity to their exchange. She didn’t miss the irony, but apart from her desire to find out about the whole madam thing, she wasn’t pretending. It wasn’t so much an ulterior motive as much as it was an additional one. Charlotte winced. Feeding her very real attraction could only complicate her mission, but she couldn’t untangle it now.
Not without losing her chance at discovering Alex’s shadow business.
Charlotte wished she could call Jayson. Would he tell her to proceed with caution? That it could get confusing to get close to someone like this . . . someone she was going to hand over to the police if she confided in her?