And yet the word slipped from her mouth like honey. Almost like she wanted to talk to him. “Okay.”
7
He worked to hide his surprise. He hadn’t expected her to agree so easily. Sitting across from her hadn’t made him feel like he knew her, but he’d gotten some preliminary impressions, and the strongest of them was that Alexa Nash wasn’t someone who gave up information easily, especially about herself.
An hour with her hadn’t made it easier not to stare. If anything, her face was more striking to him than ever, and he had the strangest desire to reach over, free her dark hair from the tight ponytail at the back of her head, watch the glossy mane tossed over one shoulder fall into a spill of waves in his hand.
Her skin was nearly poreless, the skin of a doll who’d never been touched, and her eyes were lit with intelligence and something wise that said she knew things other people didn’t know, had experienced things most people would never experience, things she would never be able to explain.
She’d taken off her fleece to reveal shapely breasts that couldn’t be hidden by the workout shirt covering her skin from wrist to neck. He was glad her lower body was hidden by the table. That was an added distraction he didn’t need.
“Who goes first?”
He blinked, wondering how long he’d been checked out, racing poetic about Alexa Nash in his mind.
Jesus christ.
“It’s nice living with my brothers,” he said, answering the last question she’d asked. “At first we were just roommates, but we’ve gotten closer over the past year or so.”
He shoved the last bite of waffle into his mouth, reviewing what he’d said, making sure it hadn’t been incriminating.
“Why is that?” she asked.
He washed down the waffle with a swig of cold coffee. “It’s my turn. Why law?”
It was the closest he could come to asking about her accident, to understanding how it had impacted her. Telling her he knew about it wasn’t an option. That meant revealing that he’d been interested in her from the beginning, that he’d been digging around in her past, and that was a best-case scenario. Worst case, she would think he’d been doing background on her because MIS was guilty-as-charged in the media, that they were trying to get in front of a possible investigation by the AG’s office by digging up dirt on their prosecutors.
“I wanted to do something good,” she said without missing beat. “Give back to the community.”
She was a champ, her face a mask of earnestness.
“That’s a politician’s answer,” he said.
“It’s the truth.” He had a feeling it was, but he also knew there was more to it than that. “How did Julia Berenger and your brother meet?”
She was fast, quick on her feet, serving him a softball with the question about his living arrangements only to follow it up with a land mine.
“They met when we were hired to look for Julia’s sister, Elise.” He wasn’t giving anything away. Alexa had to know about the Manifest job — the official version of it anyway, which was that MIS had been hired by John Taylor, Elise and Julia’s grandfather, to find Elise when she went missing.
“I read the file,” she said.
Thanks to Nora, Nick’s youngest sister who’d once worked for the FBI, they’d managed to concoct a story that more or less cast them as investigators who’d stumbled on the underground organization called Manifest.
Nick had no idea if the story had been believable or if the Feds had looked the other way because MIS had had two former agents on their side, Nora and her boyfriend Braden Kane.
“Sounds like you got in over your head,” she added.
She was talking about the death of Julia and Elise’s grandfather at the hands of Manifest, about the fact that Yael Dohan, head of the Federal Reserve, had eventually been implicated as the de facto leader of the organization.
“How close is the AG’s office to opening an official investigation into my company?” Nick asked, ignoring her last statement.
Her mouth curled into a smile. She was enjoying the exchange. Fucking lawyers. Of all the women in Boston, he had to go and get a hard-on for a fucking assistant AG.
“Close is subjective,” she said.
The waiter appeared at their table to clear their plates and ask if they wanted a refill on their coffee. They declined and the waiter set their check on the table.
“That’s not an answer,” Nick said when the waiter was out of earshot.