When she’d felt like scum about her crush, her saving grace had been knowing her feelings were daydreams reserved for bath time. Now she didn’t even have that. She wanted Max to kiss her. She wanted it now. That is, if she’d read the situation correctly. Maybe he’d just been trying to stare into her pupils or something.
She sifted through sticky piles of faux leather wallets and wondered if Max would tell his wife about what almost happened. Maybe Bonnie would laugh and pat his arm. “That gangly IT nerd? I didn’t think she’d have it in her.”
Or maybe she’d show up at Julia’s house and shoot her in the tits. That would suck. If one more person was murdered in their house, Ash would never be able to sell the place.
A loud scraping noise echoed around the evidence room and she jumped, slicing her hand on a broken motherboard. “Jesus,” she hissed, sucking a tiny bead of blood from her finger. She peered around the shelf to see Max dragging a huge cardboard box across the floor. She wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing but more than two hours had passed since Kissgate and the awkwardness between them had reached fever pitch. If they managed to survive a two-day stretch without food or coffee, she was quitting and moving to Africa. She wouldn’t spend another week longing to be Max Connor’s too-tall mistress.
Thwack.The soft thump made her look around her shelf once more. Max’s gleaming black head rested against the door.Thwack.He banged his head against it, not super hard, but loud enough she guessed he’d probably lost a brain cell or two. Julia bit her lip. If Max was having a meltdown, she had no idea how to deal with it. She didn’t know how to give CPR. She didn’t know if yougavepanicking people CPR. Max was a cop; surely he had himself under control.
Thwack.
“Christ,” Julia said under her breath. Come Monday morning she would bleach off her fingerprints and flee the country, but until then she had an obligation to do the right thing. Julia took a deep breath. “Hey, Max?”
“What?” He didn’t lift his forehead from the door.
“Come over here.”
“Have you found something that’ll get us out?”
“Not quite. Come over here and see.”
With what looked like some difficulty, Max hauled himself away from the property office door and strode toward her. He’d taken off his uniform shirt, revealing a gray T-shirt taut enough she could see the ridges of his abdomen through it and that wasn’t all the T-shirt revealed.
He had a tattoo on his shoulder, a steampunk-looking design of the muscles and bones that lay beneath his skin with a bit of clockwork thrown in for a post-apocalyptic edge. It suited him to a T; it also made him look downright fuckingdangerous. Everything did, from the mean line of his mouth to the tar-black eyes and heavy boots. Dangerous and gorgeous and oh fuck, married.Married. Wedded to a policewoman. Totally married.
Max inclined his head toward her. “What have you got?”
Julia’s mind was utterly blank. Was it something to do with tattoos?
“Have you found something useful?” Max’s brisk tone snapped her out of her reverie.
“Sort of…allow me to show you.” She bent down and pressed play. The battery powered speakers she’d found began blasting “Protect Ya Neck” at surprisingly ear-splitting decibels.
Max folded his arms across his chest. “That’s it? Portable speakers?”
“Portable speakersandan iPod shuffle. Mostly Wu-Tang, but that’s criminals for you,” Julia said, affecting Ashley’s perky cheer. Max’s raised eyebrows said it wasn’t working.
“You didn’t find anything we can actually use?”
“Ah, no?”
“Great.” Max heaved a world-weary sigh. “Of course there are working speakers in this shit-heap.”
Julia felt distinctly uncomfortable with how un-reassuring this attempt to cheer Max up was. “Um…how’d you go with the door?”
He ran a hand through his blue-black hair. “It’s too reinforced to remove the hinges or kick the panel open but I think…”
Julia could smell his sweat. It pinged some primitive center of her brain, making her want to wrap her legs around Max’s face. Not for the first time, she wondered how he carried out police work without being assailed by women. An ultra-buff cop who looked like a model and smelled like raw sex? He probably wore the wedding ring just to keep fangirls off his dick.
Julia had never understood the “man in uniform” thing. Now, thanks to Max, she had a swathe of cop fantasies, each kinkier than the last.
“…I thought about using an ax,” Max continued, clearly oblivious to his own musk. “But if I damage it there’s every chance we’ll be paying for a new door as well as looking for new jobs come Monday.”
Julia breathed through her mouth to offset the pheromones. “You don’t think we’re going to get fired for this, do you?”
Max shrugged. His brow was heavy with what Julia could only assume was irritation.
“Well, I do have some good news.”