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Marc frowned, and he crouched down close to the couch. His hand drifted up, pushing back some of my hair from my forehead. “You about to pass out? You look like shit.”
“Not that,” Axel said. He fished out a bottle of water and opened it. “Tell her the other thing.”
“We didn’t find anything,” Marc said.
I got up on my elbows, nearly bumping into him. “What?”
“He didn’t have anything at his office.”
“You mean he’s clean?”
“I mean we didn’t find anything. Not a paper. Not a computer. Nothing. It was a storage unit for empty boxes, a desk, and a couple of filing cabinets that were empty.”
I held my breath. That ... wasn’t right, was it? Did he have it emptied? Or was it always like that? If he purposefully showed up there before he went out to talk with drug dealers, it didn’t make sense to stop by an empty office first. “A decoy?”
“Yeah.” He settled back onto his heels, planting his palms on his thighs. “Looks like we bothered you for nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” I said. “Now you know he’s hiding something worth hiding, right? What’s the next step?”
Marc’s face lifted. “Pardon?”
“Were you going to follow him around until he did something stupid or what?”
He smirked. “Well, Plan C was probably going to be to try—”
“Hang on,” I said. I sat up, spinning around, leaning forward. “You mean this was Plan B?”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
“What was Plan A?”
“Try to ask him what he was up to.”
I felt my eye twitch. “Plan A was to ask him?”
“We sent Brandon in to get friendly with him. That’s how he got the invitation. Only he wasn’t talking, so we went with trying to break into his office. But don’t worry about it. We’ll think of something else.”
“There might be a problem,’ Brandon said. He cocked his head my way. “Miss sticky fingers here got a little too close to him. He was trying to piss me off so I’d back off and he could get it on with her.”
Marc frowned.
I hesitated, unsure how far I was willing to push these guys, or myself. In the end, I couldn’t resist, though. “Maybe I should take the job he offered me.”
“Nu uh,” Brandon said.
“What job?” Axel asked.
“Mr. Coaltar wants to give her a job working in research with him,” Corey said. “Although I think it was a ploy to getting her to agree to date him.”
“He just wants in her pants,” Brandon said. “He was coming on to her.”
“Shit,” Marc said. He yanked his fingers through the soft brown locks, brushing them away from his mismatched eyes. He breathed out slow. “This is bad.”
“I can do it,” I said. “I’ll be able to keep an eye on him. I’ll scope out his house.”
“No.”
“But...”
“Not now, Bambi. We’ll worry about it later. Right now you need to sleep. We all do.”
“I want to figure it out.”
He waved me off, tucked his arms around my stomach, and stood, hoisting me over his shoulder. “Come on,” he said.
“Ugh,” I dangled precariously over his body. I pressed my hand against his butt to pick myself up so I wasn’t just limp. I punched him in the back with my other hand. “Let go!”
“Marc,” Brandon barked at him. “You can’t do that to her.”
“I’m just taking her to bed.”
“Oh no, you’re not!” I punched his butt and back again. I was disoriented and the blood was rushing to my head, but I aimed for where I thought the kidneys were. Weren’t you supposed to hit people in the kidneys? I thought I read that somewhere.
“Stop, or I’ll drop you.” He shifted me higher on his arm and walked out the door.
He marched with me down the hall to his apartment. I punched at him the entire time, and tried calling out to the others to help me, but none of them budged. Their loyalties were clearly with Marc.
Marc didn’t put me down until we were inside his apartment. He stopped on the carpet in the dining room between the desks and dropped me to the floor. I landed on my side in a heap.
“Ow!” I cried out. I jumped up, and threw a fist at his chest. “What was that for?”
He smirked. “I wasn’t going to have you bullying my team.”
“Who’s bullying who?”
“You were sprawled out, taking up the entire couch and they had a little bit of space. I saw what was going on.”
“I had moved over! And I was about to go to sleep. Corey even offered his bed. Why don’t you ask them if I was bullying anyone?” Somehow I didn’t think this was about the other boys at all. He just wanted to separate me from the others.
Marc had opened his mouth to say something when there was a knock at the door. Finally. Someone had come to their senses and came after me.
Marc’s brows furrowed. He crossed back to the door, opening it. “Hey,” he said. “Uh ... sorry. I don’t really have time.”
“Marc,” a female voice said. “I want to talk to you. Just for a minute.”
Oh god. Drama queen.
“I can’t, really,” he said. He wedged himself between the door and the frame. “I’ve got a lot of work to do and ... what happened to your shirt?”
“This?” Sniffle. “Oh, nothing. It was just an accident.”
“Was it?” he asked, though doubt dripped from his voice.
I groaned. He was going to give in. I didn’t want to see him tortured, even if he was a bastard. I marched forward. Sure, it wasn’t my business, but I was going to do him a favor.
I shoved the lower hem of my shirt up and through the inside of the collar, tying it off, a
s if I was trying to look sexy. I captured Marc’s arm, yanking on him to back away from the door, and at the same time, swung the door open.
A thin girl, with blond hair and red patches on her cheeks, narrowed her eyes on me instantly. Her shirt was ripped along her side. At a second glance, I realized it was blatantly cut with a pair of scissors, I was sure. The lines were too smooth. There was a red mark along her exposed skin. Makeup. She didn't even have the decency to actually injure herself. “Who are you?” she asked in a highly strung out voice like I was completely unexpected.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. I turned full on against Marc. “Sweetie, come on back to bed, won’t you?” For a bonus, I leaned in, and planted my lips against his, intending to give him a small kiss.
His mouth opened in response. His teeth parted, deepening the kiss. His hand drifted up, catching my cheek, and he held my head, tilting his own.
My heart fluttered in ways I hadn’t felt in a while, and so strongly that it scared me. I pulled back, trying to maintain my ruse and at the same time hide the sudden attraction I felt for him that had become overwhelming. I winked at him, ignored the girl and walked back into the apartment.
Marc froze against the wall, gazing back in at me. I couldn’t see the girl, but I heard footsteps running away. This seemed to jar him from his daze. “Hey!” He called out down the hall.
“Don’t encourage her,” I said. “And you’re welcome.”
He slammed the door and turned on me. "What the hell did you just do?"
"I cured her from your pussyfooting and dragging this out."
His head reeled back. "What the hell are you talking about?"
I planted my hand on my hips. "That girl out there has an addiction. All girls get it hard the first couple of times. She cut her shirt and tried using makeup to look injured. I've seen that one before. She thought if you played the hero enough, you'd see something in her and fall in love, or at least guilt trip you into staying."
His hands dropped to his sides. "That was makeup?"
"Trust me. What she needs right now is someone to hate. It'll probably end up being me, but that's okay. Giving a girl a let's be friends line doesn't work. They feed on that. You have to cut them off sharply. Give them something to hate, and she'll be on to someone else in a week."
