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“Shopping.”
“A little retail therapy? I never would’ve guessed you were the sort.”
He waved his finger up and down to take in her wrinkled blouse. “I was thinking of you. Do you want to pick up a few clothes here?”
“That would be great, but you don’t have to come along.”
“Humor me.”
* * *
FOR THE NEXT few hours, she humored him. She picked up some jeans and T-shirts, a comfortable pair of ankle boots and some sneakers. She added some underwear and a few more toiletries. Max picked out a small carry-on suitcase for the plane trip he was convinced she’d be taking. She let him believe that.
He paid cash for everything from a seemingly endless supply of money even when she offered to use her credit card, which he refused and told her to put away.
She wasn’t going to allow him to pay for everything, so when he ducked into a sandwich shop to get some drinks she headed toward an ATM.
Placing the edge of her card at the slot, her hand wavered. It had to be okay to use her card just once. The machine piled up the bills for her to snatch. She tucked them into her purse and returned to the front of the sandwich shop.
Max approached her, carrying two drinks in front of him. “Are you going to get that other pair of shoes?”
“No, I decided against it. I don’t want to spend any more of your money.” She held out her own cash to him. “And I really want to pay you back.”
Max reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I appreciate the gesture, but you keep the cash just in case.” He handed her a soda and picked up her shopping bags. “I don’t know about you, but I need a nap after last night’s activities.”
She could use a nap, too, but sleeping in the same room as Max was awkward—at least for her. He seemed all business now, definitely not as friendly as when he was her patient. But he hadn’t known the extent of his enslavement to Tempest at that point and that she’d been injecting him with poison. He had no reason to be friendly to her.
He’d parked his car in the parking structure below the mall, and they took the elevator into the bowels of the garage.
As they approached the blue sedan, she turned to him suddenly. “Where’d you get this car? Why do you have all that cash?”
He clicked the remote and put a finger to his lips. “I still have some secrets.”
She eyed the car as he opened the trunk and swung her bags inside. It didn’t look like a spy’s car unless it had special, hidden gadgets.
“Does this thing have an ejection seat or turn into a hovercraft?”
He opened the passenger door for her and cocked his head. “I don’t think it can even do eighty miles an hour.”
The car went sixty on the highway on the way back to the hotel. Max rolled into the hotel’s parking garage, and they returned to the room.
He pulled the drapes closed on the gray day and stretched out on the bed with his tablet propped up on his knees.
She pointed at the computer. “I thought you were going to sleep.”
“I am. I’m actually reading a book. Even though it’s a good one, I should be drifting off any minute—and you should, too.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and toed off her shoes. Then she fell backward, her knees bent and her feet still planted on the floor, and stared at the ceiling.
She should’ve never taken the job offer from Dr. Arnoff. It had seemed too good to be true—a chance to practice medicine without the medical license. Now she was paying for her lies. She always did.
“Do you generally sleep with your legs hanging off the bed?”
“I’m almost too tired to move.”
“Shopping does that to me, too.”
“I don’t think it was the shopping.” She hoisted herself up on her elbows. “I think it’s more the threats on my life and the fact that my job was a sham.”
“Sorry.”
She studied his face. Was he being sarcastic?
He stared back at her, his dark eyes serious, not a hint of sarcasm. Had he lost that ability, too?
No, he meant it. His life was in the toilet and he still had empathy for her. Guess the T-101 hadn’t worked that great on him if it had been designed to erase human emotions. Max kept a tight rein on his feelings, but he definitely had them.
