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Austin scrambled to catch it, then tossed it under the counter. “Sorry.”
“Mm-hmm.” He arched a brow at his employee, but his mouth quirked at the corner, with fond familiarity. Family maybe? “Is Austin figuring things out for you?”
“Yeah,” Mila said, trying to sound more casual than she felt. Then again, he had to be used to women getting flustered around him. “It’s an old laptop, so I don’t know if he’ll be able to save it for me.”
Atlas looked over the kid’s shoulder, and then at Mila. “If we can’t fix it, we can probably retrieve the information off of it, Ms. . . . ?”
“Oh, uh. Mila. It’s Mila Tanner.” She could feel her cheeks heating and she wished she could plant a fist in what looked to be his very hard torso. Okay, so her feeling flustered wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to blame him.
“Mila,” he repeated. A lazy grin spread across his face, and it made her shiver. A man this built shouldn’t be hot too. By all rights he should have looked like someone had taken a shovel repeatedly to his face. Instead he was all stubborn jaw, strong cheekbones, and hard blue eyes. And dammit, he was blond.
The man needed to be licked. A lot. But not by her. She was a cop, and not at all attracted to possible criminals.
But wow . . . yeah.
He was looking at her the way men sometimes did if they were interested. She braced herself for the standard lame pickup lines, but he only pulled the laptop closer and waved Austin away. “I’ll do this. You go clean the break room.”
Austin shrugged and wandered into the back, his phone in his hand before he’d gone two steps. The break room was probably going to have to clean itself.
Atlas dragged the stool closer and sat, then motioned for Mila to take the stool on the other side of the counter, which she did. The longer she could keep the man talking, the more she could learn about him.
“Like I was saying, I can get the information off of it, but I’m not sure I can get it running reliably again.” His lips pressed together and Mila did her best to stop checking him out. “It might be time for a new laptop.”
“That’s going to have to wait a few months.” She grimaced. “So . . . you must do this all the time, right?”
“Yes, we get several jobs like this a day. Why?”
“Do you have, like, a confidentiality clause?” She forced herself to look away, trying to seem embarrassed, but she still knew it when he leaned his muscular forearm on the counter between them. When she glanced back up at him the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Why? Forget to clear your browser history?”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with watching porn,” she teased, smiling. Was she flirting or just staying the part? Maybe a little of both.
He arched a brow, and the look made her insides shivery. “No. You just have watch what sites you use, or your computer will suffer the consequences.”
Consequences? The way he said the word gave her a brief flash of being pulled down over his thigh and his hand coming down on her ass.
It was official. She absolutely needed to get laid as soon as possible. Leering at the creeps she investigated was ridiculous.
They stared at each other for a long moment, and he cleared his throat. “I’m Atlas Larson, by the way.”
“Larson? Are you related to the owner?”
“Yeah, he’s a bit of an asshole, but family’s family.” The gleam of amusement in his eyes made her wonder what he was thinking.
“You’re the owner.”
“Yes,” he admitted, closing her laptop. “But I stand by what I said.”
She found herself smiling at him and wondered if he could tell she was fantasizing about him shoving her down on the counter and . . .
“Um . . . how long have you been at this location?” she asked, trying to banish the pornographic images from her mind.
“We just opened a storefront about six months ago. Before that we were mainly doing contracts for businesses, and some work from home, but it’s easier to advertise if you have somewhere to hang a sign.”
She nodded, wondering how far to push the conversation on the first contact. If she seemed too interested in his business it would look suspicious.
“We?” She asked. “Is that the royal ‘we’, or is that married ‘we’?”
