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“Then we should get moving.”
I leveled her with a stare. “Why does it matter?”
“You didn’t see them together. There was chemistry! Don’t you want to know?”
I cocked one eyebrow and resisted the urge to go with her when she tugged on my hand again, our fingers still linked.
“I’ll buy dinner if you do this with me,” she said, tugging my hand one more time. “And I’ll let you pick the place.”
“I’ll pick sushi.”
She made a face but nodded and tugged on my hand again, her grip stronger than I expected, and I reluctantly followed her.
“Will you pick up the pace?” she said over her shoulder.
“I agreed to help you spy. I did not promise to be excited about it.”
The interior of the store smelled like leather, and one of the clerks was near the front helping someone decide between two bags.
“Where did she go?” Teagan leaned into me as we neared the back of the store, pausing to look at a rack of luggage tags. Like all shops in the airport, the place wasn’t big, and we slowly made our way along the wall of luggage options, looking around like Jess might appear while the clerk was mercifully busy with someone who looked like they might buy something.
“Are you sure she came in here?” I asked.
“I didn’t see her leave.”
“Maybe she slipped out while you were agreeing to eat sushi with me,” I said with a laugh.
Teagan didn’t have time to answer because we both heard the muffled groan from the other side of the closed door to what must have been a back office or storage space. Our eyes met, hers wide with recognition, as mine must have been.
“Was that...” We both heard the sound again, followed by a soft moan, and I tugged on her hand to pull her toward the exit.
“That was definitely...” We’d gotten almost all the way out of the store, but the person deciding between bags was blocking the path; then we heard the door open behind us. I wanted to crawl into one of the suitcases.
“Hi, folks. Can we help you?” The man approaching us smiled and adjusted his tie, though he didn’t reach out to shake our hands. Noted. Behind him, Jess from the pet-grooming place emerged, running a hand down the front of her shirt, her cheeks a little pink.
“Oh, hi, Teagan,” Jess said. I thought she sounded a little breathless, but I might have imagined it. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh,” Teagan said, fixing her face. I knew she wanted to be squee’ing and it was all I’d hear in the car on the way back to her place. “You know, I’m taking a trip soon and wanted to check out what was in here.” The lie rolled off her tongue so easily, I was jealous... and a little frightened, but then I remembered the lie I’d been telling her for months.
“Did you know my ex-husband ran this shop? Jack, Teagan works at that candy place that’s so good, a few gates from us.”
Ex-husband.Teagan’s lip twitched at the realization, but she smiled and greeted the man.
“Will you excuse me? I need to get back to the salon.” She kissed Jack’s cheek and they shared what looked like a pretty heated gaze. “If I don’t see you, have a good trip, Teagan!”
We walked out, too, Teagan saying she’d think about the bags we’d supposedly looked at. She practically vibrated next to me as we walked out. When we were almost to my car, she turned. “Are we not going to talk about what they were doing behind that door?”
My body had reacted to it the same as I imagined hers did... or fantasized hers did. “Do we really need to debrief it?”
“Um... people were having sex five feet from us. Yes, we need to debrief. How often does that happen?”
I shrugged and hit the button to unlock my car. “Admittedly, not since I had a roommate in college who didn’t respect boundaries.”
“How is Caleb, anyway?”
“I have no idea, but I overheard enough of his partners to be pretty confident he’s making someone somewhere very happy.”
“I really should have gotten to know him better,” she mused. She said it to get a rise out of me, but it still worked.
