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“I could arrange for you to get the money back.” Ah, there it was, criminal as a jailbreak.
She leaned into the table and before he could react, put a finger against his lips. “Shhh. Don’t tempt me. Just sit there and look handsome and don’t spoil things by reminding me you’re a bad influence and it’s not smart to be anywhere near you.”
There was no stopping his smile or the way his body went on alert at her touch, nerve endings firing all along his spine, fireworks in his chest. His lips firmed behind her finger and she took it away and sat back, but his smile stayed in place when she said, “Is there any chance what you were thinking is legal?”
He could still feel the slight pressure from the edge of her nail on his top lip. He licked across it. It was entirely legal to want to pull her into his lap and kiss the tiny scar on her cheek. “Is that a trick question?”
She groaned. “There is something wrong with me that I really want to hear what you have in mind. But it’s worse than pulling a thread on a sweater, it’s putting a pair of scissors to it, lighting it on fire, and then dancing in the smoldering ashes.”
“You
don’t have to know how I do it.”
“You mean, I could just profit from your crime?”
“Something like that.”
She angled her face away, looking out toward the street. He wanted to know how she got that little scar. He wanted to know what drove her, what made her laugh, what made her moan in bed, and having his imagination fill in the gaps wasn’t cutting it. “You wouldn’t be profiting. It would simply be a refund.”
“Oh my God.” Her eyes got huge. “You’re going to jack the car.”
He coughed, wishing she hadn’t used the word “jack.” “It’s not really about the car. It’s about—”
“Wait. Are you going to jack the car?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
She shook her head, and her hair swung over her face. “No, no, no. Don’t put that on me. I’m not your conscience.”
It increasingly felt that way, which was alarming. So was the desire to put that hunk of hair back behind her ear. “I’d like to do a lot more than boost the car. It’s about stopping Cookie Jar from everything he’s getting away with.”
“Hmm. I seem to remember you talking a big game at Stumptown. And you were casing the joint at the gala.”
He palmed his forehead. “I wasn’t casing the joint. We’re not burglars.”
“My bad. Just carjackers and mail thieves.”
“If we weren’t short-staffed, we’d make sure Cookie Jar was disgraced. We’d run a game on him so tuned to his ego and designed to appeal to his hunger for power that when we turned the tables on him, he’d be exposed and destroyed forever. Once that happened, his political party could deal with the scandal and sweep him out of power.”
Lenny blinked hard. “You’re not kidding around.”
He shook his head. “I put it to the family board this morning, and there was unanimous agreement to work with Cookie Jar’s political opponents and act against him.”
She waved her hands crisscross in front of her face. “You’re talking about bringing down a government. I don’t want to know.”
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing to know, because we’re tapped out in terms of resources, and Cookie Jar is only accessible to us over the next six weeks of his stay here.”
“That’s like my sister telling me she’s not having sex or doing drugs. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel relieved or disturbed by that.”
“I wish this was different.” No amount of wishing was going to close the gap between them.
She tipped her head and hooked her hair behind her ear. “Since I can’t use the information you gathered, we’re done with each other, nothing but an expense account lunch.”
“And a good waltz.”
That got the ghost of a smile. “You did give good waltz.” She shut it down quickly. “If you weren’t casing the joint, that means you were only at the gala to check up on me.”
There were a lot of reasons he’d gone to the gala. He hadn’t lied to Lenny, there was no point starting now. “I really was gathering information and making friends with people who are not fans of the esteemed prime minister. And I was checking up on you.”
