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Mother fucker.
“No.” I held my hand up in a stopping gesture. Shaking my head, I dropped my feet on the deck and pulled myself out of Flynn’s arms. If the detective thought for one second that I wouldn’t fling him off my yacht for such a stupid-arse suggestion, he was kidding himself. Maybe he and Jaws could get better acquainted.
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely not. Stop right there,” I ordered, my tone leaving no room for dispute. “Flynn doesn’t get involved in your investigations. He stays out of whatever you have going on. It’s not negotiable.”
Flynn’s warm hands landed on my hips, pulling me back and onto his lap with a gentle squeeze. The move sent an involuntary shiver of desire through me, but Flynn misread my reaction. He slipped off the pale blue cotton shirt he’d worn unbuttoned over his tee and slid it over my bare shoulders. “It isn’t what you think, Zee,” he assured me, his voice as calming as the ocean.
“It’d better not be,” I warned, my eyes fixed firmly on the detective. “Spit it out, detective, and make it good.”
“I want you to enrol in a summer school subject at university. Go to class, learn, do the assessment.”
“Why? Who’s the target?”
“There is no target in the traditional sense. It’s a chance for you to experience university life and study something relevant to our field—investigative techniques. The professor teaching it is an old friend of mine.” Ezra held his hands up in supplication and waited for my answer. “That’s it.”
“Why are you doing it?” I asked Flynn.
“It’s an extra credit elective that I can do over summer. I liked the look of it. The assessment is totally practical, hands-on stuff. We work with the professor to design how we present the findings of our research for the podcast.”
Ezra licked his lips, hesitated, then spoke again. His voice held a note of pleading in it. “I want you to do this, Zali. It’s big.”
“If I say no?”
It took him a moment to answer. “I’ll be disappointed. But more than that, you’ll have cheated yourself out of doing something important.”
Low blow, but luckily I decided what was important enough for me to work on it, not him.
“What’s the podcast? I’m not being part of some hack job.” The detective’s responding smile stopped me in my tracks. It had been a while since I’d seen him genuinely happy like this, and it made me pause. If Ezra had oozed sex before, now he was panty melting.
“I can assure you that he’s no hack. He’s intimately familiar with the criminal justice system and is just as particular as you are about getting his facts straight.”
“Fine.” I sighed. “Send me the paperwork, and I’ll have a look.”
“No need,” Flynn responded brightly, snatching the manilla folder off the table before us. “I already filled out the application for you. All you have to do is sign it.” He handed me a pen and flipped it open to the signing page.
“You knew I’d procrastinate until the cut off date passed, didn’t you,” I accused him with a grumble.
“I did. Or you’d blame a faulty internet connection.” He pointed at the helpful “Sign here” stickers and grinned unashamedly. I loved putting that smile on his face. The way it lit him up from inside was enough for me to give him anything, and he knew it. “We’re gonna be study buddies.”
“Looks like we are,” I groused, signing on the dotted line.
Two
Zali
I
pushed through the doors of a room that made me pause. It wasn’t the lecture theatre I was expecting. There was no tiered seating, no tiny pivot tables. Instead, there were desks at different heights, some slightly higher than a coffee table and others that chairs would slip straight under. One was even at standing height. A colourful mix of typist chairs, padded cubes, a two-seater couch, and a few floor cushions were arranged around them. Each table had a television-sized screen mounted to the wall nearby, and a projector beamed an image onto the white screen at the front of the room. It looked like it would make for great collaborative work, especially if the screens were interconnected so people could freely share their progress.
Conversation ceased, but I ignored the stares of the dozen other students who’d spun to face me when the doors whooshed closed again. I spotted Flynn at the front of the room, sitting at the table closest to the lectern. I grinned, affection warming me. He was such a teacher’s pet; only he’d pick the table that close to where the professor would be.
He flashed me a smile over his shoulder, and I sauntered up the aisle between the tables and slid onto the stool next to his. He greeted, “Way to make an entrance. Going for what? Cute sea captain?”
“You like?” I showed him my sparkly red Louboutin peep toes with a pencil thin heel. They matched my cherry-red ’67 fastback perfectly too. My Mustang was just as gorgeous as she was powerful. A little like me. But I drew the line at driving in these shoes. They were too pretty to scuff up the heel.
I’d paired my heels with matching red lipstick, denim cutoffs, and a blue-and-white striped crop top with three-quarter-length sleeves. Cute, sexy and playful.
The doors slid open and closed again, but I didn’t bother turning around. “Welcome to Investigative Techniques. I’m Professor Tristan Reid.” The man’s voice… holy fuck. It was like warm honey. Velvet sliding over silk. Deep and sexy. A shiver lit up my insides. When he turned and faced us, still holding onto his brown leather satchel, I swallowed.
