Undercover with the Hottie (Investigating the Hottie)

by Alexander, Juli

  Sitting in this car wasn't helping me relax. I needed a soccer fix, but I wasn't likely to get one in the Big Apple right after Christmas.

  Will pulled out his phone to text someone. I guess he's bored with me. It wasn't like we could really talk with Nic and Christie listening. We could text though. I wished I'd thought to text him before he started texting other people.

  My phone vibrated in the pocket of my jeans. A text. The dawning realization that I was a total idiot brought heat to my cheeks. A quick glance at Will confirmed that the text was from him. I freed my phone from my pocket and read his text. Are you okay?

  It was no wonder I had it bad for this boy. He was so sweet.

  Me: Nervous.

  Will: We'll be fine. We're seasoned professionals.

  I laughed. We were anything but seasoned. And it was a stretch to call us professionals.

  Will: Plus you're irresistible.

  I rolled my eyes, but my insides turned to mush. He was such a great guy.

  Me: I want to kiss you.

  He looked up from his phone with a big smile. Then he glanced at the front seat.

  Will: Soon.

  Wasn't there a tunnel into the city? Were we taking a tunnel or a bridge? I didn't want to ask because I was pretty sure my aunt and her partner could see right through me.

  Will: Does that mean I'm irresistible too?

  Me: Yes.

  Will: Maybe if we work on our cover stories now, we'll have time for kissing later.

  I crammed my phone back into my pocket and picked up my binder. He didn't have to tell me twice.

  We finally pulled up in front of a giant warehouse building in Turtle Bay. The outside didn't impress me at all. It wasn't pretty, but it was big. It looked like it took up the whole block.

  “This is us,” Christie said. “Home sweet home.”

  “There are forty-eight lofts inside. Twenty-four on the first floor and another twenty-four on the second. The rent on this thing is so high that we'd never be able to live here on our salaries.” Nic glanced at me. “Don't make a face, Amanda. It's much nicer on the inside.”

  I wasn't so sure. In Atlanta, we would have torn this thing down instead of making it into apartments. “If you say so...”

  Our loft was on the higher floor, so we took the elevator. Then we walked to the door.

  “This is us,” my aunt said.

  A familiar face opened the giant wood door.

  “Grandma!” I squealed when she opened it to usher us into the loft.

  “There’s my sweet girl,” she cooed, hugging me before letting me pass.

  “Grandma,” Will said, giving her a hug. “I totally pulled that off,” he whispered in my direction.

  Shaking my head, I said, “She is your grandmother, dufus.”

  “Oh good.” Christie walked in behind us. “Sibling bickering. You should keep that up.”

  “Just don’t do bickering the way Nic and Christie do,” Grandma cautioned. “It might come off as flirting.”

  “No kidding.” I shook my head at my aunt. “It’s ridiculous.”

  “We don’t flirt,” Christie said with a straight face.

  But then, she lied for a living.

  Once we’d unloaded the car, Will and I went upstairs to check out our rooms. We found his first.

  “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was afraid they’d go all out with the twin thing and give us bunk-beds.”

  “Yeah, or go for industrial and make us sleep on steel bars and insulation.”

  “This is definitely better.”

  His room was very Pottery Barn. I liked it.

  Dark wood dresser, bed, and desk. The bed was covered with a striped duvet in a beige, white, and navy stripe that screamed overpriced. Over the headboard, large letters in assorted plaids read, “Will.”

  “Okay, now mine.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him out of his room.

  My furniture was white and plantation style. Very nice. My name was spelled in pastel letters. The duvet cover was a very light gray damask. The room reminded me of an upscale hotel, and there were at least ten pillows on my bed.

  “You’ve got your name too.”

  I laughed. “Mom is such a dork.”

  “You’ve got that right, twin,” he said. “Nice bed.”

  “It’s awesome!” I ran over and flopped onto the bed.

  When I glanced up at Will, I realized that I’d made things very awkward. I scrambled to the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. Sitting was much better.

  I patted the bed next to me, and Will came and sat down.

  “Do you think we can do this?” I asked.

  “In five days? Yeah, that’s a good question. I guess we just take one step at a time. How much reading do you have left?”

  “At least two hundred pages. You?”

  “About the same.”

  “Let’s explore the rest of the house and then finish reading. Then we can quiz each other.”

  “Why does this feel like school?”

  “Hey, I already lost my Fall break, remember?”

  “Was it worth it?” he asked, meeting my gaze.

  “Oh yeah,” I said as my heart thumped faster.

  My gaze dropped to his lips.

  One or both of us moved, and our lips were millimeters apart. If I were breathing, we’d be sharing air.

  “Amanda,” he whispered and his lips crashed into mine.

  Finally! After keeping our distance all day, I was finally getting to kiss him.

  My hand moved up to his touch his hair.

  “Seriously?” My aunt’s exasperation brought me back to reality.

  Oh no. I slid away from Will.

  She stepped into the room and stood, hands on her hips, looking down at us.

  As I took in her stern expression, I wished I had told my parents where I was going. Just in case I didn't make it back.

  “You guys can’t do that.” She huffed. Actually huffed. “We are counting on you to pull this off. If you blow your covers, you compromise the rest of us.”

  “We’re sorry,” Will said. “It won’t happen again.”

  Noooo! He did not just say that. “He doesn’t mean that. He just means we’ll be careful. We are so going to do that again. But we won’t blow our cover.”

  Please, please, let it happen again.

  “You should be downstairs with us anyway.”

  “On our way,” I said with a sigh. “We want to see the rest of the upstairs first.”

  “There's just my room and a full bath.”

  “Your room? What about Nic?” Will's question prompted a scowl from Christie.

  “He doesn't have a room. The room up here is mine. The bedroom downstairs is Grandma's.”

  “I guess he's stuck sleeping on the couch,” I said with a shrug. “I don't think they're fully committed to their covers.”

  Christie pretended not to hear me as she left the room.

  He grinned. “Like fully committed to their roles in a play? Yeah. I think they'd better be fully committed because we have a job to do.”

  He held out his hand and pulled me up to a standing position. “Did you notice the Christmas tree downstairs?”

  “Yeah,” I noticed it. I just didn't think about it. “That's weird, right? To move into a place right after Christmas and put up a tree?”

  “I guess Grandma wanted one here.”

  When we got downstairs, we realized that the Christmas tree wasn't the only decorating that Grandma had done. She'd hung some decorations from the ceiling over the kitchen island. Gold and silver ornaments floated above the counter on long strands of nearly invisible wire. “Did you do that, Grandma?”

  She nodded. “I got bored. I had the place ready to go yesterday. Today I've been putting on some finishing touches.”

  “It looks great,” I said.

  Nic walked over to the kitchen area, holding scissors in one hand and something green in the other. “Well you can forget the mis
tletoe, Grandma. I cut it down.”

  “Nic!” Grandma huffed her displeasure. “I worked hard to find mistletoe here in the city.”

  He nodded at us. “These two don't need any more temptation.”

  “Hey,” I said. “That's not very nice.”

  “Are you worried about the kids, Nic? Or are you worried about yourself?” Grandma looked from Nic to Christie. “It's a harmless tradition.”

  “These two don't need mistletoe to swap saliva,” Christie said.

  Eww. Did she have to make it sound so crude?

  Nic opened the cabinet under the sink and tossed in the two bunches of mistletoe. “Regardless, these are out of here.”

  “Touch my ornaments and you die,” Grandma said, reaching for the scissors.

  Nic turned them around and handed them to her, handle first.

  “Big bad Nic is afraid of a little old mistletoe.” I giggled. “Who would have thought?”

  “Either that or he's afraid of kissing,” Will added.

  I was about to break out in the old k-i-ss-i-n-g song when Nic growled, “Don't you two need to get your covers down?”

  Since we did need to know them, it was hard to argue.

  Will and I buckled down with our cover reading. I had trouble concentrating at first, but I managed. First, I didn't want to look stupid compared to Will, and second, I wasn't willing to fail at this mission. After an hour of reading at my desk, I moved over to the bed and stretched out to start memorizing.

  “Hey,” Nic said from my doorway. “I need to go out and take care of some things. I probably won't be back until after midnight.”

  “Okay. Good luck. Are you driving somebody tonight?”

  “Not until tomorrow. I'll be meeting with one of the regular drivers for some coaching. I'll probably see you in the morning.”

  “Okay. Bye Nic.”

  “Work hard, Amanda. The better you are with the story, the less danger you'll be in.”

  “Got it,” I said and saluted him.

  I had managed to focus again and had torn through about twenty pages, memorizing and then closing my eyes to test myself. That's when the music started. Although music may be too complimentary for the noise that started shaking the walls and vibrating the floor. The neighbors were making their presence known.

  The heavy bass reverberated right through my bed but the distorted melody was impossible to make out. I scooted out of bed and searched the drawers of the desk for some noise canceling headphones. I thought GASI would have prepared for anything and everything. Unfortunately, they were only partially prepared. The ear buds I found in the bottom desk drawer wouldn't help drown out that bass.

  “Hey,” Will said from the same spot Nic had chosen earlier. He nodded to the wall behind me. “Kind of loud, huh?”

  “Yeah. They must be having a party or something.”

  He nodded and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. My heart thumped at the sight. The whole slightly sheepish, casual thing worked so well for him.

  “Actually, I think they're playing Aliens NYC or Seal Team 139.” He cocked his head for a moment. “Yep. It's Seal Team 139. I recognize the soundtrack.”

  “You do?” I strained to hear anything recognizable.

  “Yeah, it's Sail.”

  “Sail? By AwolNation?” I loved that song. “How can you possibly tell?”

  “Hear the extra static sound? Plus, it's the second song on Seal Team 139 on level 14.”

  “So you can identify songs through the walls and you've memorized the order they play on the game?” Seriously. He must have finished learning our full cover story an hour ago.

  “Don't be impressed. Level 14 takes a while to beat. I heard this over and over for what seemed like days.”

  “Good. I was starting to feel inadequate.” Geez. Why had I told him that?

  Will gave me a crooked smile. “At least you've done this before. This is my first mission. I'm in there trying to learn all this stuff, and I'm starting to wonder if it will turn out like art class.”

  “There's no way that is going to happen. We'd have to screw up epically for it to be that bad.”

  “True,” he said. He walked into my room and sat, facing me and straddling the desk chair. “Art is our greatest weakness.”

  We'd bonded for the first time in art class when I was spying on him. He wasn't exactly an artist. Neither was I. “What did you get in that class?”

  “A-minus.”

  “Wow.” I tried to hide my surprise. “You, um, must have been most improved.”

  He grinned. “I did the computer project and got extra credit volunteering to help elementary school kids with their art projects at the Boys and Girls club.”

  Now that made a lot more sense. “I'm glad you found a way to save your GPA.” I shook my head. “Who knows what I would have ended up with if I'd stayed in the class.”

  “You would have gotten an A.”

  “Awww. Aren't you sweet.”

  “She allowed credit for up to ten afternoons at the Boys and Girls club.”

  “How many do you think I'd need for an A?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Ten,” he said, his eyes glued to mine. “Definitely all ten.”

  Narrowing my eyes, I asked, “And how many days did you volunteer to get your A-minus?”

  The stare down continued for a few seconds before he said, “Four.”

  “You are so dead,” I screeched. I grabbed for the closest pillow and threw it at him. “How dare you say I'm twice as bad as you!”

  Will had caught the pillow and used it as a shield while I battered him with another. Will was laughing harder than me, but he managed to stop long enough to say, “It was a compliment, remember?”

  “What?” I walloped him on the top of the head with my feather-filled weapon.

  Breathless now from laughing, he argued, “You won the contest. You were the best of the worst. The very worst. The worstest?” He decompensated into another fit of laughter.

  I stopped hitting him and he cringed while I considered. I had won the contest to be worst. And his grammatical corruption made me smile. “Okay. I won the contest last Fall, but I'm not twice as bad as you are. That's more of an insult than a compliment.”

  He peeked over the top of his pillow shield. “How about fifty percent worse than me?”

  I cocked a brow. “Not twice as bad but half of twice as bad?”

  Will's eyes crossed for a split second. “How about we go with, you're just a tiny bit worse than me? Just enough to beat me at being the worst?”

  “Better. Much better.” I lowered my pillow.

  “Are you finished now?” He stood up and now was towering over me by several inches.

  Unnerved, I squeaked out an answer that sounded more like a question. “Yes?”

  “Then it's time I seek recompense for being falsely vilified.”

  Huh? “What do you mean?”

  He raised his pillow. “It means, I'm going to give you a head start.”

  I blinked.

  He leaned closer and whispered, “Go.”

  Chapter Four

  I ran, clutching my pillow and dashing down the stairs and around the living room. “I'm sorry,” I shouted over my shoulder as I ran.

  “Hey guys,” Christie called from above us. “What's with the ruckus?”

  “She has to pay,” Will called in response.

  “Christie, help!” I shouted. “Save me!” I screeched as I picked up speed, laughing like an idiot as I ran.

  “Here I thought the neighbors were loud,” Grandma said from the kitchen counter.

  I turned at the promise of safety, dashing towards Grandma. “Grandma, help!”

  “Don't help her! This is between us,” Will yelled.

  Grandma's eyes widened as I rushed toward her. “Amanda! Will! No!”

  I had a flash of insight, picturing myself smacking into the older woman and then smashing her against the kitchen cabinets. M
ust not kill the grandmother. I jumped over an ottoman and changed course again, this time heading for the stairs. I had to reach Christie before he caught me.

  Pain seared through my side, a stitch from laughing and running at the same time. What a stupid thing to do. I grabbed my side and hit the first step, then the second. Safety, in the form of my aunt, stood about fifteen steps ahead of me.

  I raised my eyes to hers just as she gasped and held out her arms.

  Will had caught up to me. I flinched, still climbing and expecting the impact of the pillow against my back. Instead, Will's hard body hit my back, and he grabbed me around the waist, lifting me as I started to fall into the steps above. The pillow slipped from my grasp as I struggled to get a grip on something solid.

  Christie and Grandma were both shouting for us to be careful as I realized I wasn't going to smash my chin on the metal staircase after all. I was flying upward in Will's arms, losing my equilibrium as I became weightless.

  Finally, I was pulled back into Will's chest and everything stopped.

  “You nearly killed me!” I accused. I was leaning back at an angle, and if he let me go, I'd fall.

  “Put your hands on the railing, and I'll let go so you can kick my butt,” he said into my ear. “I don't want to drop you.”

  I grabbed the railing, struggling from my angle, and with a little help from Will, got myself vertical on the stairs. Christie rushed towards me, and I turned to Will. “Why did you do that?!”

  “Which part? Almost kill you, or save you?”

  “Good grief, you two,” Christie said, hands on her hips. “All we need for Amanda to fit in here is a bashed in, bloody face.”

  Um. “Thanks for your concern, Christie.”

  “Well, it's true. We can't probe for secrets if everyone is trying to figure out what happened to you.”

  “I couldn't stop,” Will said. “I had just sped up, and she slowed down suddenly, and I couldn't do anything to stop from crashing into her.”

  “At least we know your bulk will help us in the field.” Christie quirked a brow. “Are you okay, Amanda?”

  “Yes.” I think. Probably. “Will caught me.”

  “Come sit down and catch your breath,” Grandma said, motioning to the sofa.

  Great idea. I kept my hand on the railing as I followed Will off the stairs. Then I gripped his shoulder until I made it to the couch.