by Scott, Kadie
Still he’d been mathing the hell out of the case for the last few hours with a decent amount of success. He’d already marked a few inconsistencies in the books he was reviewing as points to dig deeper into.
He’d just notated a “next step” on a line item, when his boss popped his head in the door. “Status on Orsini?”
Max flicked a glance at his screen. “Sorry, John. Still working on it.”
John frowned, the lines around his mouth deepening in displeasure. The man had a face like leather and a personality to match, but he got shit done and was fair. “This is taking longer than usual. Do I need to assign more resources to it?”
Crap. Now his personal life was impacting work. Christmas needed to come faster, dammit. “No. I’ll get there.”
John regarded him with narrowed eyes. Working for the FBI had its drawbacks, one of which was dealing with people trained to look for lies. Max held his boss’s gaze with a confident one of his own.
His cell phone vibrated on his desk. The display showed his caller was his mom. He’d been avoiding talking to her since Thanksgiving, but the interruption now fell under good timing. Luckily John couldn’t see the name.
Max picked it up. “I have to take this.”
“I want progress by the party,” John said. Then he ducked out.
Great.
“Hi, Mom,” Max answered.
“Everyone can stop worrying,” she shouted. “We’ve found Max and he’s alive.”
Max held the phone away from his ear as his mother apparently directed her announcement at whoever was in the house with her, probably his dad.
Waiting an extra beat, in case she had more to yell, he put the phone back to his ear. “Have you been looking for me?”
“You could say that. What happened? Did you forget how to check voicemail again?” she teased.
He chuckled. The sarcastic apple did not fall far from the tree. “I hope you didn’t ask the police to open a missing persons case.”
“It was a close thing.” She paused, then jumped to the real reason for her call. “I’m planning meals for Christmas so I can get a head start on the desserts.”
A likely excuse, and one he couldn’t argue with. His mother cooked all of December to get ready. “Yeah?”
“Have you nailed down plans yet?”
Suddenly grateful his was a private office rather than one of a sea of cubes where anyone could listen in, Max had no problem answering. “I think so. My girlfriend”—that rolled off his tongue way to easily—“wants to spend Christmas day with her family. We should be there for Christmas Eve, and leave late that night.”
“Oh.”
He almost laughed at the dip in her voice. He could practically hear her thinking. Despite her obvious excitement that the “girlfriend” was still in the picture, she’d be disappointed that they wouldn’t be there the entire holiday.
“Are we going to get to meet this girl before then?”
Max leaned back, propping one foot on his knee. “Sorry, Mom. We’ve got all our weekends booked between now and then. You know…holiday parties.”
If he knew his mother, she’d be scrunching up her face by now. “Do we at least get a name?”
Thank God he’d managed to avoid giving a name over Thanksgiving—a feat of Herculean effort which involved a lot of avoiding and misdirecting. The tricky part with giving her Gina’s name now was he still needed to do the trial run at his party. What if he ended up having to substitute another girl at the last minute?
Max scowled, the idea of replacing Gina settling like a lead weight at the bottom of the ocean. Why did the concept of swapping her out for someone else bother him so much? She was temporary. Interchangeable with any other single girl his age who he could keep at a distance.
No, she’s not, an inner voice whispered. One he ignored.
Not that he’d done a great job keeping that distance so far. Max scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling that soft kiss all over again. A temporary leave of sanity that he wouldn’t be repeating.
Before he could decide how to answer, Drew knocked and let himself into Max’s office. Most people would wait until called, but not Drew. Even with his new girlfriend, Cassie, coaching him in people skills, the guy still had none. Strike that, Cassie was her own brand of awkward, in an “adorable girl version of Drew” kind of way, with a penchant for speaking every thought she had, so she wasn’t much help.
“Got a second?” Drew asked, seemingly oblivious that Max was in the middle of a conversation.
“Is that Drew?” his mom asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re busy. I’ll let you go.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Tell Drew hello.”
Max hung up and set the phone down. “Mom says hi.”
Drew brightened. “How are your parents? I haven’t seen them in a while.”
“Both fine. I showed them a picture of Cassie, by the way. They approve.”
That garnered a grin.
“What’s up? I know you don’t need help with hacking whatever computer system they have you assigned to now.”
“I’m going to lunch with the new guy in the office. Do you want to come?”
Max took a moment to track with the change in topic. “Who?” There was a new guy? This office was large enough that departments didn’t always cross-pollinate.
“Brandon MacIntyre. He’s up from TECAD in Alabama.”
“Bomb tech?” Max asked.
Drew nodded. “I’m helping him with an op.”
Max chuckled. “Look at you making friends and influencing people.”
Drew merely stared back at him, expression blank, obviously not interested in answering that one.
Max checked his watch. “Sure, I’ll come. Noon?”
Drew nodded.
“Good. I could use the break.” He damn sure wasn’t getting any work done. Not with Gina Castillo hijacking his brain, his body, and his workday.
He’d slept with women who had more curves, who had more exotic eyes, who were more like him, and he hadn’t given any of them more than a passing thought when things ended. But Gina’s curves, her wide brown eyes, her smile, how she treated everyone around her…those were sticking with him. He didn’t like it.
Although…thinking of Gina, perhaps he should mention her to Drew.
Max debated that idea in the matter of a nanosecond. He hadn’t given his mom Gina’s name for a reason, but Drew would meet her at the party. Better to plant the seeds of his “relationship” before then. If he simply showed up with someone, Drew—and everyone else, for that matter—wouldn’t believe him. Literally. Given his history with women, and his stated aversion to all things relationship, his co-workers’ FBI training would kick in and he’d have an office full of suspicious people watching his every move.
He never brought a girl to functions where anyone who knew him personally or professionally was involved. That would require letting her in on his life, and, in the case of events like an office party, also involved telling her he worked for the FBI. That broke his rules about no personal information in a big fucking way.
But the situation with Gina was different. He needed this trial run to go smoothly. So, first, to set things up with Drew. “Mom’s driving me nuts about this new girl I’m seeing.”
Drew paused in the middle of dropping his tall, lanky frame into one of the two black leather seats across the desk from Max. He stared for a minute, then dropped the rest of the way with a thump. “Seeing? As in, more than one night of sex?”
“We haven’t had sex.” Yet, the small devil on his shoulder whispered. Because his body was damn sure interested in that idea. Max stuffed the thought into a locked box with annoyance. No sex. They weren’t getting involved.
Meanwhile, Drew’s eyebrows tried to do a Houdini and disappear into his hairline. “You haven’t slept with her?” he asked slowly. “Why?”
Max went to lift his eyebrow, then lowered it, Gina�
�s comment making him hyper aware of the gesture. “Why do you think?”
He couldn’t very well say Gina was special or the breakup wouldn’t appear natural so soon after they got together. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips to add an air of casualness to his lies.
His tactic worked. Drew relaxed, leaning back in his seat and shaking his head in disbelief. “The mighty Maxwell Carter has finally fallen.”
Max choked on his coffee. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, buddy. It’s only been a few…dates.” He’d almost said discussions.
“Hmmmm…”
What was that supposed to mean? Drew and his damn analytical mind. The guy was a computer hacker by trade, but he applied his skills to data analysis, which periodically included analyzing his friends. Cassie was even worse. “How’d you meet her?”
Like he’d told Gina they should, Max decided to stick as close to the truth as he could. “She’s new in my apartment building.”
“So she knows where you live? Wow.” Drew was familiar with Max’s rules. “She must really be something. Is she hot?”
This part needed no embellishment. “Italian, with dark hair and eyes, and fantastic curves.” Along with fantastic lips, laugh, smile… Shut it down, Carter. Max shifted to adjust the part of him suddenly straining against his zipper.
“Good kisser?”
“Don’t be an ass.” Max might not be into relationships, but he was a gentleman.
Still, the subject of kissing brought back that quick brush of the lips he’d given her in the park—again—that’d had his gut clenching in stark reaction to an innocent kiss. But the way her eyes darkened… Max mentally slammed on the brakes. What the fuck was wrong with him?
This whole blackmail and lying to his family and friends thing was seriously screwing with his head.
“So that’s a yes?”
Damn, he must’ve waited too long to answer. “Just a small kiss over coffee in the park. No big deal.”
“In the park? So, you like this girl?”
He was supposed to be sowing seeds of a relationship here. “Let me put it this way. She got me to try coffee from a cart, and I liked it.”
“Marry her.”
Max scowled. “Et tu, Brute? I get enough of that crap from my family.”
Drew chuckled. “When do we get to meet her?”
Max mentally paused. Drew was one-half of a “we” now. That still took getting used to. “I’m bringing her to the office Christmas thing.”
Drew’s eyebrows tried to disappear again. “It is serious, then.”
More serious than it should be.
Part of him wanted to end this entire deal and walk away. Part of him wanted to pin her against a wall and see if their chemistry had been an anomaly.
His dick definitely preferred the option behind door number two.
Despite his own irritation with himself and the situation, suddenly the party seemed a long way away. The problem was, if he gave in to the urge to see her before then, no way could he guarantee he wouldn’t take her to bed.
Chapter Six
Hustling home in her elf costume always scored high on Gina’s entertainment spectrum. In New York, a city where people didn’t blink twice at any given oddity, apparently dressing in a red and green costume with bells tinkling away on her shoes was cause for second glances and secret grins. At least she left a bit of happiness in her wake.
She greeted Charlie, who held the door for her, with a friendly wave, smiled at the guy at the front desk, rode up the elevator, and walked down the hall to her door—all without a single glimpse of Max. Not that she expected to see him.
“T-Bone,” she called, once her door closed behind her. “I’m home. Let’s go take a potty break!”
She poked her head over the gate she used to keep him in the palatial bathroom where she’d set up the Shangri-La of doggy time, including water recycler, a fluffy bed three times his size, and toys safe to leave with him. T-Bone went nuts, his half-curly, half-straight tail wagging a mile a minute while he did donuts and jumped up on the gate, practically knocking it out of the door jamb in an attempt to get to her.
Gina scooped him up, craning her neck to avoid getting a tongue bath. Thank God he wasn’t turning out to be a yippy dog. She’d worried about his alerting the neighbors to his presence while she was at work, but no one had said anything. Yet.
“Time to sneak you outside.” She tucked him into her spy bag—grinning at the memory of Max’s face. He’d been jealous of her sneakiness, she could tell.
Cracking her door open, she peeked outside, only to discover a familiar dark head at the door two down from hers, and she breathed a sigh of relief even as a spark of anticipation ignited inside her. “Hi, Max.”
He glanced up as she approached. That charming smile of his—the genuine one this time, the one that reached his eyes—would be the death of her equilibrium.
Gina locked her knees, probably walking like a newborn giraffe in the effort to convince her body that wobbly knees were dumb.
“Hey.” He glanced at the bag. “Potty time?”
Two words she never would’ve expected to come out of Max’s mouth. “Yup.”
As soon as he heard Max’s voice, T-Bone went bananas inside the bag, yipping and squawking and scrambling to play. He managed to work his head and paws out of the hole in the top, which was only a drawstring closure, before she could do more than swing it off her back.
Max grabbed the fluffball, pulling the little dog all the way out to hold him, despite how the dog fur would stick to his suit, and receiving the same delightful tongue bath T-Bone had tried to give her a minute ago. Just as she was about to take the dog back, the tell-tell snick of a deadbolt being unlocked sounded.
“Hide!” Gina grabbed Max by the arm and dragged them all into his apartment, right before one of their nosiest neighbors opened her door and poked her head into the hall.
“Gina?” she called. “Was that you?”
Gina waited with baited breath, leaning with her back against the door, Max beside her doing the same, as they waited for Mrs. Blakely to go back inside. Gina glanced over to find he had his hand over T-Bone’s muzzle, bouncing the animal in his arms like he was calming a squirming child.
The humor of the incongruous picture—an elf, a man in a conservative suit, and a wriggling dog, all hiding behind the door—struck like lightning. She tried to hold it in but couldn’t. A snicker escaped in a burst of sound, and Max frowned, holding a finger to his lips.
But the floodgates had been opened. Another laugh broke free, followed by another, until she couldn’t stop laughing.
Max scowled as he placed T-Bone on the floor. “It’s not funny.”
She nodded but couldn’t stop the giggles from tumbling out. “I know.”
“At this rate, we’ll both be evicted,” he pointed out.
But his poker-faced response only set her off again. Before long, after holding his glower until he couldn’t, Max chuckled, then those chuckles rolled into deep laughs. The dog hopped around at their feet, panting and jumping up to get their attention, but fortunately not barking.
As their mirth eased, Max turned his head to face her. “This is all your fault.”
“Hey. I was doing just fine before you came along,” she countered, a few chuckles still escaping. “It’s not my fault T-Bone is a bad judge of character.”
The laughter started back up, another wave overtaking both of them. Even as she chortled, a new kind of sensation replaced the rush of hiding and the shared silliness with Max.
All that time spent arguing herself out of fantasizing about touching him bubbled to the surface, and she couldn’t seem to disconnect her stare from his lips. What would he do if she leaned over and kissed him right now? She checked his expression and registered awareness in the amused blue-eyed gaze trained on her face. The intensity of that stare drew a gasp from her.
All traces of laughter abruptly stopped as they both froze, something electr
ic sizzling between them.
Was he going to kiss her again? Did she want him to?
Suddenly, Max moved, pinning her between his door and his hard body, his lips on hers. Heat flooded her body as kissing changed to kissing.
In less than a heartbeat, they were locked together. Hands roaming. Bodies fused.
With every sweep of his touch, every press of his lips, she dove deeper into the kiss. Glorious, the sensations he pulled from her body. The needy ache, how her nipples tightened, the way everything tingled. She never wanted it to end.
…
Damn she felt amazing, just as he knew she would—warm and soft against him, her curves fitting the hard planes of his body as though made for him. Gina whimpered against his lips, and Max slid his tongue into her mouth. She tasted like candy canes. Who knew an elf could be so sexy?
Tugging her closer, knowing she could feel every inch of his now-raging hard-on, he smoothed his hands down over her hips, then cupped her ass under that ridiculous skirt and lifted. In perfect accord, she wrapped those long legs around him, and he pressed into her body, rubbing against her right where he knew it would feel the best, smiling between kisses as he drew a shudder from her body.
She tangled her fingers in his hair, as if anchoring him to her. Her kisses were as sensual as the rest of her, her response so uninhibited, all he wanted to do was take her back to his bedroom and sink into her sweetness.
He pressed into her with his hips again, trying to relieve the throbbing, his tongue mimicking the motion as he ground against her. Gina moaned, and maybe he did, too, as she raked her nails down his back. Max tugged at her lower lip with his teeth, then laved the spot with his tongue, drawing a shiver from her.
Maybe he could break his one-night rule. Just this once. Just so he could have this woman and still keep their bargain.
Her hand skated up over his rib cage in a whisper of a caress that drove him even higher.
“Max,” she sighed into his kisses.
He brushed his mouth over the sensitive underside of her jaw. “Hmmmm?”
