by Eva Luxe
I walked up and down the grocery aisles, and I thought about her smile. How radiant it was and how it made her eyes shimmer in the moonlight. I thought about how tightly her arms had been wrapped around me during our motorcycle ride after our last date. I thought about our eating contest and how it had been drop-dead sexy that she had an appetite she wasn’t afraid to show off.
Why the fuck could I not stop thinking about her?
I decided to keep it simple and cook chicken. I grabbed some vegetables and cheese to stuff the chicken breasts with. Then I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to cook as a side. I already knew the bottle of wine I was going to grab to go with dinner, but I wasn’t sure what to do for anything else. I wanted to impress Paige, as well as heighten my chances of at least being able to run my fingertips along her skin.
“Excuse me, could I ask you a question?”
I turned around and saw a woman with her head wrapped in a silk scarf. She was holding the hand of a small little girl, who looked no older than three or four years old. The little girl was staring up at me with large blue eyes, and her curly black ringlets cascaded down to her shoulders.
“Of course,” I said as I looked back toward the woman.
“What is that bottle of wine in your cart? My daughter can’t get over how shiny the label is.”
“It’s a new one for me,” I said as I pulled out the bottle. “It was in the Riesling section of the wine aisle.”
“Do you mind if I take a look at it?” she asked.
“Go ahead.”
The woman was stunningly beautiful, with big, brown eyes and porcelain-white skin. Her lips were just the right amount of plump and had a naturally red hue. Her body was tall and thin, with long legs and delicate fingers that held the neck of the wine bottle.
There was something about her that was familiar.
I saw the little girl staring up at me through her black curly hair, and I smiled. She was a small little thing, with a cute button nose and chubby red cheeks. She was clinging to her mother’s leg as she watched me warily, her eyes slowly wandering over my form.
It was like she was sizing me up for some reason.
The woman handed the wine back to me. “Thank you for letting me take a look. I’m not very good with remembering things, so I knew I’d have to take a good look at it if I wanted to find it later.”
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “I’m more than happy to help.”
“Blithe, can you say hi to our new friend?” the woman asked.
I wasn’t sure if I was a new friend, but I understood what the woman was trying to do.
I smiled gently at the little girl. “Hello there, Blithe. I’m Zach.”
All she did was cower closer to her mother.
“She’s really shy,” the woman said.
I nodded. “That’s fine. Stranger danger should be a thing all children should know about.”
“Well, thank you again,” the woman said.
“Anytime.”
In another world where Paige wasn’t on my mind so much, I would’ve gotten more information on the woman. I would’ve gotten her number and possibly asked her if there was a time where her child wasn’t going to be with her. Or maybe I would’ve enticed her to have me over one evening after her little one had already gone to bed.
She was a beautiful woman, with very kissable lips and legs I wouldn’t mind having wrapped around my body. But right now, there was a very interesting woman that was already occupying my thoughts.
A woman I was still shopping for.
I gathered up the rest of the things I would need for dinner and dessert before I headed to the cash register. The cashier rang me up, and I went to my car and began placing things into my trunk. I was eager to get home and get the chicken marinating before I hopped onto my computer for the night, but a piercing cry caught my attention.
I whipped my head around and saw that same beautiful woman struggling with her daughter.
This was why I didn’t want to have children. One moment they were just fine, and the next moment they were angry beyond belief. I could tell the woman with the silk scarf was struggling to keep her daughter in the cart and put her groceries away. I felt bad for her. I really did. She was obviously a single mother trying her best with a situation that had been thrown at her.
So, I shut my trunk and walked over to her to see if I could help.
“Hello again,” I said.
She jumped at the sound of my voice before relief cascaded over her features.
“Oh, hi,” she said as she struggled with her daughter.
“I’ll get your groceries in the trunk,” I said. “You just look after your little one.”
“Are you serious? Oh my gosh. Thank you.”
The moment she took her daughter out of the cart, the little girl stopped crying. She nestled her nose into her mother’s neck, and they swayed together in the parking lot.
I put the woman’s groceries in her trunk as she sang lowly to her daughter, her hand running through her daughter’s pile of ringlet curls. I looked back and saw the little girl’s eyelids drooping— Blithe, I think was her name— and I grinned as I put the last of the groceries in the woman’s car.
“All set,” I said as I closed her trunk softly.
“How in the world can I repay you?” she asked.
“Not necessary. It looks like your daughter’s tired.”
“She is. I need to get her home.”
“Well, I don’t blame her. It’s been a long day, and I’m going to do the same thing soon enough.”
“Me, too,” she said. “You know, once I can get her down.”
There was still a quality to her that seemed familiar. Intimately so, like I’d known her in a past life or something. I studied her for a little while as her eyes danced along my face. Then I sighed when I couldn’t place where she was from.
Maybe I was just going crazy.
“Well, drive safely,” I said.
“We will. And thank you again.”
“Not a problem.”
I walked back over to my car before I turned and looked behind me one last time. The woman was shutting the back door of her car and climbing into the driver’s seat. I studied her one last time, taking in her long legs and her thin stature. I racked my mind for who the fuck she reminded me of because it was obvious I’d never met her before.
But when she backed out of the parking lot to drive off, I froze.
A white car didn’t pique my interest—not in the slightest—but a white car with a dented door and a missing hubcap grabbed my attention immediately.
The woman was driving the same car that kept buzzing by the worksite. She was the woman stalking the site.
Chapter 19- Paige
My hotel room was warm, but the voice on the other end of the phone was as cold as ice.
“I don’t know what it is you’re doing out there, but you’re not on vacation,” my boss said. “Your target doesn’t require this kind of up close and personal surveillance to gather information for our client.”
I gritted my teeth. “I disagree. Something isn’t right with this—”
“Make Mr. Kent happy, and you’ll get a permanent position on my staff. He specifically picked you for this case, so if this goes well, it means repeat business for our agency and for you.”
“Boss, I understand that, but you hired me all those years ago because of my gut instincts,” I said.
“I hired you because you were able to track down information on people. When I found you, you were working at a credit collection agency, wasting away in an office and still dreaming of becoming an artist.” His dismissive tone stung a bit.
“Sir, there’s something really weird here.”
“I don’t care about weird,” he said, sighing. “Mr. Kent practically solved this case for you. Find the paper trail that ties this man to the accounts so we can move on.”
“But he hired me for the entire month, didn’t he?
” I asked.
“No, he paid three times what you’re worth for month because he wanted the job done as quickly as possible.”
“That’s not what he told me in our meeting,” I said. “He wants me to keep an eye on Zach Harte and report back to him. So, that’s what I’m doing.”
“You’re supposed to report back to me. Have you been calling him directly?”
“Sir, I really don’t understand why you’re—”
“Stop,” he interrupted. “I don’t even care. Here are your orders. You do your research, you wrap up this case, and you get home. Understood?”
“Understood. But at this point, I still have to meet up with him to wrap up this case. Randomly backing out but staying in town would look suspicious.”
Silence fell on his end of the line as my boss contemplated my words. He was irate, and I understood why. He was being left out of the loop, which wasn’t how things worked.
Normally, if I had information for a client, I routed all my information through him. He was the middle man and for good reason. He provided a buffer, just in case things got rough with a client. Sometimes, they did. Still, Mr. Kent was paying me a great deal of money to report back to him, and something in my gut told me there was much more to this story than Mr. Kent was letting on.
The evidence I was digging up was slowly proving that theory.
“Fine,” he said. “You’ll go tonight, and you’ll get more intel. But you call me before you call Mr. Kent, and you brief me on everything. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
“Good. Get what you can and use any means necessary. I expect a call tonight.”
He hung up the phone before I could get another word in. I hated my boss with every fiber of my being. With every case that came across my desk, he became more aggressive. His attitude was beginning to get to me, and the way he talked down to me pissed me off. I tossed my cell phone onto the bed and sighed.
I’d worked for this man for four years. Four fucking years, and the only thing I had to show for it was my own little dinky office. It wasn’t any bigger than the bathroom in my apartment back home. Hell, if I took a meeting with a client, I usually had to do it outside of the office.
Even though I hated the job I had when my boss found me, he offered me much more money to do it. That meant paying down my student loans faster, which meant I could get back to doing what I really wanted to do with my life more quickly.
I needed about two more years to pay off my student loans, but I couldn’t take this for another two years.
I couldn’t take the attitude and the haughty tone he took with me because he was my superior. I couldn’t take the incessant need to exert his authority over me just because he was the middleman when it came to cases. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to take any more insinuations that I should be using my damn body to get information on cases.
I still had three hours before I was set to meet Zach at his place, and I was nervous. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, and I was ready to call it quits.
I was prepared to pick up the phone, tell Mr. Kent what he could do with this fucking case, then call my boss and let him have it. My hands were shaking, and my eyes were watering with anger.
Use any means necessary. What a scumbag.
Chapter 20- Paige
I grabbed my phone and called Kami before I went crazy. Calling Kami always helped calm me down, but it also helped me to make important decisions. I knew she could talk me off this ledge I was standing on. I was so tired of my job and so tired of hating what I did for a living.
“Paige?” Kami asked.
“Hey there,” I said.
“Paige. What happened? Are you hurt?”
I laid down on the hotel room bed and sighed into my cell phone. “I hate this job, Kami.”
“You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked.
“No,” I said breathlessly. “I’m not.”
“Did something happen with your boss?” she asked.
“He’s upset because I’ve been relaying information to the client directly instead of going through him, but that’s what my client wants me to do. That’s what he’s paying me to do. And I had to defend why I was meeting up with Zach again tonight to get more information, and then my boss told me to do whatever I had to do to get the information.”
“He said those exact words?”
“His exact words were, ‘get what you can, and use any means necessary.’”
Kami made a sound of disgust. “Listen to me. Don’t you fucking do anything like that. You stick to your guns. Don’t you dare do anything stupid out there.”
“Like going to Zach’s house for dinner?” I asked.
“Yes. That would be stupid.”
“Well…”
“Kami, what the fuck are you doing?” she asked.
“We agreed he would choose the next date, as well as pay for it, and this is what he chose. The thing is, I’m not nervous about that. Not even a little bit. The more I’m around him, the more I get the feeling that this entire scenario isn’t what the client is making it out to be.”
“Do you have any evidence to back up that gut feeling?”
“Actually, yes. And because I think the client has concocted this scenario for another purpose, I’m only telling him what is necessary to paint the picture that I’m on his side.”
“This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Paige,” she said. “You can’t just do this from home? You know, just give your client what he wants?”
“If I do, then an innocent man could get arrested for something he’s not doing. I refuse to let that happen. If this is going to be my last job with this company, then I at least need to do it right.”
“Whoa. Who said anything about this being your last job?”
“I don’t know, okay, Kami?” I drew in a deep breath through my nose before I let out a shuddering breath. “I just know that I can’t take much more of it.”
“Because of what your boss asked you to do?”
“It’s not just that. I just don’t enjoy this. I don’t enjoy researching people. I don’t enjoy lying. Yes, I enjoy catching bad people doing bad things, but that’s not what’s happening here. The more I dig and the more I’m around Zach, the more I’m convinced he’s innocent.”
“Then maybe it’s time,” Kami said. “I’ve told you to do something with your painting for years. You’re good enough. You just don’t believe you are. Maybe it’s time to start researching some avenues.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said.
“In the meantime, what is your boss expecting of you now?” she asked.
“A phone call after everything goes down tonight. He sounded like he wanted to be looped in on what I was finding.”
“Only give him what you find tonight. If he pushes for more and you don’t want to tell him, then give him the bare minimum, like you’re doing with your client.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. “Fuck. How did this get so complicated?”
“When you found out your client was full of shit.”
I grinned up toward the ceiling before I sat upright on the bed. “If this is my last job for the agency, I can’t leave it unfinished. And I sure as hell can’t accuse an innocent man of doing something like this.”
“Guilty or innocent, you need evidence to support it, and you don’t have it, by the sounds of it,” Kami said.
“Exactly. So, I’ll stay here. Do this right. Then when I’m done, I walk.”
“How much money do you have saved up?” she asked.
“Enough,” I said. “One step at a time. Right now, I have to wrap this case up the way it deserves, no matter the outcome.”
“Which means you still need to be on your guard tonight,” she said.
“I know. Because he still might be a criminal.”
“You don’t have to call me tonight, but whenever you’re done, just shoot me a text so I know you’re back at the
hotel.”
“Will do. Thanks, Kami.”
“For what?”
“For always being the voice of reason when I can’t be,” I said.
“Anytime. Fuck knows you’ve done it plenty of times for me. Now, go figure out what the hell you’re wearing tonight.”
“I’m thinking just jeans and a shirt,” I said.
“Sweetheart, fuck your boss, but if you look hot, this guy will be more willing to open his mouth and talk. At least slap some lipstick on.”
“Jeans, shirt, and lipstick it is,” I said, grinning.
“You’re terrible.”
“And I take pride in it. I’ll talk with you tonight.”
“Stay safe, Paige. I’m serious.”
Chapter 21- Zach
Everything was coming together perfectly. The chicken was in the oven, stuffed with cheeses and vegetables. The whipped and buttery potatoes were cooling off, and the ice cream I’d picked up for dessert was hardening in the freezer. Paige messaged me to let me know she was on her way over, so I stepped away from the stove to get her present ready.
I wanted this evening to be special for her because she wasn’t just any woman. She was a vibrant, sexy, outgoing woman who didn’t hold herself to the same standard other women did.
She wasn’t high maintenance when it came to her looks, and she had this “fuck off” attitude I really enjoyed. She wasn’t a woman to be messed with, and even though I wanted to mess around with her, I didn’t want to mess with her.
I wanted her to know that I understood the woman of value she was.
I heard her car pull up, and I stashed the present behind the arm of my couch. I quickly changed my shirt before I went over to the door, and I slid it open just as she got to the top of the steps of my porch.
She looked stunning in the outfit she’d picked out. She wore her signature skinny jeans with a flowing top, and her blonde hair flowed well past her shoulders. Her lips glistened with the little bit of lip gloss she had used, but the rest of her skin was completely bare.
I loved that she didn’t feel the need to overdo it with makeup.
