Page 42 of Bad Situation

He opens his mouth to say something more, convince me further, when his phone rings. His mouth clamps shut and his eyes go hard. From his reaction, that’s more than some random phone call. He knows who it is.

“I take it that’s an important ringtone?”

He shakes his head but his brows pinch. “It can wait.”

Well, then. It’s one thing for me to trust him with my body, but my life? He can’t ask me to do that, not when he’s holding back.

After his call goes to voicemail, I decide I’m done. “I need to go home. I’ve had a long weekend. I have an even longer week coming up with work and my brother’s wedding. Let me go.”

He doesn’t let me up. He pulls me in for one more kiss and I let him because he’s right. This man, I trust him with my body. It’s my heart I’m not so sure about yet.

Letting his kiss linger on my lips like an empty promise, his phone comes to life again, this time with a different tone. A notification.

When I push against him, he helps me up. I brush myself off from the dusty mat and he goes straight to his phone, making me think this tone is much more important than the call. I turn to him as his fingers are flying over his screen and he’s deep in concentration. I start for the door but he tags my hand on the way past. “Don’t do that, Jen.”

I sigh. “Do what?”

“You know what. Turn cold on me.”

I compromise every day in some shape or form. It might come in the form of negotiations, but it’s a compromise all the same. At this moment, I’ll do anything to get home and only tell him a half-lie. “I’m wound up about tomorrow and you have calls to take care of. Please take me home.”

He yanks on my hand and I find myself in his arms. “Promise me you’ll text me right after your hearing tomorrow. If I can manage a reason to be at the federal building, I want to be there. If I can’t swing it without throwing up any red flags, I want to know what happens right away.”

I press into his chest at the same time I harden my heart. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “Let me take you home.”

Chapter 12

Fucked, Legally and Literally

Eli

I slip into the back of the courtroom and take a seat next to Dean as if I didn’t have my hands and mouth on the woman in the spotlight less than twelve hours ago.

He barely gives me a glance. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m early for a meeting with the ATF two floors up on a case that’s linked to one of mine. Heard this was going on so I snuck in for the show.”

The case isn’t a lie but the meeting is.

Dean doesn’t blink at my presence. Bree, however, who’s sitting on the other side of him, should not play poker. My showing up is more than a surprise by the look in her beady eyes, probably because, if she’s been following the damn trackers she put on my vehicles, she thought I’d be at the office right now since that’s where they are—sitting right on her fucking desk for her to find later.

I decided last night I wasn’t going to pussy-foot around with my co-worker. I’m throwing it in her face that she can’t fuck with me. I’ve dealt with the scum of the earth—way worse than her. There’s no way I’m going to let some greedy backhanded agent—who I have no doubt is planting evidence to frame the woman I want in my bed—think that she’s got one up on me. She started this game and I’m more than willing to play.

She’ll go down and do it big. If she’s lucky enough to keep her job, she’ll be Giglioed for life—unreliable and useless to prosecutors since she’s lied on official documents. She’ll find herself at a desk, pushing papers or managing agent recruits—boring shit that would make my head explode.

Basically, she’ll blackball herself faster than a sorority girl plagiarizing her midterm.

Still, I give her a generic smile and a head-lift, which she doesn’t return and turns back to the show she’s puppeteering.

I shift my focus, too, but can’t take my eyes off the defendant. Today, she’s wearing a white, crisp shirt crisscrossed with thin black lines tucked into a skirt that fits her like a second skin. It starts high on her waist and ends at her knees and I’m interested to see how she sits in the damn thing without it bursting at the seams. Her long, rich hair lays in soft bends down her back as she stands next to her attorney with an army of others sitting behind her in the first row.

Even though I haven’t laid eyes on her shoes, I can only imagine them because, I’m right, they do amazing things to her legs and ass. I have to flex my hand—my fingers are itching to touch her, to test the seams on that skirt.

It’s why I came. I need to see her. Not only did I get alerts last night that Bree was on the move while Jen and I were at the warehouse, but I also got a call from Sarah. As much as it kills me to do it right now, I’ve got to leave town. I talked to my supervisor first thing this morning and I fly out late this afternoon. I wanted to put a trip off until next month, but the pressure is on.

I feel like I’m being pulled in a million fucking directions.

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