Page 35 of Over & Out

Mabel did a full background check before Chris signed her contract. She insists on this elaborate one involving a PI company for all new members of my team. We used to only do reference and criminal record checks. Then we hired this temp to replace Cindi when she took a leave to help her daughter with her new baby. I woke up on the temp’s first day not with the whole team in my bedroom, but just her, quivering and sweating as she sat in a chair next to me, watching me sleep. She didn’t even flinch when I screamed, just reached out and stroked my face.

I shudder, remembering it. So now we do more, and Mabel makes me read the reports. Except this time, when I started reading and saw that Chris had grown up in Redbeard Cove until she was twelve, that her dad was a firefighter, and that he died at the age of thirty-five, I closed the report. The fact that I wanted to read the thing like a novel—and that even those few words had made my chest feel heavy for my assistant—meant it was a badidea. Tru told me there were no red flags, so as far as I was concerned, I didn’t need to know anything else. The fewer personal details I had, I reasoned, the less interested in her I’d be.

This tactic is failing miserably right now, because I want to know every fucking mundane detail of this girl’s life. This morning, I’m specifically thinking about how Chris probably grew up with her dad skillfully navigating the corners of the local highway in his rig, and presumably in the car with her. Since he was a single dad, I like to assume they were close. I think she’s probably a very good driver and am not worried in the slightest. But fuck if I’ll tell her that.

“Is this the car you want to take?” Chris asks when we get to the four-car garage around the side of the house. She looks unimpressed.

I look at the very expensive sports car I’ve stopped next to. “What’s wrong with this car?”

She shrugs. “No torque.”

With anyone else, I might think they were trying to impress me. Does she know I was big into cars when I was a kid? It was one of the few plusses of being a Hollywood kid. Sure I got abruptly pulled away from my friends and school and baseball and BMXing in the empty lot by my house, but I got to sometimes ride in nice cars. But I don’t get the sense Chris knows about this. Plus, she and Tru and the hair lady had a half-hour conversation about their menstrual cycles over my head yesterday, which I found both horrifying and fascinating. She doesn’t give a shit about impressing me.

I picture her as a kid in the passenger seat next to herdad, the two of them exchanging a conspiratorial look before he gears up and flies. Even this imagined image of a good dad makes my chest pinch, seeing as my dad treated me like a cash cow.

“Right,” I say. “A girl’s gotta have torque.”

Chris rolls her eyes and I roll mine back. But when she turns away, I don’t. I can’t, not when she looks so in her element. She leans over, peering into the car, her teeth biting her lip. A finger trails along the hood like she’s tempted to pop it and inspect the engine.

“The problem with this particular car,” she says, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes before doing this little twisty thing to tuck it back, “is that for a luxury vehicle, it tends to degrade at an unacceptable rate.”

Chris gazes over at some of the other vehicles—a big F-350 that came with the house, a minivan Cindi insisted on driving up here from California herself, a few others. But while she rattles off problems with this particular car, her fingers dance over the buttons up the denim jacket under her wool coat. She’s wearing two coats, which should be ridiculous but just looks good. But I’m starting to suspect Chris looks good in whatever she wears because it’sherwearing the clothes.

“Are you done?” I ask when she’s wound down her rant. I bring my eyes back up to her face and that full bottom lip, slightly crooked nose and squinty eyes.

“Yes, I’m done,” she says, annoyed.

“What kind of car would you prefer to drive, Miss Picky?”

She shrugs. “I mean, if I had my choice, a Bugatti, forthe performance. Or maybe a Koenigsegg, just to turn heads. Or I don’t know, a Ducati?”

She’s clearly thought about this before. “Really? You compete in the Indy on the side? Or do you prefer MotoGP?”

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Donnach. A whole world.”

She’s right, of course. And I suddenly want to know way, waymore. I’m desperate for it. Maybe Ishouldread that background check. “Okay, then. Ride or drive?”

“Pardon me?” She looks startled.

“There’s a bike out back. We could ride.”

For a moment, she almost looks excited. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t ride.”

I examine her a moment longer, but she’s back to ogling the car. She mentioned a Ducati, but I guess that just means she’s a bike passenger princess. Doesn’t really track for her, but who knows? Some people don’t feel safe on motorcycles.

“Driving it is,” I say. I run my hand over my chin as if considering. “Well, shit. Hate to disappoint you, but all I’ve got that you can’t already see is this old thing.” I stride over to the far side of the garage and lift the corner of a car blanket, making my face regretful.

That full lip of hers drops, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of the tip of her tongue.

Cotton candy.

But my trick has worked; Chris is running over here like a kid at Christmas. “No fucking way.” She drops to her knees.

“Please get up,” I croak. My lower half is doing untoward things.

“A One-77? Are you kidding me?” She stands up and whips the blanket off. “Bro!”

Okay, bro helps.

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