Page 2 of Cream and Punishment
I ducked behind the largest stack of boxes and tubs, hoping beyond hope that Max would continue on his merry way without giving my stuff a second glance. Sure, it was probably odd to see a bunch of boxes on a sidewalk, but this was Detroit. Weirder things have happened. Maybe he’d think it was a secretive yard sale?
I forced myself to count to one hundred as slowly as I could and give him ample time to pass before I peeked around the edge of the stack.
Score! He was gone.
Hallelujah.
I breathed a sigh of relief, finally able to feel the ache in my knees and thighs from squatting so long. Nicely done, me. Maybe my sister wasn’t the only one in the family who’d gotten the super-spy genes after all.
“What are you doing?” a semi-familiar voice asked from behind me.
I yelped, jumping and falling back on my butt. You know,gracefully. Sort of. If fainting goats were considered graceful, that is, because I just gave every fainting goat in a two-mile radius a run for their goat money.
“Don’t scare me like that!” I protested, holding a hand to my chest. “You could’ve given me a heart attack.”
I looked up at the source of my cardiac arrest, dread already sinking deep into my bones. There was only one person who it could logically be. The one person I was trying to avoid.
Yep. My heart flipped as I met Max’s eyes. Whether it was from nerves, guilt, embarrassment, the urge to flee, or his strikingly handsome features; I couldn’t say. Too many options to choose from. The early evening sun cast shadows over him from the boxes, but left his eyes in a patch of light that made them glow an almost butterscotch color.
His lips were pulled into an amused smirk, a hand extending to help me up. “I’ll try to be more careful next time I find someone hiding from me. Can’t have a heart attack on my conscience.”
I stared dumbly at his hand, mind whirring like a KitchenAid. He was offering to help me up? After what I’d put him through? It was probably just to drop me all over again when I was unbalanced. I’d deserve it.
Nice try, buddy.
When I didn’t accept his offer, he crouched next to me, eyebrows raised in question. “Is there a particular reason you want to stay down here, Dekker?”
My name on his lips finally kicked my two remaining brain cells into gear.
“I wasn’thidingfrom you.” That was a lie. A big, fat, juicy lie. “I was…”
WhatwasI doing? What could possibly be a good enough explanation?
“I was inspecting my boxes, that’s all. I thought one of them broke.”
Uh-huh. Becausethatwas believable. And normal.
His eyes drifted over to the stack in front of me, lingering on a tub in the middle. A clear tub. Where both cups of a hot-pink leopard-print bra smooshed unmistakably against the plastic.
Kill. Me. Now.
Blinding my Uber driver had been bad enough. But now Max? The man who didn’t need any more ammo against me? Not to mention the fact he was basically a Greek god dressed to kill in that suit he wore, and I was still flat on my butt next to a tub of unmentionables.
I shot back onto my haunches and pretended to lean oh-so-nonchalantly against the clear tub until my elbow obscured what was easily my most risqué undergarment. “Obviously, they’re fine after all, so it was a false alarm. What, uh, what brings you here, Max? I mean, what a surprise!” Understatement of the century. “I didn’t even see you coming.”
Man, I was racking up the lies. Would the powers that be make allowances for when you were surprised by the man who wants you shipped off to Timbuktu forever? Probably not. But a girl could hope.
He narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips into a tight line, accentuating the dimple in his left cheek. “So, that wasn’t you I saw duck behind these boxes when you saw me headed this way?”
The blood drained from my face, only to shoot back up with a vengeance to splatter a blush across my cheeks. So, he saw that. All of it. Awesome. Was there any possible way to salvage my dignity?
Ha! Bold of me to assume I had any dignity left to salvage.
“Nope.” I smiled tightly. “I mean, itwasme, but for completely unrelated reasons. Box security reasons.”
Good gravy, why was Istilllying? He was an FBI agent on my sister’s squad—he could smell lies miles away. I wasn’t even a good liar! I was easily one of the worst. My lies didn’t make sense, for one. And for two, I wasn’t convincing at all. My palms sweated and my heart raced, and I couldn’t breathe.
Fortunately, for me, those things already happened in his presence. So…yay?
