Page 60 of Love at First Sighting
“No matter what we find, I won’t go anywhere,” I tell him. I’m shocked at myself. With other people I’ve liked or dated,I’ve always been ready to flee. But Carter? “I know it’s not a lot, but I’m not going to leave you.”
His shoulders drop and he tilts my chin up off his chest. His gaze is lighter, easier. “Itisa lot.”
Our eyes flutter shut, and as I lean in for a kiss, thunder cracks across the night sky and rattles the windows.
“Was that thunder?” he asks.
“Is that actualrain?”
Outside, the sky opens up and torrential rain douses the city streets and thumps on the roof.
“Wow.” Carter sighs. “We needed this.”
It’s the quintessential SoCal line that unites us all when the sky opens up. “Yeah, we really did.”
“We should stay here.”
I furrow my brows. I am very much still in an evening gown. “Here?”
“Yes. I don’t want to—” He quiets. “I don’t like driving in bad weather. I’m…I’m a nervous driver.”
It’s why he grips my car’s safety handle for dear life, too.
“I can drive if you want?”
He shakes his head. “Look, the rain can’t go on for long, right? We can just…hang out here for a bit. If that’s okay with you.”
Really, I’d love to take him back to my place and strip off his uniform, but I suppose any time at all with him is good enough for me now. Carter snaps a photo of the appointment in Marcus’s planner and slides it back into place. He escorts us out of Marcus’s office and locks the door like we were never there. We strip off our rubber gloves and tuck them into my purse so we don’t leave behind any signs of our subterfuge.
“So,” I start, “what do you do around here to kill time?”
“Truthfully, I’m not used to being here and not having someone tell me to go fix something.” He guides me to a desk with two chairs. “This is where I sit.”
“Two seats?”
“Yeah. The other one is for my trainee. His name’s Toby. Brad—he sits over there,” he says, gesturing to another desk with a huge pair of nail clippers in the pen holder, “is his brother-in-law. Not the brightest bulb, but we’re working on it.”
“I mean, not everyone can be as good at fixing the coffee machine as you are.”
“I have my uses.” Carter opens a lower drawer. His brows raise. “You want a drink thatdoesn’ttaste like lighter fluid?”
He pulls out a midshelf bottle of whiskey and shakes it.
“Please.”
“This has been sitting in here since last Christmas. Derek, one of our other agents, got it for me for Secret Santa.”
I laugh. “The Men in Black have Secret Santa?”
“We sure do. Guess who organizes it?” He stands, covertly pointing to himself before disappearing into the galley kitchen we passed. He claims two glasses and sets them on the desk between us.
Carter pours each of us a decent shot, while I take a seat on the edge of his desk. I swirl it, giving it a sniff, and throw it back in one steady gulp. I set the glass down with a thump.
“Damn.”
“I forgot what consumable alcohol tastes like.” I laugh.
Carter refills my glass. This one I take slower. The rain rages at the drafty old windows. Normally, the rare sounds of rain in LA would lull me to sleep. But not tonight…Not with the way Carter sits in his chair across from me, carefullysipping his whiskey, looking like an apparition from another time. I’m wide awake.
