Page 25 of Hot Pursuit
Jo walked around Nate and into another room of impressionist paintings. Her gaze darted over a few canvases before settling on one. Nate followed the path of her eyes, trying to see what had caught her attention. A still life with apples, fruits, and an uneaten slice of pie.
Pie! Of course, pie. Why didn’t I think of that before?
Nate leaned down, keeping his voice casual. “I should have known.”
“Huh?” Jo turned to look up at him, honest surprise written across her face.
He nudged his chin in the direction of the artwork that had caught her eye. “You have an obsession with baked goods.”
“Obsession?” Jo froze, a thin trace of ire laced through her tone.
It was Nate’s turn to force back a grin. He was onto something. Finally, after so many meaningless words, he could tell from her voice he’d finally found something she cared about. And he planned to milk it for all it was worth.
“Yeah, obsession.” He emphasized the word, getting a thrill as her nose wrinkled with unspoken protest. “You’ve dragged me to half the bakeries in Manhattan. Practically tried to force-feed me a cronut and a coopa, or whatever it was you called it.”
“Coopie,” she corrected, voice clipped, defensive.
“Huh?” He feigned ignorance, pushing a button he didn’t realize could so easily be pressed, not with the calculated, confident Jolene Carter.
“Coo-pie,” she repeated, stressing the second syllable as flames gleamed to life in the centers of her eyes, sparks of angry fire. “A cookie in a pie. A coopie.”
Nate shrugged.
Her irises flashed brighter.
The edge of his lip twitched. “Cute.”
Somehow he knew that single word would set her off.
He wasn’t disappointed.
Jo put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes so they burned like lasers. At least, he guessed that was the general effect she’d been going for. Instead, he was amused.
And it’s about damn time!
She’d had the upper hand for far too long. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like up here, where the air was cleaner, fresher. Nate took a deep breath, soaking in that sweet, cool scent of victory, letting it fill his lungs as the woman before him continued to fume. He straightened his spine, using his height to his advantage as he looked triumphantly down at her.
“Cute?” she spat with disbelief. “Cute? Mark my words, Nathaniel Parker, the coopie is going to be huge. The coopie is going to take the world by storm.”
“So that’s the big endgame?” Nate countered, bringing the conversation full circle now that her defenses were down, now that she was, for the first time, edging on vulnerable. “Internationally renowned hacker and wanted criminal turned…baker?”
Jo blinked and swallowed.
For a moment he swore, heswore, uncertainty flickered in her gaze.
Nate pressed the advantage. “Can I ask you a question, Jo? How is that going to work? The Feds will never stop hunting you. We’re not in the habit of letting felons go gentle into that good night. Ride off into the sunset. Live happily ever after.”
Jo stared at him. Her chest pulsed with heavy breaths, stretching in and out, rising and falling, filling the space between them with something new, something that almost felt the slightest bit like fear.
“We catch you,” Nate continued, hammering the final nail in her coffin. “And we put you in jail.”
- 11 -
Jo
Jo sucked in a slow breath. He didn’t know, hecouldn’tknow, that he was dangling her greatest hope and her greatest worry right before her eyes, a careful balancing act that teetered on the precipice of all the things she was too scared to dream of and too scared not to.
She had to regain control of the situation.
