Page 64 of The Hanukkah Hoax
“All right, fine.” Alec released Marisa and picked a duffel bag off the floor she’d been too entranced by gluten to notice earlier. Then he grabbed her around the waist and kissed her. Hard. It was the first time they’d crossed their undefined and completely irrelevant ground rules in front of her friends.
But before Marisa could sink into the taste of him, he pulled away and hiked his bag higher. “Now, where the hell is the bathroom in this place? If I’m to show off for my girlfriend, I’ll not do it with a bunch of felons eyeing my arse and her best friend taking bloody notes.”
Eden shot her arm out toward the bathroom while Marisa basked in the stupor of Alec calling her his girlfriend for the first time.
Leave it to former rabble rousers to turn anything into a gym, especially one as industrial and gritty as what Marisa and Eden had in mind for the backdrop of Alec’s mini photo shoot. The corner of the main warehouse space had been quickly cleared of shipping equipment and, in a matter of minutes, been crammed full of strategically placed gym mats, a few free weights, and the only other props they’d been able to muster: the rugby ball Alec had in his trunk—seriously, was that a guy thing?—and a Santa hat.
Eden was futzing with the camera frame on her phone, trying to position the tripod correctly while Captain, Sid, and Manic hooked up some extra lamps.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Marisa asked, gnawing off her last good nail.
“Of course it’ll work.” Eden stood back from the setup and held out her hands. “There! It’s as good as free labor will get you.”
“Hey, Alec fed you, and I’m paying you in promises that, if you die first, I’ll delete your e-reader history before your brother gets to your stuff.”
“Oh, please. That’s not the flex you think it is. Who do you suppose I got half, if not two-thirds, of my book recommendations from?”
Marisa pegged her with a calculating stare. “I was talking about your younger brother.”
A touch of Eden’s confidence flickered, and she snapped her attention back to lining up the shot. “Heartless woman.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just nervous. We’ve got all of fifteen minutes to take an amazing picture, edit it, figure out the correct sizing for the fudge squares, which I’ve yet to also make, and hope like hell the community college’s edible printer and icing sheets hold up to their end of the bargain.”
“What did you pay for all this stuff again?”
Marisa tried to work out a knot in her shoulder, but she had trouble finding the spot, as if the damn thing meant to stay just out of reach until she offered up the honesty Eden deserved. “Couple hundred,” she muttered.
“And would it be fair to say that the couple hundred wasn’t in Mexican pesos?”
Marisa toed at a spot on the floor. “It would be.”
“Yikes.”
“But it came with the ink, right?” Shit, did it come with ink? Marisa hadn’t bothered to check and hadn’t owned a printer, food-grade or otherwise, since grad school. She just assumed the plastic bag hooked on Eden when she’d walked in held the rest of the stuff needed to make Marisa’s dreams come true.
Her insides twisted horribly and had her questioning, for the umpteenth time, what part of any of this was a good idea.
A foreign cluster of taps pulled Marisa away from her spiraling thoughts as Alec’s cleats joined the conversation, reminding them all that it was show time. In more ways than one.
Eden looked up from her phone at the exact time Marisa did. “Oh, holy Jesus . . .” her friend said breathily, any of the prior fastidiousness over the camera placement long gone as she abandoned the thing to its lonely tripod.
Marisa nodded stiffly through her own dazed appreciation. “Still the wrong crowd,” she murmured mindlessly around a throat gone arid, “but I’m starting to get it now, I think.”
She and Eden both tilted their heads to the right as Alec continued his catwalk across the concrete. The corner of his lips lifted with that Scottish charm that told Marisa one of two things: yes, he knew the effect he had on women, and no, he wasn’t above using it to make her go insane.
“It’s got to be painted on, right?” Eden reasoned out of the corner of her mouth. “Otherwise, how would he get in and out of it?”
“Not sure. But those are definitely four-inch inseams.”
“Or less.”
“But the shirt,” Marisa stammered. “The sleeves. The . . . the . . .” The complete abundance of visible flesh. Well, except for the socks, but even those seemed to know their place when it came to the lines of his calves.
Alec joined them. “Are we ready to do this?”
It occurred to Marisa that she’d made yet another grave mistake, far worse than any earlier surveillance she’d failed to perform on the Plant Nanny. In all her time with her nose in front of a screen, she’d yet to pull up video of what Alec Elms looked like in his rugby uniform.
Kit, she mentally corrected.
