Page 56 of Kiss Me Now
We spent the next two hours picking our way around tree roots and discovering mushrooms on trunks, fallen logs, and hiding in the dirt. Maybe I should have felt weird about being alone in the woods with a guy I didn’t know so well, but Miss Lily was good people, and despite his arrogance when we first met, I was beginning to think Ian was good people too.
He was easy company. Or, not easy, exactly. Easy company was like Noah or Miss Lily, where I felt comfortable with them right away. And it wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with Ian, but there was a subtle tension there that made it something other than easy. It was a tension that wove a kind of spell that shrunk the world down to the two of us and our patch of woods. I felt it every time he took my elbow to help me scramble over a fallen log, or when I caught him watching me as I pried mushrooms loose from tree bark.
I was too smart to fall under the spells of charismatic men anymore, so I went out of my way to break it.
“Tell me about your work,” I said. It was designed to remind me that he spent most of his waking hours in an environment that had been a nightmare for me. To remind me that he lived a life I’d left behind for good reason.
“What do you want to know?” he asked. “My job sounds interesting on the surface, but it’s mostly Google searches and stakeouts where nothing happens.”
“Then tell me about the non-boring parts of it. What’s the weirdest case you ever had?”
“Probably the fish smuggler.”
I stopped and stared at him. “It sounded like you said fish smuggler.”
“Yep. I was trying to find some intel on a Malaysian diplomat one of our clients wanted to lobby for a construction contract—”
“By ‘intel’ you mean ‘dirt,’ right?”
He shrugged. “Potato, po-tah-to.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Continue.”
“Anyway, I was tailing him, and I thought I was on the trail of something big. I knew he was doing something shady. Illicit meetings, exchanges of money, stuff like that. But then I finally caught him in the act of a trade with an aide from South Korea at an embassy party. And it turns out my shady Malaysian was a dealer, all right, but in fish, not drugs. He was sneaking in a fish called an arowana and making major bank.”
“So arowana, not marijuana?”
“Yeah. I turned the case over to the US Department of Wildlife and Fisheries instead of the DEA. They’re pet fish and in huge demand all over Asia, but they’ve been banned here forever. So Mr. Malaysia was supplementing his humble government salary in the pet fish black market.”
I stared at him. “You’re making that up.”
He pulled out his phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it over.
“Hang on, I want to sit to read this. Give me a boost.” We were standing beside a fallen trunk so thick it came up to my hip, even on its side. Ian put his phone back in his pocket and wrapped his hands around my waist.
“Hold my shoulders,” he said, so I did. His shoulders were as firm as they looked, and taking them put our faces at eye level, but I pretended to be interested in the tree behind him instead of meeting his gaze. There was a tiny pause before he lifted me up so I could sit on the trunk. Then he handed me his phone and the article.
It took a second to focus on it. A couple of my synapses had fried when he’d picked me up. Dang, he was strong. I swallowed and blinked to clear my head before I could read the article.
Sure enough, there was a headline about a diplomat being sent back to Malaysia in disgrace after he was busted for fish trafficking.
I cleared my throat to break the loaded silence that had fallen between us. “So you’re saying stalking mushrooms in the woods with a relative stranger isn’t even the weirdest thing you’ve done.”
“Not by a long shot. But ‘relative stranger’? I’m not sure that’s accurate.” He leaned against the trunk beside me, resting his forearms on the mossy bark, and glanced over at me with a smile. His voice was low and warm, and the tone was so inviting that I knew I needed to change the subject.
“What kind of cases do you normally work in DC?” I asked, turning to the screen again.
“All the ones you’d expect. We’re in charge of a lot of oppo research.”
I grimaced down at the phone. “Oppo” was meant to tank political campaigns or torpedo deals.
“What’s that face?” he asked.
“Nothing.” My cheeks warmed at being caught.
“Something. Tell me.” He nudged me with his shoulder, an invitation to meet his eyes. It was a terrible idea, but I turned my head and did it anyway.
“You don’t approve of airing dirty laundry?” he asked. “Maybe people shouldn’t do bad things so they don’t ever have to worry about them coming to light.”
