Page 4 of Baby One Last Time
“How about I call you a cab.”
Oops. “No! I’ll need my car later.” I turned the pout into a sultry smile. “How about you drive me home in my car, then call a cab to get back. It’s only fifteen minutes each way.” I ran my hands over his fuzzy, white lapels and dropped my voice to a whisper. “There might even be a surprise for you under my tree.”
He swallowed audibly and smiled at me with too many teeth. “Well, I do like surprises.” He ran his hands up my arms and squeezed my shoulders while I focused on not gagging. “Hold that thought.”
He ran up the driveway while I kept myself out of view behind a tall hedge.
“Hey, Tomas,” Santa called, “I have to run an errand. Be back in forty-five.”
Forty-five minutes. With half an hour of travel time, that meant he’d left a whole fifteen minutes to spend on me. Asshole. He was making this job easier and easier. By the time he got back to me, he was panting from the exertion. Yeah, fifteen minutes had probably been optimistic.
“I’m stuck down this way.” I smiled up at him as he took my arm and propelled me forward with just a little too much force. I waited until we were at the exact spot Derek had pointed out, then turned toward the bushes and made gurgling noises.
“Oh, shit.” Fifteen-minute Santa laid his hand on my exposed back. “You gonna hurl?”
I stood up straight, wishing I had a better upchuck reflex. I would have used it on him. I turned toward him and reached out my arms. “No. I just need to stand still for a minute. Really still.”
He held onto my arms and stood still with me, just like a good little target.
His eyes went wide at precisely the split second I heard thethwackof the tranquilizer dart’s impact on the side of his neck. Santa fell forward into me, and with his last bit of strength, made a claw with his right hand and copped a feel. I brought my knee up hard into his gut, eliciting a satisfying grunt, then let him drop face-first onto the pavement.
“Perv.” I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for Derek to pull up so we could toss this piece of trash into the truck bed.
Chapter 2
I staredout the window of a fiftieth-floor suite in one of the high-rise hotels in downtown LA. I rubbed my arms, chilled by the AC. It had been over an hour since we’d pulled off the Santa Baby without a hitch. Kessler and Wilder, together again.
No. That was so inappropriate, I couldn’t even think it.
I bit my lip and drew blood. The metallic tang focused me, as did the full-blast cold air blowing over my exposed arms and legs. If it had been up to me, I’d have been back in more suitable clothing by now, but Derek had parked me by the window and asked me to be patient.
“When will the cleanup crew get here to deal with our Santa problem?” I asked, ignoring his request for patience.
He walked up behind me, reached his arms around me without touching me, and presented Mrs. Leary’s flamingos with healed neck wounds.
“Oh my gosh, they’re perfect! The patches are even pink.” I turned toward him, and he propped his hands on the window sill on each side of me. “You had a repair kit with you,” I said, realizing now that the months in the civilian world had dulled the edges of my suspicious mind. “It had pink patches. Almost like you knew you’d need them.”
There was that infuriating grin again. “I had to find a way to get your attention and pull you away from work for the afternoon.”
I threw the flamingos onto a nearby chair and glowered at him. “You ever think of texting ‘Hey, meet me for a cup of coffee’?”
“Nope.” He leaned close until his lips were just an inch away from mine. “You ever think of yelling at me less and kissing me more?”
“Maybe.”
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispered, but he placed his hands on my legs and slid upward.
That’s all it took to send my heart spiraling backwards nearly a year. Christmas Eve in Vegas. I’d been stood up by a bleached-blond lounge lizard, and Mr. Tall, Dark, and Delicious, later known as Derek, plied me with drinks. Expensive, yummy drinks, followed by a proposition I couldn’t refuse.
It was all a ruse, a way to recruit me into HEAT and test my skills and reflexes at the same time. But our late-night date turned into a throw-down with some bad guys led, of course, by my MIA lounge lizard. I’d passed the test with flying colors, and Derek and I—flush with adrenaline and hormones—spent the night celebrating, against both our better judgement and HEAT policy.Just this one night, we’d promised each other.
We’d kept the promise for our first four months of working together. Then there were those last four months...
No. No, no,no. We couldn’t...Icouldn’t. Not again.
“About that cleanup crew,” I asked again.
“Close by. But you know LA traffic. It could take a while to get here.”
