Page 5 of Loverboy
“Just talk,” Max says. “So long as he’s willing.”
Yikes. “Be careful, Max. Make sure you’re in the right frame of mind here. I know Aga is important to you. But you’re pretty important to the rest of us. So I need you to take care.”
He tilts his head to the side and studies me. “Thank you, Gunn. I appreciate it. I know you think I’m tilting at windmills. But I need to explore this.”
“Sure. Where should I start?”
“You’ll begin tomorrow morning at about nine-thirty, after the morning coffee rush has passed.”
“So I can get a table at one of the establishments your sloppy hacker likes?”
“Not quite.” He slides a photo toward me on the coffee table. It’s a storefront called Posy’s Pie Shop.
My spine tingles. “Interesting name.” There must be a lot of women in New York named Posy, though. Thousands, probably.
“Isn’t it? Note theHelp Wantedsign in the window. They pay fifteen bucks an hour. They’re desperate for a barista.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “You can’t be serious! I don’t even drink coffee. They’ll never hire me.”
“Think about how easy it will be to watch the customers from behind the counter, Gunn. You’ll have an excuse to stare at everyone who comes through the door. The hacker posts half his stuff from this one location.”
“They’ll never hire me! And it’s shitty to take a job for two weeks and then bail.”
He shrugs. “She’ll find someone else.”
“She?” My spine tingles again.Posy’s. It’s probably just a coincidence.
Max reaches into the folder and passes me another photograph of a beautiful woman. She’s handing a plate across the counter to a customer. And smiling. That smile always made me stupid. I wanted her so badly.
But all I got was a single kiss. And then a whole lot of trouble.
I let out a groan and toss the picture back to Max. “No. You can’t be serious.”
He puts the photo away. Then he just sits back and watches me.
“You really think I’m going to apply for a job atherbakery? That’s stupid.”
Max waits.
“I can’t do that. She hates me. And given the way things ended, the feeling is mutual.”
Max sips his scotch.
“She doesnotwant to see my ugly mug every day. And she does not need an incompetent barista. I mean—I’m sure I could figure out how to make coffee. How hard could it be? But that’s not the point. I don’t need to stand around in a bakery for hours on end just to follow up on this stupid lead you’re getting from some dark web forum. Even if the perp knows too much about…” I swallow. “A string of murders.” Grizzly, horrible murders.
A violent criminal is using Posy Paxton’s shop to boast about killing people?Shit. Posy isn’t equipped for that. She’s about as fierce as a kitten.
I let out a sigh of resignation.
Max watches me take all this in. “I knew you’d see it my way. You cared for this girl.”
“Did not,” I lie. “Fine. What if I did? I was young and stupid.”
It was fifteen years ago, for God’s sake. I worked at Paxton’s—her family’s swanky uptown restaurant—as a bartender. Posy turned up the summer before my senior year of college. It was the first time in my life I ever felt lightning-struck by a girl. She had bright, intelligent eyes. And her quick smile did unexpected things to my body. Every time she walked into the room, my heart rate sped up, and my skin felt too hot.
It didn’t even matter to me that she was a horrible bartender. Every time she smiled at me, I forgave her incompetence. Hell, I think I liked it. Because Posy needed a lot of help from me to do the job. I taught her a lot, even though we were competing for the bar manager’s job.
I wasn’t that worried, though, because I’d been working my way up the Paxton’s ladder since I was sixteen. I knew ten times more than she did. I used to tease her about it, too. But even as my mouth was saying,you call that a margarita?my heart was saying,will you please get into my bed?
