With Love, from Cold World(37)

Shit, the report. Lauren glanced at her watch and saw that it was close to Cold World’s closing time. She’d probably lost the opportunity to make any adjustments to her report for Daniel, but at least she should have time to print it if she left now.

“Again,” she said to Kiki. “Thank you so much for the makeover. I’m sorry I didn’t bring my contacts so we could get the full movie experience.”

Kiki waved her hand. “Laney Boggs looked hotter before, and I’ll die on that hill. And you pull off the red way better.”

That sounded like gibberish to Lauren, but she took it for the compliment it was. She folded up her old clothes, clutching them to her chest as she left, saying goodbye to Elliot and John, who was making cheese toast in the kitchen.

“If you hang out another fifteen minutes,” John said, “Asa should be home.”

“Oh, I’m not—” Lauren stopped in the act of explaining. It would be too much to get out, and would make it seem like she was protesting too much. She glanced at the refrigerator automatically, wondering if her juvenile little note would still be there. It wasn’t.

Well, she hadn’t expected Asa to want it up for long. There was something else in its place, an invitation with dancing sock monkeys on it, but she didn’t have time to look closer. She made her apologies to John for having to run out and left.

She drove as fast as she could without breaking any traffic laws, but still when she got to Cold World the sign had been turned off, and the parking lot was empty.

“Shit,” she muttered to herself. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She was never there at closing time, but she’d hoped that it would take longer to finish up the cleaning and setting everything to rights. Maybe Marcus was on duty, and he was doing his early mop again. It would be just her luck.

Except Asa had also worked the closing shift, and she hadn’t seen him arrive back at the house. So if they’d closed, it would have to be extremely recent. She parked her car and got out, circling around the back of the building to the fenced area where the dumpsters were. Sure enough, there was a single door propped open an inch. She slid through it, hesitating only a second before removing the brick that had held it open and letting it softly close shut. Even if the open door wasn’t immediately visible to anyone passing by, it couldn’t be a good idea to just leave it open like that.

She’d print three copies of the report and be out of there just in time to drive to the other side of town where Dolores lived.





Chapter


Ten

Asa lifted one earbud out of his ear, tilting his head to listen. He could’ve sworn he heard something, but maybe he was being paranoid. It wasn’t every day that he stayed late at Cold World with a clandestine mission, after all.

Just to be safe, he carefully set down the faux snow machine he’d been carrying on the hallway floor, stepping over it to check on the back door.

Which was now closed. Fuck. He had no idea how that would’ve happened—he’d made sure the brick he wedged to keep it open was heavy enough.

He’d had a feeling that this plan wasn’t the brightest idea he ever had. He should’ve listened to that instinct. But he’d been thinking about what Lauren had said a few days ago, about how much cooler the Snow Globe would be if it could snow from the ceiling, and he’d suddenly gotten an idea of how he might be able to get the machine to work.

He’d been thinking about Lauren.

God, she was frustrating. She treated him like he was a freeloader, while the whole time Daniel was asking her to run secret reports for whatever Drakkar Noir–drenched idea he’d come up with. She told him to stop, when the only thing he’d been trying to do was look out for her. She was so prickly.

If he managed to get this snow machine working, she’d have to admit that was impressive at least. While she and Daniel had been cooking up whatever pie-in-the-sky scheme they were going to present to Dolores, he would’ve actually found a way to make it snow better in the Snow Globe. It would be . . . what was the word she’d used?

Magical.

The look on her face would be priceless. He could almost picture it now.

But then Lauren herself came around the corner and scared the shit out of him. He wasn’t proud of it, but he actually startled and gave a yelp that didn’t sound fully human. Which caused her to look up and give a small shriek of her own. The sheaf of papers she’d been holding went flying.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I closed tonight,” he said, still clutching his chest like someone out of a gothic novel. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to print the—” She swallowed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m about to leave.”

Now that he’d calmed down a bit, he was able to take in the full picture. Lauren Fox, standing in front of him wearing a candy apple–red dress, her dark hair loose around her bare shoulders. She looked really . . . his mind blanked, unable to come up with a word other than good. But maybe it was less about the word and more about the emphasis, because she looked really, really fucking good.

She bent down to gather the papers, and he automatically started to crouch down to help her, but she waved him away. It was clear she didn’t want him looking at whatever she’d printed.

The implications of it all hit him—why she was dressed up, her plans with Daniel, the once-open door that was now closed. “Did you shut this when you came in?” he asked, gesturing toward the door.