“She did?”
He winced. “She did.”
Curiosity got the best of me. “What else did she say?”
He looked out his window, a flush creeping over the back of his neck. “She said you had your heart broken pretty bad. And if I do anything to hurt you, first she’ll take my badge, and then she’ll break my face.”
I shook my head, chuckling to myself. “Between my sister and my kid, you must think this is all just one big setup. I swear, none of this was a ploy to get you to ask me out.”
“Would it be so terrible if it was?” He turned from the window, his eyes moving over me the same way they had last night on my porch. Only this time, his appraisal of me felt far less professional.
My laughter died. A charged silence settled over us, prickly and hot. Nick was attractive and single. He was friends with my sister, which meant he had already passed the world’s most stringent background check. I was pretty sure he wanted to kiss me right now, and I was also pretty sure I’d like it.
A bead of sweat trailed down the small of my back. I reached over the center console for the thermostat just as he reached for the radio. Our hands brushed. When I glanced up, our faces were close, the bill of his hat shadowing our faces. Neither one of us moved, and my heart beat a little faster as Nick laced our fingertips together.
“I have a confession,” he said in a low voice that left me a little breathless. “This wasn’t all Georgia’s idea.” I didn’t pull away as the vinyl creaked and he leaned closer. My adrenaline spiked and the air felt thin. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this close to a man other than Steven.
“Is this all right?” he asked, our foreheads touching under his cap. Nudging it loose.
No, this was not all right. What I wanted right now was very, very wrong. Wrong for a million reasons. I nodded, dizzy, the inch of distance he was holding back testing every ounce of my self-control. Our noses brushed as a long black hood rolled past the window behind Nick’s head.
I pulled back sharply. “That’s him,” I said. “That’s Feliks’s car.”
Nick fell back against his headrest with a quiet swear. He closed his eyes, releasing a heavy sigh before raising his seat back.
The Lincoln parked along the curb in front of Theresa’s office. Andrei opened Feliks’s door and followed him into the building.
“Looks like they’ll be here for a while. Stay here for a minute. I’ll be right back.” Nick got out before I could ask him where he was going. He walked briskly toward the office, pausing when he dropped his keys behind Feliks’s sedan. I lost sight of him as he knelt to pick them up. A second later, he stood, slipping something into his pocket as he withdrew his phone. He pressed it to his ear, making a hurried call as he wandered back toward Ramón’s car.
“What was that about?” I asked him as he ducked into his seat and shut the door.
“Just checking a hunch,” he said, a little distracted.
“Now what do we do?” Every part of me from the neck down hoped we’d pick up where we left off. The other part was pretty sure that would be a very bad idea.
Nick’s eyes were glued to the office doors. “Now we wait.”
A moment later, Andrei emerged and held open the door. Feliks came out, his palm on the small of Theresa’s back and a smile on his face. His hand strayed lower as she dipped inside his car.
“See, I told you they’re sleeping together. Now that we know what Theresa was hiding, we can go, right?”
Nick started the engine. He waited a beat before pulling into traffic a few car lengths behind them. He was quiet, his brow furrowed as he followed them west onto the interstate, away from the city. We tailed Feliks’s Lincoln for the better part of an hour, forced to hang back when they veered onto an exit ramp and the roads narrowed with the rural terrain. They made four stops in front of large farm tracts with FOR SALE signs posted on their fences. Each time, the Town Car slowed to a crawl, but Feliks never once got out. After the fourth drive-by, the Lincoln returned to the interstate, doubling back to the city the same way we’d come.
“Looked like a pretty normal real estate meeting to me. Seems innocent enough.” I hoped Nick would agree and take me home.
“Nothing Feliks Zhirov does is innocent. He’s shopping for land.”
“So?” The plots they’d visited today were a lot like the ones Theresa had scratched out on her notepad. By the looks of it, he hadn’t liked these four options any better than the others.