Текст книги "Tangled Bond"

Автор книги: Emma Hart

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

“No, we’re not. Dude, not all of us can have easy, happy marriages like you have. Not all of us know when we’ve met the one right away. Nothing about me and Drake is easy. We fight more than anyone I’ve ever met, and no sooner do we make up than we’re fighting again. It’s so complicated I don’t know where to start with it.”

“I’d try talking to him, because family dinner is in four hours, and Nonna is expecting him to be there.”

“Then Nonna needs to get over it, because I’m not even going.”

“Noelle…”

“No, Trent. I have a job to do. I have work that needs to be done, and I need to decide exactly what I want. I can’t think for a second about me and Drake if I have her muttering in my ear about weddings and shit I couldn’t care less about. So, if she bitches, tell her I’m right here, in my office, working.”

“She’ll come down here. You know that, right?”

My phone rings. Grecia’s extension is flashing.

“Yep?”

“Ms. Shearer is here to discuss the mayor’s flyers with you.”

“I’ll be right down.” I slam the phone down. “Apparently, Jessica is downstairs.”

“With the flyers?” Trent asks.

“Jesus, she’s gotten around today,” I mutter, taking to the staircase.

Sure as hell, she’s standing in the middle of the waiting area, a small box deposited on the coffee table. I don’t miss the handful of magazines scattered on the floor or the way Carlton and Mike are staring at her like she walked off the front cover of Playboy.

“Carlton? That information I needed? I’m assumin’ you have it given that you’re standin’ around like a lobster waitin’ to be boiled.”

“Aw, shit,” Bek mutters, briefly making eye contact with me.

Carlton snaps out of his apparent haze and jogs past Trent and up to the stairs.

“Mike? Didn’t you say you were headed out for surveillance?” I shoot at him.

“I… Yeah.” He shuffles out when he sees my hard gaze.

Finally, I turn my attention to Jessica, who’s still standing somewhat demurely in the center of the room, an amused smile curving up her perfectly painted pink lips. “Jessica. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping your assistant would have passed on my message.” She glances at Grecia.

“Oh, she told me you called.” I offer her my own fake smile. “But I was too busy working my way through the messages pertaining to my investigation and checking on my staff. I’m sure you can forgive her oversight, given the circumstances surrounding that little investigation.”

Trent prods me in the back.

“Oh, no, of course. That is the most important thing.” She laughs.

Someone take my gun away. “So, as I said, what can I do for you?”

“I’m handing out campaign flyers for the mayor, and he’s requested that everyone puts one in their window to show their support for him, especially during this difficult time for Madison.”

Unreal.

“So,” she continues, “I have a small box here, maybe two hundred and fifty, and it would be fabulous if you could put them out here on your table, too.”

“Can I see them? Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” She pulls one out from the open box.

A big picture of the mayor’s head stares at me, with a campaign slogan I don’t care to read.

“Sorry. No.” I hand it back to her.

“No?” She purses her lips and pulls her plucked eyebrows in for a frown. “What do you mean no?”

“I mean no, I’m not putting this in my window or on my table,” I explain slowly. “I make it a rule not to have political choices on display in the workplace. This is, of course, a neutral building, and I can’t risk having potential clients scared off by my choice. Besides, I have other staff members who might not even plan on voting for the mayor.”

“Do you plan on voting for the mayor, Ms. Bond?” she asks scathingly. “Given that he’s hired you and is paying you a considerable amount of money for your services?”

I take one step forward. “The council hired me with the mayor as their liaison, and I’ve asked him for no more money than I charge any other clients of mine. The additional fees were added at his insistence. Please get your facts straight before you throw your inaccurate comments in my face.”

“I will inform him of your refusal to display your support for him.”

“Please go on and do so. I couldn’t give a flyin’ shit what you plan on doin’.”

Her lips twist in annoyance, but the evil glint in her eye tells me that she has a score to settle in Holly Woods—and it has fuck all to do with the mayor. She bends to pick the box up and ends up two or three steps closer to me. Accidentally, I’m sure.

“I expect you’ll be fired within the next twelve hours, Ms. Bond. Then you’ll have absolutely no need to work with the HWPD, will you?”

I pull my lips to the side. “Expect all you like, hon. Was that everything?”

“For now.”

“Good. Now, Ms. Shearer, get the fuck out of my building before I help you out.”

“Are you threatening me?” she squeals. She looks around me at Trent. “She just threatened me!”

Trent moves out and looks at Bek. “You hear a threat, Bek? Grecia?”

They both shake their heads.

My brother looks at Jessica. “My apologies, Ms. Shearer, but all I heard was her offering to help you out of the building. Those shoes are real high, after all.”

Jessica scowls at him, marring her usually pretty face, and clicks her way over to the door. Then, with a tight grasp on the handle, she looks back at me. “This isn’t over.”

The door echoes as it slams behind her.

“Sounded like a war declaration, didn’t it?” Bek offers chirpily, breaking through the silence.

I laugh once before heading for the stairs. “She can declare all she likes. Doesn’t mean there will be a war—or that she’ll even win it. The chick is deluded.”

I’m going to kill my brother for telling on me.

After he left, I got a frantic call from Nonna in Italian so fast that I could barely keep up with it, demanding why I was refusing to go to family dinner tonight. So here I am, at family dinner, with my laptop and notepad.

I’m determined to work. I’m determined to focus on something other than the fact that it’s been ten hours since I walked out of the police station and Drake has only called me once.

I’ve been in my office all day, expecting him to walk in the brash way he normally does and kick my ass. I expected him to storm in, slam my door so hard that the hinges rattle, and pin me against it until I explode and we scream at each other.

That’s how we work. Isn’t it?

But he didn’t. So I ate my cupcake, drew kaleidoscope-esque patterns all over what could now be the new theory of relatively for all the sense it makes, and threw my Sharpie at the wall.

At least I settled on a color for the office’s kitchen walls and e-mailed the decorator, I guess.

I’ve all but crossed Nick off of my suspect list. I think he knows more than he’s letting on, but if knowing stuff got Vince killed, then I don’t blame Nick for not saying a word. Although I do have to wonder if he knows he has police protection just in case.

The evidence is bugging me more than who the murderer is. That’s the link. But it could be anything. Evidence can never be pinned down to a single thing. It has to be tangible though. It also has to be something incredibly damning to make Natalie and Vince think they could get a ton of money for it from the mayor.

The obvious answer is, of course, the baby. But since extracting DNA from a fetus is pretty tough, that’s ruled out.

Maybe it’s text messages or e-mails or the D.O.M. contract the mayor is probably paying to keep under wraps.

Who knows? Mayor McDougall is so corrupt that even Satan will refuse his soul entry to hell. The amount of people he’s rumored to have paid off over the last few decades must be as long as Santa’s Christmas list. The media, the police… Probably even his own wife. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he’s paying her to stay married to him at this point.

So, what would he pay so much to keep quiet?

“Auntie Noelle!” Aria bursts through the front door while I’m still sitting in my car.

“What’s up?” I open my door and swing my legs around.

She crooks her finger for me to lean in and rests her hands on my knees, lifting her mouth to my ear. “Do you love Drake?”

“Whoa. That was random.” I pat her little hands and grab my things from the other seat. “And kind of unexpected.”

“Well, I saw him earlier, and he said you’re beautiful.”

“And I think you’ve been spending too much time with Nonna, little one.” I tap her nose and bump my door shut with my bum.

“Ooookaaay,” she replies. “But he seemed kind of sad when I asked him if he was coming to dinner. Nonna was buying all the dinner things and invited him, but he said no. Aren’t you friends anymore? Because Dad said he’s still friends with him.”

Thanks, Trent.

I open the front door. “Aria, things happen. We’re grownups, and while I love how much you care, Drake and I need to sort out our own problems. You can tell Dad that, too.”

“Okay.” She runs past. “Dad, Noelle said to mind your own business.”

“Apparently, ten-year-olds are excellent at twisting things,” I drawl, dropping into a chair and setting my laptop on my legs.

Alison raises her eyebrows. “Y’think?”

“Pfft.” I open the computer and flip my notebook to the last page. Ah—the one with my mindless doodles.

We’ll skip back a page.

“Noella!” Nonna shuffles into the room as I open my latest document.

“Si, Nonna?”

“You-a never speak Italiano. What-a do you-a want-a?”

“To work,” I tell her, motioning to my laptop.

“I see-a Drake. He say-a you-a have-a fight-a.”

Excellent. I didn’t realize my Italian grandmother was secretly the Spanish Inquisition. “It’s not a fight,” I protest, sighing. Why will no one listen to me? “I left to avoid a fight. I’m so tired of fightin’ over everythin’ all the damn time.”

Nonna rams her cane against the floor, making Silvio jump and his car flip off the track. “Noella!” she yells, her face steadily getting redder. “You walked out on a fight?” she asks in Italian.

“Si.”

“Perché?”

“Why? Because I’m fed up of fighting. I said that.”

“No.” She hits the cane against the floor again and lifts one wrinkled finger in my direction. “Idioto!”

“What?”

“Si, idioto!”

Oh, crap. She’s defaulting to Italian.

Everyone in the house should run right now and save themselves. It’s too late for me.

Her next sentence is in Italian, too. Fluent, ferocious, angry Italian. “You think you can walk out on a fight? No! You never walk out on a fight. You walk out, you don’t care,” she rambles, still pointing at me, her cheeks flushing red with their anger. “You’re a Bond! You never walk away!”

I slam my laptop shut. “Well, I do if I’m tired, Nonna! I don’t want a relationship where I fight all the time. I don’t want to be butting heads with my partner all the time. I want to come home and smile, not wonder what I’m gonna have to yell about tonight. I don’t want the relationship you and Nonno had!”

“We had-a the best-a one! We-a knew that-a, in-a the end, we’d-a be okay-a! Many fights-a, lots-a shouts. Noella, it was-a not always okay-a. Si.” Nonna pauses then reverts back to Italian. “It wasn’t okay a lot of the time, but we loved each other. We still do, and I haven’t seen him. You love enough to fight for everything. Then you don’t ever walk out on that fight.”

“I never said—”

“Giammai!” she insists. Never. “Love has-a nothing to-a do with-a it. It is-a your-a soul, Noella. Souls are-a stronger than-a love. Hearts, they-a break. Souls? No. Souls-a never break.”

Uncertainty runs rife through my veins, pumping its way through with my blood, and I look away from her. God, I wish she weren’t so passionate about everything, especially love. I wish her whole life didn’t revolve around love and everything that makes it.

No. I don’t.

I’m a liar.

If she weren’t a romantic, she wouldn’t be Nonna. If she didn’t fight for each of us to have our happiness, she wouldn’t be Nonna. And damn her annoying Italian ass. I love her for it.

“Nonna…” I say quietly.

“No. You-a want him, you-a go get-a him.”

I smile, but it’s lame. “I’m not you. I can’t fight every day for the rest of my life.”

“Ah.” Her eyes sparkle. “No. You-a, me?” She throws her head back and laughs. “You-a better. You-a Texan-Italiano. You have-a the sweetness of-a a Southern ragazza, and-a you have-a the fierce-a-ness, too, but you-a have an Italiano ragazza’s passion. You-a dangerous, Noella.” She waggles her eyebrows. “And-a Mamma didn’t raise-a no weak ragazza.”

“Oh, damn you!” I snap, grabbing my things. “You twisted old lady. I bet you’re lovin’ this, aren’t you? Cazzo! Fine!”

I storm past her, her cackling laughter only riling me more, and slam the front door behind me.

Damn her with her fucking stupid philosophies that make total sense.

She’s right.

My mama didn’t raise no weak girl.

She raised a sweet but fierce Southern girl with a good dose of Italian passion.

How is it that I can stand in front of a woman who fancies herself a threat to me and tell her what to do with herself, but I can’t go out and grab the thing she thinks she threatens?

Because I’m a fucking coward. That’s why.

He makes me weak. He makes me completely and utterly soft. He cuts through my hard outer shell until he’s found the softness inside, and he takes hold of that and he doesn’t let it go. He forces emotions I don’t want to feel and realities I don’t want to exist.

Drake Nash makes me a coward.

Of the very best kind.

I throw my laptop onto the backseat and put my foot down, going into reverse. I swing back onto the street faster than I’m allowed to, and I have to lift my foot as I turn off my parents’ street and the speed limit really slows.

He lives closer to my parents than he does to me.

I have no idea what I’m even thinking when I get out of my car again and storm through his open gates and up his drive.

I have no idea when I’m thinking when my fist raps on his door four times.

“Noelle,” he says as soon as he opens it.

I take him in—his unruly, dark hair, the shadows beneath his eyes from his lack of sleep, his tightly set jaw—and say, “We need to talk.”

His lips twitch. Just a little. “You stole my line.”

“Well, I never said I was completely original. Can we? Talk?”

He steps to the side and opens the door. “Sure.”

I have no idea what I’m going to say when I step over the threshold and enter his house.

He pushes the door shut behind me and undoes another button on his shirt. He’s still dressed from work, and I’d guess he’s barely been home thirty minutes. He brings his eyes to mine, one of his eyebrows lifting in question.

And I’m shaking. I can’t focus properly because all I can think of is that Nonna is so right and it would have been easier to fight with him. When I’m fighting with him, his eyes don’t look nearly as bright or penetrating or bone-shakingly powerful as they do right now. As the silence lingers, my breath hitching every other inhale, and my heart beating triple time, it’s harder and harder to force the words out.

“I’m not mad at you,” I manage eventually, swallowing hard and wrapping my arms around my stomach. “I want to be. I thought I was. But I’m not. I’m mad I didn’t know anything about your past. I’m pissed I never asked, but that’s my fault, not yours. I never wanted to know, so I didn’t. And she blindsided me. I didn’t run out because I was angry. I ran out because I didn’t want to be angry. I didn’t want to fight anymore, but then I get forced to dinner tonight, and unsurprisingly, Nonna tells me that, if I don’t fight, I don’t care, and God, I’m so confused about everything. You’re so open—well, except for about Jessica—and I’m not that. I didn’t even know that I did care until today.”

I take a deep breath and look away.

“I don’t even know what I’m saying. How stupid is that? How fucking ridiculous is it that I have to be surprised by you once loving someone so much that you almost married them before I realize I actually really do want to try at this? At us?” I cover my face and press on the inside corners of my eyes. “How damn dumb is it that I don’t even know what I’m saying right now although I can’t stop fucking talking and want to punch myself in the face?”

“I didn’t almost marry her.” Drake runs his hand through his hair, his eyes never leaving mine. “Fiancée is such a loose term. I met her while I was training. She worked at this coffee place we used to go to, and we didn’t even get together properly for the best part of a year. It fell apart when I graduated from the academy and she realized I wasn’t stayin’ in Austin, but comin’ home.”

“But Austin is an hour away. It’s not like you were moving across the country. Or even to Dallas or something.”

“She didn’t care. She didn’t get it. She wanted me to be there with her all the time, but when she realized I wanted to be more than a beat cop—that I wanted to be head of homicide and command a whole, albeit small, team, she freaked the fuck out. I thought I loved her, so I proposed. I was young. I don’t think I knew what I was doing.” He rubs his hand across his face, shrugs, and finds my eyes again. “I think she thought I’d be back for her every night. That I’d commute into town every day from Austin. I didn’t, and then I started workin’ longer and longer hours to show the sheriff I was serious and wanted to be someone in his force. Simply, she couldn’t hack it, and on nights when I worked late and didn’t go to her place after my shift was done, she was with someone else.”

Oh, shit. “Drake,” I whisper before running my teeth across my bottom lip.

“I didn’t care at that point. I was betrayed, but not upset. Honestly? I was glad she did it. It gave me a reason to end that pathetic excuse for a relationship.” He shrugs. “I’ve seen her a handful of times since then, but I’ve never stopped to talk to her except for once. She obviously found out that I’ve gotten where I wanted to be, and she’s interested again.”

“Are you?” I swallow before my voice cracks. “In her?”

“I’d rather drink a smoothie full of my own sperm than look at her that way again.”

“Well, then.”

He laughs and waves me over to him. We end up meeting in the middle of his living room, and he frames my face with his hands.

“No,” he says firmly, clearly, completely honestly. “I have absolutely no interest in her. And this is everything I was going to tell you before you ran out on me.”

“I didn’t run out,” I protest. “Okay, kind of, but I was mad. I thought I might shoot her,” I admit. “In hindsight, I would have shot her.”

“You need to get that trigger finger under control.”

“I don’t think so. I think she… I… Well, um.” Now, how to tell him that essentially the beginning of a female pissing contest has begun. What’s that called? An ovulating contest or something?

He takes two steps back, dropping his hands. His voice is flat when he asks, “What did you do?”

“Nothing! Maybe a little something.” I pinch my finger and thumb together in front of my face, a small gap between the tips. “Well, she shouldn’t have come into my office all fucking righteous and bitchy, should she?”

“You threatened her, didn’t you?”

“I quote Detective Trent Bond when I say it was offering to help her leave the building.”

“I don’t know if I should laugh or not.”

“It was pretty funny. It’s actually on camera if you want to laugh.” I chew the inside of my cheek. “And she might have told me it isn’t over.”

“You shot her then, didn’t you? Jesus.”

“No! I didn’t shoot her! Yet.”

“Noelle…”

“Like I said. She shouldn’t have come in with her bitch face on. My bitch face outweighs hers any day of the week.” I sniff and glance away for a second. “She doesn’t know who she’s messing with.”

“Now that I agree with.” He shakes his head, his eyes reflecting the amusement curving his lips. “What the fuck am I gonna do with you, huh?”

“Just don’t…” I hesitate, my stomach coiling nervously. God, I’m hot all over. Why is it so hard to stop it?

“Just don’t what?”

You’re a Bond, Noelle. Your mama didn’t raise a weak girl, and your nonna didn’t influence a pathetic one.

I take a step toward him and curl my fingers around the loose openings of his shirt. He rests his hands on my waist, his thumbs brushing across my skin, and I look up at him.

“Us,” I whisper. “Please don’t let her come between us.”

“You admitting there’s an us?” he murmurs, his lips ghosting across mine in a kiss that’s barely featherlight.

“Yes.” My hands creep up to his neck, where my arms wrap around it, and his easily slip around my body. “I want there to be. Even if we fight every day. If it isn’t easy, it isn’t worth it.”

“It won’t be easy,” he warns, his voice low. “She won’t let it be. She’ll make your life hell.”

“Then that’s real unfortunate for her, because I’m the woman the devil is scared of.”

“You mean you aren’t Satan incarnate?”

“Shush. I think he’s secretly my father. Don’t tell Nonna.”

Drake’s hand cups the back of my head, and he smiles, our foreheads resting together. “The day I tell her that is the day I sign my death warrant,” he laughs softly. “But honestly, Noelle. It was ten years ago and I still remember how nightmarish she made my life. She’ll be here long after the closing of this case.”

I slowly brush my lips across his, taking strength from the warmth of the kiss.

It’s the first time I’ve ever kissed him.

This now—this moment. I know, in that fleeting touch, everything changes.

“I’m not scared of her,” I whisper to him. “You? I’m fucking terrified of you. You and me is the scariest thing I’ve ever encountered, but if I can finally pull my head from my ass and face us, then I can sure as hell take your shitty little bitch of a ex.”

“You really do want to shoot her, huh?”

“What gave it away?” I pull back and meet his eyes. My smile dies.

The intensity in his gaze quite frankly takes my breath away. It’s hope and resolve and desire and steadfast determination mixed with the kind of protective warmth I know I’ll never see again.

It’s the way you’re only ever looked at once in a lifetime.

“I want to be yours.” My words are so quiet, and I stroke my thumb down the side of his neck. “I want it so badly.”

“Then be mine,” he murmurs. “It’s that simple, bella.”

“Make me,” I murmur back. “Make me yours.”

He creeps his hand down to the hem of the light dress I threw on before dinner as he pushes me backward, finally lowering his mouth to mine and taking it in a kiss that makes me as breathless as always. I feel his kiss and his touch everywhere as he hikes my dress above my ass and it bumps into the edge of a table.

Oh, shit.

Here we go again.

As he lifts me onto the table, bunching my dress up further, kissing me harder I flatten a hand against it. Drake drops his mouth my neck, and his lips shoot sparks from every single little kiss across it. Each touch is heavier than the last, more teasing, and I swear each one makes me want to beg a little more than the last.

His hands probe my thighs and pull me against him. His hard cock is a jolt of pleasure against my clit, even through the layers of fabric separating us. There’s nothing but him as he explores my body, each touch deftly sweeping my skin as if he owns my body.

And right now, on fire from him, I’d swear he does.

He bends, the hot breath that was coasting across my breasts now teasing my thighs.

“You have a thing for tables.”

Drake looks up at me, smirking. “I was taught to always eat at the table.”

Then, just like that, he hooks my panties to the side, pushes me back, and closes his mouth over my clit.

“Well,” I gasp, closing my eyes and dropping my head back. “Manners are important.”

“And you’ll be thanking me long before the main course.” He pauses long enough to say those words. As soon as the final one has left his mouth, he’s focused entirely on what he’s doing.

Licking my pussy.

And I’m focused on that, too.

I think he has my clitoris on speed dial.

He finds it instantly and wastes no time working it with the very tip of his tongue. And God, God, God. It’s so fucking lucky I’m mute from pleasure right now or he’d think I was renaming him.

Still… He isn’t shy about this. Neither am I. I want him to do this. A part of me, the biggest part, wants him to own me and possess me so thoroughly that the only thing on my mind as he’s inside me is his name.

I want that, too, though. The rest of me. I want him to finally end this are-they-aren’t-they bullshit that’s been spiraling in my mind for days.

I want him to own me.

I want the most vulnerable part of me to belong to him without hesitation.

And it happens as he pushes me over the brink with his tongue and fingers combined.

He’s right. I’m breathing his name before he’s even freed his cock from his pants.

He grasps the back of my neck with his hand and forces my face toward his. “Say it,” he demands.

No more fighting unless it matters.

“Yours.” I tilt my hips toward him.

He teases me by brushing the head of his cock against the opening of my wet pussy. “All of it. Every fuckin’ word, Noelle. Because my cock won’t be inside you until you’ve said it.”

“Yours,” I repeat again. “I’m yours.”

He pushes into me in one long, easy thrust.

And I throw my head back again. I want to hold this, this moment. I want to keep it forever. The moment where everything changes and I finally stop and give myself to him the way he wants. Even if it means fighting every day and rarely seeing eye to eye but always needing the other at the end of the day.

This. Me. Drake.

It’s so right that I don’t know how I ever thought it was wrong.

His grasp on me is so hard and desperate, and my fingers twine in his hair so deeply as he moves me even closer to him and his hips grind faster and deeper and he’s so buried in me that there’s nothing but the way my pussy hugs him as he lingers inside me for seconds that aren’t really seconds but are nothing more than fleeting moments in time.

And this… This is everything. Our bodies together. Skin on skin. Fingers grasping and mouths gasping. It’s insanity and perfection and the one level of oblivion that should be added to dreams.

It’s fast and desperate and furious and intense. It’s just us, us, all over. It’s head-buttingly intense and so fucking crazy that I can’t tell his fingertips from the pleasure that coats my skin as he pushes me closer to the brink of the orgasm I know he’ll give me.

Everything.

Heartstopping.

Skin-tingling.

Lung-constricting.

Stomach-somersaulting.

Breathtaking.

It’s everything and more as his name leaves my lips in a long, breathy cry that isn’t worthy of the pleasure accompanying it. It’s pathetic and useless compared to the sensations unashamedly assaulting my body in this very moment.

“Mine.” He growls it. That deep, rough growl that gets me every time.

“Caveman,” I respond breathlessly. “I’m not food.”

“She says after being eaten on a table,” he laughs into my collarbone.

Bastard. “Shut it.” My responding laugh is breathless and barely distinguishable as one. Because him.

God, just him.

Slowly, he pulls out of me and pushes my panties back into place. “Sorry about that.”

“The sex or my underwear?”

“That’s a tough one. I don’t think I should be sorry about either, judging by your response.”

“It’s okay. I might have packed an overnight bag in case I decided to blow my family off and come here to kick your ass.”

“Hate to tell you, cupcake, but not much ass-kickin’ happened.”

I sigh, still on the table. “I know.”

“Does this mean you’ll stay with me tonight?” he asks, touching his hand to my cheek. “Again?”

“Do you want me to?” I hold my breath as I look into his eyes.

“Do you need to ask me?”

“Okay,” I agree, turning my face into his palm. “Just keep your cock on your side of the bed. It’s real distracting at four a.m.”

Drake laughs, and I can’t help but smile. “Got it.” He touches his mouth to mine softly. “There’s wine in my fridge.”

“You know me so well,” I mumble.

He pulls me off the table. “Grab your shit from your car, and by the time you get back, there’ll be a wine glass on the coffee table.”

“And you’ll clean the dining table, right?”

His answering smirk is both cocky and amused. “You got it, cupcake.”

“So, to sum up,” Drake says, rolling onto his side and looking down at me, “we have no idea what we’re looking for.”

“That would be an accurate explanation.” I wince. “Because the only people who knew about it are now dead.”

“So we need to go back into their houses and search for something that could incriminate the mayor.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” I grumble and sit up, holding the covers over my bare chest. “When can we do that? Are we even allowed to do that?”

Drake gets out of bed and walks toward the bathroom. He’s completely naked, and if I were a less mature woman, I’d laugh at how pale his butt is compared to the rest of him.

“Didn’t stop you before, did it?” he asks.

“I have absolutely no idea what you mean,” I lie.

“Oh, so you didn’t break into Ryan and Lena Perkins’s apartment.”

“It’s not breaking in if the door is unlocked!” I call, grabbing my bra from… Uh… I glance around and find it hanging off the lamp.

Because all good table lamps should have a bra hanging off them.

“But it’s still illegally entering.” The toilet flushes, and he walks back into his room.

Still naked.

“Have we already reached the toilet conversation stage in this? I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” I tease him, pulling a clean pair of panties from my bag and putting them on. “And if we have, I’m drawing the line at poop-talks.”

“How have you been single for years?”

“You’re a cocky bastard.” I grab my dress, lay it on the bed, and dig in my bag. I know I put a roll of string in here yesterday.

“What are you doin’? Not that I’m upset about the view.”

“I’m pretty sure my ass is your favorite part of me,” I mutter, locating the string under my hairbrush and pulling it out.

“No, seriously.” Drake frowns and pauses with his hands on the button of his jeans. “What are you doin’?”

I grin and snap a long piece of string off with my teeth. Then I thread one end through the hole in my zipper. Back zippers are a woman’s nemesis, and ever since I saw this trick on one of those stupid “30 Life Hack” articles that are irresistible reading while on the toilet, my life has been so much easier.

I tie the ends of the string together with Drake still watching me. At least he’s done his button up now. Actually, on second thought, I kind of preferred it open.