Eight thousand dollars would probably buy every piece of clothing the store had for sale. “Beautiful,” I said, squeezing her fingers and making sure she didn’t let go. “You can get whatever you want. If I need more cash, I’ll call Corbin.”
Imogen dropped my hand to use both of hers to rifle through the racks of clothing. Most of the colors were bright neon, and I cringed every time she pulled one out from the circular rack and stared at it before putting it back in.
“Ohhh, Cyrus,” she said, and I guessed from the sound of her voice I wouldn’t like what she had to say. “This will look so good on you.” She emphasizedso goodand I almost closed my eyes when she flipped the shirt around to show me, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off her smile.
I should have.
My mouth fell open and my eyes squinted, trying to make sure I saw it properly. The shirt wasn’t offensive from the back because it was plain white, but the front had a printed fake tux, complete with muscle shadows.
I stepped forward and touched the fabric of the shirt to check we were still in reality and I wasn’t passed out dead somewhere after landing in hell. “Oh wow, these are real?”
I thought they only made them for ironic scenes in movies. Were people in America really walking around in fake tux shirts?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Imogen said, clearly enjoying this more than she should. “You’d look hot in this.”
“Hot, huh?”
She nodded enthusiastically, but her smirk told the actual story.
How did this woman who’d been kidnapped days ago and was still technically on the run for her life find such pleasure out of a crappy shirt? If me walking around in a fake tux brought this kind of smile to her face, I would do it easily.
But I wanted something out of it in return. A Kensington didn’t make a deal without first making sure they got their fair share.
“Fine, I’ll wear the fake tux if you wear this shirt,” I said, pointing to a rack of shirts hanging off one of the store walls. It was a complementary design to mine, if you were having a beach wedding and the woman wanted to be married in her bathing suit rather than a wedding dress.
The shirt was white all around the edges, but in the middle was a set of large fake boobs barely covered in the teeny tiny bikini. Imogen didn’t need the fake assets to make hers great, but I wanted a fair trade.
Rather than get mad, she only laughed harder and grabbed the shirt from the wall, getting it at least two sizes too big. “I’ll do it if you do it.”
I said nothing out loud, but for her I’d do pretty much anything. Plus, I couldn’t wait to see the shock on Corbin’s face when he came to pick us up and saw me wearing the truck stop gear. Between Imogen smiling and Corbin’s reaction when he saw me, it would be totally worth it.
On a rack beside the shirts were small bags of various items we’d need for a shower. Some kits were small with shampoo and conditioner, while others got bigger with washcloths and towels. I grabbed two of the largest options and then found Imogen looking at shorts.
She selected two pairs, one for each of us, and thankfully bypassed all the bright neon-colored ones with words on the back for two simple black mesh pairs. We were definitely going to look like a matching couple.
I gathered up all of our items and laid them on the counter back at the restaurant to have our purchases taken off the tab.
“Did you want coins for showers?” The woman answered. “You get seven minutes for every coin that you put into the machine outside the stall.”
We needed many coins. All the shower coins.
“Give us two of each,” I said, not sure I’d ever showered in only seven minutes in my life.
Imogen leaned forward, looking back at me once quickly before she spoke. “Make it three.”
She glanced at me as if I’d tell the woman no, but if she wanted a twenty-one-minute shower, she could have it. I’d buy her a forty-two-minute shower if she asked. If she wanted to stay under the water until my brother made it here to pick us up, I’d buy her as many shower coins as she needed.
“Okay, that took $157.25 off of your eight-thousand-dollar credit,” the woman said, raising her eyebrow at me with unspoken sarcasm.
I didn’t take any offense and gathered up our items, leading Imogen back to the showers. I planned to scrub for the full twenty-one minutes.
Getting clean consumed my thoughts, but when we reached the space and had to break apart to enter the men’s and women’s shower area, I suffered a slight panic. The woman hadn’t been out of my eyesight besides sleeping for days. Now I’d let her walk into a bathroom by herself?
Some might call me crazy possessive, but they didn’t survive a kidnapping and flee a ship only to be chased down to a police station in Florida. If we survived this, I’d put GPS on both of us.
She took a step past the opening for the women’s bathroom and I reached out, stopping her. “Beautiful, wait.”
“Is something wrong?” she asked, panic in her words as she searched the area for anything weird.
