She reached out and he stepped back.
“Afraid of me?” she said, a hint of a smile on that fresh face of hers. She’d washed off her makeup from the night before, leaving her looking more like a cross between the girl next door and an old-fashioned homecoming queen with glowing skin and pink cheeks than the sharp professional from the night before. He liked this look even better.
He crossed his arms. A shitty defense. Whether he did it to deter her or to stop himself from reaching out for her, he didn’t know. “No. Just keeping the lines clear.” Because they were so fucking fuzzy it was like trying to see the road while being hammered with a torrent of rain. He’d never crossed that line before, and the idea made him question his professionalism.
Professionalism he’d always had one-hundred-percent confidence in.
She raised a brow. “You blurred them last night.”
“That was a mistake,” he said.
She kept on walking toward him.
“We can’t go back, he pointed out.
“No, can’t go back,” she agreed.
“Best to just forget it,” he muttered when she stopped right before him.
She traced a finger over his forearm, not in a flirty way. There was no calculating smile, just curiosity and eyes glazed over in a sort of wonder as she traced the path of her finger with her gaze. “Really? Can you forget it?”
God, no. “Yes.”
She tipped her chin up to him, her long, blond hair falling down her back. “Bull. I think you remember everything, just like I do. The feel of my skin against the palm of your hands, the way my hair slid through your fingers, my taste.”
Like strawberries. She tasted like strawberries. It was Chapstick, lip gloss, something, and he’d swear the scent of it still hovered in the air between them even then.
“I have a job to do,” he said.
“I have a job to do, too, she countered”
They stared at one another, all the things neither would say hovering there. Hell, they had met less than twelve hours ago, but it seemed as though an invisible force had been moving them in this direction their entire lives. He’d never believed in that shit, but for this it fit.
“About that job… what did the boy tell you?” He scratched the scruff on his cheek. He really should shave the shit.
“I know what you’re doing, and I’m going to let you get away with it. This time.” She put a few feet between them, grabbed her mug, and leaned against the pillar bisecting the dining room and kitchen. “He said that he saw Cullen get shot.”
“That’s it?”
She held the cup nestled between her hands and he found himself jealous it wasn’t him between those slim fingers.
Jesus.
She frowned, and furrowed a brow. “No. He said that there were women there, and that they were made to watch.”
Abandoning his coffee, he dropped his arms to his sides and straightened, taking a step toward her. He wanted to keep it quiet just in case Skyler woke up and heard them. He didn’t want anything he heard tainting the information he gave them. “Women? That’s a leap from the drug deal gone bad that they’ve been reporting.”
“Yes, but I can’t believe that you fell for that story in your line of work. You must have seen through that lie. Tell me you saw through that,” she said, giving him an incredulous stare.
“Of course, I did. I’m just surprised you did. Isn’t it your job to report news, not fight crime?”
She smiled and tapped her chin with her index finger. “Crime fighter, huh? Maybe I missed my calling.” Her playful smile slipped. “But, seriously, I don’t just report the news. I find the newsworthy. I watch people. I report on them. As a result, I’ve compiled quite a collection of human behaviors. Cullen is part of a social circle where it’s hard to believe that he turned to buying street drugs, when any of his rich friends would be happy to hook him up with whatever he wanted.”
Maddox nodded, impressed that she saw through the bullshit. “Did the boy tell you anything else?”
“Just that Cullen said the girls there weren’t what they’d agreed upon. Whatever that means. Maybe he was hiring escorts, or into human trafficking. I don’t know. I knew enough that I’d better not dig deeper without the authorities, especially since Skyler’s age complicates things.”
“If it’s trafficking it could be huge, and have moving parts all over the country, or world.”
