“Then what’s your opinion?”
“What? I just said you’re attractive.” He was really milking this now.
“You said it was a fact.” He jabbed a finger toward her. “But I don’t care about facts. I want to know your opinion.”
“My opinion is that it’s a fact that you’re attractive.”
Another of those full-throated laughs of his sent shivers along her skin. “In other words, you find me attractive.”
She scowled at him, simultaneously regretting the margarita and taking another sip of it. “Isn’t that the definition of attractive?”
“You’re so squirrely, damn. I find you attractive. There, see how I did that? Not hard at all.”
She opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again. He found her attractive? That was why he was flirting with her, not because he was a Hollywood actor to whom flirting was second nature?
“Why?” she said finally, almost in disbelief. “I mean, I know I’m pretty hot, for a police officer, but probably not for an actress or whoever you usually…” She shrugged, not particularly anxious to finish that thought.
“There is no usually. And you’re pretty hot in any context, to my mind. Look at you. Gorgeous, brilliant, funny as hell. I can’t wait to get your clothes off.”
“You…what…what?” she spluttered, her thoughts flying every which way like startled pigeons.
“You heard me.” His grin could have lit up a fire station. “Eventually. When the time is right.”
Oh man. Talk about a tease. “How will we know when the time is right?” Her voice sounded so wobbly that she had to steady her nerves with another dose of her margarita. Was this number two or number three? She’d lost track somewhere in there.
“Good question. I guess we’ll have to stay tuned. Just like the end of a two-parter.”
“I hate the two-parters,” she said through gritted teeth. “I need resolution, not a cliff-hanger.”
“Oh, but doesn’t hanging on that cliff make the resolution all the more satisfying?”
His sexy growl was driving her nuts. “I hate you.”
“Come on now. How can you hate a man who thinks you’re the bomb diggity?”
She was about to burst into laughter at his use of a phrase right out of a 1990s tween translator’s handbook, when he suddenly sat up, arrested.
“Hang on,” he said slowly.
“What?” She shook her head to disperse the margarita buzz. It didn’t entirely work.
“Bomb diggity.”
She waited patiently as he worked it out in his head.
“Jessie used that term in one of her texts about Seth Baker. I thought it was odd because she’s never used it before and it’s not her style at all. She’s more of a vintage girl if anything. She might say, ‘he’s the bee’s knees’ or the ‘cherry on my sundae.’”
“Okay, so maybe she learned a new term.”
“Maybe. But what if she was trying to send me a message? If he was monitoring her texts and she had to be careful how she phrased things, she might have chosen it deliberately.”
Tina’s head was slowly clearing as she brought her thoughts into better focus. “If that’s the case, what do you think her message was? There’s a bomb somewhere? If so, we need to alert?—”
“No.” He cut her off before she could go too far down that path. “I think she wants me to dig.”
“You are digging. We’re digging.” She waved her hand to indicate the entire journey that had brought them to this intimate dark basement tavern. “That’s what we’re doing here.”
“Literally. She buried something for me to find.”
