The skirt on her dress flared out before settling against her thighs. “I’ve gotta admit,” he said. “I’m surprised at your restraint. It’s been three days. I thought you’d have cornered me by now.” He paused, curious as to whether she’d be honest or not. “Or at the very least, broken in and searched the place yourself.”
She bit her lower lip and appeared to have an internal discussion with herself. Then she blew out a sigh. “I already did that.”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“I broke in to search your apartment,” she admitted, but didn’t look happy about it.
And he knew why. “And . . . ?”
She tossed up her hands. “The minute I did it, I turned to leave. I couldn’t do it, okay? I couldn’t snoop through your things. It felt . . . wrong.” She rolled her eyes. “And also I realized you had a security cam, so don’t play surprised with me. You knew what I did and you knew what I didn’t do.”
“Yeah,” he said, letting his smile escape. “Watching you spend that ten seconds wrestling with your conscience was the most fun I had all week.”
“You’re an ass. Where’s the wallet?”
“I still have it. I haven’t had time to dig in.”
“I have time. Hand it over.”
“You don’t have time,” he said. “I know Archer loaded you down hard with that new project we’re doing in conjunction with the local FBI.”
She sighed and nodded.
“Give me one more day with it,” he said. “I promise I’ll get to it.”
“And you’ll tell me everything you find.”
“Everything,” he vowed, holding up three fingers like the Boy Scout oath.
She rolled her eyes. “You were never a Boy Scout.”
True. Very true.
She shook her head and moved to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Personal business.”
“Is that a euphemism for another shift at the bingo hall?”
“No, I’m on dad-duty tonight. Turns out, the Christmas Village doesn’t need me again until two nights from now. But Mrs. Berkowitz stopped by today to talk about my progress and I didn’t have much to tell her. I need progress, Lucas.”
“You’re making progress.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“You’re doing the due diligence,” he said. “You’re asking the right questions and following all your leads. Sometimes these things take time.”
“Not when you guys do it,” she said.
Mostly because they were willing to go the unconventional route when needed. At Hunt, they always worked for the morally right side. But that didn’t mean they always followed the letter of the law to the last crossing of the t’s. Sometimes there were . . . gray areas. He was comfortable working in those gray areas. He wasn’t comfortable with Molly doing it, which he realized made him a caveman.
She rolled her eyes at him and turned to leave. He snagged her hand. “I’d like to go with you,” he said. “But I need five minutes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to. Is that okay?”
She just looked at him, clearly not sure if it was okay or not, so he did his best to look like something she couldn’t live without.
“Fine,” she finally said.
He gently squeezed her hand in thanks, pulling her in so that her body just brushed his. He had no idea if she felt the bolt of awareness. Hell, maybe he felt it enough for the both of them, but he waited until she met his gaze. “You’ll wait?” he asked quietly.
She was a little breathless. Yeah, she felt it too.
And yeah, she’d wait.
He took a two-minute hot shower, grabbed fresh clothes and wished for caffeine. Since he’d yet to make it to a store, he was still going without. In the promised five minutes, he came back to the living room to find Molly thumbing through a stack of photos his mom had recently sent him.
She flipped a pic in his direction, revealing his five-year-old self and his dad, both on skis, flashing toothy grins at the camera. The background was a formidable looking ski run.
“Squaw Valley,” he said. “I’d just followed my dad down my first black diamond ski run. My aunt lives in the Sierras. We spent a lot of time in the mountains over the holidays. This year will be no different, though my dad’s teaching in England until January. He’s a college professor and he’s on loan to Oxford. But everyone else will be there.”
“Sounds nice,” she said a little wistfully. “I’ve never been on skis.”
“I’ll take you,” he said without thinking. And he meant it. He’d love to teach her how to ski.
But she shook her head and gestured vaguely to her leg, making him feel like a first-class asshole for forgetting.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking.”
She sent him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Don’t worry about it, it’s easy to forget.”
He cupped her face up to his. “Nothing about you is easy to forget,” he said. “I want you to remember that.”
She stared up at him for a long, vibrating beat and then stepped free. “Time to go.”
She had a bag of food in her backseat that smelled amazing and his stomach growled.
Molly’s mouth tipped up slightly. “He might share. If you ask real nice.”
He had no idea if she was kidding or not. Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to a duplex in Inner Sunset. “Joe’s place?” he asked.
“Joe owns the building,” Molly said. “He bought it for me and dad. But I needed to have more independence than that, so I live where I live and they live here. Not together, though—they’d kill each other. My dad lives on one side and Joe on the other. You didn’t know?”
Lucas glanced over at her. He and Joe were close as far as partners went, same for being friends, but they spent so much time together at work, as in almost all their time, they rarely saw each other off the job.
Which was just as well at the moment since Lucas happened to be lusting after the guy’s sister. Not to mention getting naked with her, to a very mutually satisfying conclusion if he said so himself. “Joe’s pretty private.”
“Yeah, where do you think I learned it from?” she said on a rough laugh.
The neighborhood was blue collar and hardworking. Not all the homes had been shown any love, but this duplex most definitely had. New paint, grass trimmed and mowed, and flowers thriving in the flower pots on both sides of the duplex.
Lucas started to get out of the car, but Molly put a hand on his arm. “Wait here.”
He arched a brow. “Like you did at my mom’s house?”
She grimaced. “Okay, so I was nosy and curious and you’re the same. I get it. But your mom and your sisters, they’re . . .”
“We’ve already had this conversation,” he said. “They’re crazy. Nosy. Busybodies—”
“—And wonderful. But this isn’t a joke to me,” she said. “It’s my life.”
And she was actually letting him see some of that life, which she didn’t do as a rule. For anyone. Knowing how private she was, he felt . . . honored, and let his smile fade. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. If you really want me to wait here, I will. But I’d really like to meet your dad.”