FBI informant would bring. The idea was so ludicrous it would almost have been funny if it weren’t so serious.
When Colt got back, he showered and dressed, then made us coffee and poured it into travel mugs.
We were quiet on the ride to Loose Cannons, and when he pulled into the parking lot, it was 8:55, just a few minutes before I was due to meet Caleb. I stared out the window, not wanting to get out, wishing Colt would insist I stay in the car the way he’d done before.
But he didn’t.
“You ready?” he asked, shifting the car into park.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t.
Colt squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
We got out of the car and he kissed me before turning and walking into the club. I headed in the opposite direction, walking down to the drugstore where I’d first met Caleb the other day.
I got there at ten on the dot, and Caleb was already waiting outside. He had on a black suit, perfectly pressed, and his hair was combed back from his face, his face freshly shaven. He looked every bit the part of an FBI agent.
“Waiting outside?” I asked snidely. “That doesn’t seem very covert.”
“You alone?” He scanned the street behind me suspiciously.
“Of course,” I said and rolled my eyes.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the necklace, and I snatched it out his hand and fastened it around my neck. “Anything else?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. But Olivia – ”
I turned around and walked away, not in the mood to get another warning about what a bad person Colt was.
Please don’t let me be wrong about him, I thought as I headed down the sidewalk back toward the club. And then I began to run, as if the quicker I got back to him, the more chance my wish had of coming true.
I spent the first few hours of the day back in the office while Colt dealt with some kind of delivery probably with one of the kitchen vendors. I fell into a steady rhythm of entering receipts into the computer, the work so monotonous it tempered my anxiety from a rapid boil to a rolling simmer.
But the whole time, my necklace lay heavy against my chest, a reminder of my reality.
Colt and I ordered in sandwiches for lunch, ate them sitting around my desk, talked about food and the weather and a baseball game Colt wanted to watch, what we should do this weekend.
It was ridiculously normal, and I wanted to scream into my necklace, to tell stupid Caleb that I’d been right, that Colt wasn’t a bad person, that I was done helping them, that I didn’t give a crap if they arrested me.
After lunch, it was more office work, until finally, at six o’clock, Colt returned to the office.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked. “I could take you.”
I shook my head. “No, I...I want to stay here with you.” I felt myself flush at him calling his apartment “home.” I knew he meant his home, but still. It felt very intimate somehow.
“Oh, yeah?” he teased, and walked over to me, pulling me out of my chair and putting his hands behind me on the desk before pressing his body against mine. “You want to stay here with me?”
“Yes,” I said, grinning as his lips brushed mine.
“What will we do?” he murmured.
“Colt!”
“What?” he asked, acting innocent. His hand moved up under the bottom of my shirt, brushing against my belly. “You didn’t have a problem with it on the couch the other day.”
“Colt!” I said again. I giggled and pointed at my necklace, imagining a truck full of FBI agents listening to Colt and I have sex.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Colt mouthed to me, and he was so close and his lips so hot against my neck that he almost convinced me that I didn’t give a fuck either, and I leaned back on the desk as his hands moved down and unbuttoned my jeans.
But a second later, there was a knock on the office door.
“I’m busy,” Colt barked.
“Colt?” a woman’s voice called. “It’s Ava.”
Ava. The girl from the other night, the one who’d told Colt she’d take him to the after party, the one with the tanned skin and the perfect breasts. Jealousy welled inside of me.
“I’m busy,” Colt said again, his lips still pressed against my neck.
“It’s your uncle,” she said. “He’s here.”
Colt straightened up slowly, buttoning my pants