them both. Lily mimed zipping her lips shut and stepped away to serve another customer. Ruby simply busied herself at the bar, keeping one eye on Maddox. "So hot," she mouthed to me.
"Have I kept you waiting long?" asked Maddox, taking the barstool next to me, and leaning in to kiss my cheek.
"At least a whole minute," I replied, smiling. "Thanks for meeting me."
"It's no hardship." Maddox pointed at my glass and then at himself. Ruby sighed and nodded before she fetched the bottle. "What's wrong with her?" he asked.
"She's dazzled by you," I said and Maddox huffed as he shook his head slightly. Then he took a long moment to run his gaze over me, assessing every detail. Just when I was ready to ask why he was being so intense, he said, "You look like you recovered from your ordeal. I was worried about you. I feared you might have been stoic about it."
"I feel weirdly okay now. It happened. I didn't get hurt. Someone did but he's okay and we all walked out of there. Bank robberies are usually crazier than that, right? I'm supposed to be terrified but I'm not."
"Now, I am worried." Maddox reached for the wine glass Ruby placed in front of him and sipped it.
"Why? Isn't that a good thing?"
"When I first met you, what I liked about you was that you weren't a hard case. You weren’t jaded by all of the horrible things in the world. You could still flinch."
"I thought what you liked most about me was looking down my top when you worked undercover for that insurance firm," I quipped. The memory of that dragged me back to the moment I misdirected my company time to shop for lingerie online and accidentally sent my choices to the communal printer. Maddox picked up the printouts. Thankfully, the low lighting of the bar covered my blush at the flashback.
Maddox's mouth split into a delighted smile. "I didn't say not being a hard case was my favorite thing about you. I liked that you knew when to be afraid. Your fear impulse was still intact. You hadn't seen stuff."
"I was afraid at the bank," I confessed.
"But not enough to say screw this, I'm done with this life. Instead, you're right back at work, shrugging it off like it's nothing."
"Solomon told me I could take some time off." Maddox raised his eyebrows. "He offered, but I didn't take him up on it," I continued. I sipped my wine and licked the residue from my lower lip. Maddox stared. "Fine. I get your point, but I've seen plenty of worse stuff. Psychologically damaging stuff."
"I doubt many other people in that bank with you could honestly say the same." Maddox lifted the wine glass to his lips again. "Nice," he added appreciatively. "Good choice. Very grown-up."
"What were you really doing there?" I asked.
"What were you doing there?"
I threw my hands in the air at his opacity. "Depositing cash from one of the clients."
"Really?" Maddox appeared skeptical.
"Yes! I'm not involved in anything. It was sheer coincidence that I happened to be there."
"I believe you, although when I first saw you I thought you were undercover or something. It seemed too crazy that you turned up in the middle of yet another crime scene, even for you."
I pulled a face. "Like it never happened before."
Maddox looked at me and shook his head wearily. I got his point; usually I turned up at a crime scene simply because I intended to go there, although I didn't always expect the results. That didn't mean I would let Maddox get away with deflecting. As much as I enjoyed his company, we met for a reason. I wanted information. And also, possibly, a second glass of wine.
"It's not my case but here's what I know," I told him. Honesty seemed the fastest shortcut to dragging some information from him. "The bank manager, Charlie Sampson, hired us to look for an item that was stolen during the robbery. He won't tell us what it is or why he wants it found, not even who the owner is, so we don’t know who really wants it. But I am convinced it's just one item. Do you know what it is? Or were you there because of something else stashed in that vault?"
Maddox leaned in. "This remains strictly between us?"
I nodded. "Absolutely."
"While I've no doubt many of the bank's security boxes are owned by perfectly normal people, the FBI got a tip a few