“What?”
He took the flashlight from his mouth and rose. “Thank you, Max.”
“Yes, thank you, Max.”
He shoved the infamous photos in the sack, then zipped it closed. “You’re welcome,” he said, and dropped a kiss on her lips. “Ready to go?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Again he took her hand, and together they left the same way they’d entered. He even shut the basement window behind them, and once they were in the woods behind Sam’s house, he checked his watch.
Thirteen minutes.
They’d done the job with two minutes to spare.
It was over. Finished. Now there were no more excuses.
Lola didn’t need him any longer. In twelve hours and forty-seven minutes, he’d put her on a plane back to North Carolina. He’d say good-bye for the last time. He should have felt relieved. A part of him did.
Mostly he just felt the weight of the inevitable, and for a man who liked to set his own rules, the inevitable always pissed him off.
Chapter 15
“Max, what are we going to do with Sam’s money?” Lola asked from the passenger seat of the Jeep. To be on the safe side in case they were stopped, he’d told her to change into the skirt and bandeau she’d worn earlier.
“What do you want to do with it?”
She looked over at him as she pulled off her half boots. “Give it to charity,” she said, and tossed them in the back. “Maybe we should shove it in a mail slot at some church.” She unzipped her jeans and they soon joined her boots. She cast a quick glance at Max’s profile as she wiggled into her python skirt. Still all business, he kept his gaze on the road.
The hair on the backs of her arms tingled and her heart continued to pound in her chest. Stealing back those photographs had been one big adrenaline rush, and something she never wanted to experience again. Unlike Max, she was not cut out for black missions and undercover operations. For walking in the shadows and blowing up safes. She just wanted to breathe normal again.
A bead of perspiration rolled between her cleavage as she pulled her turtleneck over her head. “How much was in the safe?” she asked, then drew her arms through the bandeau and adjusted it over her breasts. When he didn’t answer, she looked up at him, and through the dark interior of the Jeep, he was finally looking back.
He gave her a quick once-over, starting at the top of her head and sliding to her breasts. But his gaze got stuck on her skirt riding up her thighs perilously close the crotch of her thong underwear.
“Not sure,” he answered as if he were distracted and trying to figure out the exact color of her panties. “Maybe a thousand.”
“He probably made that money off my naked pictures,” she said as she gathered up her shirt. She raised herself to her knees on the seat and turned around. With her python-covered behind in the air, she reached around back and did her best to shove everything in her suitcase. After she’d zipped it closed, she turned back around and pulled down her skirt. Although there wasn’t all that much to pull. She slid her feet into her sandals and lowered the visor to look at herself in the lit vanity mirror. “I think some good should come out of the profit.” She finger-combed her hair and smoothed her eyebrows.
“Are you wearing thong underwear?”
“Yes, were you peeking?”
“Peeking? You make it sound as if you weren’t doing your best to show me.”
She flipped the visor back up and looked at him. “I wasn’t trying to show you.” Of course, she hadn’t been
“You were practically waving them in my face.”
“You’re twisted.”
“And you’re a tease.”
Neither of them spoke again until after Max had stopped the Jeep in front of an old stone building with ivy growing up one side. Lola watched him pull his leather gloves back on, grab the cash from the rucksack, and run up to the door. He shoved the money through the mail slot, and it wasn’t until they were back on the road that she asked him about it.
“What was that place?” she finally broke the silence.
“Light House Urban Ministry,” he answered, and tossed his gloves on the floor by her feet. “They supply inner- city kids with school supplies and tutoring. They have a great mentoring program.”
He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d told her he was a priest. “You’re a mentor? What do you teach them to do, blow up their school?”
“Very funny, Lola.” He shook his head. “I just send a little money now and then.”
Probably more than a little, she thought. On the heels of that thought came a question. “Why don’t you want children, Max?”
“Who says I don’t?”
“You did, when we were on the
Street light slid across the lower half of his face as they moved through the city. “I’d make a lousy father.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged. “I’m not home enough.”
Lots of fathers weren’t home much. “Weak excuse. What’s the real reason?”
“The real reason?” He gave her a quick glance, then returned his gaze to the road. “I don’t want to disappoint a child, and I would. I grew up that way, waiting for promises that usually didn’t come true. I used to wait for my dad to come home and take me fishing or to a movie or just to sit and watch the tube, but it never happened. He’d always make grand promises about the things he and I would go do someday, and the weird thing was, I’d always believe him. No matter how many times his promises fell through, and ninety-nine percent of the time they did, I believed him anyway.”
Now she felt bad that she’d called him twisted and she reached over and laid her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Max.”
“Don’t be sorry. You asked and I told you. I have hundreds of stories just like it. Each one a bit more pathetic than the last.”
“I think you would make a wonderful father. The best kind. The kind that would make a child feel safe and secure.”
He looked at her hand, then ran his gaze up her arm to her face. “Axe you trying to tell me something?”
It took her a moment to understand what he wanted to know. “No. No! I told you I have an IUD.”
“Have you had your period yet?”
Well, he certainly wasn’t shy, and she pulled her hand away from his shoulder. “Yes, a few days after I returned.”
“Thank you, Jesus!”
His relief was so obvious, so tangible that it felt as if he’d slapped her. Right now a baby wasn’t a good idea, but he didn’t have to behave as if he’d just been given a reprieve. “You don’t have to act like it would be a fate worse than death.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked out the window. At the lush woods and the other cars on the road. She’d been trying to make
“You’re not bad at all.”
“Gee, thanks.”
The Jeep pulled into the drive of a brick town-house, and Max reached above his head and hit the switch to open the garage door. The front of the townhouse was ablaze with light on the first and second floors as if someone were home.
“You still planning to fly out at noon tomorrow?” Max asked as the garage door shut behind them.
