Page 15 of The Interns

“You two aren’t working at all, are you?” Lauren asked.

“We are,” he insisted.

“Well, I just spent the last half-hour shopping for a dress to wear to this wedding I have next weekend,” Lauren confessed in a faux whisper. “Oh, don’t you look at me like that, Reed.”

“I wasn’t,” he stammered.

To his credit, he honestly hadn’t moved a muscle or batted an eye, but what the hell, Stanton? Where was the grin? The loaded look? The flirtatious come-back? She knew he had it in him, but he was falling flat on his face.

“What are you two doing for lunch? We should go out.”

“I brought my lunch today,” Maya said quickly to get herself out of another lunch since she still hadn’t recovered from yesterday’s awkward social outing.

“Reed?” Lauren asked, looking down at him with an arched brow. “There’s a great Thai place around the corner.”

“I really shouldn’t, but thanks for the offer,” he said politely. “We’ll have to check that place out some other time.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She gave him a flirty smile as she pushed herself off his desk. “Don’t work too hard, y’all.”

Maya waved goodbye, watching Lauren walk out of their office with a puzzled expression. Yeah, no kidding, girl. She shook her head as she watched him at his computer, already busy opening up some files that came along with the case.

“You could have gone, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, typing away on his keyboard.

His reaction to that encounter was so much more mysterious than their case. “I think she wanted you to.”

“Yeah, I know that, too,” he answered in that lazy drawl of his. “So what’d you bring for lunch today?”

She was caught off guard by his question and him turning to face her as he awaited her answer. “I brought a…”

“You didn’t bring anything and now you can’t go downstairs to grab something because Lauren would see you and your cover would be blown.”

She rolled her eyes as she raised both hands. “Yes, Officer Stanton. You caught me, but you didn’t want to go either, so spare me the judgment.”

“No judgment here. I was just going to offer to pick something up for you when I go down.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Well, I’ll take a turkey sandwich on wheat, then. Hold the mayo.” She opened her desk drawer to grab her purse, and he walked over and reached out to accept the five-dollar bill in her hand. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome.” He grinned as he slid the money into his back pocket. “That’s ham with extra mayo, right?”

She groaned and rolled her eyes at the joke that he had just wasted on her. Where was this two minutes ago? She was about to turn back to her desk, assuming he was on his way out the door, until she heard his voice.

“So I was thinking we’d come up with our terms for the plea bargain today, run them by Al tomorrow, make any changes we need to, then drive down to Corinth to meet with the client on Friday. Sound like a plan?”

She found herself nodding slowly, a bit stunned that his plan was identical to the one she was going to propose to him after lunch, and even more so that he’d beat her to it.

“Yeah. Sounds like a plan.”

“Great. Be back in a few.”

“Yep.”

She watched him leave their office, absolutely dumbfounded. Their case? A bust. Her plan to start fresh? Pretty good. Reed Stanton? No clue, but there seemed to be more going on in that head of his than she had given him credit for.

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