Page 36 of Due South

When he draws away, I can barely meet his eyes, because I can’t believe I acted that way. Dragged a man to the shower to give him a blowjob and got myself off in the process. Who does that? But it turns out I do, and when he looks at me with that marveling smile on his face, I can’t help but be pleased instead of ashamed of myself.

“Lucy, that was—”

The fountain of praise I was waiting for is interrupted by a crisp knock on the door.

Holy. Shit.

My heartbeat, which had been settling into post-orgasm normality, starts racing again. Holy fucking shit. Who the fuck is that? But I know who it is and so does Evans. Our eyes meet in utter panic. India. And if she catches us, canoodling in the shower… Shit, shit, shit.

We stare at each other for too long and there’s another knock at the door.

“Lucy?”

I tamp down the squeak trying to escape from my throat, which is constricting with complete and utter horror.

“Yeah?” I manage to croak.

She starts talking, but I can’t hear her so I wrench the water off and grab a towel, handing Evans another one and gesturing wildly for him to hide behind the door. I would totally want him on my charades team because he reads my panicked flailing, wrapping the towel around his waist and scurrying over to plaster himself against a wall where he won’t be seen when I open the door. And quietly too.Damn you’re good, Evans.

I clutch the towel around me so I’m at least technically decent and jerk open the door to India’s impatient face.

“So can you get that done today?”

“What? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the water and the—”Horrified skittering. The sound of my own heart beating its way out of my ribcage.“Sorry. What did you need?”

I’m saved by the chime of her cell and thank god for India’s self-centeredness as she answers the phone, her face softening slightly.

“Hey, what’s up? You missed me already?”

Cris then. They’re disgustingly adorable.

“Oh, yeah. I’ll come down… No, you don’t have to, I know you want to get out to the beach. I’ll be right there.”

She clicks off her phone, shaking her head, her perfect high ponytail swinging with the motion.

“That was Cris. I forgot my lunch in the car. I’m going to go down and grab it, but when I get back, could we go over the information on syndicate structures and bond allocations? I need them so I can work on the underwriter selection part of the proposal today.”

I scan my mind, trying to remember in the flood of things I’ve accomplished over the past few days. If I have—please, god—done that so I’ll get a smile or at least a nod of approval instead of a glare. “Oh, yeah. I went over those last night. I’ll—”

I thumb toward the bathroom door where I’m sure Evans is hyperventilating. She takes my hint because I’m standing here, barely covered by one of her soft, luxe towels.

“Yeah, of course.” She dismisses me with a wave of her hand and heads toward the exit to go collect her lunch. It’s cute that Cris picks her up and drops her off when he’s here. Weird, sure, but I guess they don’t get much time together. Makes sense they’d take whatever opportunity they’ve got to be together when they’re in the same time zone.

As soon as the door to BCG clicks shut, I slam the door closed and am confronted by a white-as-a-sheet Evans.

“It’s okay, she doesn’t know you were in here. But go!”

I gather up his clothes from the floor and shove them into his arms, hustling him out the door. He’s still got India’s towel draped around his waist, though, and he can’t have it in his office. Because then she might think he was doing something creepy and inappropriate, which, to be fair is entirely true on the inappropriate, but it wasn’t creepy. So I grab the soft terry and pull it away from him.

“You can’t take this with you.”

He turns bright red but nods his understanding and covers himself with his clump of wrinkled clothes.

“Go,” I urge. “She’s only going downstairs. She’s going to be back in a minute.”

So Evans darts out of the bathroom and down the hallway. I can’t deny I get a little, entirely ill-timed pleasure out of watching the muscles of his back, hips, and butt work as he runs across the carpet. He’d die if he knew I was watching him. But better me watching him run naked down a hallway than India catch us both in her bathroom.

Lucky. We got really fucking lucky, and the reality of how close we came to getting fired makes me queasy. We’ve got to end this. Soon. We’ll end it soon.

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