Page 20 of Not That Complicated

“Thank you for your co-operation. Goodbye, Mr Underwood.”

“Good—oh.” He was gone.

I stared at the landscape picture a bit longer.

It was growing on me.

Eventually, I packed up my overnight bag, which seemed to have exploded and flung its contents everywhere, and headed down to Reception.

Adam stood behind the desk.

“Exactly how long are your shifts, anyway?” I said with a scowl.

His attention flickered to my bag and back. “Checking out early?” he asked. “You’ll still be charged for the room overnight.”

“Yes, yes, I know. And yes, I’m checking out.”

“Issues at home resolved, are they?” He turned to the screen and tapped at the keyboard.

Issues at home. That was one way of putting it. “If you mean have they moved the crime scene tape and can I go back in, then yes.”

“And the dead guy?”

“They took him away yesterday. I don’t know why I even had to leave. It’s not like I’d just killed him and they had blood spatter patterns to photograph and skin cells to scrape up. It wasn’t that kind of crime scene.”

“If they thought you’d killed the guy, Ray, you’d have spent the night in custody while they were gathering evidence, not the Premier Lodge.”

“Bet the coffee’s better in prison.”

“Ah. You’re a snob about coffee as well as hotels. How very unsurprising.”

“I am not a snob about anything, will you stop saying that?”

“Our coffee is perfectly decent.”

“Your coffee comes in freeze-dried granules, in little sachets. That’s not decent. It’s a travesty.”

His lips twitched. “You are very high maintenance.”

I strode forward and bumped into the desk, even though I knew it was what he wanted me to do. I could tell by the way his hazel eyes glinted. “I am incredibly laidback and easy to please!”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so! I am laidback!”

He ran his gaze over me in that distant, assessing way that should not have made me as hot as it did. His cheeks were tinted faintly pink. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that,” he said. “Perhaps I should lay you on your back and find out for myself quite how easy to please you are.”

That was a terrible, terrible line. It was awful. I wasn’t aroused by it at all. I was staring at him wordlessly from being stunned at how embarrassed I was for him, coming out with a line that bad.

Okay, fine. My brain just vaporised.

For whatever reason, being in Adam’s presence lowered my IQ. I was perpetually flustered. It was probably his flawless beauty. I was probably too close to it, that was what was wrong, and it was warping reality. Once again, I was mashed up against the desk, all but climbing over it as I vibrated up at him in anger.

“Do you wear makeup?” I said suddenly.

Case in point. That was not a normal thing to ask a man you didn’t know, regardless of how unnaturally even and poreless his skin was.

Adam gave a tiny huff of amusement and his cheeks bunched under his eyes, which sparkled.

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