Page 12 of Undercover
“Getting up to greet you,” I said. A wealthy, well-educated guy like Gabe would be a lot more likely to respond well to this than to the way I’d behaved the day before. And also, I wanted to. “That’s the polite thing to do.”
“Oh. Well, yeah.” His smile curled up higher this time, lighting his eyes and dimpling one cheek.
Jesus, I was so fucked. Even more so when he looked me up and down, his eyebrows slowly rising. I hadn’t shaved, because I couldn’t do a full personality transplant and expect him not to be suspicious. But I’d definitely dressed up a little, comparatively. A darker, sleeker pair of jeans and a deep-red button-down with the sleeves pushed up to my elbows, and the leather jacket draped over the back of my bar stool. Less seedy unemployed park stalker, more normal guy. Hopefully I could pull it off without making him wonder too much.
“You clean up really nice,” he said softly, and accompanied that with a glance at me from under his long eyelashes.
He did too. He’d put a dark turquoise blazer over a t-shirt and tight jeans tonight, and he looked fucking edible. Somewhere between a college student who didn’t know how to dress up and a hipster with a sense of vintage style. The color of the blazer made his eyes gleam like aquamarines under those long blond lashes.
I was so. Fucked.
“It’s a nice place,” I said gruffly. “Wanted to blend in.”
And then Gabe’s face fell, his lips curling down from the smile and that flirtatious light dying out of his pretty eyes. “Yeah.” He swallowed. “Yeah, let’s, um, get a table? I’ll get a drink first.”
He turned to the bar, waving down the bartender, leaving me staring at him in bafflement.
It wasn’t until he’d already ordered his glass of wine, all without interacting with me more than a tight-lipped smile he shot over his shoulder, that the penny dropped. I’d basically just told him I didn’t give a shit what he thought and hadn’t dressed up for him; I’d dressed up for the venue.
And that feeling, crawling in the pit of my stomach? It took me a second to identify that, too. Guilt. Wasn’t I supposed to be working this guy for information? I hadn’t come here to romance him, and as long as I kept him interested enough to fill me in about Middleton Marine, who cared if I hurt his feelings? And if he’d been playing me, did he have feelings—in my direction, anyway—to hurt in the first place?
When Gabe turned back to me, after taking a healthy slug of his wine, I forced a smile, my lips protesting the motion. Shit, I really had resting pissed-off facebad, if smiling at a cute guy in a bar took this much effort. “You look really good,” I said. “I’m glad I’m not—I was afraid I’d be that guy on the date who looks like he’s way out of his league, you know?”
I did anyway, of course. Anyone would look at him ten times for once at me.
Even more so when his eyes got a little of their sparkle back. This would’ve been so much easier if my maybe-criminal had been unattractive. Or female, that would’ve worked too.
“Thanks.” He sipped his wine, peering at me over the rim of the glass. The music changed as a song ended, something a lot more upbeat starting to filter out of the speakers. Gabe smiled at me, a wider smile that knew exactly how charming it was. “I amdefinitelynot out of your league.”
That should’ve made me happy, or at least the stupid part of me that hadn’t gotten the memo that this wasn’t a real date, but…something about it sounded like he’d said it by rote. Like he knew his lines, and he’d already planned out how the evening was meant to go.
And that rubbed me the wrong way.
“Yeah, you are,” I said, a lot more grouchily than I’d meant to. And this was why I hated going undercover. Fuck. “Let’s sit down, yeah? A booth just opened up over there.” I nodded at the other side of the room, where a smiling group of four had just gathered up their sweaters and slid out.
Oddly, Gabe still had that smile on his face as I grabbed my jacket and beer and led the way to the booth. I’d been acting like a clueless dick, and it’d barely thrown him off his game.
As if it didn’t matter what I did, or who I was. As if he meant to go through with whatever he had planned no matter what.
What the hell was the deal with Gabe? I couldn’t figure him out. If he’d been less appealing, I’d have thought he might be the most insecure person I’d ever gone out with, ready to sleep with anyone just for the validation. But that couldn’t be right. He was incredibly hot, probably very intelligent, and perfectly pleasant. No way he could be that unsure of himself.
Anyway, if he wanted me off-balance, he had me there.
We sat down on opposite sides of the booth. His bright hair and bright eyes took on an almost unearthly cast in the flicker of the candle on the table.
Gabe fiddled with the stem of his wine glass, making the ruby-red liquid swirl and gleam.
“So you had a job in Burlington?” he said casually. Too casually? “What do you do?”
“I’m a tax accountant,” I said, totally deadpan.
Gabe let out a startled crack of laughter and stared at me. “No way you’re—oh, are you serious? I’m sorry? Were you serious, I shouldn’t have laughed—”
“No, I wasn’t serious,” I said, putting him out of his misery. At least I’d broken the ice a little. “Not an accountant. I do—this and that. You know. Freelance jobs.”
Which would be very enticing if he really did run a smuggling operation, but off-puttingly vague and shady if he didn’t.
“Oh.” He wrinkled his nose a little, and his voice sounded extremely dubious. Either he was an excellent actor, or I could put another checkmark in the already predominantnot a criminalcolumn. “Um. Anything…in particular?”
