“Check your phone,” Cash said.
Lucia left the door and grabbed her phone from the counter. Sure enough, there was a text from her boss: Cash on his way over. Make it work. We need him.
Annoyance caused a rush of heat to flame up her neck. Lucia set the phone on the counter and shook the irritation off her face. When she turned around, she smiled. “We don’t have a problem. As long as you don’t break the law or run a con on me, we’ll be fine.”
“I think you’re forgetting that Benjamin hired me because I can read people and I know you’re lying. I piss you off and I need to know why.” Cash was darkly good-looking and maybe he was accustomed to every woman falling at his feet. He’d have to learn she wasn’t every woman and she didn’t throw herself at men.
“Benjamin cut a deal with you because you have connections to a criminal we’re hunting, and catching that criminal will make him look good for a promotion he wants.” There. That should set Cash straight. He had skills they could use, but she wasn’t giving his ego a boost by acknowledging them.
Broad shoulders lifted. “He hired me for both reasons. Tell me why you can’t stand me. No one else on the team has a problem with me.”
That her team had welcomed and embraced him added to her agitation. They hadn’t been nearly as warm with her. Lucia shouldn’t have a problem with Cash. She didn’t know why he got under her skin. She dealt with criminals on a weekly basis. She’d been on stakeouts and watched scumbags commit crimes. She’d been undercover and lived with the lowest of the low. It hadn’t taken a personal toll.
But Cash Stone grated on her. “You shouldn’t have been released from prison. You need to serve your time. With you at my back, I’ll be waiting for you to put a bullet in it.”
What she’d said was blunt, but that was how she rolled these days.
His eyes sparkled with amusement. Was he enjoying this? If she’d hoped to get a rise out of him, she’d failed.
“I am serving my time. For the remaining three years of my sentence, I’ll be chained to you.” He lifted his pant leg to show her the ankle monitor. “You can trust me to do my job. If I don’t, I’ll earn myself seven more years in prison.”
“Unless you skip town before you’ve worked your three years,” she said.
“Won’t happen,” he said. “I want you to give me a real chance and treat me like everyone else on the team.”
Lucia rolled her eyes. He would run the first chance he had. Men like Cash didn’t change. He was a con man and a felon. He was probably conning her now, saying what he thought she’d want to hear. She wouldn’t mince words with a known liar. “You can count on me to behave professionally.”
“I don’t know what it’s like at the FBI, but in my world, professionally doesn’t include showing your colleagues you hit the gym six days a week.”
“What are you—”
He gestured at her and she looked down. In her anger, she’d set her hands on her hips, which had opened her jacket and given him a view of her white lace bra and bare stomach. Fantastic. She’d flashed a convict.
She refused to show remorse or embarrassment. “You came to my home. Deal with it.”
His eyes were wide and a smirk played across his lips. “Gladly.”
Lucia pulled together the jacket. He was infuriating. “How did you get in here, anyway?”
Cash tipped his head to the side. “Do you want me to point out the security weaknesses in your building? It won’t help you sleep better at night.”
“I sleep fine at night next to my gun,” Lucia said. The words weren’t intended as a threat. They were the truth. Lucia worked hard to practice constant vigilance. In her line of work, she made enemies. She wouldn’t be someone’s victim.
“Benjamin wants us to move past the hostility.”
It wouldn’t happen. At least, not until she’d had time to figure how to get Cash kicked off the team. They didn’t need him to crack this case. She could find Clifton Anderson and the hundreds of millions he’d embezzled. She’d return the money to the people it belonged to, people who were counting on that money. She didn’t need a felon to help her.
“Stay out of my way in the field and we won’t have a problem,” she said.
“Then you won’t mind if I join you for happy hour tomorrow after work?”
Lucia felt the familiar sting of rejection. Someone had already invited him to the weekly happy hour. Lucia hadn’t been invited to it, although she’d overheard others talking about it. She was an outsider on her own team. Again.
Cash was too charming for his own good, but she pegged his laid-back, easy demeanor as hiding something dark and dangerous. “You should do whatever you want,” Lucia said.
“What’s that scent?” he asked.
She didn’t smell anything, but her condo was over that of a gourmet chef and she had grown accustomed to the tantalizing smells that wafted to her place. “Maybe it’s trash.” She might as well dump on the conversation. She didn’t want to have a gourmet-food discussion with Cash.
“It’s not trash. It’s something delicious. Earthy. Sexy.” He leaned forward and inhaled. “There it is.”
Outrage jolted her at the same time her legs tightened and heat pooled between them. “You cannot speak to me like that.” Boundaries. They desperately needed boundaries.
Cash frowned at her. “I can’t pay you a compliment?”
“You won’t win me over with flattery.”
“Flattery implies I’m lying.”
He had moved closer to her. He smelled like a fresh shower and spices, a scent she enjoyed but ignored. The kitchen breakfast bar was at her back and Cash was standing a few inches from her. He was six inches taller, but when he looked at her she felt as if they were eye to eye. “Aren’t you always?” She wasn’t threatened by the closeness, but he’d view it as weakness if she asked him to back away. She would stand her ground and make him move first.
“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “You know you’re gorgeous. Every man and woman on the team thinks so. I’m the only one bold enough to say it to your face.”
She scoffed. “You can’t possibly know what everyone else is thinking about me.” If Cash didn’t already know it, she wouldn’t point out that most people thought first about her family’s wealth, not how she looked. Or, if they weren’t thinking about her family money, they were wondering about her time with the violent-crime division and why she’d been transferred.
“Again, I have a talent for reading people. When people look at you, they have the same interest in their eyes that I have. You’re so beautiful they need to look for an extra few seconds to take it all in. But unlike most of the people on our team, I plan to do something about it.”
“What is it you’re planning to do?” she asked, unable to help herself.
“I’ll win you over and make you forget how much you dislike me. Once that’s out of the way, you’ll see that I have a great many talents you may enjoy.” Sexual innuendo laced every syllable.
She had never been spoken to this way and it turned her blood hot. She had no doubt some of Cash’s talents related to his bedroom activities. Heat rushed low in her belly and her thighs tingled.