Her eyebrows shot up. “Nature? As in Mother? Nature Antillean?”
“Long story.”
“I take it your parents were hippies, and you were conceived at Woodstock.”
His eyes rolled. “I was born on a camping trip.”
“Oh.” She gave a shrug. “Cool. But back to the wardrobe discussion, I don’t do baggy men’s shirts. More importantly, this shirt is on sale.”
“Then maybe I like it better.”
“From the way you were staring when I walked up, I’d say you like it just fine.” He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off. “Anyway, what are you doing over here? I thought you said you were going to grab a throwaway cell phone, not shop for a new computer.”
He held up a phone he’d set down on the shelf in front of him. It was a smart phone that appeared to be permanently encased in stiff plastic packaging. “I need to use a computer, not buy one,” he said with another glance over the top of the shelves they stood in front of. They were facing the electronics department’s service desk, and the clerk there had his back to them while he fiddled with his red uniform vest.
“Can’t you check your Facebook later?” She stood on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. “Ooh, does that model come with a Blu-ray player?”
“I found a WiFi connection nearby,” he said. “I’m going to use it to check something that is similar to Facebook, if you’re a guy like me looking for people like you.”
“Sounds kinky. And what’s that supposed to mean, ‘people like me’?”
“Criminals.”
She let out an exasperated growl. “I thought we recently established that I am not, in fact, a criminal?”
“You jumped bail and left the state. So you are, ‘in fact’, a wanted felon. For that if nothing else.”
“And you don’t have a laptop stuffed in the trunk next to the spare keys and prisoner hogtie devices?”
He glanced at her. “As a matter of fact, I do. But I can’t risk using it. There’s a chance our location could be tracked if I turn it on.”
A heavyset woman in a housecoat pushed a cart up their aisle, and Nate clicked up a demo window to hide whatever it was that he was doing. He switched back the minute the woman turned the corner.
He was typing furiously while keeping one eye trained on the clerk, who was completely ignoring them. Lydia stopped watching what he was doing and started staring at him with a whole other sort of interest. Nate in profile was a fascinating study in male architecture. His long lashes flicked up and down while he shot glances over the lid of the laptop, and his broad shoulders were squared and proud even though he was a lot taller than the level of his workspace. There was no arguing how gorgeous he was, whether he was holding pink balloons, bending Lydia over a table, or offering her his hand in the middle of an escape from rogue gunmen.
My, how she had thrown herself at him the second they met! Damn alcohol. Even so, had she known he wasn’t really a stripper, no amount of booze would have compelled her to come on to him so blatantly. What must he have thought of her? The thought sent a flush of heat to her cheeks. She was embarrassed, it was true. But she couldn’t drum up any remorse.
She wasn’t sorry she’d fucked him. Not one damn bit. He’d responded to her so readily, and he’d upped her game to something far hotter than she’d ever gotten. So good that even now, she felt a dull throb stirring in her clit. Maybe alcohol wasn’t the only thing that got her crazy horny. Life on the run apparently got her bikini bottoms wet. Or maybe it was the man who’d spanked her and made her love it.
“This Wi-Fi is for shit,” Nate said, glowering at the screen. “It’s taking forever for the damn page to load.” He glanced up and caught her staring. “What?”
She looked away in a hurry, just in time to spot trouble. “Uh-oh.”
He followed her eyes and grunted. “Figures,” he said under his breath. “When you want help, they’re never anywhere to be found.”
“Can I help you folks with something?” asked the clerk who had finally waddled himself over.
Nate hid his page with the demo again, but before he could answer, Lydia launched into action.
“Why yes, thank you so much,” she gushed. Nate looked at her as though springs had just shot out of her ears, but she ignored him. “I was just asking my boyfriend what he thought, and he agrees with me.”
She wandered straight up to the guy to halt his advance on the commandeered laptop, and along the way she deliberately put a bounce in her step to give extra jiggle to her breasts. She pointed to them as she stopped in front of the clerk, whose name badge read “Thaddeus”.