Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(26)

Allison rolled her eyes and stopped, tugging gently on my arm to get me to break my stride as well. I opened my mouth to protest but was silenced by her fingers pressed lightly to my lips. “Just say ‘You’re welcome,’ would you?” she said softly, looking into my eyes.

A shiver went up my spine. Her feather-light touch on my lips was warm, and I had to fight the urge to give her fingers a soft kiss. I wrapped my own fingers around her wrist and slowly removed her hand. “You’re welcome.”

“That’s better.” Her eyes held mine for a moment longer before she finally broke the contact and resumed her gait. “Give me a lift to my hotel?”

“Sure. Hungry?”

“When am I not?” Allison tossed her bag into the backseat of my car with an almost-euphoric sigh. She rolled her shoulders as if working out some residual tension and opened the front passenger door. “But I’d like to take a shower first, if that’s okay.”

“No problem. Just give me a second to make a phone call.” I stowed my own gear and started the engine.

“No talking and driving.” Allison put her hand over the gear shift, preventing me from shifting out of park without a struggle.

I threw up my hands in a huff. “Fine.” I punched in the numbers with more force than was really necessary and waited for someone to answer on the other end.

“La Traviata. Can I help you?”

“Hey, Kendra, it’s Ryan.”

“Oh, hey, Ryan. How’s it going? Are we still going to see you tonight?”

“No, that’s why I’m calling.” Allison’s fiddling with the programming on my radio distracted me. I slapped at her hand. “We’re not going to be able to make it. I figured you guys would be slammed, so I wanted you to know. I didn’t want you to be waiting on me.”

“Oh, well, we’ll miss you, of course, but we can always use the table,” Kendra said over the roar in the background.

“I’ll stop in soon. Say hi to the guys for me.”

“Will do. Take care, Ryan.”

“Thanks. You, too.” I hung up the phone and rounded on Allison. “I’ll shoot you. Stop messing with my stations.”

“What was that?” Allison stopped playing with the radio and looked at me.

“What?” I was now completely focused on pulling out into Saturday night bridge-and-tunnel traffic. I chanced a peek at her out of the corner of my eye and spied her smiling at me enigmatically.

“The phone call. What was it?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“You made dinner reservations.” Her voice was soft, and her tone was oddly tender.

“Just for the Italian place down the street. I figured we’d be hungry, but they’re always busy at this time on a Saturday night, so I thought a little insurance wouldn’t hurt.”

“That was very thoughtful, Ryan. We can eat there if you want.”

I shook my head and narrowed my focus to the side-view mirror as I merged onto the Brooklyn Bridge. “Nah. You’re tired, and you want to take a shower. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.”

“I thought we could order room service, a couple of beers, and maybe start hammering out some of our paperwork. Is that okay?”

“You mean, you thought I could start hammering out some of our paperwork?”

“Well, yeah.” She was unrepentant as she picked lint off her sleeve. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I muttered, amused. She was hopeless when it came to filling out the required forms for visits, and we both knew it. For some reason I had yet to figure out, it took her damn near forever. To say that it would just be faster if I did the whole thing was a gross understatement. If I let her do it, the visit would be over before she had anything that was remotely usable. It was sad, really. And somehow absolutely adorable. “How do you fudge your way through other visits? I mean, you can’t possibly con everyone into doing your work for you?”

“Why not? Besides, I don’t think of it as conning. I consider it the spirit of teamwork.”

“The spirit of teamwork,” I repeated skeptically.

“Of course. They have the pleasure of working with me, and in return, I offer them the chance to gain invaluable experience by doing the paperwork. It’s win-win.”

I laughed and shook my head, knowing when I was beaten. I also knew Allison was just joking. Though she deserved her status as the golden child, she was truly the most modest woman I’d ever met, which made it difficult for anyone—no matter how jealous they might be of her success—to dislike her.

Traffic on the bridge was packed with people looking to go out and have a good time and was crawling. I took advantage of the situation and got out my cell phone to send a quick text message while I had the chance. Once we were on the FDR, I wouldn’t be able to.

“Hey!” Allison made a grab for the phone. “No texting and driving. It’s bad enough you try to talk and drive.”

I had to be quick to maintain possession of the phone. Keeping it out of her reach with one hand while fending her off with the other wasn’t easy. “We’re sitting in completely stopped traffic.” Her flailing arms were now smacking me in the face in their attempt to pry the phone from my grasp, but I continued to text badly with my left hand while elbowing her across the chest with my right. “We haven’t—ouch—moved. Stop it!” I slapped at her hands with my free one and was rewarded with a surprisingly forceful backhand across the nose. “Ow! The message is already sent.”