Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(58)
Chapter Nineteen
I glanced at my watch for the third time in less than ten minutes, eager for a plausible excuse to make my escape. The party was still going strong and showing absolutely no signs of flagging. Apparently, the guys had banded together to once again prove me wrong. Thanks, guys!
I sighed and considered my options. True, I was having a blast. Ever since I’d transferred out of Counterfeit to PI and Rico had been shuttled over to Protection, I welcomed any opportunity to spend time with him. That Paige was here as well was just frosting on the cake of my day.
However, the hour was growing late. I’d imbibed all the alcohol I was inclined to for one evening and had switched to a steady stream of water some time ago. And I had to get up early in order to administer the remaining PT tests, which would be the beginning of a very long day for me. It was past time for me to pack it in.
“You keep looking at your watch,” Rico said. “You got a hot date or something?”
I smiled ruefully. “Yup. PT tests in the AM.”
Rico made a face. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So you’ve got to get going, then?”
“’Fraid so.”
Rico looked sorry to hear that but didn’t argue.
“Wait, you can’t go,” Paige interjected loudly, her volume just this side of a screech. She’d had a huge lead on me in the drinks department and then had attempted to keep stride once I’d joined the fray, so she no longer had any concept of indoor voice versus outdoor voice.
“Sorry, sweetie. Early day tomorrow. I need to get some sleep.” I failed to mention that sleep as a concept had been largely elusive recently and that chances were the trend would continue. It seemed counterproductive.
“But…” Paige’s brow wrinkled in an adorable frown, and she was obviously struggling to come up with a reason I should stay.
I continued to watch her in expectation, and Rico and I exchanged amused glances.
“You and Rico have to dance first,” Paige proclaimed matter-of-factly, obviously proud that she’d succeeded in her task.
I blinked. “What?”
Paige nodded, and her sage facial expression contrasted with the dazed look in her big blue eyes. “Yup. You guys gotta dance. I picked a song and everything. I’ve been waiting.”
“Paige, honey,” Rico said, his voice measured with patience though he was obviously trying not to laugh. “This isn’t really a dancing kind of a place.”
Paige shrugged, completely unconcerned. “So what?”
Now Rico’s brow furrowed. He was clearly trying to think of a compelling argument.
“I wanna see you guys dance,” Paige went on. Her eyes fell on someone standing just behind me. “Tell ’em.” She put her tiny hands on her slim hips and glared from the newcomer to Rico to me and back again.
I glanced over my shoulder and smirked when I realized Paige was ordering around Allison, who’d just wandered into this conversation and was completely clueless.
She looked to me for help, but I just shrugged. With her reappearance, I was suddenly too busy battling my conflicting feelings concerning her—unlocked and freed from their confines by the copious amounts of alcohol I’d consumed, no doubt—to really take much interest in the discussion.
“You should see these two dance,” Paige told Allison, apparently tired of waiting for a response from any of us. “It is so f*cking hot!”
Allison raised her eyebrows at me, a small, almost indulgent smile stealing over her oh-so-kissable lips. She appeared intrigued, and a blush rose to my cheeks.
When Rico and I’d first been paired together for that undercover op in the Counterfeit Squad, I’d learned he had four older sisters. They’d enlisted him as a practice dance partner from the time he could walk. Rico told me he hadn’t really minded. He got along well with his sisters, and he’d found dancing actually fun. And after he’d grown up a bit, all the little preteen girls in his class at school had practically swooned when he’d revealed he had some serious moves.
I’d taken my fair share of dance lessons as a kid, too, and had gravitated toward styles with a lot of flair, like salsa. While I could perform other steps and had, in fact, tried just about every type of dance around, I preferred the fast ones with a lot of movement and twirling.
Rico and I discovered rather quickly that we moved well together, and the result of our inadvertent pairing for that assignment had been a lot of interesting dance combinations. We became something of a club favorite with the patrons and bartenders and eventually garnered the attention of the club’s owner. The relationship we’d built with him and some of his employees had led them to trust us enough to let slip little details concerning the non-club-related activities occurring on the premises. Together with the information we’d gathered during independent investigation as well as tips from another confidential informant, we had all the probable cause we’d needed to get a search warrant for both the club and the owner’s residences. After that, it’d been a done deal.
Rico and I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to do a lot of dancing since the operation ended. On the rare occasion we did go out together, the music generally didn’t lend itself to what I’d classify as actual dancing—bopping, writhing, grinding, flailing, and swaying maybe, but not dancing—and the atmosphere was always less than ideal. I mean, most of our after-work outings were held at some version of an Irish pub, and who really felt comfortable doing a merengue in a place where people habitually did shots and flung darts around? Not me.