Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(11)

If she stopped, she’d crouch down behind a counter and cower there, unable to drag herself back up. And there was no freaking way she was doing that.

Jake shrugged. “I’m here as long as you’re here.”

Lina paused. “Are you planning on stalking me indefinitely?”

“You complaining about having a few extra safety measures right now?”

When he said safety, tension relaxed across her forehead and down the nape of her neck through her shoulders.

She bent her head, for one moment purely grateful he existed. To keep her safe. Then she took a deep breath. “That’s a really excellent ‘good cop’ technique. Make the person you’re interrogating feel grateful to you for keeping her safe, and she’s much more likely to tell you things.”

That faint lift of his eyebrows again. “You got anything you still want to tell?”

Lina glared at him. “No.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jake said. “Don’t start throwing liquid nitrogen on me, ma’am, I’m on your side.”

She gave him a dirty look. She’d thrown the liquid nitrogen she was carrying into her cousin’s face in her first reflex when the attackers burst into the kitchens. It might be the only reason she and Vi and their Au-dessus team were alive today. And he was going to joke about it?

But another little spark got past that gray wall. As if his humor had peeled off a flake of gold leaf from the sheet on the counter and blown it off his finger to float down into her soul.

His secret smile lurked. “I guess you know how to freeze a man’s heart, don’t you?”

Okay, you know what? She didn’t have to put up with this. “Mostly I use nitrogen on men’s dicks.”

He gave a shout of laughter. It slipped out of him, his hazel eyes lighting with it as he pressed a hand to a flat belly as if to hold it in.

Wow, it felt good to have laughter ringing through those kitchens again. She hauled out a can of liquid nitrogen and poured some into a bucket in as villainously menacing a way as she could. The vapor rose instantly around her hands, a delicious chill spreading around the metal bucket. She had always loved liquid nitrogen. It made her feel like some sorceress, bending the world to her wiles. So she pushed memories out of her mind and gave Jake a sorceress’s smile over it.

He reached out and brushed a curious finger over the surface of the vaporizing liquid, too fast to cold burn himself. Nitrogen vaporized so quickly at exposure to human body temperatures that you had to sustain contact or expose yourself to greater quantity to end up hurt by it. A bucket thrown on a man wearing a cotton sweatshirt that soaked it up would do it. And punching that soaked sweatshirt repeatedly would leave some burns on fists.

She flexed the knuckles that had been burned, picked up one of the roses she used for one of her desserts, and handed it to Jake.

“Flowers already?” he said. “So you like me better than you let on?”

Oh, were they flirting now? Even if it was part of a good cop routine, it still felt…warm. Hopeful. And fed far too much encouragement to her brain’s apparent desire to focus on life in the most primitive way possible, where he was concerned. “Dip it in.”

“If this rose is supposed to represent my dick, I’m not sure I’m flattered by the comparison.”

She grinned. Oh, yes, she liked the way he beat back bad things with humor. She really did.

Jake dipped the rose in the nitrogen, looking like a fascinated kid as the flower froze instantly. When he lifted it out, a perfectly frosted red, Lina thumped it with her middle finger, and it shattered onto the counter.

“Graphic,” Jake said solemnly. “Excellent way to warn a man to keep you away from his dick.”

Well, that wasn’t…okay, that wasn’t quite what she had…but now she couldn’t say that because it would seem like…(would he have freckles there? Stop wondering that, you idiot. Go Google it, if you want to know the answer that bad.)

No! Don’t Google it! God knew if her computer might be confiscated, and Jake himself would be looking at her search history, with the words freckles on penises.

Oh, God. Definitely don’t Google it. Not even on your phone. They’ve got phone hackers these days.

“Don’t worry,” Jake said solemnly. “I find my frozen dick an uncomfortable subject, too.” He gazed sadly at the shattered rose.

She realized how long she had been standing there flustered and glared at him again.

That little smile of his got a tiny bit less secretive. Like maybe, maybe she might deserve to be in on the joke one day.

“So you literally blow hot and cold with men, is that it?” Jake asked, nodding to the blowtorch.

She sighed at how pathetic this level of innuendo was. And yet she was enjoying it anyway. It was the most human she had felt in several days. To flirt, you had to believe life would go on, right? Flirting was itself an act of hopeful fantasy.

“Sometimes I freeze a heart and melt it within seconds.” That was one of the fun things to do with liquid nitrogen. Encase something molten in a shield of mousse, dip the mousse in liquid nitrogen, plate it, and send it to the table, so that the client had the hot and the cold both together.

“I guess a humble boy from the hills would be no match for a sophisticated Parisian player like yourself, then.”

What? Who were they talking about? “I don’t think I know anybody who fits either of those descriptions.”