Lucky Girl (Lucky Alphas Book 2)
By: Mallory Crowe“What reason do I have to lie to you?”
“Well, you’re male and you’re breathing. For all I know, this is still all some ploy to get into my pants.”
He let out a little whistle. “You have a really high opinion of yourself, don’t you?”
Harper was quiet. If only this stranger knew the truth. “Or a low opinion of you.”
“Hey, I don’t have to lie to get a woman interested in me.” He reached into his pocket and dropped his cell phone on the table. “Go ahead and scroll through the list of girls messaging me on the daily.”
She raised an eyebrow at the gesture. “My opinion just got lower. You’re not even smart enough to add a pass code to your phone.”
He gave her a terse smile. “You’re a fun one, aren’t you?”
“No. I can honestly say that I’m not considered fun.”
His eyes scanned her up and down, and she didn’t even want to consider the thoughts going through his head. “Shame.”
Her shoulders tensed. “All right, assuming you’re telling the truth and Wade did send you”—which she still didn’t believe for a second—“I’m officially letting you go from the investigation.”
“While that’s adorable, you don’t have the authority to do that.”
“And yet I’m doing it anyway. There’s a lesson about authority for you. You can’t just wait until somebody gives it to you. Sometimes you have to take it.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, and she could tell he was just itching to have a chance to prove exactly how much authority he had. “All right, I get it,” he said tersely. “You’re threatened by me coming into your territory, messing around with your job. But I am a professional, and I can help you. Your buddy offered me good money for this, and I’m not going to back off that just because you recommend it. What’s it gonna take for you to let me help you on this?”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Is that another threat?”
“Not at all. It’s a little question. You asked what it would take for me to allow you to help on this. Well, if you can come back here and tell me about my own back story, I’ll let you help.”
He frowned and studied her. “I don’t get it. What’s the catch?”
“The catch is that I spent a lot of my life trying to make sure there is no trace of me that’s left. If you can find out a few juicy details, then I’ll believe that you are actually useful for something. Until then, I don’t see it.”
He smiled, a wicked glint flickering in his eyes. “Well then, challenge accepted.”
The man raised his glass as if to toast, even though she still didn’t have anything to drink.
She just smiled at him. He was out of his mind if he thought he could find anything on her.
That lady was out of her mind if she thought he was going to jump through hoops to investigate her. Lucas paced back and forth in the cheap motel room he’d rented as he took another sip of his beer and waited too damn long for the person on the other end of the line to pick up.
“Wade Maxium,” said the man on the other end.
“You didn’t tell me she’d be so difficult.”
Wade sighed. “So you met Harper?”
“You made it sound like I was doing her a favor by coming on. Why would you even hire me if you already had someone doing the job for you?”
“I hired you because I don’t want all my eggs in one basket. Did you tell her I sent you?”
“Yeah, I told her. I think it just made her more pissed off.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. I’m sure she’ll warm up to you eventually. When are you two going to meet again to talk about the investigation?”
“She gave me some stupid task. She wants me to find out information about her to prove myself or something. So tell me what I need to know.”
“You’re the investigator. Why do I need to tell you anything?”
This job, this supposedly easy, well-paying job, was going to be the death of him. “You hired me to find out who was trying to frame you for murder. Not to look into information you already know.”
