Indiscretion: Volume Three (Indiscretion #3) (8 page)

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

The shrill ring of my phone came from my purse sitting at my feet. God, I hoped it wasn’t work related. As much as I probably should’ve been, I so wasn’t in that headspace yet. I bent over and grabbed the phone. It was Jess.

“Who is it?” Max asked.

“My sister.” I bit my lip. Okay, this was awkward. “Do you mind keeping quiet while I talk to her? I’ll only be a minute.” I felt terrible having to reduce him to a dirty little secret, but there was no sense bringing my sister into something that wasn’t going to last.

“Sure thing.” Max’s tone was even, and he didn’t seem to be bothered by my request.

A relieved breath escaped my lungs. I hit the button on my phone and brought it up to my ear. “Hi, sweetie. How are you?”

“I’m good,” she said casually. “Just on my lunch break, so I thought I’d give you a ring and see how it’s going.”

“Not bad.” I picked some invisible lint off of my shorts. “Work has been keeping me pretty busy.”

“What are you up to?” She sounded curious. Too curious. Or maybe that was just my own paranoia.

“I’m just driving.” Technically true, I supposed.

“Liar.” Her tone was teasing, but my spine stiffened, and I sat up straight in the passenger seat.

“What do you mean?”

“If you were driving, you’d be talking on your Bluetooth, and I can tell you’re not. Who are you with?”

Shit. She was observant.

Her tone was more inquisitive than accusatory, but her question had me on edge nonetheless.

“I…um…” I glanced over at Max with wide eyes, as if he could help me think of something to say when he had no idea what she and I were talking about.

He returned my gaze with a confused expression of his own.

“You’re with that guy, aren’t you?” She sounded excited at the prospect. “The one Kurt said he saw you with.”

Busted.

I blew out a breath. There was no point in trying to deny it any longer. All I could do at this point was minimize the damage. “I am,” I said with a shaky voice. “But for reasons I can’t explain to you right now, I need this to stay between us.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked, concerned.

“Everything is fine, but I mean it. You can’t mention it to anyone. No one. Do you understand?”

“Geez, got it already. Relax.”

I shouldn’t have snapped at her. I could trust Jess not to say anything. “Sorry to be so intense, but it has to do with work, and there would be big issues for me if anyone knew.”

“Whatever you say, sis. I’ll keep it on the DL.” I could practically hear the eye roll she was giving me on the other end of the phone.

“Thanks, sweetie.” I let out a breath and relaxed back into my seat.

“Well, I guess I’ll let you go since your busy with mystery man,” she teased. “But call me tonight to explain what the heck you’re talking about.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

“Okay, love you.”

“Love you, too. Talk to you tonight.” I hit end and threw the phone back into my purse, unsure of how I felt about the fact that Jess now knew what I was up to. On some level, it was a relief not to have to lie to her or hide it. I mean, I still wouldn’t be explaining the nature of Max and my relationship, but at least I didn’t have to lie to her about who I was spending my time with.

“I take it the cat is out of the proverbial bag?” he asked.

I glanced over at Max, who had an eyebrow raised in question at me.

“She outsmarted me.” I laughed. “I felt horrible lying to her anyway, and she won’t say anything once I explain the situation, so we’re good.”

Max reached over and grabbed my hand from off my lap, bringing it to his mouth and placing a chaste kiss on it before resting it on the console between us. He gave me a reassuring squeeze. “Glad to hear it.” He paused as if considering whether he was going to say more. “You miss her?”

Tears pricked behind my eyes, which surprised even me. “Yeah. Horribly. She was my one constant these last ten years, and now she’s gone. It’s tough.”

“I can imagine.” He sounded sad, and it wasn’t the kind of sad when you empathized with someone. It felt more like personal experience.

“You never said whether you had any siblings,” I mentioned carefully, watching his profile as he kept his attention on the road in front of him. But it didn’t escape my notice the way his expression dropped and he swallowed deeply, as if trying to compose himself.

“No. No siblings,” he said, his tone hard. It was apparent that further conversation on the subject wasn’t welcome. I was probably just imagining it, but I changed the subject anyway.

“I keep meaning to ask you what the tattoo on your arm means.”

He had the name Makya Peyton surrounded by wings, with a pair of birds sitting on a branch below. I’d wondered for a while what it meant, but we were usually both naked when it would come to mind, and my head was always elsewhere.

Apparently, this topic of conversation wasn’t safe either. His body stiffened, and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel. “Let’s save that for another day.” He tried to cover by smiling in my direction, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

I dropped it, making a mental note to revisit the topic another time. There was definitely something behind the tattoo, and his reaction had me curious.

The remainder of our drive home was fairly quiet—both of us stuck in our heads for our own reasons. Max pulled into the carpool parking lot where I’d left my car, and it wasn’t until I went to unlock my car that I noticed something was amiss. The fine hair on my arms stood on end, the air rushing from my lungs as I looked down at my rear tires.

Both of them were deflated.

“Chloe, what’s—you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Max growled as he walked toward my car, bags in hand.

I dropped my purse and covered my mouth with my hand. I’d been doing my best to push the thought of some stranger breaking into my house from my consciousness, but with this latest incident, it all came rushing back.

Max circled my vehicle. “Your front passenger one is flat, too.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t like this, Chloe.”

“Me neither,” I barely whispered.

Max walked over to me and wrapped his arms around me. “This is escalating. Whoever it was had to have followed you out here to know where your car was.” I just nodded into his chest, and he ran a hand through my hair. “You need to call the police and file a report.”

I pushed away from his chest. “No!”

His mouth hung agape and he looked at me incredulously. “What the hell do you mean ‘no’?”

“If I file a report, the police are going to want to know why my car was parked here, for how long, and why. They’re going to look into how I’ve been spending my time lately. I can’t take that risk.”

Max clenched his teeth together, a visible tick in his jaw. “You’ll take the risk with your life, though? Just to save your job?”

It was like he’d slapped me—my head sprang back, my eyes wide. “That’s ridiculous.”

Max grabbed my upper arms, shaking me a little. “Chloe. Someone broke into your house. They followed you outside of town and gave you three flat tires. The only reason they didn’t finish the job is probably because someone drove into the parking lot. This isn’t something to take lightly.”

I pried his grip off of me. “I’m not going to take it lightly,” I grit out. “I’m going to let Jackie’s husband handle it. He can do all the same stuff the police would but off the record.”

Max turned from me and paced beside the car, massaging his temples. “I don’t like this. Not at all.”

“That may be,” I told him, standing straighter. I may be a little shaky, but he had to know there were boundaries. “But I’m a grown woman and you need to let me decide how to handle this. You’ll be gone in a couple months, but I’ll still be here stuck with the consequences.”

He wheeled around and pinned me with a scowl. I matched it with my own glare, and silence descended over us.

After a few minutes, Max finally spoke. “Fine. But you have to promise that if Jackie’s husband tells you that you need to file an official report with the police in Bar Harbor, you’ll do it.”

I nodded. “Agreed.”

That seemed to appease him somewhat. “Now how are we going to fix this?” he asked, throwing his hand out at my car.

“
We
aren’t going to do anything,” I said, motioning between the two of us. “You’re going to leave, and I’ll call Jackie and figure it out.”

A crease formed in the center of his forehead. “Like hell. I’m not leaving you alone out here.” He motioned with his hand to the wilderness surrounding the parking lot.

“You have no choice.” I shook my head, irritated with his bossiness, but at the same time a little frightened to be alone here. “We’ve already been in this parking lot too long together. Someone is bound to come along at some point.”

Max’s eyes narrowed. “You are one stubborn woman.”

“Noted. Now get out of here,” I shooed him toward his vehicle. “I promise I’ll stay in my car with the door locked until someone gets here.”

He walked briskly over to me and drove his hands into my hair, taking my mouth in a scorching kiss that ended way too soon for my liking. “I’m not going far. I’ll be sitting in my car just outside the entrance to the parking lot until I know Jackie’s husband is here with you.”

“Max, please—”

“Don’t fight me on this, Chloe. It’s not up for discussion.”

“Okay,” I said with an exasperated sigh.

His hands still in my hair, he leaned back down and gave me another passionate kiss before pulling away. “Text me when you get home so I know you’re okay.”

I nodded, unable to speak. I was still reeling from that kiss—it had evaporated all my irritation with him. Max leaned forward and rested his forehead on my own, took a deep breath, and then stepped away from me, heading back to his car.

I unlocked the door of my vehicle, tossed my bags in the back, then sat down. Max was looking at me from inside his car. I locked the doors and gave him a thumbs up so he’d know all was well. He nodded, gave me a small smile, then reversed from the spot and drove out of the parking lot.

Isolation bore down on me. I felt alone without him here with me, but took comfort in the fact that he was still nearby. I dialed Jackie’s number on my phone, and when she answered, I filled her in. As luck would have it, it was Jamie’s day off, and she said she’d send him over right away.

“This is some serious shit,” she just about yelled in my ear.

I sighed. “You sound like Max.”

“Well maybe you should listen to him.”

Now I was the one massaging my temples. “Enough already. I need you to fill Jamie in before he comes, and make sure he knows not to say anything about Max. Plus, I don’t want to have that conversation with him.”

Jackie knew that I was still seeing Max on the side, but I’d sworn her to secrecy, insisting that she not even mention it to her new husband.

“Okay, okay. I’ll fill him in so you don’t have to.”

“Thanks, hon,” I said with relief.

I hung up and relaxed back into my seat to wait for Jamie. Well, I tried to relax, but my mind was racing. Who would be doing this to me? I had no idea. I didn’t have any enemies that I could think of. I was at a complete loss. After the break-in, I had felt like whoever had left me the paper was in some strange way trying to help me. But this…this just creeped me out.

Jamie pulled into the carpool parking lot about thirty minutes later, and I stepped out. He parked beside me, got out, and looked at me over top of his car. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

“Seriously,” I replied, laughing.

He came over and bent down in front of the rear tire on the driver’s side, inspecting it. After a minute, he stood up and turned to me. “Well, the good news is that it looks like someone just let the air out of your tires as opposed to slashing them, so I should be able to blow them back up and they’ll be fine.” He levelled me with a look. “The bad news is that the incident at your house was obviously not a one-time deal.”

I wrung my hands together. “I know. And I realize I should report it, but I can’t take the chance that my boss will find out about it and question why I was here. Jackie filled you in?”

He nodded, his lips drawn into a thin line. “She did.”

I put on a shaky smile. “Any chance you can keep this between us like the last time and see if you can find anything out?”

He shook his head, looking hesitant. “Because you’re Jackie’s best friend, yes. But I don’t like it. If you’d do up a report, I could get a team out to your place to dust for prints and do the same on your tires. But without an official report, I can’t make use of those resources.”

“I know.” I nodded. “And I hate putting you in this position, but it’s really important.”

He let out a long sigh. “Alright, well let’s blow these babies up and get you on your way.”

He walked back to his car and pulled a compressor out of the trunk. Once he’d set it up and was inflating the first tire, he came to lean against the car beside me, crossing his arms in front of his chest.