"I was hoping for Spy Nancy."
She thought for a second, then smacked him hard on the arm. He winced, rubbing the spot, mock-scowling at her.
"Please. Say it louder."
"We're alone," he protested. "Besides, as far as I'm concerned..."
They stood in the elevator, too close. He had her cornered against the back wall, and despite himself he couldn't stop playing with her. He could feel it wearing on the edges of her nerves, and she swatted his hand away every time it brushed her arm, her hip, her cheek. Her gaze kept straying to the elevator buttons.
He hadn't had this much fun since... well, since the last time he'd seen her.
He'd been looking forward to it all morning. Fielding emails about projects, watching the light hit the wall opposite his desk, fidgeting and counting the minutes until he could plausibly leave for a long lunch. He wore a black suit. He felt like a process server out of an old movie, just without a brimmed derby and cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
"As far as you're concerned, what?" She was almost, almost half-smiling. He could see it in her eyes.
"It's all wigs and makeup and short skirts," he returned, sliding the tips of his fingers over her hair. She looked like herself. One knee bent with her pump against the wall, shoulders back, darkened lashes. Loose twist at the nape of her neck, a two-piece suit that felt rough under his fingers. Very businesslike.
She glanced down, and then in one smooth lurch the elevator doors were opening and she had her palm open in the middle of his chest, pushing him back, away from her, two feet on the floor, calm as silk. Now her eyes were dancing.
They were in sight of the yellow crime-scene tape and seal across the door when suddenly he saw a bundled length of black velvet in her palm. He reached for her other hand and spun her around on her heels, so quick he caught the edge of a gasp, her mouth falling open.
"Where'd you hide those?"
"Wouldn't you like to know." She swung with his weight and they were moving again, her heels almost soundless on the linoleum.
"I would," he growled. "The words 'strip-search' come to mind."
"Oh, Ned..." She ran the backs of her fingers down the angle of his jaw, holding his gaze with hers. "I don't like to be disarmed."
He raised his eyebrows as she turned back to the door. "Are you saying you'd put up a fight?"
"Something like that."
The elevator chimed at their floor, twenty feet away, and he found himself pinned against the wall opposite their target apartment, her fingers tangled in his hair, her mouth hot and sweet against his. The next chime was distant, drowned in the unbearably loud thrum of his pulse in his ears. She slowed, their mouths separating with an audible pop, and he looped an arm around her waist without her shoving him immediately away.
"The words 'mixed signals' don't even begin to describe you," he sighed, following as she crossed the hallway again. A single glance at her confirmed that she was almost as unsteady on her feet as he felt. "Isn't it terribly clichéd to start making out as a cover?"
"You knocking it, Nickerson?"
"No, no," he replied. "In fact, I think I hear someone coming right now."
She carefully tugged the tape and seal back with her fingernails, then slipped on a pair of gloves and began working in the lock with two thin black wires. "Nice try."
He nodded. Then he started eyeing the back of her neck. If he kissed her there...
"I can feel your eyes," she murmured, under her breath. "If I swear to you that I'll see you for dinner tonight..."
He traced his fingertips over the nape of her neck, and she shivered, almost imperceptibly, against his touch. "I wouldn't believe you," he whispered, leaning in close, brushing his mouth just over her skin. "You, my darling, always seem to be working late."
He noted with some satisfaction that her hands weren't moving, only trembling slightly, and her voice was weak when it finally came. "Darling?"
"You don't like it? Too soon?"
She swallowed hard. "Try it again in a week," she said, and then shook her head softly and went back to work. "You don't really want me to get in here, do you."
"I know you will," he replied. "I just like making you blush."
She gave a soft pleased cry when the lock clicked back, and then pushed into the apartment. "Don't touch anything," she murmured, as she reached for the light switch.
He nodded at the back of her head. "So what are we looking for?"
"The things Celia didn't tell me," she said.
"Something the police wouldn't have found?"
She shrugged. "You'd be surprised how many people in the police department know me. And how many will know that my father's defending their best suspect."
"You need me to seduce a file clerk?"
She cast an appraising glance over at him. "You do know there are male file clerks now, right? After that whole equal-opportunity thing?"
Ned made a face. "Uh... no, thanks."
"Besides, you think I want you chatting up some bottle-blonde in fishnets while I'm doing all the dirty work?"
"Fishnets...?" She looked up from her cursory search of the cabinets to glare him into silence. "See, I was thinking of buying some poor working girl a drink and then lifting her keys while she was in the powder room, not... whatever you were thinking."
"You sure you're not with CIA?"
"Like I'd tell you if I were."
She laughed aloud at that, then produced a slender camera. He only figured out what it was when she held it to her eye and pointed it at things like the scraps of paper hanging from magnets on the front of the refrigerator, and him.
"Now you're just trying to make me feel insecure."
She glanced between the camera, which was about the size of a five-stick pack of gum, and him. "What, this?" She had that devilish twinkle again, the one that made him wish for approaching footsteps and another possessive kiss. "If you're jealous of this, maybe we really should..."
"What?" He walked over to the desk and, pulling a pen from his inner pocket, started poking through the tumble of papers on its surface. "We really should what? I know how I'd finish that sentence, but..."
She shook her head with a half-chuckle, then went back to taking pictures. "Nothing."
He trailed her through the entire apartment, in the soft weight of companionable silence, until they were both standing in the narrow bathroom, inspecting the crowd of miscellaneous junk in the medicine cabinet. She was opening every bottle, sniffing delicately at the contents.
"You'll have dinner with me tonight?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die," she said, her voice distracted, before turning to him with a brilliant smile. "If I give you a kiss and a pair of gloves, will you go through the trash in the kitchen?"
"See, I'm not even allowed to seduce female file clerks, and then you try to make a deal like that," he playfully complained, leaning forward. He caught her off-balance and kissed her hard, the heels of her gloved hands braced against the lip of the sink as she returned it, meeting his intensity with her own. When he pulled back he could almost see the beginning of fear in her eyes. Fear and awakening desire.
"I don't like competition," she explained breathlessly. Then she produced another pair of gloves, pushing her lower lip out in the mockery of a pout. "Please?"
"Dinner at my place," he said sternly. "As for the kisses, I reserve the right to demand more."
"More kisses, or more than kisses?" She put her hand on her hip. "And I'm sorry, what makes you think you can demand anything, darling?"
"The fact that I can hear your heart beating right now," he replied, gratified at the deepened color washing her cheeks. "Also, if I find a severed head in the trash, I can't promise that I won't scream."
"As long as it's not a girly scream, I won't tell anyone," she vowed, watching him snap the gloves on. "And I will make it up to you."
He looked back at her from the doorway, his dark eyes suddenly serious. "Don't make me start hating those words," he said softly.
Nancy looked down for a second. "Dinner tonight," she replied. "At your place."
His gaze softened. "And if you wear fishnets, well, that's up to you."
"Maybe you can show me what you've got. Buy me a drink and try to steal my keys."
He couldn't help but smile at her broad grin. "Deal," he replied. "If I get them, well, that would mean you can't get into your apartment... so you'll have to stay over?"
She propped her hand on the sink again, rocking back on her heels into a consciously seductive pose, regarding him from beneath her lashes. "Guess we'll have to find out," she purred.
"God," Ned muttered, gripping the door hard before swinging away, toward the kitchen. "And I thought I couldn't make it until lunch."