Romero had my shoulder bag now and was pulling out the videotapes one by one. “A good cop captures criminals. That’s what I was doing.”
“I am not a criminal! I’m a—a good girl!”
“You told me you were saucy enough to make a sex tape. And you stole state’s evidence.”
“No,” I said, yanking the chair along with me. “I attempted to steal state’s evidence. If I didn’t actually leave the building with it, it can’t be called stealing and thus, not a crime.” I wrangled against the chair. “Now get this off me.”
Romero shot me an exasperated look before dropping the tapes and coming around the desk. He put a hand on each of my shoulders and guided me down into a sitting position in the chair.
“I’m going to do you a favor. I’m not going to file a police report and I’m not going to put you in a holding cell.”
I crossed my legs and used my free arm to rest my chin in my hand. “No big. I’ve been in a holding cell before.”
“What happened to you being a good girl?”
I demonstrated my range of motion.
“I’ll keep you in here while I call Alex and he can escort you out. That way no one has to know.” Romero smiled, a dumb kindness in his eyes. Had I not been handcuffed to refurbished office furniture, I might have thought his smile was warm and his eyes, intelligent.
Not now.
“Wait.” My head snapped up. “Did you say you were going to call Alex?”
“Yeah, he’ll come down and get you, won’t he?”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again, suddenly mute. I shrugged my shoulders. Romero turned to leave, but turned back to me in the doorway. He pointed a single finger at me. “Now don’t you go anywhere,” he said with a smile.
I rolled my eyes. “You really think this chair won’t fit through that door? You’re an idiot,” I huffed under my breath.
I waited for Romero to disappear completely before I grabbed my shoulder bag—tapes repacked inside—and began my seated scoot toward the doorway. I lined myself up and crept closer, attempting to clear the entire door frame like some sort of bizarre Operation game.
It hadn’t occurred to me what I would do once I got out of the office. Not a lot of things raised eyebrows in this city—I’d once carried a six-foot-tall pi?ata on the bus and no one had batted an eye—but a woman handcuffed to a metal office chair and scoot walking down the block just might.
Whatever.
I squared myself up and launched myself through the door with a massive amount of F-you glee. Or at least I would have, had an arm of the chair not caught the door frame. Instead my chair stopped and I slid right off the leather seat, sailing until the slack went out of the cuff and I was slammed to the ground, my arm at an odd angle above my head.
“Epic fail,” I muttered.
I pressed myself back into the chair and tried to ignore the new throb in my shoulder. On a determined sigh, I repositioned myself and slid toward the door frame once again, this time gently. I did my best to keep an eye on the arms of the chair, as they narrowly rubbed against the door frame. I could feel the edges of my lips turning up. I could feel that F-you smile.
I was sure that somewhere in our house, Vlad had stashed some kind of medieval weaponry that would free me forever.
But I didn’t count on being stuck. The arms of my chair squeaked against the door frame.
I gripped them and wriggled, trying to loosen it up. I pressed my feet to the floor and clenched every muscle in my body as my sneakers tried to gain traction while I pushed. I was searching through my shoulder bag, looking for lotion to slather myself and my chair with when I heard Alex clear his throat.
His T-shirt was disheveled, his jeans wrinkled, and his dark curls had the unequivocal look of bedhead. He didn’t look happy to see me.
“I’m stuck,” I said, looking up with my best puppy-dog eyes in an attempt to win him over.
Alex blinked at me. Then, without saying a word, he lifted one foot and used it to spread my legs. Images of hot prison sex or Fifty Shades of handcuff sex flashed in my mind. My heart began to pound and the throbbing of my shoulder had moved to the pit of my stomach, threatening to drop lower.
“Alex.” My voice came out a sultry whisper as I stared at his foot nestled a half-inch from my crotch.
Again, Alex didn’t answer. He simply flexed his foot and gave me a solid shove back into his office. The back of my chair gently thumped against his back wall and I stared while Alex shut his door, then angled himself on the edge of his desk.
“You have exactly two minutes to tell me what the hell you were thinking and one to tell me why I should take the cuffs off.” There was no humor in his voice, no trace of the easy half smile that usually graced his lips. His eyes were a dark, slate grey. The accusation in them pinned me to my seat, regardless of the cuffs.