She drops into her chair. “I don’t feel qualified for this.”

  I kneel in front of her and take her hand. “I don’t think anyone ever does.”

  There are three short raps on the door, then Lamonte barges in. When he sees me kneeling in front of Nova, her hand in mine, he stops short. “I knew it. I told Kate there was something going on.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Actually, she told me. I was blind as a bat. But we were right. You two have become a thing.”

  Nova pushes out a great gust of air. “We’d appreciate it if you kept this quiet. It’s not been going on for long. Just a couple of days.”

  “Whatever you say, Miss Sparkle Eyes. But the locksmith needs you for something.”

  “I’m coming.”

  Lamonte heads out. I’m about to walk out the door when Nova calls me back. “Jason?”

  I turn around the doorway. “Yeah?”

  “I did have fun last night. It was…” She trails off and our eyes lock for a long moment.

  “I know exactly what you’re trying to say,” I tell her. “And I agree.”

  We share a small smile. I think my confession will have to wait. For one, it’s April Fool’s Day. Nobody tells anyone anything important on a day like this.

  Two, we need to catch a thief. I have to finish what I came here to do. Let work life settle down again for Nova. She’s got too much to bear right now.

  As I survey the mixing table, and how far Lamonte has gotten on the bread, I head to Mr. Chill to pick up the next set of ingredients he’ll need.

  And consider how much time I have left with Nova before I tell her the truth.

  26

  Nova

  The stupid security man is late again.

  I help Connie and Charlotte clean the deli, trying to push them through before he gets here.

  I don’t suspect either of them in the stealing, I really don’t. But like I told Jason, I want to do this right. Assume nothing.

  Connie gives Jason a broom, and the two of us sweep.

  When he gets close to me, he asks, “When’s the guy coming?”

  “Hell if I know. I’m about to fire him.”

  He grins. “I’d like to see that.”

  There’s a different feel to our conversations today. I know it’s about last night. I did sneak away, taking the fastest shower possible and using my phone to navigate the downtown streets until I made it to the deli.

  It was a bit of a walk, a couple of miles, but it was good to clear my head.

  Things have gotten intense so fast. I feel like I don’t know anything about him. His family. What he plans to do after his time in Austin. I’m privy to very little of his history, other than the fact he played football in high school.

  Which I can’t bring up without admitting I stalked him.

  What are we even doing?

  As he holds a dustpan for me to sweep the crumbs from the deli floor, his smile is so genuine, and his gaze is so earnest, I don’t think I can suspect him of anything terrible.

  If he’s playing some game with me, I can’t see it. And even if I’m a short-term fling, it’s not as if I didn’t know he was temporary.

  Although he does have a really nice condo for someone only visiting. Maybe it’s a short-term rental. That would explain the cleanliness.

  Charlotte follows behind us, swiftly mopping the floor. We’ll easily be done in half the usual time, but I’m mindful of the hours they need.

  As we finish up, I tell them, “Go ahead and write down the usual hours. We need to be able to shut down earlier tonight.”

  The women ask no questions, happy for less work and an early night. When they finally close the back door, Jason asks, “So I guess we wait here for this guy?”

  My annoyance simmers beneath the surface, threatening to boil into anger. “If he’s not here in the next half hour, I say we lock up and he’s fired. I can find someone else.”

  But the words are no more out of my mouth when a tap on the front glass draws us back into the front. It’s the security guy. He’s mid-thirties, with a mega-beard and a beer gut.

  As I unlock the door, I am ready to lay into him.

  But he speaks first. “Thank you so much for understanding today,” he says. “My wife is due any day now, and twice she’s called me home thinking she’s in labor. I’ll get these cameras installed lickety-split; in case I get another one.”

  “Oh!” I say. “Are you sure you should be here?”

  The man waves me off. “This shouldn’t take an hour. You want everything remote and wireless, right? It’s running wire that takes forever.”

  “Yes, wireless,” I say.

  He wanders through the deli. “I assume you want something over the register, and front door? You asked for a five-camera system.”

  I follow the man. “Yes. Front door. Back door. Cash register. Office. Safe.”

  “Show me the other spots. Then I’ll get all the gear from my truck.”

  I give the man a rundown of what I’d like, and Jason and I take down a couple of chairs from a table to sit and wait.

  “Thanks for hanging out with me,” I say. “You don’t have to if you have something else to do.”

  Jason leans in close. “The only thing I want to do right now is you.”

  “We’ve been pretty insatiable, haven’t we?” It’s new to me, this every day, twice a day, can’t-stop-thinking-about-it one-track mind.

  He waggles his eyebrows at me. “And now we can do it on camera.”

  “What! No!” But he’s right. The camera in my office will keep us from going in there.

  We didn’t think this through.

  Within half an hour, the man tells us he’s installed the cameras, and we need to load the software on my computer to activate them.

  The three of us head into my office, and the security guy shows us the varying views of the cameras and the settings to store the recordings.

  “You might want to get an external hard drive for this,” he says. “They take up a lot of room.”

  “This is great. Thank you.”

  He scribbles some numbers on his clipboard and passes me the sheet. “Here’s the invoice. You can mail it in.”

  I set the paper down. “Thank you. And good luck with the baby. Is it your first?”

  He shoves the clipboard in his rolling cart. “Number six,” he says.

  “Well,” Jason says. “That’s something.”

  “Tell me about it.” He rolls his cart through the kitchen. “I can see myself out. Thank you for your patience today.”

  “No problem!” I call.

  I return to the screen, watching the image of the man pass under the register camera and then fall out of view again, picking back up on the camera to the front door.

  “This is pretty good,” I say.

  Jason picks up my keys. “I’ll go lock the front door.”

  I turn to him. “And then what?”

  His grin is full of mischief. “We get started on our own six kids.”

  My jaw drops, but he laughs and heads out across the kitchen.

  I watched him follow the same path as the security guy, admiring his confident stride.

  And his butt in those jeans.

  I know I should ask him what we’re doing, where we’re going, what his plans are. But this time together has been so full of magic, I don’t want to question it. Just live in the moment. Enjoy what I have while it lasts.

  When I hear the swinging door, I call out, “Hey, go walk near the safe and by the back door so I can follow your movements and see how they look in here.”

  “Sure.”

  He appears by the safe cabinet first, looking up and waving.

  When he arrives at the back door, his face peers up into the camera. “So, who’s going to review this footage?”

  “Just me, I guess,” I call.

  He grasps the bottom of his shirt and pulls it off.

  “Jason!”

  “You said it was just you!”

  “For now!”

  He starts unbuckling his belt.

  “Hey! I might have to turn it over to the police!”

  Jason hesitates. “I guess I shouldn’t give some random cop a show.”

  I head to the door of my office. “I don’t think so.”

  He walks slowly toward the office. “What about here?”

  I turned to look at the screen on my desk. “I can still see you.”

  He takes a few more steps forward. “Here?”

  “That seems to be a dead spot.”

  He holds out his arms. “All of this?”

  I shake my head. “I can see your fingertips.”

  He comes to the door. “The camera gets your entire office.”

  “Yep.”

  “Can we turn off a single camera?”

  “Probably. But I would have to figure out how.”

  He frowns. “Well, I guess that’s it. Our sex lives are over.”

  I shove at his chest. “Am I not as interesting in your bed as I am in the office?”

  “Oh, I like you both places. But asking me to wait an entire workday might be too much.”

  I lean back against the door frame. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  He glances around the kitchen. “Did we get a delivery of flour today?”

  “We did.”

  “So, there’s lots of big cloth bags in the pantry?”

  I don’t know where he’s going with this. “I guess so. I haven’t been there.”

  “Good enough for me.” He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

  The world tilts as I’m turned upside down. I pummel his backside as he holds onto my legs. “Hey. Caveman! What are you doing?”

  “Me find dark cave. Me take woman to cave with no security cameras.”

  He carries me the short distance to the door of Bertha and reaches up to flip on the light.

  “In here?” I ask.

  “In here.” He sets me down on a pile of flour sacks and turns to look out into the kitchen. “Goodbye cameras!” he says and shuts the door.

  He grabs the hem of my shirt and whips it over my head.

  I realize when it comes to Jason and his interest in me, if there is a will, there’s a way.

  27

  Jace

  April starts out pretty sweet.

  Nova and I stay late every day, checking the cash in the safe and reviewing the footage from the cameras from the previous night.

  But for two weeks, nothing happens. It’s if they somehow know we’re on to them.

  I don’t care. I can’t get enough of Nova. She’s always willing and eager. Sometimes we’re playful in our roles as lowly intern and boss.

  Sometimes it gets more serious, and we lie together for hours, talking about inconsequential things.

  Sometimes she stays over. Sometimes she goes home to spend time with her sister. We’ve made an unspoken rule about staying apart on Sundays when the deli is closed. Since we work together all week, it makes sense to find time for other things.

  Today’s a Monday, and with the cameras everywhere, we’ve had to be good all day.

  Nova sits back in her chair, Army boots up on the desk, ankles crossed. I run my finger along the bit of skin between her rolled-up pant leg and the sock peeking out over the top of the boot. Touching her skin anywhere sets off a hum in my body.

  Our eyes meet, and I know she’s thinking what I’m thinking—time to go.

  “Should I check the safe?” she asks. “We don’t have to stay while the girls finish cleaning. They have a key.”

  I continue the slow easy caress on her leg. “Sure. If there isn’t any money missing, there’s no point checking the footage.”

  So far, there hasn’t been a point in any of it. I’m surprised. If whoever was pilfering cash was going to unexpectedly stop, they would have quit when Susan left. And if not then, at least when Nova got the keys and took over.

  But it went on, in sporadic amounts, every few days.

  Right until we installed the cameras.

  I don’t get it. We’ve been careful not to make any mention of the missing money to anyone. No one should know we’re watching. We’ve kept the cash routine exactly the same.

  Nova sets her boots on the floor. “I’ll go take a peek. I’m sure it’s the same story as every day.”

  While she’s gone, I flip through the camera views. I keep my eye on the office door, to make sure neither Connie nor Charlotte sees the feed.

  The cameras are super subtle. Very small, the ceiling tiles cut to fit them so only the barest hint of the glass shows.

  But it’s possible whoever was watching to see when the deli was empty happened to notice the security truck out front. Or maybe they watched for cameras to be installed, particularly after Nova took over.

  So, they’ve moved on.

  I wonder how long I should wait before calling this problem over. And after that, how much longer I should stay.

  I don’t want to go. In fact, if things don’t go completely south when I tell Nova who I am, maybe I’ll take up residence in Austin. I honestly don’t mind the hours or the work. We have a good crew and it’s fun.

  And with Kate leaving in a month, I should probably oversee the other people we hire. Maybe even hire an assistant manager and give Nova some time off. As it stands, she can’t easily take a vacation. The deli could run a day or two without her, but beyond that, someone would need to step in.

  If I’m with her, hopefully watching her sunbathe topless on the Riviera, I won’t be able to help out either.

  Just the thought of that vacation dream sends me over the edge. I’m ready to get out of here. I adjust my jeans and stand up to see what’s taking Nova so long.

  But suddenly, she bursts into the office and closes the door behind her.

  “Money’s missing,” she says quickly. “Exactly five hundred dollars. Like the old days. That’s no coincidence. Something’s happened.”

  She’s shaking. I take the packet of cash from her and set it on the desk. “You okay?”

  “I don’t know. I mean we knew it was happening. But for it to happen while we’re watching. It’s a lot. So I guess it was last night? Some thief?” She wraps her arms around her body like she’s cold.

  I sit in her desk chair and draw her onto my lap. “Let’s look at the footage together. I think this is about to be over. We’ll see who it is.”

  She nods, her hand gripping my thigh.

  “I’m so afraid,” she whispers. “Please don’t be anyone we care about.”

  I click the settings to find the recordings that began at close of yesterday. “That’s why we’re looking at it ourselves first. Then we can make some decisions.”

  “We have to tell Jace Pickle either way,” she says. I try not to flinch at my name. “He may not care if it’s someone we love who might be desperate for reasons we don’t know.”

  My jaw tightens. “Let’s cross that bridge only if we come to it. I really don’t think we will.”

  But as we pull up the safe footage and begin quickly scrubbing through the recording, I wonder if I can stop what will happen. This is not a small amount of money. At the height of the theft, it was a couple thousand a week for months on end.

  There are issues of insurance, and the franchise itself. What would my dad want me to do?

  Nova lunges forward. “Stop.”

  I scrub backward. A figure appears in the corner of the frame. She turns, and it’s clearly a woman. She doesn’t glance around but reaches up to make sure her hood covers her head.

  “What does the back of her hoodie say?” Nova asks.

  I pause the video, but that makes it even harder to read. The resolution isn’t high enough for a still. I reverse a few frames and start it again.

  “Something cleaning service,” I say.

  “We don’t use a cleaning service. Connie and Charlotte are employees of the deli. Not a service.”

  “What about that time they were sick?”

  “I hired Connie’s sister. Still not a service.”

  We fall quiet as we watch the woman bend down, presumably to open the safe and combination lock.

  “Is that the sister?”

  “No. She was much larger.”

  The woman blocks the view of the camera. We can’t see her actions, and it wouldn’t be enough for law enforcement. “We can’t even see her face,” I say.

  The woman stands, closes the cabinet again, and walks out of the frame.

  Nova braces her elbows on the desk. “We proved it’s somebody. Which we already knew.”

  “I think we also know it’s nobody who works for us. This clearly is not Connie, Charlotte, Kate, or Elda. You ruled out Connie’s sister.”

  “But we don’t know anything about this woman. Her hair color or anything.” Nova frowns at the screen as I play through the woman’s actions at the safe a second time.

  “I guess we have to catch her in the act.”

  “Are you crazy? What if she has a gun? Or some thugs waiting out in the car as backup if she gets in trouble?”

  I slide her mouse closer. “Let’s look at the backdoor footage. Maybe there’s a better view.”

  “Good idea,” Nova says. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m freaking out so hard I can’t think.”

  I switch views and forward to a few minutes before the safe footage began.

  “There she is,” Nova says.

  The woman enters the back door of the deli holding a broom.

  “She’s making it look like she’s legitimately here,” I say. “She’s banking on the fact nobody will be concerned with her appearance at the back door.”

  Nova nods. “She has to look legit. I’m sure that’s probably a fake cleaning service.”

  “Probably.”

  The woman sets the broom against the wall and carefully closes the door. “This is dark,” Nova says. “There’s a light on by the time she gets to the safe.”

  With the door closed, the woman is a shadowy figure, but her hand reaches out for the light. She fumbles for a while, running her hand along the wall, and eventually flips it on.

  “She didn’t know where the switch was,” Nova says.

 

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