8. Maya
“It’s weird that he’s meeting you here, though.” Maya sat cross-legged on Adam’s bed as he rushed around his bedroom in a white undershirt and jeans, stopping just long enough to cast a sidelong glance on his way to the closet.
“Hold that thought.” He turned around and held up two nearly identical button-down shirts. “Green or blue?”
“Green. It goes well with your big brown eyes.”
He put the blue one back based on her vote, and slipped the green one on, turning to continue their conversation as he buttoned up.
“Why is it weird? I think it’s sort of old-fashioned and sweet.”
“Meeting a blind date at your house? You just don’t do that. It should be a public place, well-lit with a lot of people around.”
“You should probably lay off the true crime podcasts, love. Evan’s a friend of a friend,” Adam argued. “It’s not like he’s some random guy off the street…or the internet. Anyway, I have you here to keep me safe.”
She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow at the assumption that she’d be up for playing bodyguard for him if things went south.
“See?” he said pointing at her sour look. “If I didn’t know what a doll you were, I’d be intimidated.”
“A doll,” Maya scoffed. She smiled as she watched him straighten his collar and check his hair one last time. Of the two of them, he was the doll. Sweet, kind, and with not one mean bone in his body.
He caught her eye in the mirror and a small frown formed on his face. “So you’re really gonna stay in and work tonight?”
“Yep.
“Maya, it’s Saturday night.”
“Uh, Darby is working tonight,” she pointed out. “Nobody’s giving her shit about it.”
“That’s different.” He turned away from the mirror to give her a look.
“Not really.”
“She’s a resident! You’re a—”
Before he could bring the conversation back to his concern about her lack of a social life, he was mercifully cut short by a knock at the door. His eyes widened, and she jumped up from the bed to follow him.
“He’s here,” she sang.
She trailed him out of the room and down the hall, staying on his heels until she reached the end, choosing to hide around the corner so she could get a peek at his date without being intrusive.
He walked to the door, taking a moment to look back at her for one last check, and she gave him a thumbs up. He opened the door, and if he was trying to play it cool, he failed because his face lit up at the sight of the man standing at the doorstep. Adam had impeccable taste in men, so this guy must have been something. She craned her neck around the corner to get a better look and what she saw made her jaw drop.
“Evan?” Adam asked.
“No, sorry,” the man stammered with a familiar southern drawl. “I’m Reed. Is Maya here?”
“Yes. Yes, she is.”
Adam turned to call for her, but she was already walking into the foyer. Any disappointment over this, objectively speaking, very good-looking man standing on their porch in a faded blue Braves cap, gray t-shirt, and jeans not being his date was outweighed by intrigue given the way he looked at her with wide eyes and mouthed Oh my God. Thank God Adam had his back to Reed as he fawned over him.
“Reed? What are you doing here?”
He shoved his hands into his front pockets and shyly mouthed a hey, then stared at her for a moment. She realized just how different she must look to him, as well, so casual in a tight white tank, jeans slung low on her hips, and bare feet exposing the fresh bubble gum pink pedicure she’d treated herself to that morning. When his eyes drifted downward, she self-consciously tugged at the hem of her tank to cover the hint of midriff showing. Just because she’d taken him up on his offer to drop her off at home on their way back from yesterday’s field trip didn’t mean he now had a free pass to show up whenever he pleased.
“Adam?”
Reed looked away from her and turned to find a cute, light-skinned man dressed in crisp jeans, a t-shirt, and blazer watching him with a big smile on his face.
“No, I’m—” Reed sighed, probably realizing it didn’t matter who he was as it would only create more questions. “I think this is who you’re looking for,” he said, stepping aside and pointing toward Adam.
Reed crossed the threshold and stood beside her. So close that the heat from his skin warmed hers. She rubbed the back of her neck and cast a hard glare his way. How dare he come to her house and make her feel things? He gave a slight nod acknowledging that he could and would explain himself in just a minute.
“I am,” Adam confirmed, stepping into the center of attention and reaching out to shake Evan’s hand. “Nice to meet you both,” he said as he looked back at Reed.
“I am so confused,” Evan admitted with a nervous laugh, unsure of whom he was picking up and what was going on.
“Me too,” Maya agreed, staring pointedly at Reed.
“Adam,” her cousin said, placing a hand on his chest to introduce himself. “Maya, my cousin and roommate for the summer,” he continued, gesturing to her. “Reed, her co-worker,” he said, pointing to the man at her side. “And Evan, my blind date,” he said finally for Reed’s benefit.
Evan swiped his hand over his forehead in secondhand fatigue from the marathon introduction.
“Already off to a memorable start,” Adam said to his date with a grin.
“I’ll say,” Reed seconded. “Where y’all headed this evening?”
“We’re grabbing drinks at a distillery on the Westside,” Evan volunteered readily. Maya liked that he seemed to be a friendly, easy-going guy. She supposed this date mattered to her, as well, considering they’d probably be spending a lot of time together this summer if things went well and he may even become family if things went really well.
“Yeah, I’ve heard good things about it,” Reed said. “Been meanin’ to check it out.”
Maya strained her neck in disbelief. Was Reed really more up on new restaurants in the city than she was or was he just making small talk? She supposed if she hadn’t banned it, maybe she’d actually know. She kind of did want to know now.
“We’ll let you know how it is,” Evan answered as if it was a sure thing that they would all be meeting up again someday soon.
“Definitely,” Reed said with a nod.
Maya watched the exchange with a faint grin on her face. It was all so surreal, yet somewhat endearing how seamlessly Reed rolled with the situation. When she glanced over at Adam finally, he raised an eyebrow at her and grinned, finding the circumstances just as amusing as she did.
“Well, we should probably get going now,” Adam said as he moved toward the door.
“Nice to meet you all,” Evan said with a wave toward Reed and Maya as he turned to exit. “Have a nice night!”
“You too,” Maya said as she followed behind them to close the door. “Have fun!”
Once they were out the door, Maya shut it and leaned against it, eyeing the unexpected guest standing in the foyer. His hands were still in the front pockets of his jeans, and he looked a bit unsure of himself now that it was just the two of them.
“Well, they’ll have a good story to tell if it all works out,” he said.
“Yeah, they will. So, uh, what exactly are you doing here, Stanton?”
“I found some information that I didn’t think should wait until Monday morning.”
“We have these things called phones, you know.” She pulled hers out of her back pocket and flashed it in front of him for emphasis.
“Yeah, I know,” he groaned, “but this is important.”
“How could you be so sure I didn’t have something else going on? It’s a long drive from Clayville.”
“Just a hunch you’d be spending your weekend the same way I was,” he said with a knowing grin.
She squinted her eyes and stared at him, again, wanting to be annoyed with his presumption, but she couldn’t bring herself to be. Instead, she was impressed that he was taking this case as seriously as she was, to the point that he was working on a Saturday night as opposed to the many other things a single, good-looking twenty-eight-year-old man could be doing instead.
“Come on in.” She led him to the dining table that she had transformed into her home office. Her laptop was propped open with a cup of coffee next to it and files spread out across the table. “Have a seat,” she said motioning to the chair just beside her as she sat down.
“How’s your research going?” he asked as he took in the surroundings.
“Slow. I’m having to teach myself employment law as I go, but I’m getting there. I really do think we have something here, though,” she said just as her cell phone buzzed on the table. “Sorry.” She picked it up and opened the text. “It’s Adam. I promised to be his out if he needed one.”
You def downplayed his hotness. And niceness. Evan and I think he’s a catch.
Heat flashed through her upper body, and she clutched the phone to her chest in a panic at the thought of Reed seeing it.
“Does he? Already?”
“What?” She looked up to see Reed watching her, then took a quick breath and pressed her lips into a smile. “Nope. So far, so good.”
“Good. It’d be a shame otherwise. They seem like nice guys.”
Her lips remained pressed into a smile as she tilted her head and nodded. She honestly did not know how to process his reaction which was just sweet. Why was he like this? She lowered the phone from her chest and dragged her eyes away from his, then fired back a response.
Then you two can fight over him if you don’t hit it off.
She locked her phone and no sooner did she put it down on the table, a response came back. She picked it up and read it against her better judgment.
Don’t think we’re his type, but you might be. ;-)
She should have trusted her gut, she thought as she rolled her eyes and put the phone down, then looked up to find Reed patiently waiting for her to finish up. “Sorry about that. So, what have you got?”
“Well, I showed that picture to my friend,” he started as he pulled it up on his phone. “It’s a tool that allows you to crimp copper pipes instead of soldering and brazing them.”
“I’m sorry?” she asked, staring blankly at him and then the picture.
“You can press the pipes together instead of having to weld them,” he explained. He pointed at the tool in the picture thinking it would somehow illustrate how it worked. “Saves time and there’s less exposure to fumes and chemicals.”
“Okay…” It was clear as mud to her because she had zero base knowledge of plumbing, so she’d take his word for it. Bless his heart, though, because despite how lost she was, he looked like he was about to buckle down and try to explain it to her again.
She stared at the picture, thinking maybe it would click this time, but her focus was broken by her phone buzzing again. She looked down at the screen and knew it would be trouble. Sydney. She opened it, once again, against her better judgment.
You have a guy over?!
And just as quickly, she turned the phone screen side down on the table and shoved it under some papers, then returned her attention to Reed who, if he had even noticed her distraction, didn’t seem to mind as he carried on.
“It’s a fairly new technique, and my friend hadn’t ever seen one that looked like that until a few weeks ago when someone came into his shop trying to sell him a tool that looked just like it. A Freddy Prescott.”
“The son,” Maya said, having recognized the name from some of the reports she had gone over.
“Yep. He was shopping a prototype. He said they were taking orders for production sometime in the fall. My friend was interested, only he didn’t end up placing an order because he said the guy couldn’t answer simple questions about the product.”
“Because the young guys don’t know a snap cutter from a rotary cutter,” Maya finished, remembering Johnson’s remark from the day before.
“Exactly.” Reed leaned back in his chair, bending and resting one leg on his knee, and folding his hands behind his head, all while looking quite pleased.
“You think Johnson made it?” she asked.
“I think there’s a good chance he did.”
“And they unceremoniously fired him right around the time they started shopping this tool around.”
He nodded. “Guess they figured they could make more off of his invention than his work.”
Synapses fired rapidly in her brain, making connections, and bringing the pieces of this case together. They were absolutely onto something, but there was one obvious question.
“But if Johnson was the one who was wronged, why wouldn’t he just tell us that from the start?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” Reed shrugged and dropped his hands from behind his head, smoothing one over his scruffy chin. “Maybe he didn’t know his rights? Maybe he doesn’t even realize what they were doing.”
Perhaps Johnson didn’t mention it because he was still in the dark himself. Her eyes went from Reed to the computer screen in front of her, and the wall of words about employment law which were better than criminal law, but still not where her heart was. She sighed as she looked at Reed again, his lips pursed into a grin that made his chiseled cheeks dimple. It was the same grin that got under her skin the first day they met because she figured it was his get-out-of-jail-free card, but she was starting to think she was very wrong about that.
“I am trying not to get ahead of myself until we talk to him, but—”
“It’s hard when you think your criminal case is actually an intellectual property case,” he finished for her.
“You have no idea.”
As a goofy smile spread across her lips and warmth spread to her cheeks like wildfire, she brought her hands to her face to geek out in private because there was no stopping it now. Holy shit. Just like that, her plans were back on track. After a few more internal Holy Shits and a couple deep breaths, she peeked over her fingertips to find him leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, watching her with amusement.
“I know it’s not a big, high-profile public arts case, but it’s something, right?”
“It’s better,” she said softly as she regained her composure and drew her hands down to her warm cheeks. “We worked this case from the bottom up. Every discovery is ours. This was an incredible find, Reed.”
He stared at her for a moment before looking away and shaking his head. “Nah,” he eked out. “I lucked into it. Anyway, if you hadn’t spotted that tool, we wouldn’t have gotten the break.”
He had no clue how impossibly high he had just set the bar. Any future guy who showed up at her doorstep with flowers or chocolates wouldn’t cut it. This was the best gift she’d ever received. Not that this was a gift, of course, because they were just co-interns, and he wasn’t trying to court her, but if someone wanted to, this was definitely her love language. And why she was thinking about such things? She didn’t know, so she shrugged off his compliment and busied herself with reaching for her coffee and returning her attention to the computer screen.
“So I guess I have even more case law to review now,” she said, getting back to business after taking a sip.
“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, too.”
She watched him idly sift through the files for a moment, then picked one up and held it out in front of him. “You wanna get started then?”
He stared back at her wide-eyed before a small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. He nodded and took the file she was holding out for him then leaned back in his chair again and started reading.
Maya sifted through the rest of the files, uncovering the phone she had buried. She picked it up, seeing that there were two more messages from Syd, three from Adam, and one from Darby. She ignored the first two and went straight for the last one.
Syd and Adam said a cop came to the house. What’s going on? Is everything OK?
Maya laughed to herself. Sweet Darby.
Yeah. Everything’s fine. :)
She put down her phone, sneaking a glance at the man beside her who was completely engrossed in his work, then got back to work herself. Everything was more than fine now.