Page 6 of Live Love Steal

Isobel watched me.

“What?”

She licked her lips. I got snared on the light color glistening in her tongue’s wake. “Would your lawyer also put in a word for me?”

I tapped another message. “How do you spell your name again?” I finished it as she rattled off the letters.

My phone dinged with a short reply. “Done.”

Cool. Now all we had to do was wait this out.

I’d seen pornos that started like this. I tried not to think about that, because if I drifted down that mental playground path, I might forget my vow of not messing with party chicks. And this woman was one of those.

There was a little tattoo peeking out at me from her long sleeves. It was one of those delicately lined pieces that barely took up two square inches of space. They usually had some special meaning despite the simplicity of the pattern.

I was so busy trying not to pay attention to her and all the little intricacies of her outfit, like the little skulls around her shoelace eyelets, or the matte black studs on her backpack that pushed it from normal to “edgy,” and her choice of black lace at her cuffs, near that delicate tattoo, that I missed the fact she was beginning to freak out.

“Are you hyperventilating?”

That’s the last thing I needed. A chick who couldn’t maintain. I had enough shit falling down my neck right now.

“No.” Under her breath, she muttered, “In for four.” Then she inhaled through her nose. I paid more attention.

She held it for a moment, then breathed out through her mouth.

“Are you freaking out?”

She held up one finger, telling me to wait, then repeated the breathing twice more.

Finally, she spoke. “It’s called box breathing. My sister does it for her panic attacks.”

I hated to point out the obvious, but she had already confessed. “You’re freaking out.”

“I am not. I used a breathing method so I wouldn’t, and I’m not.”

She lied. Even though she wasn’t as obvious about it, she did the breathing thing again, twice.

“We’ll be moving soon.”

“I hope so.”

“What you in for?” I asked.

“I’m sorry? In for?”

“The court date, what’s it about?”

She frowned and tipped her head so her hair fell across her face, obscuring the expression. “Traffic.”

“That’s it?”

She huffed. “A camera photographed a car that looked like mine crossing a red light line. I didn’t run the red light, it’s not even my car.”

“They all say that.”

Her glare spoke her obvious rebuttal.

“They get a photo?”