Accidentally on Purpose Read online

  Catching sight of Elle heading toward the bar wasn’t difficult, people parted like the Red Sea for her, making room. She settled herself on a barstool right next to Chuck Smithson and nodded to the bartender.

  Finn.

  “Nonalcoholic,” Archer murmured.

  Finn, also wired, nodded even though they’d already gone through all this. On the job there was never any alcohol allowed.

  Elle waited for her drink and then took a sip, all without looking at their guy.

  Chuck sat on the stool next to her. He was five foot four, wiry, and with his wrinkled academic-looking clothes and thick black-rimmed glasses he was either a hipster wannabe or making a play for imitating a slightly grown-up Harry Potter. His feet didn’t touch the floor, instead they were hooked into a rung of the barstool, his messenger bag settled between his boots. He’d swiveled to watch, actually stare, at Elle, and when she slowly turned as if eyeing the room, he straightened, pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and sent her a hopeful smile.

  She gave him one in return, a sugary sweet smile that Archer sure as hell had never seen aimed his way before and which had Chuck nearly falling off his stool.

  “Man, she’s something,” Joe whispered in their ears.

  “You’re drooling,” Max said.

  “We’re all drooling,” Lucas said. “She’s a walking boner.”

  “Silence,” Archer ordered quietly and they all shut the hell up.

  Still looking sweet and somehow demure despite the sexy-as-hell getup, Elle leaned into Chuck. Archer watched closely, fascinated because he knew she could pick a pocket in a few seconds flat right in front of his eyes and he wouldn’t even see it.

  “Chuck?” Elle whispered.

  Her pic had been on her bio but the guy swallowed hard and nodded, his eyes lit like he’d just discovered it was Christmas morning. “Candy?”

  Elle bit her lower lip, managing to look a little shy. “Would you mind showing me your ID?” she asked. “You wouldn’t believe the number of creepers I have to weed through.”

  “I bet,” Chuck said sympathetically. “It’s because you’re so beautiful.”

  This guy was eating out of the palm of her hand. She wasn’t even going to have to use her skills. Archer found himself smiling at her cleverness and shaking his head in awe. He loved watching her in action, which he didn’t get to see often.

  She hadn’t made a secret of the fact that she didn’t like him all that much. Not that he blamed her. She associated him with a very bad part of her past, plus he knew she thought he was too bossy and a control freak—both of which happened to be true.

  But it took one to know one.

  Chuck hopped of his stool and pulled a wallet from his back pocket.

  Elle, smart enough to kick off her high heels to cut her own height down before standing up too, gathered her shoes by the strap, hanging them off a finger. She then leaned into Chuck to look at his ID, letting her hair fall into his face and, Archer was pretty sure, also letting her breast brush against the guy’s arm.

  Chuck swallowed hard, blinking when Elle lifted her beaming face to his. “Nice to meet you, Chuck Smithson,” she said.

  “ID confirmation,” Max said into his comms from where he sat at the bar two spots over, appearing to be lost in the basketball game on the TV behind the bar. “I’m in place to move in.”

  Now all Elle had to do was keep Chuck distracted from his messenger bag while he did.

  “Can we dance?” Elle asked, shy. Timid.

  Archer didn’t have a type when it came to women. He liked them in all shapes and sizes and in a wide variety of personalities. But shy and timid had never done much for him.

  Until right that minute. Even knowing it was a damn act, knowing that Elle didn’t have a shy or timid bone in her body, he wanted to go over there, haul her in tight, and comfort her. It was such a shocking urge he nearly missed what came next.

  “Uh.” Chuck blinked up at Elle, still several inches shorter than she. “I’m not much of a dancer—”

  “Oh, no worries,” she said sweetly, “everyone’s got a dancer deep inside him.”

  “But—”

  “Please?” she asked softly, batting those baby blues.

  Chuck downed his drink. “For liquid courage,” he said, gesturing to Finn for another.

  “Make it a double,” Archer instructed Finn.

  “I’ll lead,” Elle promised Chuck as he tossed back the second drink. Winding an arm in one of his, she pulled him away from the bar.

  “But my stuff . . .” Twisting back, he eyed his messenger bag on the floor.

  “It’s safe here.” Elle looked at Finn behind the bar. “Right?”

  “Absolutely,” Finn said.

  “But—”

  But nothing. The poor dumb fucker never knew what hit him. As Elle led him by the balls to the dance floor, keeping Chuck’s back to the bar, Joe moved in, smoothly grabbed the briefcase, and vanished.

  On the small, crowded dance floor, Elle began to move, shimmying that body of hers, dazzling Chuck—and every other man in the place—into an openmouthed stupor.

  Not Archer. No, he was in heart failure because if she wasn’t careful she was going to come right out of that dress. “Joe, report,” he said, rubbing his left eye, which had started to twitch.

  “We’re an inch from a nipple-gate situation,” Max said in a reverent, hopeful whisper.

  Archer made a mental note to kill him later. “Joe.”

  “Need three more minutes.”

  Shit. The seconds crawled by, while on the dance floor Chuck had moved up against Elle and was grinning ear to ear as he tried to keep up with her.

  As if anyone could.

  “Done,” Joe finally said, and Archer breathed for the first time in the longest three minutes of his life.

  “Copied the hard drive,” Joe said, and then in the next beat Archer watched as he smoothly replaced the messenger bag beneath Chuck’s barstool.

  Not two seconds later Chuck turned from the dance floor, his gaze seeking and finding his messenger bag, still under his barstool.

  “All done, boss,” Joe said. “Oh and the guy’s got a handful of different IDs on him as well as the laptop. Scanned everything.”

  Score. “Elle,” Archer said. “Make your exit.”

  The music was loud, so was the pub. People were having a great time. And apparently Chuck was one of them because his liquid courage had clearly kicked in. Some confidence too because he kept trying to get his hands all over Elle as they moved together to the beat.

  “You’re so pretty!” Chuck yelled up to Elle’s face.

  She smiled.

  “No, I mean like . . . porn pretty!” He was still yelling. “I’m kind of a connoisseur, so I’d know! Have you ever thought about it? You’d make millions!” He grinned. “Usually when I get drunk, I talk loud, like really loud! But I’m not doing that now because you don’t even look scared!”

  “You ever miss being a cop in moments like this?” Max asked conversationally in Archer’s ear. “Cuz then you could go arrest that fucker.”

  No, Archer didn’t miss being a cop. As for what he did miss from that old life—his dad for one, no matter how hard-assed the guy had been—he’d shoved it deep and moved on. The real question was why the hell was Elle still dancing? He’d given her orders to move out. Making his way through the crowd, he hit the dance floor and tapped Chuck on the shoulder.

  The guy turned and looked up, up, up into Archer’s face. “Erm—” he squeaked out. With a gulp, he relinquished his hold on Elle like she was a hot potato and scampered off like a rat into the night. After stopping for his messenger bag, of course.

  Elle bent to slip back into her heels.

  Apparently she needed the armor with Archer. Slipping an arm around her waist to give her the support she needed to buckle herself into the FMPs, he waited until she straightened then said, “What the fuck was that?”

  “Me do