Page 157 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

Miles tilts his head, studying the man, and whispers back, “Interesting.”

“He has an Etsy shop.”

“That makes it worse.”

I nod gravely. “Much worse. He sells fake Civil War letters to unsuspecting collectors.”

Miles leans in close enough that his mouth brushes my ear when he says, “His wife thinks he restores antique maps.”

My skin tingles where his lips graze it, which is extremely distracting, considering we are discussing forged Civil War documents. A laugh bursts out of me. “That’s his cover?”

“Yep,” Miles says. “The man contains multitudes.”

We move on to a woman in an enormous sunhat.

“Competitive orchid smuggling,” Miles tells me.

“There are competitions for that?”

“There’s a competition for everything. Even if the competitors don’t know they’re competing.”

By the time we move on to Secret Lives of the Innocent, the woman in the sunhat has become the mastermind of an international botanical crime syndicate, and beachy button-down is forging documents to help her transport rare orchids across borders.

The night is getting a little chillier, so I’m tucked against Miles’s side now, his arm around my shoulders. I gesture discreetly toward an older man who’s eating pretzels from a paper cup. “Him.”

Miles studies him. “Retired accountant.”

“But that’s only his cover. He was once the drummer in an extremely successful eighties rock band. He even had the big hair.”

“He walked away at the height of their fame,” Miles says.

I nod. “After a scandal.”

“But it wasn’t his scandal—it was the lead singer’s. He just took the fall.”

“By choice?” I ask.

Miles nods. “He knew the lead singer was suffering from male pattern baldness and could no longer pull off the big hair without a wig. If the band didn’t break up, the public would’ve found out.”

I look back over at the retired accountant / disgraced rock drummer as he finishes his pretzels and moves to another part of the boat. “Now that’s a true friend.”

I turn back to Miles to see that he’s just gazing at me. His hair is moving in the breeze, his eyes warm and amused, and for a second, I just look back because my best friend is ridiculously handsome, and I no longer have to pretend that fact is irrelevant. So, I kiss him. He kisses me back, pulling me in close, and it’s a good, long while before we get back to the game.

Eventually, I spot a woman sitting alone with oversized sunglasses, reading a paperback. “Witness protection,” I say.

Miles looks. “I can confirm. She keeps checking the reflection in the window instead of turning around.”

I look at the woman until she does it again. “Ooh, the perks of you being a spy. It gives us an occupational advantage.”

“Yep, and combined with your librarian-grade pattern recognition and beekeeper vigilance, we’re unstoppable.”

Both our phones buzz at the same time, so we both pull them out. It’s a text with a picture from Charlie.

Charlie: In case you were wondering what my ring looks like in the lighting of Board and Butter.

She’s got her left hand facing the camera and the deli in the background, even though I’ve now seen her engagement ring approximately forty-seven times since Owen proposed to her eleven days ago after the ribbon-cutting and opening night of the Shadowridge Theater. Just three more days until he finishes the train station restoration in Philadelphia and Charlie gets him back in town full time.

Miles chuckles and texts back.