Actual Stop

by Kara A. McLeod

Traffic on the bridge was packed with people looking to go out and have a good time and was crawling. I took advantage of the situation and got out my cell phone to send a quick text message while I had the chance. Once we were on the FDR, I wouldn’t be able to.

  “Hey!” Allison made a grab for the phone. “No texting and driving. It’s bad enough you try to talk and drive.”

  I had to be quick to maintain possession of the phone. Keeping it out of her reach with one hand while fending her off with the other wasn’t easy. “We’re sitting in completely stopped traffic.” Her flailing arms were now smacking me in the face in their attempt to pry the phone from my grasp, but I continued to text badly with my left hand while elbowing her across the chest with my right. “We haven’t—ouch—moved. Stop it!” I slapped at her hands with my free one and was rewarded with a surprisingly forceful backhand across the nose. “Ow! The message is already sent.”

  “Put it away,” she ordered me. “We’re moving now.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” I shot back maturely.

  “Away.”

  I scowled and touched my nose gingerly before complying with her request. “Has it occurred to you that brawling with me while I’m operating a motor vehicle is slightly more dangerous and apt to get us all killed than my texting?”

  “Just leave it in the holster while you’re behind the wheel.” Allison narrowed her eyes and pointed one finger in my direction.

  “I love it when you get all domineering,” I told her, allowing my voice to turn low and throaty at the end. I grinned at her and wiggled my eyebrows suggestively, marveling at how easy it was to slip back into playful banter with her. Like not a minute had passed.

  Allison was not amused. “How about when I spank you like the spoiled brat you are? Do you love that?”

  I made a show of closing my eyes, letting my head loll back, and moaning softly. “Don’t tease me. It isn’t nice.” That earned me a hard punch on the arm and a glare, which made me laugh.

  “Uh…Ryan?” Allison said in a small voice.

  My insides flipped at her tenor, and I was immediately wary. She did know I was only kidding…right? “What?”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “What?”

  “Your nose.” Her tone was just this side of apologetic. She pointed, as if I couldn’t be trusted to find my nose on my own. “It’s bleeding.”

  I touched my fingers to my upper lip and discovered she was right. “Wonder whose fault that is?”

  “Whose?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “What?”

  “You really don’t see how you might’ve had something to do with this?”

  Allison shrugged lightly, but I could see she was struggling not to smile. “I plead the fifth.”

  “I’m sure you do.” My tone was wry. I made a faint gesture with my now-bloody hand before returning it to its previous task of trying to catch the crimson flow. “You’ll find some napkins in the glove box.”

  With an expression that was an odd mixture of amusement, wistfulness, and contrition, Allison grabbed a couple and handed them to me so I could clean myself up. “How long?” She sounded concerned.

  “How long what?” I was busy trying to wipe my nose, assess the damage in the mirror, and drive at the same time.

  “Since you were sick? How long?”

  Bloody nose momentarily forgotten, I turned my head to gape at her. “Huh?”

  “You always get a bloody nose easily right after you’ve had a sinus infection. So I was wondering how long ago you’d been sick.”

  I was shocked she even remembered but tried not to show it. “Are you trying to blame this mess on something other than you and your flailing limbs of fury?”

  Allison snorted. “Call it shared culpability if you like. I refuse to accept all responsibility for this situation. But if you were recently sick, it wouldn’t take much.”

  “Hmm. I only admit it because I want you to know I’m tougher than that, and it’d take more than that pop you gave me to really hurt me.”

  Allison smirked. “Of course. You’re a total badass.”

  I laughed, and she looked at me expectantly. “What?”

  “How. Long.”

  “Oh. About three days, I guess.” I was concentrating much harder than necessary on weaving in and out of traffic on the FDR. “Maybe four.” I was oddly touched she recalled something so trivial about me. Especially since I’d been under the impression she’d completely purged everything about me from her memory. A lump began to form in my throat, and I tried to swallow it.

  Allison sniffed and glanced in my direction. “You’d better not get me sick,” she said, her tone threatening. She pointed one finger at me as she gave me the command.

  “How the hell do you think I’m going to get you sick?”

  “You’d just better not.”

  “Well, don’t kiss me, then,” I shot back, regretting the words the instant they were out of my mouth.

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” Allison fished her BlackBerry out of its holster in response to the vibration that even I could hear in the weighty silence filling the car.

  My face immediately warmed, and the slash of regret that sliced through me was agonizing. I hadn’t been expecting her to kiss me, of course, but would it have killed her to want to? Even a little? I inhaled deeply and let out a heavy sigh. I hastily resumed wiping my face with the napkin in an attempt to hide my expression. Fortunately, Allison didn’t appear to notice. She was completely consumed with reading and then answering an email on her BlackBerry, leaving me to wallow in my own unpleasant thoughts.

  “How many post-standers do we have for the LZ again?” Allison’s eyes were glued to the device in her hands as her thumbs flew over the keys.

  I wracked my brain, trying to remember how many bodies the scheduling guys told us we could have for the landing zone we used for Marine One. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t like the answer. “How many did we ask for, or how many did we get?”

  “Those numbers are different?”

  I nodded, speeding up in order to pass a slow-moving car in the right lane and then returning to that lane quickly so we didn’t miss our exit. “They always are, out there. But we can use NYPD detectives on the outer-perimeter, nondiscretionary posts. I’ll show you. It isn’t a big deal.”

  Allison was pursing her lips and annoyance flickered across her features, but I could tell it wasn’t directed at me, which made me nearly dizzy with relief. I must have hidden my emotions better than I’d thought. Either that or she was more distracted than I’d realized.

  Allison let out an irritated sigh and punched the keys on her BlackBerry with a little more force than she’d been using. “What’d they give us?” Her tone was borderline resigned but with a touch of exasperation.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Why are you worried about this, again? You have coworkers up here with you getting paid to work out those details. You don’t have to do everything yourself. We have enough to concentrate on without getting involved in things that aren’t our job. Trust your peers to do theirs.”

  “I do trust them. But I want to know everything about every single, solitary part of this visit. Right down to the smallest detail.”

  I tried hard not to smile because showing any mirth would only irritate her. But it was tough. She was too cute when she was all anal retentive. “Of course. When we get to the room, I’ll go over the diagrams for each site with you one by one. Then you can work it out with the site agents how you want it structured. Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.”

  “You have working copies of the diagrams already?”

  I nodded, piloting through the traffic on the surface streets with care, keeping a particularly wary eye on the yellow cabs zipping around. “Yeah. I sketched them while we did the initial walkthroughs.” That made me as much of a control freak as she was.

  “Fantastic.” Allison sou
nded relieved.

  “You asked the boss if you could work with me and then expected a half-assed job?”

  “Do you really think I’d stake my reputation on anything less than stellar?”

  “Then why do you sound so surprised that I made diagrams?”

  “I don’t know. I just wasn’t thinking that far ahead. This whole thing sort of took me by surprise. And then there was the shock of actually seeing you.” Her words made me inhale sharply, but I didn’t have time to follow up on them. She held up her BlackBerry and wiggled it at me as she rushed on. “The boss wants to do preliminary walkthroughs tomorrow afternoon. I want to have everything squared away by then.”

  “No problem.”

  I forced myself to focus on the parking situation and tear my mind away from her cryptic comments. I’d spotted a space just up the block that would put us less than thirty steps from the front door of Allison’s hotel and had convinced myself if I didn’t take my eyes off it, I’d be able to save the space through willpower alone.

  I effortlessly slid the Impala into the spot, pleased with my luck. Throwing the car into park, I leaned back between the seats to retrieve my parking placard, unsure how it’d ended up there in the first place.

  The resulting position put my face in very close proximity to Allison. When she turned to look at me, her lips mere inches from mine, and I again had the disconcerting notion she was staring directly into my soul. She leaned toward me, causing my head to swim; the scent of her was intoxicating.

  Allison’s near-black eyes flicked to my lips for an instant, and she shifted just a fraction of an inch closer, her lips quirked in a small smile. I was pretty sure my heart would give out at that point.

  “I thought I told you not to get me sick,” she whispered. Her breath ghosted gently across my cheek, and I had to fight not to close my eyes.

  “I thought I told you not to kiss me,” I whispered back. I flashed her a small smile of my own, amazed I had the presence of mind to form coherent words, let alone attempt wit.

  “I wasn’t planning to.” She tried to make her protest sound haughty, but the heat in her voice fizzled and died. She didn’t make any move to increase the distance between us.

  “Uh-huh.”

  My heart lurched. I’d seen that expression before and wasn’t liable to forget it. She might not have planned to actually do it, but she’d definitely thought about it. If only for the briefest of instants.

  In the end, the loud honking of a car horn on the corner shattered the moment. I folded my fingers around the police placard but took my time returning to a completely upright position.

  “Come on, supercop,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Allison smiled back at me as she gathered her belongings and followed me out of the car.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The New York Field Office of the United States Secret Service leads the entire agency in arrest stats as well as protection visits, surpassing even the Washington Field Office. The guys in WFO like to argue that we’re only on top due to a technicality because our stats are bolstered every year by the United Nations General Assembly, which usually attracts upward of two hundred protectees to the NYFO district. In response to those allegations, I normally choose to respond with a well-timed raspberry. I find that tends to end most arguments rather quickly.

  In addition to the yearly meeting of the UNGA, New York has numerous visiting dignitaries in and out of the city throughout the year. Because of that, we tend to have a close working relationship with the many hotel chains scattered in and around here. Most hotels have housed either agents or visiting foreign delegations.

  The W Hotel on Lexington Avenue is located near both the Waldorf Astoria and Intercontinental, two favorite hotels of our own president and of foreign heads of state. As such, it’s the perfect location to house our agents when necessary. The agency has a very good working relationship with the hotel staff, and I’d personally made some friends there over the years.

  That fact would explain the loud, “Well, well, well” that carried across the entire lobby upon my arrival.

  I turned toward the greeting, both unwilling and unable to hold back my grin. “Well, yourself,” I shot back. “Looking pretty good.” I allowed my eyes to sweep up and down the curvaceous form of my personal welcoming committee, lingering very obviously on specific parts of her anatomy.

  Allison’s eyes shot from me to the woman heckling me, but the ringing of her cell phone spared me any commentary. She walked a few paces away to take the call in relative privacy while I rested my hands on my hips and waited.

  The blond woman headed my way snorted as she approached and rolled her hazel eyes theatrically. She made a show of fluffing her hair and sweeping nonexistent lint off her impeccably pressed uniform. Her general manager’s nametag gleamed brightly under the lobby lights.

  “Pretty good? Please. I look fabulous, as usual. And stop trying to butter me up. I got your text.” Her tone was dry, but her eyes were shining, so I knew she wasn’t really as annoyed as she pretended. “That’s always the way with you agents. We don’t hear from you for months, and when we finally do, it’s only because you want something.”

  “Oh, come on, Stace. That is so not true. I asked you out to dinner just last week.” I paused as I rethought that statement. “Or maybe it was two weeks ago? I think last week I was on Trinidad. Anyway, whenever it was, I didn’t want anything from you then aside from the pleasure of your company.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course, really. What else would I want?”

  Stacey shrugged, but I recognized the mischievous gleam in her eye all too well. It always meant trouble. “Oh, come on, Ryan. We both know you’re hopelessly attracted to me. Why deny it any longer?”

  I scoffed. “We do, huh?”

  “We do. And I’m flattered. Really. But you know I’m happily married. Besides, I just don’t think I could get on board with the whole woman scene.”

  “The hearts of lesbian and bi-curious women everywhere are breaking.” She was such a trip.

  She went on airily, almost as if I hadn’t spoken. “Even if I were inclined to make all your wildest dreams come true and give the girl-on-girl thing a shot, Jeff would be devastated. You know he called first dibs on you. And I don’t think he’d want to share you, even with me.”

  I bit back a laugh, unsure, as I always was, whether Stacey really was that cocky or whether she was just messing with me. I really hoped it was the latter. “That’s a damn shame. And as attractive as I think your husband is—you know, for a guy—he just doesn’t do it for me. But don’t tell him that, okay?”

  She laughed at my joke, and her gaze slid over to Allison, who had her back to us and was giving no sign of paying any attention to our banter. “Speaking of attractive.”

  My chest was suddenly tight, and my face burned as my eyes flicked to the woman in question. I clenched my teeth together for an instant before making a conscious effort to dispel the tension from my body. It helped. Well, a bit.

  “What happened to Lucia?” Stacey wanted to know. “Did you finally break up with her? Because it’s about damn time.”

  I blinked, startled, and returned my attention to Stacey, who was eying Allison speculatively. After a moment, her focus shifted back to me. “Not that Lucia isn’t very sweet and completely gorgeous if you go for that Michelle Rodriguez type, but you know…” She sketched a wave in the air, as if she’d made her point.

  “Lucia and I didn’t break up.” I had trouble getting the words out, and I didn’t even want to think about why the air in the lobby had just become stifling.

  Stacey’s eyes widened, and she put one hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God, Ryan. I’m so sorry. I just assumed, well, I mean, I never really thought you and Lucia clicked all that well, and now here you are with this walking wet dream—”

  “Stacey,” I barked, a little louder than necessary, which caused Allison to turn her head in my direction and examine me briefly
with her hawk-like gaze. Two things were bothering me about Stacey’s statement, and I still wasn’t sure which affected me more.

  First was her opinion that Lucia and I had never really clicked. I’d thought we actually clicked pretty well. And what the hell would she know about it anyway? She’d seen us together on maybe three occasions and only long enough for us to grab dinner. That was hardly time enough to accurately assess an entire relationship.

  Second, something about her categorization of Allison irritated me. A lot. Not that it wasn’t accurate. Not by a long shot. Hell, I’d been teetering unsteadily on the razor edge of arousal all freaking day because Allison Reynolds and I were occupying the same space, but still, to hear someone else say it out loud…

  Stacey’s features softened, and her expression became a cross between sympathetic and incredulous. “Oh, wow. You’ve got it bad.” Her voice was hushed, almost a whisper, her tone colored with quiet wonder.

  “I do not!” I’d have done better to pretend not to know what she was talking about. My fervent denial pretty much confirmed her suspicions. For both of us.

  Shit.

  “Come on, Ryan.” Stacey placed a tender hand on my shoulder, and the gesture touched yet aggravated me. “I see the way you look at her. It’s obvious that—”

  I held up my hand to stop her, positive I was better off not knowing what she intended to say. I believed in plausible deniability. Oh, and plain old denial. I was a definite fan of that, too. At least in this instance.

  “Stace, we really gotta go.” I turned abruptly and walked away from the conversation, trying to sweep the entire conversation—revelations and all—to the back of my mind. I brushed the palm of my hand along Allison’s back briefly to get her attention on my way to the elevators but averted my eyes. Stacey’s words had resonated within me on several levels, and I was sure Allison would immediately know something was up.

  “Ryan.” Stacey’s voice carried after me and sounded a touch upset.

  I got into the elevator with Allison following closely behind and turned back to face the now-closing doors. “I’ll call you later.”