Colin followed her inside and set her larger carry-on down. “Here’s the room key.” He pulled out the small envelope from his back pocket and put the credit card-looking thing on the dresser with the television on it.
She noticed the envelope wasn’t empty when he set it back in his pocket. “You’re keeping a key to my room?”
“Just in case. But I’m not going to be far.” He turned around and stood in front of the discreet door between the entryway and the living space of the room. He undid the bolt lock and opened the door, revealing another closed door behind it. “I’m going to be right through here, so if you need anything, I’ll be close.”
Jean set a palm over her mouth as she tried to hide her smile. “I didn’t realize you were my servant for the time being.”
He turned around and narrowed his eyes, but the hint of a grin told her he caught the humor. “I’m just trying to make your stay easy. Either way, I’ll be right through here. My door will be unlocked and your door had damn well better be unlocked too.”
“Well, damn, there goes my idea of hooking up with random New York guys.”
Colin’s scowl turned genuine. “If I want to listen to strangers fucking, I’ll watch porn, understand?”
Jean took a small step back, trying to figure out when they’d gone from joking “ha-ha” back to him issuing her warnings and threats. Sure, the ride to the airport had been awkward, but after he’d talked her through takeoff, they’d been in a sort of truce. He gave her a small tour of the city as he drove her, this time in his own Lincoln Navigator, through the boroughs to the Manhattan hotel he’d booked for them.
Oh well. She supposed there would never be any long lasting peace between the two of them. “So what happens now?”
“We’re going to meet with Robert tomorrow. Hopefully we can get the DNA test submitted then too and get the ball rolling on your inheritance claim.”
“We never talked about what’s happening with that. Are we switching out the sample or something?”
Colin shook his head. “I told you...it’s all taken care of. The lab tech who’s going to be doing the testing is in place and knows what to do. You’re all set.”
“And is his bribe money coming out of my cut then?”
“As I said, I’m getting all the expenses. That means all of them.”
Probably because he knew exactly how she’d feel about a bribe. “Okay. I’ll probably lay low for the rest of the night. Should we order pizza or something for dinner?”
Colin shut the door to her room and grabbed his own bag as he headed for the door next door which opened to his room. “I have a few things I need to take care of. Feel free to order pizza, room service, Chinese—whatever you want.”
“What kind of things are you doing?” She regretted the question the second it was out. Even with how angry she’d been at Colin just that morning, it was so easy to start thinking they were friends. Maybe friends was a stretch, but she kept forgetting they were basically enemies.
“Nothing important. Just get some rest, Jean. I’ll wake you up tomorrow morning.”
With that, he was out of her room and the door slid softly shut behind him. Nothing important? That probably meant it was something unsavory. Figured.
Jean shrugged off her zip-up sweatshirt and set it along the back of the chair in front of the desk area. The room was nicer than she’d expected. She was too used to the shady motels that Katherine had been staying at lately with stains on the walls and carpeting.
Everything looked new in this room. The TV was a larger flat-screen with a list of channels next to it. The bed was covered with a thick comforter with a natural dark-green pattern that contrasted nicely with the golden wallpaper.
She wouldn’t mind spending a few days here. Though, from the little she knew about inheritance disputes, they could take months, so she wasn’t sure what Colin’s long-term plan was. But that was his problem, not hers.
And, considering he didn’t leave her any cash to order in, she supposed room service would have to do. At least she could charge that to the room and, therefore, Colin.
She pulled the information binder off the desk and sat on the bed as she looked through the menu. All of her glee about charging dinner to Colin fled when she realized how expensive everything was. Good grief. Chicken strips were twenty bucks! Who paid that?
As she flipped through the pages of the menu, she decided to strike a balance between her hunger and pity for Colin’s wallet and called downstairs to order a plain burger. The nice woman who took her order said it would be ready within twenty minutes.
Jean fell back on the bed and thought about what she’d do while she waited. TV was really the only option. She wasn’t used to not having anything to do. Her life was a cycle of work, fix problems, and fall asleep exhausted. Rinse, repeat.
Well, at least she had the exhausted part down. She’d been up since two in the morning and hadn’t been able to get a wink of sleep on the plane. As she looked at the clock to see how much time had passed, she debated cancelling the order so she could just sleep.
Except she probably couldn’t get a refund. Damn it, no. She could stay awake for just a few minutes more.
The ten minutes stretched to forty and the damn food still hadn’t arrived. Jean had been flipping through channels, but nothing looked interesting and she finally gave in and called, asking about her burger. Except they said it had already been delivered. They apologized profusely and promised to send up a new one and make sure her room was never charged.
As much as she loved the idea of a free burger, she’d rather get a candy bar out of the vending machine and call it a night.
The sounds of shuffling came from the room next door and Jean sat up. Was Colin still there? She figured he’d be long gone by now. She flipped the TV off and crossed to the little doorway that connected their rooms. She tried to listen through the two sets of doors, but nothing came. So she opened her side to see the blank, handle-less door to Colin’s room.
“What are you doing over there?” she called. “I’m starving and my food still isn’t here. Did you have any food hidden in that luggage?”
The door to Colin’s room slid open, except it wasn’t Colin there. She never even had a chance to scream.
Colin stood outside the club where Shannon worked. Shannon wasn’t the name she went by inside, of course. He was one of the lucky few who knew her real name. She’d told him around the fifth time they’d been together. A small sign of trust between two people who used each other for a good time.
He should march straight in there and pull Shannon aside, but for some stupid reason he stood there like a moron out on the street. Damn it. He wanted this. His cock had been a constant reminder during the day of how long it had been since he’d been laid. Hell, just holding Jean’s hand on that plane had been enough to get him on high alert. He needed something to take the edge off.
He started to cross to the entrance of the building before he turned around and headed back to the hotel. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath as he quickened his pace. “Fuck,” he repeated, running a hand through his hair. This was such bullshit. He should be half naked right now with a beautiful blonde with the body of a Victoria Secret model, not angrily walking down the city streets alone.
Except the only body he could think of at the moment was Jean’s. Between her fitted t-shirts and tight pants, his mind had conjured up exactly what he thought she’d looked like naked, and ever since he’d gotten that mental picture, he hadn’t been able to stop envisioning her doing all sorts of things.
“Fuck...” He could power through this, though. Or, better yet, he could make a move on her. Chances were that she’d punch him in the face and that would be that.
But then he thought back to the kiss just a few hours ago. She hadn’t punched him then. She’d grabbed his shoulders and pulled him closer... Maybe working off some of his stress with her wasn’t such a bad idea. They had a hard time getting along, but obviou
sly there was some sort of mutual attraction. If the only thing they could agree on was sex, why not explore that option?
Just thinking about Jean saying yes had him walking faster. Maybe he could make it back to the room before she was asleep.
Before Jean could run from the stranger in front of her, his fist connected with her face in a fierce backhand. She stumbled backward, the closed closet doors the only things stopping her from tripping over her feet.
But the assailant was on her before she’d recovered. He wrapped an arm around her throat and hauled her deeper into her room. She immediately went into a full fight response and kicked and bucked and struggled against his grasp. But every time she moved, his grip on her throat seemed to tighten. It was as if the harder she fought, the worse it got.
Oh God. This was it. She was going to die in some stupid hotel room and then she and Colin would never get their stupid inheritance and she’d never get her stupid burger...
His grip tightened and all air was cut off. No... She couldn’t fight hard. She had to fight smart. Jean gave herself the briefest second to get control of herself...to fight through the fear overwhelming her and try to think. She was in the middle of the room and nothing was within reach. She needed to go for his face.
Not able to wait any longer, she swung again, this time aiming for his eyes. She must’ve startled him a bit, because he loosened his grip while he fought off her flailing hands.
He cursed under his breath as he tried to readjust his grip so he could hold onto one of her hands and keep his chokehold.
Except the second he had her hands, she’d be helpless. She kept trying to scratch at his face; her nails made contact a few times, but the assailant had had enough. He grunted before he threw her away from him and slammed her into the floor.
Jean tried to land on her hands and knees but ended up taking the brunt of the force in her shoulder. The man stood over her before she could get back on her feet. His arm stretched back, and she knew he was going to hit her again. Once he hit her, who knew when he’d stop?
So she did the one thing she could think of. She screamed at the top of her lungs while she lifted her arms up to cover her face. She stayed like that as the seconds stretched out, waiting for the blows to start. But before anything happened, a loud crash sounded. Jean took her arms away from her face and stared in the corner of the room, where Colin and the strange man were fighting.
Well, fighting wasn’t a fair word. Fighting is what she’d been doing. This guy never stood a chance against Colin. It looked as though he’d slammed the guy into the desk hard enough to crack the wood and send the lamp crashing to the ground. From there, Colin held the man by his collar and hit him over and over. The guy wasn’t putting up any fight by now...probably was barely conscious.
“Colin.” Jean pushed herself up.
He stopped, fist midair, to look over at her, a dark, deadly calm look in his eyes. As though it were someone else in her room, and not the Colin she knew.
She held up her hands. “Hey there. I’m okay...” she said softly. “Let’s just call the police.”
Colin took a deep breath and looked back at the man slumped against the desk. “Okay. Go call the front desk and tell them we need the police. Do it from my room.”
She looked at the phone next to her bed but thought better of it. If Colin wanted some time alone, she’d let him have it. Considering the intense mood he was in, she didn’t want to fight him on anything.
After making the call, she came back into her room. Colin was in the exact same spot. The attacker was half unconscious, but Jean was more than happy to let Colin stand guard over him.
She wrapped her arms around herself. She would’ve grabbed her sweater, but it was on the floor now behind where the men were, so it would just have to stay over there. “Friend of yours?” She looked at the clock, trying to decide how long it would take the police to get there.
Colin reached down and pulled a wallet out of the man’s jacket pocket. He looked to be mid to late thirties and had scraggly black hair with a black mustache and olive-looking skin. She didn’t remember what color his eyes were, and judging from the beating he’d gotten from Colin, he wouldn’t be able to open them fully for weeks.
“I don’t know him,” said Colin briskly. “Pack up your stuff,” he ordered.
Jean looked around the room, where she hadn’t really unpacked anything. “Where are we going to go?”
“We’re going to my apartment.”
Colin pulled into his parking space at the garage across from his apartment and looked over at Jean. She’d handled the whole situation well so far. Maybe even better than he had. If she hadn’t been there to pull him back, he didn’t know whether he would’ve stopped. That man had broken into Jean’s room... He’d hurt her.
Colin hadn’t been thinking straight. Hadn’t been thinking at all. All he knew was that the son of a bitch needed to pay.
The ID read Tony Marsh and seemed to be real. The fact that the guy would even bring his ID with him to an assassination attempt was a sure sign he was an amateur. Now the only question was which of the Farrell brothers hired him.
He hadn’t told Jean his theory yet. She was already stressed enough. But he’d need to tell her before they met with Robert tomorrow. Well, later today he supposed. By the time the police left, it was well past midnight.
He also hadn’t let the police know his little theory. He knew from firsthand experience that the police couldn’t touch people like the Farrells. He was normally the one Walter hired to make sure the police didn’t get what they wanted.
Jean glanced around at where they were parked. “Are we allowed to be here? It says reserved parking.”
“It’s reserved for me. I pay more for this parking spot than the monthly mortgage on your trailer would be. Come on.” He got out of the car and grabbed their bags from his trunk as she followed.
“So you have a decent amount of money already, don’t you?” Her words were just the slightest bit slurred, betraying how tired she was.
“Walter paid me a good salary. Enough to keep me going for a bit.”
“So why all this? Why bring me here?”
“Because I don’t want just enough to last for a little bit. I’m trying to get set for life. So I don’t have to follow anyone like the Farrells ever again.”
“Hmmm,” murmured Jean as he led the way out of the garage and across the street to his apartment building.
“It’s a fourth-floor walkup. Hope you don’t mind.” From the way she was walking, he was half convinced he was going to have to carry her.
“I got it,” she insisted as she proved her point by starting up the stairs.
He stayed behind her, just in case she did stumble, but she seemed to have it under control.
“I guess I’m pretty lucky,” she said ahead of him.
Funny. He thought she’d feel pretty damn unlucky after what just happened. “Why’s that?”
“You heard me. You just happened to be getting back when I screamed. That’s luck.”
He scoffed. If she’d really been lucky, he would’ve been there before the bastard ever had a chance to hit her. Except Jean didn’t know the true story of what happened. He’d told the police officers who showed up to arrest Tony Marsh that he’d heard her scream and went in. But he hadn’t come in through the connecting door. He’d used his own key to enter her room, determined to ask her what she thought about spending the night with him instead of alone. Who knew what would’ve happened if he’d been even a few seconds later? Or if he’d spent the night with Shannon?
Jean made it to the fourth floor without a problem but swayed as they came to a stop in front of the door. “Whoa there.” Colin dropped the bags and set a hand at the small of her back.
“You better have a comfortable bed, Stranger.” She leaned back into his arms.
Colin let his eyes close for the briefest moment as he leaned down to inhale her scent. After what almost happened, it
felt damn good to have her in his arms. But she was coming off an adrenaline high and had been exhausted even before all this.
Reluctantly he opened his eyes and pulled out his keys to open the door. The jingling seemed to wake her up a bit, and she moved away from him and into his apartment. She stepped in slowly, and he couldn’t tell whether she was looking for things about him, or waiting for someone to jump at her from the shadows.
He pulled the luggage inside and made sure the door was firmly shut and locked. Then he tied the trip wire to the handle, so if anyone came in unannounced through the night, the warning lights he had rigged around the apartment would give him plenty of warning.
Jean had stopped in the middle of the living space and turned in a slow circle. “You’re not a big fan of walls, are you?”
“This is actually an old factory. After the company went bust, the building was rezoned and converted to apartments. It’s a style.”
“A style? You bought an apartment for its style?”
He smiled. “Maybe the ability to see every room appealed to me.”
She nodded with narrowed eyes. “So what are you, Colin Carter? Some sort of commando? A ninja? Former army guy? Where does a guy like Walter Farrell find a guy like you?”
Colin approached her. “I think you’re too tired to have this conversation right now.”
Jean wrinkled her forehead and ran a hand through her hair. “I’m exhausted. I shouldn’t be this tired. A guy just tried to kill me. I should be, like, wired, right? Ready to go! I feel like I just had five shots of Jack Daniels...”
“It’s the shock getting to you.” He ran a hand down her arm before he even realized he was doing it.
Jean didn’t seem to notice, another sign of how tired she was. “But I was just so bad tonight...”
He raised a brow. “You were bad?”
“I was all...damsel-ey. I didn’t do anything right. I keep on replaying all the ways I could’ve done better. When I first saw him, I froze. There were seconds I could’ve been running out of the room, or punching him in the throat, or screaming, and I stood there like a dumbass deer in the headlights just waiting for him to kill me! I was bad! I think I even tripped over myself at some point.”
Ruthless (Fractured Farrells: A Damaged Billionaire Series Book 1) Page 7