After The Storm

by K. M. Scott

  A grown woman didn’t require permission to run her life as she saw fit.

  Instead of saying something, like an apology for treating her like some kind of subservient child who needed his permission, he stood up and began walking across the room. Kate watched in a mixture of confusion and fear as he came toward her. For as much as she believed every single word she’d said, she didn’t truly know this man or how he’d react to her impromptu declaration of her own independence.

  Would he force her to obey him now? Or would he just walk out and go back to his boss to report that Kate Sheridan was definitely not a woman who needed their kind of help.

  All of this raced through her brain as he slowly moved closer.

  Roman stopped just inches away from where she stood and stared down at her with a look in his eyes she couldn’t place. For a moment, she thought it could be admiration or appreciation, but she couldn’t be sure. She waited for him to say something, frozen there as she tried to imagine what his response would be.

  He opened his mouth to speak but then his face twisted into an expression of anguish and he reached out for her, grabbing her shoulders. Kate’s thoughts immediately focused on his injury, but before she could ask him what was wrong, he fell back onto the bed behind him, taking her down with him.

  They landed on the bed with her on top of his chest and their legs entwined. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if he’d passed out from the pain or something else happened. Roman’s eyes were closed, so she couldn’t be sure.

  “Roman? Are you okay?” she asked, touching his face to check if he was conscious.

  His eyelids fluttered open and he winced. “I’m fine.”

  “You aren’t fine. You just fell over in pain from that cut on your side. That’s not fine,” she said before she realized in horror that she might be pressing against his side. “Oh, my God! Am I hurting you?”

  She tried to pull away, but he held her to him. “You’re not hurting me.”

  He felt so strong against her that she didn’t want to move. They lay there with his arm around her, Roman holding the two of them to one another. “Just give me a second and I’ll be fine, Kate. Could you stop being angry with me for that long? I promise you that as soon as I’m up on my feet you can tell me how much you don’t want my help all you want.”

  All the worry and guilt she’d felt earlier washed over her and exhausted her suddenly. Resting her head on his chest as she had when she felt asleep the night before, she closed her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult. I am. I guess I’m just more independent than most women.”

  He didn’t respond, and as she listened to the sound of his breathing and felt his chest rise and fall beneath her head, she decided she didn’t need him to say anything.

  But she did want him to know she had no regrets about who she was.

  Opening her eyes, she lifted herself off him and leaned on her elbow as he looked at her with those dark eyes of his that never seemed to give away his feelings about anything.

  “I’m not sorry for being that kind of person, Roman.”

  While that was true, she felt the need to add something else. “I am sorry for a lot of things you’ve had to go through because of me, though. When you look back on this job, I hope you’ll remember that.”

  He smiled and looked up at the ceiling before returning his focus to her. “Kate, I’m not going anywhere, so I won’t be looking back on this job as if it stopped here. Just as you don’t plan to have anyone tell you what to do, either do I. Maybe we can come to some agreement that lets us both be who we are without making the other person be something they aren’t?”

  “Was that what you were going to say before you collapsed?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  Kate took a deep breath in as she thought about his question, inhaling the scent of his shirt and his skin that smelled so uniquely him. Clean and masculine. She did like having him around, even if he tried to make her do things she didn’t want to do.

  And as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she needed his help. The police still had her on their radar, and they would find her if she didn’t get out of the city soon. Without Roman, she might be forced to contact her friends and family for some way to escape, and she didn’t want to do that. He’d likely have an idea on how to get away safely.

  She did owe him for all he’d gone through to help her. True, it was his job, but unless he was getting hazardous duty pay, he likely didn’t expect to get cut up crawling out a cheap motel bathroom window.

  “Okay, I think I can agree to that. No more you telling me what you’re going to let me do, right?”

  Roman smiled and nodded his agreement. “Right. And no more fighting me on every little thing. I meant what I said when I promised to protect you, Kate. I would never do anything that would make me go back on that pledge.”

  Maybe because she’d never had anyone who wanted to protect her the idea of someone like Roman wanting more than anything to take care of her just sounded unbelievable. She didn’t know why she fought him on everything he’d tried to do, but she could try to change that part of her since he wouldn’t be ordering her around anymore.

  “It’s a deal,” she said and then sat up next to him. “I admit I’d like to stay here and just lie around for the rest of the day, but we need to get moving if we’re going to get to my office building before everyone starts to come into work.”

  Roman nodded once more and slowly sat up. “Then I guess we better get moving to your office, but you need to promise me you’ll follow my lead. It’s not me telling you what to do. It’s just that I’m more experienced with breaking into places in the middle of the night.”

  Intrigued, she chuckled at the idea of him on the wrong side of the law. “Really? Now this is a side of you I hadn’t expected, Roman.”

  He stood up and rolled his eyes. “You have no idea.”

  Kate opened up her purse on the dresser and dangled keys in front of her. “But there won’t be any need for any breaking and entering tonight.”

  “We’re not going to go through the front door. We’ll have to find another way so we won’t be seen,” he said, dismissing her suggestion.

  Moving through the keys on her keychain, she held up the one to the back door of the building. “Well, I have that covered too. The back door work for you?”

  He arched one dark eyebrow and smiled. “Okay. Maybe I underestimated you, Kate.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s a long line of people in my life who’ve done the same thing. I might not have all the answers, but sometimes I come up with one.”

  Roman opened the hotel room door and looked out into the hall before turning back to look at her. Extending his arm, he said, “Then I’ll let you lead the way, but you need to make me one promise.”

  She stopped in the doorway and looked up at him. “And what’s that?”

  “If we get into any trouble, you follow my lead.”

  “Deal.”

  That she could agree to. In fact, as they began to walk down the hallway together toward the stairwell, she thought that she could agree to a lot of things with Roman when he acted like this. The memory of his muscular body naked in front of her in the bathroom and then him under her on the bed made her wonder if she wasn’t thinking with the right part of her body when it came to him, though.

  But for the moment, she liked having him next to her doing what no one else had ever done.

  Protecting her.

  Chapter Ten

  After making their way down the hotel stairwell and through the attached parking garage, they covered the ten blocks in just under twenty minutes and reached her office building on Loyola Avenue. Along the way, she filled him in on a few things she felt he needed to know, particularly that many a night she had worked late and never once did she run into any security, even when she didn’t clock out until one or two in the morning.

  Roman knew they didn’t have much
time before people began showing up for work. He followed Kate through the back service door of the fourteen story building and directed her toward the stairs when she began walking toward the elevators, earning him a look of utter disbelief.

  “Are you kidding? My office is on the ninth floor,” she said in exasperation that they’d have to walk the entire way.

  “We can’t risk the night security seeing someone using the elevators,” he whispered in her ear as he gently pushed her up the first few white concrete steps in the stairwell painted to match.

  “Why? I work here. It wouldn’t be anything strange for me to show up at any time during the day or night,” she complained in a tone that verged on whining.

  “Just trust me on this. Walking is the way to go.”

  He waited for her to fight him on this point as she’d fought him on virtually everything else in the past couple days, but to his surprise, she just sighed loudly and trudged up the steps without saying another word.

  Until they reached the third floor.

  Huffing and puffing like she hadn’t climbed three flights of stairs before in her life, she turned toward him and shook her head. “I need a second. I swear to God I don’t think I’m going to make it the whole nine floors.”

  “Do I have to carry you?” Roman joked, hoping she didn’t take him seriously since his side still ached.

  Screwing her face into a grimace, she began walking up the stairs again. “No. You do not have to carry me, thank you. I just needed a second to catch my breath.”

  He wanted to tease her and say she didn’t look as out of shape as she seemed at that moment, but he didn’t want to ruin the good thing they had going on since they’d reached a détente of sorts back at the hotel. Walking behind her, he had to admit she had great legs and a nice ass, even if she couldn’t climb stairs very well.

  As they reached the landing on the fifth floor, a noise that sounded like someone jiggling the handle on the door started her, and she reached back to grab his hand. “Someone’s coming!”

  He stopped and waited to see if it would open. All the time, Kate’s hand tightly squeezed his. After a few seconds, nothing happened, so he tapped her on the shoulder.

  She turned to look at him, her eyes filled with a look of terror. “What do we do?” she whispered in a panicked voice.

  For a long moment, he watched for the door to open. If it did, he’d get in front of Kate and protect her from whoever appeared. When no one did, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “It’s okay. Probably just the security guard. Let’s keep going but if you have to say anything, make sure you whisper, okay?”

  Still clutching his hand, she didn’t let go as they began to ascend the next flight of stairs to the sixth floor. When they reached each door, she stopped for a moment like she feared someone would come through at any second. Roman doubted that’s where they’d run into trouble. Far more likely, if they had any problems, it would come when they got to her boss’s office.

  Finally, they got to the ninth floor and Kate perked up at the fact that at least they didn’t have to climb any more stairs. Turning her head to look back at him, she smiled.

  “I didn’t think I’d make that last set of stairs,” she whispered. “How is it you’re not exhausted?”

  “Good genes,” he said with a smile.

  “But what about your injury?” she asked, pointing at his side.

  He had felt it twinge a little a few flights below but nothing he couldn’t handle. Shrugging, he just shook his head.

  “Maybe I should go through first. You know, just in case the security guard is there,” he suggested as she began to twist the door handle.

  “Why? What are you going to do? Knock him out?” she asked wide-eyed.

  In truth, he didn’t know what he’d do if they opened the door and found a security guard standing on the other side. He didn’t like getting other people involved in cases, especially when he already was breaking the law.

  However, he couldn’t have a guard calling the police before they retrieved the information they’d come for, so if it meant he had to incapacitate the guy for a short time, he’d do it. His job was to protect Kate, and that’s what he’d do.

  No matter what it took.

  “No. Well, if I have to, but…just be careful when you open the door. Don’t go through it without looking around first,” he said, praying to God she’d listen to him on this.

  “Okay. Jonas’s office is at the back. As soon as you go through the door, it’s on the right.”

  She slowly opened the door and did exactly what Roman had told her to do, looking left and then right before walking through to the dimly lit floor of office suites. He followed closely behind, noting the location of the elevators on the opposite end of the floor and that there didn’t seem to be any other way out than the stairwell.

  They hurried to the office at the back of the building, and Kate used her key to her boss’s office to let them in. Closing the door behind them, he watched as she made a beeline to the desk near the window thankfully covered with closed blinds.

  She turned on the lamp on the left corner of his desk and looked back at Roman. “Jonas was a history buff, so when he saw these lamps online he bought them because he said they made his office look like an old timey southern lawyer’s office.”

  Roman looked at them and didn’t see how they were any different than other lamps he’d ever seen in offices. Gold tone with linen rectangular shades, they didn’t seem old timey or southern to him.

  “You should have seen how pleased he was when he turned them on for the first time,” she reminisced as she sat in the chair behind his desk. “He was just as pleased as punch.”

  For the first time, he noticed Kate only occasionally had a southern accent. Curious, he asked, “Why don’t you sound like everyone else in New Orleans?”

  She looked up as she spun around in the chair toward the filing cabinet next to the desk and asked, “What do you mean by that?”

  “You don’t have a southern accent like everyone else in New Orleans. Like the desk clerk at the hotel. You don’t sound anything like him. You only sound like you’re from here when you say certain words, like when you said he was as pleased as punch. Why?”

  Flashing him a smile, she said, “I was born in Illinois. My family didn’t move down here until I was thirteen. I think the rule is if you move somewhere after you’re twelve, you sound like the place you came from. I’ve picked up some of the accent, but I guess I still sound like I’m from up north.”

  She opened up the filing cabinet and lifted a laptop out of the top drawer. Surprised to see that come out, he said, “That’s a strange place to keep that, isn’t it?”

  With a nod, she closed the drawer and set the laptop on the desk. Opening it, she explained as she began to tap on the keyboard, “He was an odd combination of old and new. I guess it seems strange, but even with his quirks, Jonas was an okay guy.”

  “What seems strange is that he didn’t take his laptop with him when he left the office.”

  Kate stopped typing for a moment and shrugged. “I guess. That was another idiosyncrasy of his. He had the ability to remember any detail he came across. What do they call that? Photographic memory or something like that. So he didn’t really need his laptop if a client called him when he was at home.”

  “Then what’s going to be on the laptop that will prove anything?” Roman asked, suddenly worried her boss had kept all the important details in his head and they’d risked coming there for nothing.

  She grinned up at him. “I said he remembered everything. I didn’t say he wasn’t completely OCD about making sure there was a copy of it. As I said, quirky. Anything Jonas ever heard, read, or saw ended up in a file on this laptop. But I’d bet a hundred bucks most people don’t even know he had this since he kept it hidden in that file cabinet all the time. I’m likely the only person who knew he used it.”

  Quirky indeed.

  “That must b
e why the cops didn’t take it when they searched here. I can’t imagine they’d leave a laptop full of potential evidence.”

  Kate pointed at the empty spot in front of her on the desk. “They took his desktop computer. I’m guessing they think they have everything they need. But they aren’t going to find anything on it other than receipts for everything he bought for the office, payroll for me, and his tax information.”

  She continued tapping away on the keyboard and then opened the top desk drawer to grab a jump drive. She stuck it into the laptop as Roman watched out the door for anyone coming toward the office.

  On edge, he wanted her to hurry and couldn’t understand what she was doing with the laptop all this time. “We need to get out of here, Kate.”

  Looking up from whatever she was reading on the screen, she said, “I don’t want to just take the laptop.”

  Roman shook his head, confused at her statement. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe the laptop could be traced.”

  He chuckled and shook his head again. “Only in the movies. Not in real life, unless he’s got it set up like that, which I doubt, so just take the damn thing and let’s go.”

  Now that she knew that kind of tracing a computer probably wasn’t an issue, she slammed the laptop closed and as she rounded the corner of the desk, she turned off the light. For a moment, she looked around the office as Roman wondered what she could be doing just standing there.

  Her voice filled with sadness, she said, “Jonas was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. I’m going to miss working together with him. He gave me a job right out of school when I had no experience. He was a good person.”

  Not wanting to hurry her through the makeshift eulogy she seemed to need at that moment, nevertheless, he didn’t feel good about them staying any longer in that office. If the security guard had been the one checking the door on the fourth floor, he’d make it up to the ninth floor soon. He didn’t want to run into anyone who might sound the alarm.