But had it been unthinkable? As the clock ticked on toward their inevitable home foreclosure, Aletheia wondered if she'd made the right choice after all, giving up her dreams for an education and a life in the wider world outside Deer Creek. If they lost the house, all that sacrifice of hers would come to naught.
"But it's not all bad, is it?" Parker asked. "In some ways, going off with Felix is...an adventure."
"An adventure—not knowing what might have happened to Benjamin?"
Parker didn't waver. "You know what I mean."
She did. With a quivery sigh, Aletheia stepped back from the suitcase. In a way, it was exciting, packing in a rush to fly off—to anywhere she wanted. With Felix. In a way, it was acting out the dreams she'd given up. Travel. Excitement. Doing things. And then there was that almost-kiss.
Aletheia shook her head. "That's part of the problem, don't you see? He's so...capable. I find myself starting to count on him. Trust him. And all the while, I suspect he's playing me."
She stared into space. In Pi's closet, Felix had looked so...hungry. But maybe that had been part of the ploy. He'd had no trouble turning it all off. The message Aletheia had received ever since was "keep out."
Parker was gazing at her reflectively. "Can he play you?"
Aletheia felt her face warm. "Why not? I haven't had a decent date in years."
Parker smiled. "You're not that soft, coz. Especially not when it comes to your family."
Wondering what Parker would say if he knew how much she'd wanted Felix's lips on her own, Aletheia whirled toward her closet. Should she bring a dress? Did she own one?
"Speaking of family," Parker went on. "While you're off globe-trotting, don't forget us back here, suffering under the rule of this battle ax Felix is sending us."
With a laugh, Aletheia turned back to him. "I don't recall anyone mentioning a battle ax."
"You forget. Felix and I speak the same language: male. 'Field marshal' means 'battle ax.' I'm anticipating a gray-shot hag who resembles a tank in every way."
"Poor you." Aletheia turned from the closet with a sensible skirt instead of a dress. "Maybe you'd rather handle everything here, yourself?"
"Um..." Parker pretended to consider it, then grinned. "I'll take the battle ax."
"Thought so." Letting out a breath, Aletheia closed the lid of her suitcase.
As if he could have known she was ready, Felix appeared in her doorway: big, dark, and compellingly forbidding.
A shiver of excitement, of stepping into the unknown, passed through Aletheia as she looked into his hard, implacable features. There was no warmth visible there, no discernible human emotion—and yet she had a sense of something wild under the surface, something that a reckless part of her wanted to flirt with.
Who could have guessed she even owned a reckless part?
"The pilot is ready any time we are." Felix glanced down at her closed bag on the bed. "Are you done here?"
Aletheia waved a hand toward her suitcase. Felix still hadn't asked her where they were going. She wondered how the pilot felt about that.
"Good." Felix reached for the luggage.
The simple act of his hand closing around the handle made something sink in Aletheia's stomach. It felt as if he'd reached out to take such possessive hold of herself. As if she'd like him to.
She was so damn susceptible. It was going to be even worse once they were far away, alone together. If Felix followed through on the move he'd started in Pi's house, she'd be a goner.
On the other hand, a sense of relief and safety came over her, knowing he'd be with her, capable and strong, while she looked for her younger brother.
Aletheia watched Felix haul her suitcase off the bed and knew how she had to play this out. Stay on guard. She had to work on the assumption Felix would keep to his original goal: to get both Benjamin and the Cloak.
"I have only one thing to say," she announced.
Holding her bag, Felix turned. Parker looked up curiously.
"Las Vegas," Aletheia said.
A small smile tugged one corner of Felix's mouth. "That's all you intend to tell me?"
"That's it."
As he continued the faint half-smile, Aletheia wondered if she imagined it or if a drop of warmth crept behind his ice.
"That's enough," he claimed, and indicated the door with his chin. "Let's go."
CHAPTER EIGHT
On a dark and deserted mountain road, two miles out of the sorry little town of Deer Creek and a half-mile from her destination, Meredith Burnett's rental car overheated.
"Great! Fantastic. That's all I needed to complete a wonderful day." Pulling the Camry to the side of the road, Meredith gave full vent to the injustice and indignity of her situation in a variety of colorful oaths that would have pleased her former sorority sisters back at Barnard.
It was full dark, about ten o'clock, and several hours since she'd started her journey to this idiotic babysitting job here in the middle of nowheresville. Meredith turned off the motor, glared at the steam issuing up from the hood, and mentally skewered Felix for asking her to do this.
She could have said no. That's what he'd told her.
Right.
She'd heard the command in Felix's voice. He didn't want her to say no. Beyond that, she wouldn't have said no. There wasn't a job she couldn't handle. For Felix, for anybody. She was competence personified. She wanted Felix to know that. She wanted him to realize, finally, how much they had in common, how right they could be together...
With the motor off, Meredith could hear the sound of crickets through her open window. Crickets. 'Off the beaten path' hardly described the area.
"Water," Meredith murmured. If she filled the radiator with water, she might be able to coax the car the rest of the way to her destination. Out of the holder in the center console, she lifted the bottle of Perrier she'd bought in San Bernardino.
Empty.
With immense self-control, she didn't fling the bottle out her window. Instead, she set it carefully back in its holder. Self-control was another quality she shared in common with Felix. So now she turned her anger toward considering her options.
She could walk the rest of the way. By herself. In the dark. Without a flashlight. Leaving all her belongings behind.
But there was another sound beside the crickets, Meredith realized. The sound of rushing water. There must be a stream close by.
She snatched up the water bottle again. She'd find the stream, fill up the bottle, then ease the radiator. Was she resourceful, or what?
Meredith opened her car door, swung her long legs out, then twisted back to grab her Jack Georges Milano briefcase. One did not leave credit cards, cash, and a laptop computer in a car, even a locked one, not even in nowheresville.
The trip down to the stream wasn't easy, though it could have been worse. A full moon, where it managed to poke between the branches of the pine trees overhead, lit the scene nearly as bright as day. Meredith could see every branch that scratched her bare legs beneath the hem of her Christian Dior skirt, and every clump of dirt into which the heels of her Manolo Blahnik shoes sank.
Between two tree trunks, she finally spied the stream. A picturesque play of water over stones sent sparks of moonlight to play like flitting fairies in the air. Meredith was not of a fanciful bent, particularly not in her present situation, but there was no denying an otherworldly quality to the scene: the summer night air, the musical play of water, and the star like sparks, all under a canopy of gently soughing pine.
Perhaps it was due to the strange trance into which she'd fallen that a man took shape in her peripheral vision. Or maybe it was only slowly she realized he was there.
She froze. The man was across the stream and a few yards down. Warily, she turned to regard him more fully.
He did not appear to see her, since his attention focused on a steep face of rock that bordered the stream. He was running his hands over the rock: carefully, slowly...sensuously. The muscles in his bare arms and back ri
ppled like waves in the moonlight. A pair of worn khakis hung off his narrow hips.
In the silvery light, he looked like some mythical creature, an earth god.
Meredith stayed still. The plane flight and long drive had clearly scrambled her brains. Was he real? His proportions were male perfection: broad shoulders, torso tapering to a lean waist, and long legs planted firmly. The wild hair of a Norse deity curled over his neck.
With one hand pressed possessively against the rock face, he reached with the other toward his belt. From a set of tools strapped there, he pulled forth a chisel. Meredith watched in fascination as he carefully positioned the instrument.
Abruptly, he halted.
Meredith stopped breathing. As he slowly turned, nerve endings sparked all through her, like the sparks over the stream. She wasn't sure if she was scared or excited.
His gaze met hers. High cheekbones, poet's mouth, gaze of an alert but unalarmed wild animal.
Her sparking nerves swirled in a tight circle in her chest.
He waited. Just waited. His gaze was steady, penetrating. Somehow it was profoundly interested.
Though alone in the middle of nowhere, Meredith's initial fear dissipated. The man seemed too centered in the moment, too personally attentive, to be a threat.
Feeling oddly lightheaded, she forced herself to speak. "Car overheated," she rasped, then cleared her throat. "I'm not far from my destination. Thought I'd get some water for the radiator."
The man tilted his head. "Felix wouldn't," he said.
Meredith choked. Felix? She'd barely expected to hear this creature of night and earth speak at all, but for him to mention Felix—? "Ex-xcuse me?"
The man shook his head. "Felix wouldn't have misled me this way."
"I— You know Felix Roman?"
"Not as well as I thought I did." Amused self-disgust tinged his voice. "Because he did mislead me. You're the battle ax—I mean, the field marshal."
"What?"
Setting the chisel back into his belt, he hiked down the bank of the stream toward her. Instinctively, Meredith retreated a step. Reality was taking a slow roll in her mind. The man was a human being, no mythical creature, just some nutty, rock-touching guy who somehow knew Felix.
Some guy who had a physique like an Olympic athlete. A virile mat of blond hair over his chest tapered to an interesting golden line that dove into his pants.
Meredith forced her gaze up.
Meanwhile, he came to a stop with his toes nearly touching the water. With his hands on his hips, he gazed at her with an annoying grin on his face. "No, I can see the field marshal bit, actually," he said, as though he were talking to someone else. "The designer suit, the proper pumps, and—are you carrying a briefcase?" This last produced a male ripple of laughter.
Feeling both stung and flustered by that laugh, Meredith defended herself. "My wallet's inside."
He smiled widely. If he hadn't been making fun of her, his cheerful expression could have been engaging.
As it was, antagonism took the upper hand. "And who might I have the honor of addressing?" she queried.
"Parker Taub." He sprang across the stream. "Chief of the inmates you've been sent to guard."
Parker. Felix had mentioned him. He'd claimed Parker was the sanest of the bunch.
Sane, maybe, but incredibly annoying. Anger was definitely gaining the upper hand as the half-clad man with the body of an athlete held out his hand. Her anger would have had a better foothold if Parker hadn't killed the knowing smirk and simply smiled.
Oh, boy. Meredith sternly reminded herself she responded to European tailoring, graduate degrees, and stock portfolios, not smiles of pure animal appeal.
Besides, she didn't want to stop being angry. Putting a smile on her own face, she dumped the empty Perrier bottle into Parker's offered hand. "Since you're dressed for the job, why don't you duck down and fill that? My radiator is waiting."
One side of his smile broadened perceptibly. "You've had a long day, haven't you?"
His unerring accuracy made her even more irritated. "I can handle it."
He took the Perrier bottle. "And I'm sure you told Felix you could handle all of us, as well."
"I'm sure I can."
The other side of Parker's mouth stretched, creating a smile that swung back into the obnoxious zone before he bent with the Perrier bottle toward the stream. "Felix should have realized you'd feel miffed he didn't think you were more valuable back at the office."
Meredith opened her mouth, then shut it again, tightly. How did he know? Feeling off balance, she smiled sweetly as Parker straightened. "I'm valuable wherever I am."
His laugh rang out again, a musical sound. It danced right into Meredith, doing strange things to her insides. Just as unnerving were Parker's eyes, like dark gleaming pools.
"Is that so?" he asked.
They stared at each other. Meredith would have felt more comfortable if the challenge in his gaze was purely physical, but it wasn't. His dark eyes seemed to question everything about her, down to the fundamental basics.
As if her basics weren't unequivocal. She was a well-bred, upwardly mobile woman with better things on her mind than a shaggy-haired fool like him. Raising a deliberately supercilious eyebrow, she asked, "The water?"
Ignoring her, his smile faded. "I wonder..."
"Yes?" Meredith kept her eyebrow raised.
"If you actually know your true value," Parker murmured.
Meredith's superior expression froze.
Parker lifted the Perrier bottle. His smile came back. "You know what I think?"
"I'm sure I don't know." Furious, and ridiculously terrified, she made her tone add, or care.
His eyes sparkled with laughter as he handed her the water. "I think having you around is gonna be fun."
~~~
"I didn't know a hotel existed in Las Vegas that didn't use neon. This place is positively...nondescript." Aletheia peered out the window of the cab Felix had hired at the airport. A smile briefly curved her mouth. "And it's gray."
"Blue-gray," Felix amended, feeling defensive, for some reason, about the hotel's exterior paint job.
She turned to smile at him.
Her smile was like a punch to his solar plexus. Felix drew in a slow breath. Despite keeping his eye on his objective—finding that scumbag, Benjamin Cooper—it was hard to shake the impression he was here with Aletheia for a romantic getaway.
"You're right. There is some blue—in the lights shining on the gray entrance awning," Aletheia submitted. Her eyes danced briefly with his before flitting away.
The impression of romantic getaway was particularly hard to shake when she did things like that, sweetly self-conscious. Was she shy? Wary? In any case, she was definitely aware of him. That awareness had Felix as edgy as a racehorse. She paid attention to everything he did: every move, every word. It was...highly stimulating.
The cab pulled up in front of an admittedly gray awning, bathed in blue light. Felix helped Aletheia out of the cab. The brief touch of her hand clenched his stomach muscles. He paid off the driver and picked up their suitcases.
With any other woman he wanted sexually, he'd be thinking of getting one room rather than two, Felix mused, leading the way in through the automatic glass entry door. With any other woman, he'd employ his usual method to find out whether or not they'd end up in bed together: simply ask.
More often than not, this blunt method got Felix what he wanted. If it didn't, he gave a philosophical shrug and moved on.
Things were complicated enough, however, without adding sex into the mix. Besides, Aletheia didn't look amenable to any blunt question.
The front desk of the hotel was a large slab of granite. Though Felix often stayed at this hotel when he was in Vegas, he'd never before noticed that slab was gray.
Feeling oddly chagrined about the slab's color, he approached the receptionist, a man whose suit was at least a deep navy in hue. "I have reservations," Felix told the man.
"The name's Roman."
Aletheia glided up beside him, all ears.
"Yes," the receptionist hummed, peering at a computer screen. "I have them right here. Two rooms?" He looked up, saw Aletheia beside Felix, then cleared his throat. "Uh, do I have that down right?"
"Two rooms," Felix confirmed.
Beside him, Aletheia noticeably relaxed.
Suppressing a sigh, Felix took the two card keys from the receptionist, then turned to give one to Aletheia.
As she reached out with one of those marvelous hands of hers, she looked up.
An electric pulse went through Felix. In her eyes he caught a clear, if brief, spark of desire. Oh, yeah. This was by no means a one-sided affair.
But to Aletheia, Felix was still the enemy. The new agreement they'd made regarding Benjamin was not enough to allay her well-founded doubts. The woman seemed able to see into Felix, at least far enough to cause some legitimate concern.
The blunt question was never going to cut it.
She plucked the card from Felix's grasp and glanced down. "Looks like we're on the fourth floor."
By keeping her distance, she was doing him a favor, Felix assured himself. He needed to keep a clear head here, his eye on the ultimate goal: Benjamin. "No point waking up the bellboy," he told her. "I'll take the bags."
She made some murmur of protest, as if Felix were going to let her carry a suitcase. Picking up the bags, he pretended not to hear and led the way to the elevator bank.
The carpet, the walls—even the elevator doors— Was there anything in this place that wasn't gray? Why hadn't he noticed that before? Why, before meeting Aletheia, hadn't he noticed his peculiar affinity for that color?
And what the devil did it mean?
In the elevator, Felix stared at the brushed steel of the door. Beside him, the way Aletheia flicked her fingers against her card key made him forget about the color gray. Instead, he imagined those fingers trailing over him.
Idiotic, to torture himself like that.
The doors opened at last. Hurrying now, Felix led the way down the hall, reading the signs to find their room numbers. He wasn't arrogant enough to believe, given sufficient opportunity, he wouldn't try something stupid.
I Gotta Feeling Page 8