“We heard you had some pretty good food here, so we thought we’d stop and check it out,” he informed her.
“Well, thanks to whoever told you. I’d be happy to get you anything you want. In fact,” she leaned a little closer to him so that her voice wouldn’t carry very far, “we have a blackberry crumb that isn’t on the menu. There’s one piece left and I’d be happy to set it aside for you.”
“That would be fantastic,” he said, smiling brightly. “Should go great with the blackened chicken.”
“Oh, you should try the gumbo,” she argued. “It’s the best this side of New Orleans.”
“Well, if you insist.”
She took up his menu again and dropped a wink. She was nearly gone when she noticed me, pausing with a little frown coming to that pretty face.
“I’ll take the same.”
“Very well.”
She walked off, turning once to smile at McGregor again.
“You certainly have a way with women,” I said.
He focused on me for a long moment. “It comes in handy from time to time.”
“Just don’t try to turn that charm on me. It won’t do you any good.”
“Wouldn’t it?”
I studied his face for a second. “Whoever hit my house might still be after us. If anyone was watching when we left—”
“They could still be after us.”
“Even if they weren’t, there are only a few ways out of Houston. They’ll narrow it down eventually.”
“Then what’s the plan? Where are your coworkers?”
“We’re on our own until tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not safe for them to come after us just now.”
“None of this is safe.”
He had a point there.
The waitress came back a moment later with two bowls overflowing with gumbo. I took a big bite of mine, starving despite myself, and sighed.
“This is very good.”
The waitress seemed pleased with my comment despite the fact that she was hanging around to catch McGregor’s reaction. He nodded, agreeing with my assessment.
“Spicy.”
“It’s an old family recipe. My great grandmother’s.” She set a basket of bread in the center of the table. “Enjoy.”
I ate every drop in my bowl and took McGregor’s too when he pushed it away because his sensitive palate couldn’t handle the heat. I let him have the blackberry crumble, happy to sop up the last of the gumbo with the last of the bread.
When we were done I slipped McGregor some money from the wallet I stole from the suit-wearing idiot in the coffee shop, so he could flirt a little more while I wandered over to the motel to see if I could get us a room. The place seemed comfortably busy without being too crowded. Might be a good place to pick up another car.
But as I was walking up to the office a large group of people was gathered just outside the door, everyone surrounding this tall, dark-haired man in some sort of uniform.
“Mr. and Mrs. Randolf?” he called.
Someone touched my shoulder. “Isn’t that you?”
I turned, about to explain that I had no idea what was going on, when the man shoved a room card key in my hand.
“We meet at nine tomorrow morning. Everyone be ready to go. First is brunch at a restaurant in the French Quarter, and then a tour of the aquarium. Then you’ll have free time in the evening and access to the bar at the hotel.”
“Yay,” a middle-aged man in front of me said.
The woman beside him elbowed him hard in the ribs. “Be nice,” she hissed near his ear.
The group broke up, someone muttering about the tour leader having to go home before they’d even really gotten started. “This guy doesn’t know us from Adam,” he said.
A tour group. What better cover?
McGregor came lumbering toward me, mild curiosity in his eyes as he surveyed the group I was still trapped in the center of.
“Darling,” I said, pulling him close to me. “We’ve gotten our room key.”
“Great,” he said, looking at me like he thought I’d gone insane.
“Are you going to retire?” the woman who’d drawn me into the group in the first place asked. “We were thinking of having some drinks at the diner.”
“The wife is exhausted,” McGregor said, falling into line perfectly. “I think we’ll retire early. But perhaps tomorrow night …?”
The woman’s smile lit up her face. “Drinks in a New Orleans bar? That’s part of the reason I agreed to this insane trip.” The woman grabbed her husband’s arm and tugged him close to her. “Tomorrow,” she called over her shoulder as they walked away.
I couldn’t believe our luck. I led the way upstairs to the room number written on the card key holder, expecting someone to call us out at any second. But we slipped into the room without issue—a large room with a king bed—to find a stack of luggage near the door. A tag on the handle of one read Mrs. A. Randolf.
“What is this?” McGregor asked.
“It’s a couple’s bus tour, I think.”
I looked through the rest of the luggage. It all belonged to Adam or Mrs. A. Randolf.
“What if the couple these bags belong to suddenly show up?”
“Someone said the original guide had to leave the tour. Maybe this couple left, too.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“I know that I must look enough like this Mrs. Randolf that that woman downstairs thought I was her.”
“But what if—”
“We’ll just stay here tonight and see how it goes in the morning.”
“Ms. Kelmeckis, we—”
“Amelia. My name is Amelia.”
He paused, his eyes moving slowly over my face. “Okay, Amelia, what if someone comes knocking on the door, insisting that this is their room and their stuff?”
“Then we make up some unbelievable excuse and slip out. Or we get arrested.”
“I don’t think getting arrested is a good way to avoid a murder conviction.”
“Probably not. But I don’t think it’s going to come to that.”
He tilted his head slightly as he thought that over. “And if no one shows up?”
“We spend tomorrow touring New Orleans, pretending to be a happily married couple.”
I lifted one of Mrs. Rudolf’s suitcases to the bed and unzipped it, smiling when I found a toiletry bag on top that included a bottle of that Australian brand of shampoo. I loved it! And there was an unused bar of Dove body soap, too. It was like this woman had shopped for me.
“I’m gonna go take a shower,” I said over my shoulder to McGregor. “Stay inside and keep the door closed. We shouldn’t have any problems tonight.”
I grabbed a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, too, hoping this woman was at least close in size to me as well. And then I disappeared behind the bathroom door, not bothering to look back to make sure he’d been listening to me. He was a grown man. I had to be able to trust him or we were both in big trouble.
The shower/tub combo was clean and in good working order. I climbed in and stood under the hot spray of water for a long time, loving the feel of the spray moving over my head and my shoulders. It seemed like years had passed since my shower that morning.
I closed my eyes and found myself back in that moment in the kitchen, before the shots came slamming through the front of my condo. To that moment when McGregor kissed me.
Rowan. His name was Rowan.
He knew what to do with his hands, his lips, his tongue. He’d probably had lots of experience in that area. Most men like him, charming men who clearly cared what they looked like, had lots of experience. Women seemed to flock to men like him. I was on a naval ship with dozens of men like him. I knew.
Yet he’d kissed me.
I bit my lip like I could still taste him there. This voice in the back of my head told me he was just trying to distract me and himself from his situation. And, though I knew
that was likely true, a part of me was still holding onto the idea that he might want me.
And then I found myself wondering why I would want someone like him.
My father … it always came back to my father, didn’t it? And my father was a lot like Rowan McGregor. He could tear me to pieces with just a few words, and then make me fall in love with him all over again a second later with more well-chosen words. I grew up never knowing which man I would come home to find sitting at the dinner table.
As a teen, if I walked into the room and the evil tongue was out, I would turn back around and find somewhere else to be. That’s how I ended up signing up for the navy before I graduated high school. I was getting out of that house one way or the other.
I was determined not to find myself in a similar situation. I couldn’t fall for a guy like Rowan. And I wouldn’t. It was one thing admiring his body, admiring the way he moved, the way he spoke—who could resist that accent?—but it was another thing allowing myself to fall under his spell. He was a charmer, but he wasn’t going to charm me.
I opened the shampoo bottle and poured a good amount out onto my hand, my thoughts still spinning around. Rowan was a client. We were being stalked by someone who was brazen enough to shoot up the front of my condo with an automatic weapon. Maybe now wasn’t the time to think about sex and kissing and … whatever.
Why had they shot at my condo? If Rowan was right, someone had gone to a lot of effort to set him up for murder. Why ruin that by doing something so brazen? Why hadn’t they just gunned him down in front of his house last night? Why hadn’t they just started a gas leak or damaged the brakes on his car? If they wanted him dead, why bother going to the trouble of discrediting him?
Unless discrediting him was simply a small part of a larger plan. Or perhaps we had two different entities at work here.
Rowan knew more. I could tell that he knew what was happening. It was written all over his face as we fled Houston. I needed to find out what that was.
I stepped out of the shower and finished grooming, taking a second to check the wound on my forehead. It looked good, already beginning to heal. I was lucky that I walked away with only a small cut on my forehead. With all the glass that had been flying, all the debris, the bullets, it was lucky neither of us had been more seriously wounded.
Rowan was searching through the other suitcase—the one belonging to Adam Randolf—when I came out of the bathroom. He glanced at me.
“He seems to be close to my height.”
I just nodded, watching him take out a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. He brushed past me and disappeared into the bathroom. When he came back out a while later, he was clean shaven once again, his hair damp from his second shower of the day. I’d set pillows down the center of the bed and chosen the side closest to the door.
“We’re supposed to be downstairs by nine, so we should probably get some sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He settled on his side of the barrier, dragging his hands through his wet hair as he sighed.
“Do you really think we can get away with this?”
“For a day or two. That’s all we need.”
“And then what?”
I picked up a bottle of lotion Mrs. Randolf had packed with her toiletries and began rubbing it into my arms.
“I’ll call Hayden sometime tomorrow and hopefully he’ll have some new information for us. He might even send someone to help us out.”
“And then?”
I glanced at him. “And then you tell us everything you know so we can find a way to protect you.”
“What makes you think I know anything?”
I put the bottle down and got up, moving the suitcases and simply organizing the room in order to keep my hands busy. I was thinking about Hayden, hoping he hadn’t given up on me. Hoping that he was working to figure out how to get me out of this situation. I knew he probably was, but there was that little girl inside of me who never really trusted anyone.
“You’re clearly being targeted by someone.”
“I’m a robotics expert. There are a lot of people out there who would like to see me fail in order to clear the field for their own work. I’ve already told you that.”
“Yes, you have. But I think someone taking an automatic weapon to the front of my house indicates that this is more than just professional sabotage.”
“And you think I know who that is?”
“I do.”
“Maybe I’m just caught up in something that’s bigger than I am.”
“I doubt that. You strike me as the kind of guy who knows exactly what’s going on around him.”
He just nodded, the longer hair on the top of his head flipping down over his eyes for a moment. He brushed it away and studied my face.
“Are you worried your boyfriend won’t get here in time to save us?”
“Of course not.”
He laughed. “You are. You don’t think he’s working to figure out what happened today. Do you have such little faith in your bosses?”
“It’s not that.”
“I would have to agree with you. I’d be just as frightened, I think. I’d be worried that if he hadn’t noticed your crush all these years that he was either thick-headed or he simply didn’t care for you. And if he doesn’t care, why would he put himself out to come rushing to your aid?”
“You know nothing about Hayden.”
“I know you’ve had the hots for him for a long time and nothing has come of it. Is that because you’re too scared to make your feelings known to him? Is it because you’d rather be alone and love at a distance than risk getting hurt?”
“Stop psychoanalyzing me!”
He laughed again, the sound dripping charm just like everything else that came out of his mouth. I wanted to slap that charm away, too starkly reminded of the times my father teased me when he discovered I was crushing on the captain of the football team.
That’s great, Ami. Set your sights high! Just realize that no one like that is going to look twice at you while you’re carrying around fifty extra pounds.
He thought … I don’t know what he thought. But I still cringed inside whenever I was reminded of his words.
I snapped off the light and fell into bed.
“Go to sleep!”
He continued to chuckle for a long moment before he rolled over, making the bed bounce like a trampoline. I gritted my teeth, wanting to tell him to stay still, but aware that any indication of my annoyance would only make him want to do it more. Eventually he settled down and a heavy silence fell over the room. I closed my eyes, but it was a long time before sleep finally came to me.
Don’t forget about me, Hayden …
Chapter 6
Rowan
I woke and lay stiff, afraid to move. I could feel the weight of her body beside me and the irrational side of me was convinced that the moment I moved I would discover that she was dead, her throat cut just like … but then she sighed, her breath like a fresh breeze against my arm. The pillows had been dislodged, her body refusing to remain on the far side of the bed.
She was warm and soft, her face less than an inch from my shoulder, her arm resting against mine like she’d been trying to hold my hand in the night. I rolled toward her, careful not to make my movements too large, not ready to wake her from her blissful sleep.
She was beautiful, this woman who’d saved my life yesterday.
I brushed a piece of hair from her forehead, revealing a cut that marred her tan skin. It was healing, crusted closed by old blood. I wondered if it had happened during the shooting, if she’d been injured when she burst out the front door—completely fearlessly—and forced the shooter away. It must have, but she never said a word, never allowed me to see it.
She was something, this Amelia Kelmeckis.
I’d kissed her yesterday because it was a distraction. Because it proved a point. But now, as I let my finger run slowly over the curve of her jaw, I wanted to kiss her just bec
ause I wanted to kiss her.
When was the last time that had happened?
It seemed like my entire life had been scripted these last few years. I’d done everything in order to create a life that I’d dreamt of since I was a small boy. I was going to escape my mother’s world, escape the world of a small village baker, become something more than just the pretty face behind the bread counter. I was going to go to school and make something of myself.
I fought my mother, my upbringing, everything about my life in order to attend university and work my way up through the ranks of academics, to be offered internships and the job that had been created for me here in Houston. I worked hard all my life, ignoring what I wanted in favor for what was necessary. I think I eventually lost track of my own wants and needs. But right now the memories were slowly coming back to me.
But so was the price someone else had been forced to pay.
I pulled away from Amelia, untangling myself from the bedclothes, and grabbed another man’s toiletry kit. I washed up and dressed in jeans that fit me in the legs, but were a little too loose around the waist. A loose fitting T-shirt and light hoodie seemed appropriate to the day.
I studied my face, wondering if I should cut my hair or just shave it off with the razor Adam Randolf had thought fitting to provide. I went so far as to pull the razor out of the kit and plug it in before I realized I didn’t want to. I’d given up enough of myself to this farce.
“Rowan?”
It was the first time she’d said my name. I pulled open the bathroom door to find Amelia standing still half asleep outside the door, her clothing rumpled and more erotic than any piece of lingerie could ever be, her T-shirt clinging to her small breasts, her panties pulled up high on her hips until there was almost no secret to what they hid underneath.
“You need the facilities?”
She brushed at her hair, frowning when she touched her wound. Her fingers moved over it again, her lip disappearing between her teeth to hide the hiss of pain she must have wanted to utter. I pulled her fingers away.
“It’s healing, but it’ll be sore for a few days.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, her eyes falling to my fingers around her wrist. She gestured with her other hand. “Do you mind?”
DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series Page 67