by Sandra Brown
By way of an answer, he folded his arms over his chest and settled on the bench as though in it for the long haul.
She closed her eyes briefly, then, resigned, said, “I had just come from the dentist. Top floor.” She raised her hand to indicate the stories above them. “I was still a bit woozy from the chill pill they gave me. I thought a latte would perk me up before I started the drive home.”
Gingerly she touched the side of her face. “The numbing began to wear off. I wasn’t feeling all that great. Then you show up and make a spectacle of me.” She paused, took a breath, and narrowed her eyes on him. “Don’t ever grab me like that again.”
“I didn’t grab you.”
She gave him a withering look.
He raked his fingers through his hair, turned his head aside and looked at the yellowing leaves on the nearest ficus tree, then came back to her. “I didn’t mean for it to be a grab. I didn’t mean to make a spectacle of you. I apologize.”
He appeared to mean it. “Apology accepted.” After a short silence, she said, “I thought you were going to Florida.”
“I thought so, too. That was until I checked the airfares this morning.”
She gave him a wan smile.
“Hemingway’s house is still on my bucket list,” he said, “but I may not make it down there until I publish.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for discount fares and alert you to them.”
“Definitely a benefit to having the MVP of travel agents living next door.”
The grin he flashed was too attractive, too rakish, too…too everything.
She looked away from him toward the bank of elevators where a car had just opened up. A group flowed out, another filed in. The building was full of people, yet they had the seating area to themselves, making it feel as though they were alone.
It occurred to her then what an odd coincidence it was that he had turned up here.
She regarded him with misgiving. “What are you doing here, Drex?”
“Downtown, you mean?”
“I mean in this building. Why are you here?”
“I was in search of the main library. Got turned around. Saw the sign for the coffee shop, came in for a shot of espresso and to get my bearings.” He dismissed all that with a shrug, then his eyes sharpened on her face. “Still feeling woozy? You gonna be okay?”
“The latte worked.”
“You didn’t drink it. Not one sip.”
It disconcerted her that he had noticed. It made her uneasy to wonder what else he might have observed that would be much more consequential. “I should go.” She slid the strap of her handbag onto her shoulder and stood.
So did he. “Did the dentist give you any pain pills?”
“A prescription. But I doubt I’ll need it. It was just a filling.”
“Get the pills. Take one before you need it. Head off the pain.”
“I think all I really need is a nap.” She moved away. “See you around, Drex.”
“Where’s your car?”
“Parking garage.”
“This building?”
“Third level.”
“I could escort—”
“No, thanks.” She raised her hand in a halfhearted wave, then turned and walked quickly toward the elevators.
Drex watched her progress across the lobby.
He wasn’t the only one who did.
From his vantage point on the bench facing Talia’s, Drex had looked beyond her shoulder and spotted the do-gooder in the coffee shop. He had claimed a table just the other side of the glass wall, which gave him a view of the seating area. For the duration of Talia and Drex’s conversation, the guy had been eyeing them as though poised to rush to her rescue if necessary. It galled Drex no end.
Now, while the good Samaritan was watching Talia board the elevator, Drex ducked into the fire exit door that opened into the seating area. Leaping over the treads two or three at a time, he took the stairs down to the third level of the parking garage.
It smelled of motor oil, gasoline, and rubber. It was ill-lighted. The ceiling was low and foreboding. It could have been a parking garage in any city, anywhere in the world. Except that in this one, Talia Shafer was leaning against the driver’s door of her car, crying.
Not wanting to frighten her, Drex made sure she heard him approaching. She came around quickly, and, upon seeing him, anger shimmered in her eyes along with unshed tears. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you. I was looking for the public library, got turned around—”
“You’re lying!”
“So are you,” he fired back, taking a step closer to her. “There aren’t any dentists on the top floor. It’s devoted to gynecology and obstetrics.”
Seeming to deflate, she clamped her lower lip between her teeth and turned her head away. A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek all the way to her jawline, where she wiped it off.
Drex swallowed the knot in his throat. He didn’t want to know, but had to ask, “Are you pregnant?”
She shook her head, then said a husky no.
Relief made his knees go weak, although five minutes ago, he wouldn’t have credited that physical phenomenon. Then, a worse thought struck him. “Is something…” Awkwardly, he motioned toward her middle. “Wrong?”
“No.” When he looked at her doubtfully, she repeated no. “And even if there were, I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with you.” She rubbed her fists across her eyes, bolstered herself by standing up straighter, and looked directly into his face. “You followed me here. I know you did. Tell me why.”
“I was a butthole last night.”
He stopped there, and, when he didn’t continue, she said, “Are you waiting for an argument from me? If so, you’re waiting in vain.”
He gave her a wry half smile. “I saw you leave your house. I followed you in the hope of getting an opportunity to apologize.”
“For beguiling Elaine?”
“For all of it. The manuscript, the smirks, the innuendos, the setup. I staged a scene for you to walk into and draw a conclusion.”
“Well, I did.”
“I know.”
She gazed at him with bewilderment. “But why did you do it?”
“To see if you’d be jealous.”
She took swift breath, then, lowering her head, stared at the gritty, oil-stained concrete between their feet. “I can’t be jealous, Drex. I’m married.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s all I think about. You being married. You being married to him.”
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “You don’t have cause, or the right, to think about it.”
“But I do.” He extended his arm and braced his hand against the roof of her car. He pressed his forehead against his biceps and expelled a long breath. “I think about it all the goddamn time, and it’s making me crazy.”
For the longest time neither of them moved. They scarcely breathed. Did she share his fear that something as negligible as a blink could cause a cataclysm from which they could never recover or escape? He couldn’t read her thoughts. All he had to go on was her stillness.
Until finally, he heard her hair brush against her shoulder as she turned her head toward him. “I’m sorry, Drex,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to say.”
He lifted his head from his arm and turned it toward her. Their faces inches apart, he focused on her mouth as she added, “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”
“Don’t say anything.” By the time the last whispered syllable had passed his lips, they were brushing hers.
She yanked her head back. He slid his hand off the roof of the car and raised both in surrender as he stepped away and continued to back up. “Out of line. Way out of line. I’m sorry.”
He turned and took several steps away before he stopped and came back around. He looked at her for a count of five. “Bloody hell,” he growled. “If I’m going to be sorry, I’m damn well going to make it count.”
He
covered the same distance in half the number of strides. When he reached her, he took her face between his hands, tilted it, and kissed her. But good. Without sweetness or timidity. Deeply. Boldly. Sexily. Pouring into the kiss all the frustration, anger, and lust she had aroused in him.
Then he released her abruptly, turned, and walked away.
He made it into the elevator and rode it down to the next level of the garage where he’d parked. But as soon as he alighted, he placed his back to the concrete block wall and knocked his head against it hard enough to hurt.
What the hell was he doing?
When he’d seen Talia backing her car out of her driveway, he’d given no conscious thought to following her. He’d just reacted. Fortunately, he’d planned on going out later, so the items he had begun taking with him whenever he left were already zipped into the duffel bag. He’d had the presence of mind to grab it before he’d bolted from the apartment, nearly breaking his neck getting down that blasted staircase, certainly breaking speed limits to catch up to her and then to keep her car in sight.
He hadn’t planned on her knowing that he was tracking her. Between her getting into the elevator to go up and when she came back down, forty-seven minutes had elapsed. Forty-seven minutes during which he’d examined his motives for acting so rashly.
After a heated debate with himself, he concluded that he wasn’t simply a man obsessed with a woman but that this additional surveillance was justified. She was as much a suspect now as Jasper. He needed to know where she went, whom she saw, and why.
Right?
Right.
So he’d continued to amble back and forth across the lobby, keeping a close watch on everyone the elevators disgorged, and trying not to attract the attention of the rent-a-cops posted at all the building’s entrances.
When Talia reappeared, he’d ignored the bump his heart gave. From across the lobby, he’d monitored her activity in the coffee shop. After several minutes passed, he decided that no one was joining her. She hadn’t consulted her cell phone. She hadn’t glanced around periodically in anticipation of someone’s arrival. Rather she sat alone, looking forlorn and in need of a friend.
He was good at that, too, he’d reminded himself. Role-playing. Wasn’t that one of his best honed skills?
So into the coffee shop he’d gone.
But at that point, he’d known he was kidding himself. Her apparent anguish had taken precedence over her being a suspect in at least one capital crime. The more he saw of her, the looser his grip on objectivity became, until, as of now, it was virtually nonexistent. He’d gone so far as to admit his crazed obsession to her.
Aw, well. It was too late to rethink it. Too late for a do-over. He couldn’t take back any of it. He didn’t want to take back the kiss.
He pushed himself away from the wall and started down the ramp toward his parking spot. As his car came into sight, he drew up short. “Shit!”
Standing in the deep shadows, the do-gooder from the coffee shop was leaning against the hood of his car, obviously lying in wait.
Anger propelling him, Drex didn’t break stride but walked straight up to him and demanded, “What the fuck, Gif?”
Chapter 14
Drex sat slumped in the driver’s seat of his car. For as long as he could, he withstood the weight of Gif’s stare from the passenger side, then turned to him. “What?”
Gif the unflappable said, “You have to ask?”
“Why were you tailing me?”
“Why were you tailing her?”
“Surveillance.”
“Surveillance?”
“Surely you’re familiar with the word. Derived from the French—”
“Drex—”
“—verb—”
“Drex,” Gif repeated, putting some oomph behind it.
He lapsed into angry silence and stewed, then snidely asked, “Did you and Mike toss a coin to see who would be the monitor, and you won? Or did you lose?”
“He and I discussed who should come and decided that—”
“You’re a sneakier spy.”
“Indubitably.”
Drex scoffed. “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re slipping. The first rule of working undercover is to stay the hell undercover. Don’t let the tailee know that he’s being tailed. In the coffee shop, what the hell were you thinking?”
“That I should intervene.”
“Why?”
“Because of the lady’s apparent distress.”
“I didn’t cause her distress.”
Gif conveyed his doubt by raising his eyebrows.
“I didn’t,” Drex said.
“Okay, but your manhandling wasn’t helping.”
“I didn’t manhandle her.”
Again the eyebrows went up.
Drex ignored them. “From now on, stay invisible, or you may forget how to.”
Gif gave him a rare, and somewhat smug, smile. “I had the veal Milanese and a glass of Brunello.”
Drex stared at him as though struck dumb, then shook his head with incredulity. “I never saw you.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“How did you even know where we were having dinner?”
“I got here yesterday afternoon, parked down the block from your apartment, and waited until you came out, so spit-and-polished you could’ve been a groom. I followed.” He shrugged as though it had been too easy. “The dinner seemed to go okay.”
“If you don’t count the smoke coming from Talia’s ears.” He explained about the manuscript. “That ticked her off. She didn’t like me schmoozing Elaine, either. She sees me as an opportunist who’ll prey on Elaine’s affections and her bankroll.”
“Now there’s an irony.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Anyway, as I’m sure you saw, I followed Talia home, but didn’t talk to her after parting company at Elaine’s. Jasper was on the porch. We exchanged good nights.”
“Why wasn’t he at the dinner?”
Drex explained but stopped short of sharing his certainty that the untimely illness had been a fabrication devised to give Jasper an ideal opportunity to search the garage apartment. Informing his partners of that would only contribute to their distress. They were already discontented over something, or Gif wouldn’t be here.
If they had issues with either him or the situation, they should have aired them, talked them over with him, rather than to go about checking up on him so underhandedly. He didn’t like it. Not one bit.
“Why, Gif?”
“Why what?”
Drex gave him a droll look. “Something has your noses out of joint, or you wouldn’t be here.”
Gif grimaced as though troubled by intestinal gas. “That dinner date you arranged worried us.”
“How come?”
“You were reluctant to talk about it.”
True. He hadn’t elaborated on the plans for the date because he didn’t want his cohorts questioning his reasons for setting it up. Which indeed had been questionable. But Gif could sense an evasion and sniff out a lie from a mile away, so his straightforward answer came as no surprise to Drex.
He felt a mix of admiration and agitation. “It pisses me off that you two appointed yourselves my babysitters. Did you come to see if I was behaving myself? What are you going to do? Put me in timeout? Am I grounded?”
“Don’t get riled.”
“I’m already riled.”
“Then I had just as well lay it out there.”
“Do.”
“Did you arrange this dinner just so you could spend more time with her?”
“Yes! So I could spend more time with her and her husband. Who we believe to be a serial killer. Isn’t that why I’m here?”
Gif raised his hand in a peacekeeping gesture. “We just wanted to make sure that your eye was still on the target and not on…something else.”
“And now you can be sure. Go home.”
Gif tugged on his earlobe. “The wasn’t the only reaso
n for my coming.”
“What else?”
“Not what, who.”
“Rudkowski?”
“He’s got a periscope up Mike’s ass.”
Drex cursed under his breath. “Well, that’s just fabulous. How far up it?”
“He showed up at Mike’s office yesterday morning all bluster and self-importance. Hauled Mike away from his desk and into a conference room. He grilled him about the meeting we had in the hotel. Remember the enchanting Ms. Li?”
Drex couldn’t help but chuckle. “She delivered my note to Rudkowski?”
Gif didn’t see the humor in it. “I think you’re missing the point here.”
Sighing, Drex pressed his thumb and middle finger into his eye sockets and rubbed them. He was suddenly very tired. “I get your point. Rudkowski isn’t just following up on my mysterious vacation, he’s micromanaging a pursuit.”
“Precisely.”
“I saw this coming and warned you of it. If he failed to find me, he’d come after you. I advised you to be on alert.”
“Agents are watching us, night and day. We’ve pretended not to notice. But coming to Mike’s workplace, putting him through the wringer? That takes Rudkowski’s zeal to a new level.” He studied Drex for a moment. “You left him a bread-crumb trail to follow to that hotel.”
“You and Mike urged me to contact him.”
“Through official channels, Drex. Making him the butt of a joke isn’t what we had in mind.”
Drex put up no defense. He figured he deserved this particular hand-slapping. “Rudkowski found the hotel by tracking the text sent from my old phone?”
“Isn’t that how you planned it?”
He shrugged, as good as an admission.
“Rudkowski went to the hotel in person,” Gif said. “Conversed with Ms. Li.”
“I made certain she would remember me. The birthday cake and all.”
“Likely she would have remembered you even without that.”
“She’s new on the job. Eager to accommodate.”
“Nevertheless, I doubt she would have been quite so accommodating had you not been quite so suave.” He paused. Then, “What did the note to Rudkowski say, anyway?” Drex told him, and Gif smiled in spite of himself. “I would have paid good money to see his expression when he read it. But it would have been nice for you to let Mike and me in on the joke before it was sprung.”