Colleen hastily stuffed the money back in her pocket.
Tristan told their spectators, “We’re on a first date. She’s funny.”
The other people went back to their coffee and computers.
He wiped his eyes and took a long swig of the warm, decadent chocolate to finish composing himself. Then he said, “I suppose there’s no way for you to know. I could call people who could vouch for me, but I suppose Ted Bundy had friends who would’ve said the same about him. I understand we just met, and it’s crazy for me even to suggest it. If you don’t want to, I understand. No harm, no foul. Maybe we can figure out some way that you can do some virtual assistant stuff for me, but I’m so busy that it would be hard to find time to figure that out.”
Colleen still had her hand with the money stuffed in her pocket. “Most serial killers don’t walk around with a couple thousand dollars in their wallet and then hand them out to damsels in distress.”
“That’s true,” Tristan said.
She frowned a bit more. “And if you were going to kill somebody, you had your chance when Miller came at you, swinging.”
“I certainly did.”
“You barely even hit him. You just kind of deflected the weird reaching thing he was doing, and his weight carried him into the shelves. You could’ve done a lot more if you’d wanted to.” Colleen stared at her caramel macchiato, evidently trying to divine mystical prophecy from the swirls of whipped cream, which was a definite improvement over tea sediment.
She seemed to be musing aloud when she said, “And it’s not like I have a kid or a cat who would keep me here. I have absolutely nothing and no one who would even notice if I’m gone.” She looked up at him, her eyes wider. “Actually, I have friends from college who I still see a lot of. I’m going to tell them where I’m going and check in with them. If I disappear, they’ll know, and they’ll know who I’m with and tell the police.”
He smiled gently at her. “An excellent precaution.”
She sighed. “This is stupid. I should not do this. I need to be looking for a permanent job here.” She was trying to convince herself that she shouldn’t.
“It’s just a week,” Tristan prompted her.
“Where would we go?”
“Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York.”
She muttered, “I’ve never even been out of Arizona before.”
Tristan leaned in and narrowed his eyes at her with a brilliant smile.
He knew exactly what he was doing because his mother’s bright blue eyes and his father’s chiseled face had worked on women a thousand times in the past, but he’d kind of screwed up this little cutie’s life. He didn’t like that he’d gotten her fired, and he could make amends with just a little bit of exorbitant spending.
Plus, they might hook up during the week, or he might just have somebody to talk to for several flights who wasn’t attempting to educate him about the minute differences between couture fashion houses. It was a win-win situation as far as Tristan was concerned.
He grinned a little more and put his words into his eyes as he whispered conspiratorially, “Fly away with me, Colleen. Let me show you the world.”
She blinked hard and balled up her fist, and her jaw bulged like she was gritting her teeth. “I’ve been doing lots of out-of-character things this week, so why stop now? Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Brilliant,” Tristan said, a buoyancy lifting his chin and his heart. Of course, it would be nice to have someone along on these trips to talk to and even discuss coding with. It was natural that he should be pleased that this scrumptious little thing was going to hang out with him and talk computers. “Meet me at the private terminal at Sky Harbor tomorrow morning at eight o’clock with a bag packed for a week. We’re flying to Los Angeles.”
Her shy smile pleased him even more. “And also, thanks. You didn’t have to do any of this, and I appreciate it.”
Tristan’s smile grew on his face, and he made sure his voice was nothing but Iowa as he replied, “My absolute pleasure.”
6
Private Terminal
Colleen
“You know you shouldn’t go, right?” Anjali asked as she lounged on Colleen’s mattress in the back corner of the room. Her long black hair that fell past her butt spread over the pillows and swirled at the end, lest it trail onto the floor. Anjali was spinning her scrunchie on one finger like a hula hoop. “I feel like I should lock you in a basement so you can’t go tomorrow.”
Colleen folded a blouse and stuffed it into the corner of a roller suitcase. “Houses in Phoenix don’t have basements. With the high levels of uranium naturally occurring in the soil, they’d all be radon caves.”
Anjali sighed and flopped her arms on the mattress. “A closet would work, Ms. I’m-too-literal.”
