He shook his head. “Sorry. Xander would know all that stuff. I never dealt with anything that didn’t come through him first.”
After that, Aurora came over and glared at all of us until we said some stilted farewells to Seb. She followed us to the front door and didn’t say goodbye at all as she slammed it shut on us.
“This is fucking maddening,” I growled at both Jayce and Slater when we were alone again.
Jayce winked at me. “Relax. He gave us quite a bit.”
“He gave us a job—staking out the airport. Do you have any idea how long we could stand there and just miss Xander in a crowd? Giving us actual goddamned information would have been more helpful.”
“He gave us a name, too,” Slater butted in to remind me. “And if we can track down the name, we can start on the plane and the apartment.”
“Jason Bolton sounds about as real as Xander,” I grumbled.
Slater shrugged. “I’m still going to run it down.”
Defeated, I hung my head and tried to keep from flying apart. I’d worked too hard to get where I was to end up fucked because… well, I’d wanted to get fucked. It wasn’t fair.
Jayce slid one of his warm, strong arms around my shoulders, and I shuddered. I’d been able to ignore him and not think about this… about how good his touch felt, while we were busy in there.
He tightened his arm around me. “We’ll get this figured out, sooner rather than later, I’d wager.”
“Xander implied that night it was Brickton who wanted the pics. It bothers me that the kid doesn’t seem to know who wanted to blackmail me. Was he really just fucked-up all the time? I’d thought maybe… there was more than one person behind it, but he couldn’t even verify what I’d already heard with my own ears.”
Slater’s mouth turned down into a small frown. “It’s possible he was that stoned.”
“And that other guy, Dima—” Guilt ate at me again.
Jayce tugged me closer to him. “All we can do is start at the airport, and with the name. Let’s have a date tonight,” he whispered into my ear, the warmth of his breath swirling around and tickling me as it fought off the chilly fall air.
“A date?” I scowled at him.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Yeah. There’s only one terminal here. Heathrow, it ain’t. We can mosey and spy.”
“I can watch baggage with Madden, and you two can walk the airport.” Slater glanced up and smiled at Jayce like he was helping him, and all at once my face heated and I needed to leave.
I growled under my breath. “And we just, what? Do this for the next forever until we see something?”
Slater laughed. “Welcome to the glamorous life of a private investigator.”
“I’ll be there tonight at eight o’clock. It should be fully dark by then, right?” Jayce asked cheerfully. “Don’t wait for me to start, though.”
“Great date,” I snarked, “walking around an airport until my feet hurt.” He only laughed.
The restof the day dragged by, and wasn’t improved by Madden needlessly poking his head into my office to check on me every five-to-twenty minutes. His hovering grated on me so much that I sent him home early, only to get a perky “See you at the airport later!” as he bolted for the exit. I put it off as long as I could, but finally forced myself to get my coat on and head out to the airport.
Nervously, I sat at the lone bar off the concourse, Oscar’s Beer Emporium, gulping an outrageously priced whiskey sour while the mediocre bartender judged me from behind his fifty taps of equally exorbitantly priced imported beer. Jayce found me sitting there with almost zero fanfare, dressed in his uniform.
My dick definitely twitched awake when he slid up close to me and I caught a whiff of his cologne. His wool coat only made his shoulders look beefier, and fucking fuck, why did I like a uniform on a man?
“Hi,” I snapped. “Won’t you get in trouble wearing that if you’re not on duty?”
“Makes people listen to me. You look nice,” he said as he rested a hand on my thigh. I rolled my eyes and gulped the last of my drink. The cherry plopped into my mouth, and my cheeks heated as I chewed it and removed the stem. His eyes were glued to my lips.
“Let’s get this over with.”
He held out his elbow like an asshole, but I ignored it. Together we walked about twelve thousand miles, circling the airport. It was a bland gray-walled exhibit hall for junk and everything no one needed to fly but thought they did, and there were seats and benches along the middle near the information boards. Eventually we found a seat in front of the busiest wing of the concourse and sat down. The subtle tension lines around Jayce’s mouth let me know he was clearly exhausted from his day, and I wasn’t doing much better.
“If there are pictures,” I said finally, giving voice to the thought that had been nagging me all day long, “why hasn’t anything happened yet? Why don’t they just fucking sink me already? The waiting is worse than what might happen.”
