And of course, I was wearing a dress.
“Fine, but don’t you dare glance up.” I pointed my finger at his face.
Andrew closed his eyes, shaking his head. “You should either get a pair of pants or get over yourself.”
“Get over myself?” I said incredulously.
“If it makes you feel better, I’m not into small-bottomed women who like lacy panties with a yellow trim,” he said with a straight face and in a matter-of-fact tone. I gasped. I had worn yellow trim panties the day we’d played grave robbers.
My cheeks burned, and my nose twitched, but I ignored it as I sucked in the air. “You said you didn’t see anything in the church,” I whisper-yelled at him. “And for your information, mybottomis not small. It’s a very nice size, fuck you very much.” I planted my fists on my hips. “Oh, and you maybe should stop asking me to do stupid shit like crawling through the windows into someone else’s room.”
One of his eyebrows arched, and a hint of a lopsided grin grew across his face. “Are you done?”
I glared at him without blinking. “If you give me a second, I’ll come up with more.”
“While you’re thinking, grab onto the windowsill, and I’ll lift you.”
My palms grew damp, and swallowing my anxiety about breaking-in, I turned to the wall, stretching my arms up. My fingers barely touched the wooden frame. Andrew stepped to me, and the heat of his body radiated through my cotton dress. The whiff of his lemon soap and musk cologne set off a shiver down my spine first, and when his large warm palms settled on each side of my waist, a different feeling knocked my anxiety out of the way and took control of my nervous system, igniting it and readying my body to burst into flames.
“Were you a cheerleader in high school?” he said low into my ear. The closeness of his lips to my skin and the hum of his voice made me unbalanced. I should be pissed at him, but instead, I had a mad desire to lean back and press my body against his, tilting my head sideways and exposing more of my neck.
I finally registered what he’d asked and I scoffed. “Oh god, no.”
“Why did you say it like that?” Andrew’s fingers shifted; his grip got firmer, but not restricting.
I peered at him. His face was too close to mine. An inch more and I could rub my nose against his. Involuntarily, my gaze dropped to his mouth, and when I dragged my eyes back to his, he was staring at my lips.
“Cheerleading requires a lot of money and after-school time.” I turned away. “I didn’t have either. Now let’s do this.”
I used every muscle to push off the ground at the same time Andrew lifted me, and as I gained momentum, my arms worked hard to pull up. Andrew’s hands gripped my ankles, and with his extra shove, I hoisted my body over the window ledge.
I walked on my hands the rest of the way until I was entirely inside the room. Before I had a chance to stand, Andrew appeared in the window like a limber feline. An attractive cat that every cat lady would like to keep.
“How do you crawl through the window so effortlessly?” I said, breathless, standing up.
“It gets easier each time.” He brought the window panels together, closing them. “There’s no time to fix the lock, but at least it’ll appear shut.”
The room had a slightly jarring wallpaper with large, bright green palm tree leaves, a four-poster king-size bed with unmade white bedding, and a man’s shirt carelessly thrown on top. A couch and two side tables separated this area from the living space.
We roamed the suite, focusing on the floor and studying its tiles. Andrew crawled under the bed while I flipped the floor mats on each side. Then we moved the nightstands, and after that we migrated to the living space. We moved the sofa and glass coffee table out of the way and pulled the rug. Our search yielded no results. We pushed everything back in its place, and Andrew disappeared into the bathroom. I checked the small closet and double-checked the same exposed tiles we had already been over.
“Bollocks.” Andrew returned. “I was so sure it would be here.”
“Is it possible that, while renovating this hotel, the tile was damaged, and they replaced it and found the hidden place?” Or maybe Andrew was wrong, and we should have been looking for something else. “What if it’s not a tile?”
Andrew took in a deep breath.
“It said to kneel before love birds…” he muttered, running his hand through his hair. “The floor is original. We’re in the east part of the house. This was Augustine’s and Maria’s bedroom. He often wrote to her about how much he enjoyed watching the sunrise with her in their bed. The view out of these windows matches the description. This is the correct room.”
Something banged on the wall inside the closet. Then the sound of a door slammed shut. In the hallway, women’s voices chatting in Spanish grew louder. The sound of footsteps stopped outside Brandon’s room. Fear clawed up my throat. On the other side of the thick wooden door, the metal keys rattled. They knocked and called out something in Spanish. Housekeeping? We shouldn’t be in here. Metal keys clanged again.
A turn of a key.
My blood froze in my veins.
Click.
I looked at Andrew, and his face was a replica of my fear.
