Dirk groaned.
“We’re here!” Izzy clapped her hands excitedly as the car pulled up in front of the Mansion Restaurant, one of the most elegant dining rooms in Dallas. Outside the window, a white-coated valet hurried to open the limo door.
“I hope the food is still good,” Izzy said. “My sister Gina had the tortilla soup and the chicken tagliatelle pasta with pesto and sun-dried tomatoes. I had the lobster macaroni and cheese. Everything was amazing.”
“Pasta sounds fantastic,” Val said. “I’m starving.”
Dirk got out first, took a moment to check their surroundings; then Izzy scrambled to get out of the limo. As Carmen reached the door, a pair of long legs encased in black denim appeared in view.
“What the hell’s going on?” Ethan’s voice could have cut through nails.
Carmen tossed her thick black hair and smiled up at him. “Dirk—he is taking us to lunch,” she said as she climbed out, making Ethan’s scowl go even darker. “You are just in time to join us.”
As Meg slid out, she didn’t have to look to know where that scowl was directed. The knot that appeared in Ethan’s jaw when Val stepped out of the limo erased any doubt.
Meg glanced at Dirk and both of them grinned.
“You should have called,” Ethan said darkly. In concession to the heat, his shoulder holster was gone, his pistol clipped to the leather belt at his waist. Val could see the slight rise hidden beneath his T-shirt. She found it oddly comforting.
“When I got back to the hotel and you weren’t there, I was afraid something had happened,” he said. “I tried to call, but you didn’t pick up.”
She glanced down at the petite white leather handbag she carried. “I couldn’t fit the phone in my bag. I didn’t think I’d need it before we got back.”
His jaw tightened. “From now on, you keep it with you. Understood?”
“You could have called Dirk,” she argued. “Meg and I were with him when you left.”
He tossed a hard look over his shoulder. “I tried. Call went straight to voice mail.”
Dirk checked his cell as he moved the women toward the door. “Sorry. Looks like I let the battery go dead. Won’t happen again.”
Ethan’s eyes cut back to Val. “Like I said, if you were going to leave, you should have called. It’s my job to keep you safe.”
“I wouldn’t go off by myself. We just wanted to have lunch. Dirk agreed to take us.”
Ethan scrubbed a hand over his face. “Dirk’s a pushover. I would have said no.”
Val just smiled and sailed past him into the opulent restaurant. “That’s why I didn’t call.”
Ethan muttered a curse she couldn’t quite hear, but his mouth edged up as he stepped in behind her. He’d been worried about her. Aside from Mom and Pops, no one had worried about her since she was ten years old.
Last night she’d been nervous about Ethan staying in her suite, but after the private supper La Belle had provided, he had simply escorted her upstairs, thoroughly checked the suite, and left. Ten minutes later, he’d returned. He was being discreet. He didn’t want trouble with Beau and neither did she.
He’d arrived with laptop in hand. Once inside, he set up at the dining table and went to work answering his e-mail and checking in with his office. Val sat on the sofa in front of her own laptop, doing her best to concentrate on the Internet courses she had let lapse for the past few days.
When she glanced up, Ethan was on the phone talking to Detective Hoover, the man in charge of the investigation in Seattle. From what she could hear, nothing new had turned up on the case.
All evening she worried. Would Ethan break the rules and kiss her again? Would she be the one to break the rules?
In the end, he suggested they end the evening early and go to bed.Bed.Just watching his lips move when he said the word had her nerves humming.
“You’ve got the show tomorrow night,” he reminded her. “You need to get some sleep.”
As ifthatwas going to happen with him in the other room. But she didn’t say that to Ethan.
In the morning, he left the suite before she woke up, leaving a note saying he had gone to his own room to shower and change, then returned. He was all business, as he usually was, worse since their ill-fated kiss. He escorted her to the theater for rehearsal, left her with Dirk and the rest of the La Belle security team, and went to meet his police detective friend.
Now he was here at the Mansion, standing next to a lovely arched window in the dining room, long legs splayed, hands crossed in front of him, watching over them with those intense dark eyes that missed nothing.
