His hands appeared beside me on the frame, caging me between them as I fumbled in my pocket for my key. He leaned close to my ear, his body heat all around me when he asked, “Do I want to know where you’ve really been?” The low timbre of his voice made the skin pebble on parts of my body I probably shouldn’t have been thinking about after the morning I’d had.
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
He turned me slowly to face him and plucked the key from my hand, tucking it into the breast pocket of his dress shirt as he waited for an answer. When I didn’t offer one, he bent low to meet my eyes. “I know you came here for some time away, and I get that you don’t want the FCPD or the FBI or evenmebreathing down your neck. And I know that you can take care of yourself,” he said, holding up a finger as I opened my mouth to argue, “but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think there was a genuine risk to your life, Finn, and I really,reallyneed you to trust me on this.” He took the ice bucket gently from my arm and held it over my head, pointing out the stamp on the bottom that readPROPERTY OF THE VILLAGIO.
I snatched it back from him. Was there anything this man wasn’t good at? “Fine. If you must know, I went to find Vero. She wasn’t answering her phone, and I wanted to make sure she knew what was going on with all this,” I said, gesticulating around the hall. I reached inside his pocket for my key and turned to unlock my door. He followed me inside, leaning back against it when it closed.
“Where are my mom and the kids?” I asked, ignoring his cocky grin.
“Sam and your mom went out for coffee, and the kids are watching TV with Georgia in her room. Where’s Vero?” he asked, his cop-bright eyes trailing me as I set the ice bucket on the dresser and stripped off my coat.
“With a young man at a fancy hotel with a very large bathtub. They’re ordering room service. She promised me she would keep the door locked and wouldn’t leave the room.” That was all true. Every word of it.
“Yeah? What’s her friend’s name?” His eyes went glassy as I peeled off my sweatshirt.
“I’m not telling you.”
He pushed off the door and came up behind me as I kicked off my shoes. He took my waist gently in his hands, his breath warm on the back of my neck, making the hair stand on end when he whispered, “I have ways of extracting information from reluctant informants.”
“Is this an official interrogation?”
His hands moved down my hips. “Just a conversation.”
“Not sure this qualifies as conversation.” My breath hitched as he drew me against him. The man was clearly created for this, and I repressed the urge to climb him like a police academy training rope as I turned slowly to face him.
His grin suggested he knew it. “Then answer the question so we can both stop talking.”
A frustrating pressure flared between my legs. “Vero’s having fun and she doesn’t want to come back yet.”
“So you’re not going to tell me what room she’s in?”
“Not a chance.”
Nick hooked his hands around my thighs, hoisting me up and wrapping my legs around his waist. I leaned down to kiss him, gasping with surprise when his arms came out from under me and I fell backward onto the bed. He planted a knee between mine, his eyes going molten as he climbed over me. “Sure I can’t convince you to tell me?”
“Totally sure.” I arched into him, perfectly content to discontinue the conversation. “The kids are right across the hall,” I panted. “And my mother could be back any minute.”
His mouth moved down my chest, stretching the collar of my shirt. “Susan and Sam just left,” he murmured, unfastening a button. “And the kids and Georgia just started a movie.”
Which meant we had at least an hour.
I grabbed Nick’s face and kissed him, my fingers raking up and knotting in his hair as a ferocious need took hold of me. He was right.He would figure all of this out on his own—where Vero was, who was in that room with her—and once he did, everything we had would grind to a crashing halt. Frantic, I reached down for his belt, the bed creaking as I pulled him against me. If this was our last hour like this, I was determined to make it count.
We both started as something heavy smacked into the door connecting Steven’s room to mine. Nick froze over me as the unmistakable sound of a football game blared through the wall, as if Steven had turned up the volume on his television to drown us out. I pushed Nick back by the chest, my own still heaving.
“Sort of kills the mood, huh?” He rolled onto his back and tucked me under his arm. I curled into his side as our ragged breathing slowed. He pressed his lips to my hair. “I’d invite you back to my room, but Charlie’s taking a nap. I want him fresh when Garrett and I go to Pleasantville to look into the Grindley case this afternoon. I don’t want any surprises while we’re gone.” His fingertips traced lazy patterns on my arm. I shivered and burrowed deeper into his side. “What’s the matter?” he teased. “Don’t want to spend the afternoon with Charlie?”
“Do I have another option?”
“You could come with me and Garrett. We’re going to Grindley’s house to meet with his wife. I was going to wait until Charlie woke up, but if you want to come, we can leave now and let Charlie sleep.”
I lifted my head. This might be my only shot to learn exactly what the police knew about Ike’s disappearance, or what, if anything, Ike’s wife knew about us. And Vero and Cam would need at least a few hours to make heads or tails of whatever secrets were hiding in Louis’s tablet anyway.
“I’ll grab a quick shower.” I untangled myself from Nick’s arms and climbed off the bed, digging in my suitcase for my toiletries and a change of clothes. Nick sat up against the headboard, watching me with shameless interest as I retreated to the bathroom. I locked myself inside, avoiding my reflection in the mirror, wondering how much longer I could keep up this shell game.
CHAPTER 11
Nick held my hand the entire way to the parking garage, his body angled toward mine, always careful to stay a half step ahead of me. He darted cautious glances at every corner, behind every ramp and concrete support column. I fought a twinge of guilt as he guided me toward the passenger door of a familiar red Cadillac.
