* * *
After trudging the ten blocks to their alternate lodgings, they arrived to find Frau Bieri waiting with a cross countenance and narrowed eyes. She showed them up a narrow staircase worn smooth by centuries of use and flung open a door to a room not much larger than a closet, with a single bed pushed up against the wall and a wooden chair in the opposite corner on the other side of a small window.
Frau Bieri gave them a disdainful curl of her lips and left them, presumably to go back to her own bed.
“Wait—” Cate started to call out to the hotel owner.
Draco quickly nudged her through the door and closed it behind them.
“But what about you?” Cate asked. “Isn’t she going to show you to your room?”
“That’s the thing,” Draco said. “This room has everything you need.” He nodded toward the bed. “A place to sleep and a chair.”
“I see that,” she said, frowning.
As he turned to lock the door, realization hit her. “Draco.”
He set her bag on the floor and faced her. And there it was again, that calm, steady, unflappable look he’d used with the polizei. Had he fidgeted or broken out in a cheesy grin, she’d have thrown a shoe at him.
Cate basically knew what he was going to say before he started.
“Hammer and I spoke before we left the restaurant,” he said. “As a PI, we know blending in is what makes you good at what you do. You work best if you’re forgettable. No one remembers a lone female minding her own business while standing by an elevator.”
Cate rolled her hand impatiently. “Yeah. Yeah. Get to the part you know I won’t like.”
Draco dipped his head in acknowledgment and then waved a hand from his shoulders to his hips. “As a six-foot-three male, there’s no blending into the background. If I’m following you, beside you or in front of you, people are going to see you. You won’t be forgotten.”
Her frown deepened. “And what do you propose as a solution?”
“We hide in plain sight as a couple.” He met her gaze square on. “An American couple on holiday, to be exact. It’ll be okay to stand out, taking photos along the quaint streets, arguing over restaurants, holding hands on the train, you know—” He gave a nonchalant shrug, his face its usual implacable calm as if he played tourist couple every day and it was no big deal.
Cate stared at him, a hundred feelings burbling up inside her.
“Nobody would think twice about a boyfriend following you around. A bodyguard? Absolutely. But not a boyfriend.”
She didn’t like it. But damn, it was a good plan. And that was what she disliked the most. It was the kind of plan she would have thought of if the boyfriend was anyone but Draco—the man who’d left her.
Still, it was the right thing to do.
Damn.
Still, she didn’t have to agree too quickly.
“You and Hammer, huh? You two came up with this idea without consulting me?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“We would have, but he grabbed me on the way out of the restaurant.”
“And you didn’t think to bring it up sooner?” she asked, raising the cocked eyebrow even higher. Let him sweat.
“I was thinking about it.”
“For quite some time,” she said with a slow nod.
His nod was crisp, his expression controlled, giving no indication of where those thoughts had gone. “Four hours,” he offered.
“And during those four hours of thinking, did it occur to you that faking a relationship with a man who left me without so much as a call, text, email or a kiss-my-ass might be…” she paused for effect, “…problematic?”
“That’s why it took me four hours to bring it up.” His brow furrowed, and the calm, implacable demeanor of the evening faded. “It was the first thing I thought about when we came up with the idea. It was on my mind as we walked through Niederdorf to your hotel. It’s occurred to me every minute since. It’s the best plan. The only plan. Because I’m not going to let you continue this investigation alone, especially after a man showed up in your room, knew it was your room, and attacked you.”
