The Espionage Effect(25)
She let out a dramatic sigh. “It’s only another day or two. With your library of digital romances and all those sexy Latin men ogling you, you’ll find something, or someone, to occupy your time.” Then she nudged hard with her good shoulder. “And ‘back with us?’ What’s the story?” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone.
I glanced in the direction she looked toward. Through the open door, Alec stood in our line of sight, his back toward us. In order for him to be located there, he’d moved farther down, toward the end of the counter. A man wearing a black lab coat stood beside him, a scripted name embroidered on one side, two pens clipped in his upper pocket, a stethoscope hanging around his neck—a doctor.
“Don’t know.” I stared at the two men, so alike in dark features they could be brothers.
“Really? That’s all I get?”
Oh. Right. She had no idea he’d stumbled onto our balcony, shot. Then stabbed. Then kissed…
“Um. Well, we kind of ran into each other.” If you count his lips entangling with mine. For some inexplicable reason, I had no desire to share more with her. The moments Alec and I had experienced were important to me in a way I couldn’t quite wrap my genius brain around yet. And I wanted to understand it. Long before I revealed any of it.
“He’s…nice,” I added. If nice equaled enigmatic and dangerous.
I turned toward her, expecting mischief in her expression, but instead, she seemed focused and serious as she stared out the doorway. I glanced back at the two men engaged in what appeared to be a deep discussion. Then the doctor threw his head back and laughed at something Alec had said.
“Well, if that’s how we’re playing it, then I sort of ran into the man standing next to him.”
“The doctor?”
“Yep.”
Narrowing my eyes, I slowly turned my head toward her until our gazes met. “You don’t really need to stay for therapy do you?”
Amusement flickered across her face. She gave a slow, calculating smile as she pivoted her attention toward the doctor, then returned her gaze to me. Her tone lowered, loaded with clear innuendo. “Define therapy.”
As I smiled on the outside, all the humor in my head faded away.
Her comment, meant to be playful, cut to the deepest part of me, resonating with haunting clarity in all its personal facets.
After over an hour of visiting with Anna, I’d exited her room to find Alec waiting at the end of the hall, comfortably standing guard, absent his doctor friend. The actual time back to the resort took the same thirty-two minutes it had when we’d made our way to the hospital, but every second that ticked by on the return trip seemed to stretch infinitely.
He’d supplied one-word answers again to everything I’d asked him. “What’s in the bag?” I’d pressed. “Gear.” He’d repeated in kind.
Like a cat-and-mouse game, I chased, he evaded. And yet, the minor challenge proved entertaining. And it served as a welcome distraction to the ever-present sexual chemistry that charged the air between us.
When the backs of his fingers barely touched the skin high on my outer thigh for the second time in the last twenty minutes, I sucked in a slow breath. Just like the first time, he didn’t react. Only this time, after a few seconds, he brushed his knuckles up a few slow inches, then drifted them back down. Up. Down.
Each slight movement ratcheted my pulse higher. Along with the hemline of my sundress.
My lips parted on a silent gasp as a sudden frisson of excitement sizzled through me. He paused, then continued. I finally exhaled through pursed lips, as the electric sensation settled into a low ache between my thighs.
All the while, his gaze remained concentrated on the road, sunglasses firmly in place.
I forced myself to mimic his unaffected exterior, watching the billboards zip by as my heartbeat raced right along with my mind. Regarding what came next. Concerning where we were headed. Knowing that our not talking aloud about the subject didn’t mean we weren’t both constantly thinking about it.
He turned east onto the gravel drive that led to the front of the resort.
Desperately needing to divert maddening blood flow from where it throbbed between my legs to send it anywhere else, I forced myself back into my head and switched tactics with my line of interrogation, deploying the question-bomb I’d been sitting on for almost two hours.
Don’t get anywhere scratching at the surface? Probe deep.
“What did you mean ‘been there’ with the children?”
Silence.
Then he removed his hand from my thigh. Cool air whipped over my heated skin, and I whooshed out a relieved breath. Even though my body hummed with need.
I waited, refusing to breach the awkward tension.
For the first time in his rapid report of one-word volleys, he hesitated. Had he meant to reveal that loaded hint about the kids to me earlier, or had he slipped? Would he give in now and share a piece of himself…or distract and evade, as per his usual MO.
“I grew up on the street.” His quiet reply was the longest sentence he’d uttered in the last half hour.
I frowned. “What about your parents?” Surely all those kids earlier in the parking lot, clustered in small groups as they sold their wares to tourists, had parents.
“Didn’t have any.”