Hidden Away (KGI #3)(57)

She dove for the end of the bed and ran for the bathroom, his chuckle following as she nearly killed herself getting out of the door.

“Five minutes,” she grumbled as she turned on the shower. He was probably used to hosing off in three minutes in the military. Well, she wasn’t in the military and furthermore, it took longer than five minutes just to wash her hair.

Still, his threat rang in her ears, and she wasn’t entirely certain that he wouldn’t come in after her so while she stuck her head under the spray to rinse the shampoo, she scrubbed the other parts of her body.

She momentarily got caught up in the absolute bliss of the hot water raining down over her. Instead of energizing her, as she’d hoped a shower would do, it made her want to crawl back into bed and sleep for about a year.

In disgust, she reached for the knob and turned the hot water completely off. The result was an icy blast that made her yelp as it pricked her body like little ice pellets. At least she wasn’t mooning over how good the bed would feel again.

As she stepped from the shower, shivering, Garrett pounded on the door.

“Sarah? Is everything okay in there?”

“Yes, fine!” she called. The last thing she wanted was for him to make good on his threat. “I’ll be out in just a minute, promise.”

She hurriedly dried and then pulled on her underwear and jeans over her still-damp skin. She struggled with her bra, and in her haste, she managed to put the damn thing on inside out. God, but she was a mess. With a laugh, she righted her bra and then yanked on her shirt. She wasn’t even going to bother with her hair. If he was so determined that she make it out in five minutes, then he’d just have to deal with her looking like a drowned rat. More like a horde of rats had taken up residence in her tangled tresses.

She gave one last wipe to her hair so it wasn’t actually dripping and then gave up and opened the door. Garrett was leaning against the opposite wall and he raised an eyebrow.

She frowned. “What? You gave me five minutes. This is what happens when you give a woman only five minutes in the bathroom.”

“Whoa, I didn’t say a word.”

“You didn’t have to. It was that look you gave me like you were staring at Medusa.”

He chuckled and kicked off the wall. “I wasn’t looking at your hair.”

“Then what the hell were you looking at?”

“I’m a man. Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.”

She glanced downward and saw that her shirt was clinging very damply to her bra, which was also ... damp, which in turn gave him a pretty darn good glimpse of her br**sts and the outline of her ni**les.

“Oh hell.” She turned and charged back into the bathroom to get another towel. “This is all your fault.”

“What were you hollering about?” he asked from the doorway.

She turned around, armed with a towel that she held strategically over her chest. “I turned the cold water on so I could wake up. You said you wanted to talk. I can’t talk if all I want to do is go back to sleep.”

He stepped back into the hallway and gestured for her to precede him back into the bedroom. She plopped onto the bed and switched the towel for a pillow and held it to her chest as she made herself comfortable.

Garrett loomed—there was no other word for it—over the end of the bed. He was a big man, and in such a small bedroom, he seemed to take up every available inch. He made her nervous.

“For God’s sake, sit down or something. I can’t think with you hovering like that.”

He made a sound of amusement but accommodated her by settling on the end of the bed. But that only brought him closer and made the entire setting feel decidedly intimate.

“What do you want to talk about?”

He studied her for a moment, his gaze moving over her face in a way that made her think he was peeling her skin back. “Why are you so nervous?”

That was a stupid question. Something an oblivious man would totally ask. So she ignored him and stared pointedly, waiting for him to begin.

“I’ve put my cards on the table. It’s time for you to deal yours.”

Her eyes widened and then she narrowed them in irritation. “You haven’t done anything of the sort. I know your name and that my brother supposedly sent you—which, by the way, I plan to confirm.”

Garrett shook his head and sighed. “You have no sense of self-preservation, Sarah. You and I have to work on that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If I was the bad guy feeding you a line about your brother sending me, you just tipped your hand and put me on notice. If I was threatened by that, it would be awfully damn easy to make you sure you weren’t capable of checking in with Lattimer.”

“Why are you telling me this then?”

“Because I’m the good guy, and I want to teach you not to make mistakes that could get you killed.”

He looked indulgent, like he was having to display a large degree of patience with her naïveté. Okay, she got it. She was a complete moron. But in her defense, there weren’t any classes where one learned the art of deception and cloak-and-dagger crap that was the hallmark of overwrought spy thriller movies.

Much was said about common sense, but common sense was for the generalities of life. No one she knew had experience with murder and hiding from the law.