Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(81)

Holland sniffled a little, and he could have sworn tears had welled in her eyes. “Hey, Gus.” She turned her attention right back to the task at hand. “What were you saying about the motel?” She touched one of the photos. “Oh, I see what you mean. Look at the clock. That’s not a cheap piece of crap. That’s a docking station.”

“Yes, it is,” Gus replied.

“Hell, I missed that,” Roman said, disgust in his voice. “I had one of those a few years back. They get outdated pretty quickly, but for the time it wasn’t cheap. I think one of the big luxury chains used to have those in every room.”

“The same one that uses Italian-made sheets.” Gus’s tone rang with triumph. “Look at the corner of the photo. There’s a tag hanging off. It’s hard to see but if you look through a magnifying glass that’s the logo of a very expensive Italian sheet maker. The sheets themselves are made of expensive percale. Hence the pretty sheen.”

Holland whistled. “She’s right. I splurged on some myself. They’re pricey. A seedy motel would never have the budget for these. The pictures must have been taken elsewhere.”

Dax thought back. He’d gone over his father’s every move a thousand times. “He’d been in London the week before.”

“You’re right,” Gus agreed. “He told me he’d been feeling really run-down while he was there, like he’d been on the verge of getting the flu or something. But what he’d been was drugged, and that’s when all of this went down. He’d been at a conference. Let’s check into that, see if we can find out anything.”

“No, Gus. There’s no point.” He hated to have to disillusion her. “I’ve already checked into the timeline.”

“There was no conference,” Holland said.

Dax speared Holland with a surprised glance.

She shrugged. “I made a timeline, too. I have notes on everywhere your father went for the six weeks preceding his death.”

“No conference?” Gus asked. “You think he was meeting one of his mistresses? If so, I can try to find out. I don’t recall him having one in Europe, at least not one that Mom knew about. But it’s possible.”

“Or he was there for another reason entirely and that’s what got him killed,” Dax said with finality. The truth seemed right at his fingertips. That trip to England must play into this.

Holland nodded his way, giving him support. “I know he stayed at a Gately Resort Hotel. They use the same sheets and bedding worldwide. Only the colors change. Roman, I’m going to bet you have some killer MI5 contacts.”

“I’ll get on it,” he replied. MI5 was England’s version of the FBI. “It’s been years, though. I don’t know what they’ll have. CCTV feeds are only kept for so long.”

“Try anything.” This was the first real lead they’d had in so long, and Dax meant to follow it as far as he could. “We’ll pull all his credit card records and try to figure out where he went while he was there. You two let me know what you discover.”

“Will do,” Gus said. “And you should really work on that other project we discussed.”

“Five hundred bucks says Dax is shit out of luck,” Roman offered.

Great words of encouragement from one of his best friends. Good to know he had support.

“Oh, I will take all of your money, Calder,” Gus shot back. “Bye, Holland. Have a good time with Dax. I’m coming to see you in a few weeks. Plan something fun.”

The line went dead.

He turned and Holland was still looking at that phone wistfully, as if she hadn’t wanted the call to end.

She’d cut herself off from everyone to save him. He had to find a way to give it back to her. Maybe Gus was right. Maybe charm would work. And oral sex. He was willing to give it one hell of a shot.


*

Holland stared at the screen, her mind wandering.

“Did you find anything?”

She shook her head as Dax brought her out of her thoughts. She’d been remembering those days three years earlier when she and Dax had finally come together and everything seemed possible. Today he’d lingered in her space. She sat at her laptop, running through reports and looking at his father’s credit card receipts from the London trip. Dax hovered right behind her, crowding her. She could smell the soap he’d used earlier, feel the heat of his body. Every now and then he brushed against her, skin to skin, and she remembered exactly how long it had been since she’d felt real lust.

Hours had passed, and now the day was sinking into night again. Dax was still here and he showed not a single sign of leaving.

“I have receipts for fuel,” Holland replied. “I found a rental car agreement, too. He bought gas twice. My question is why would he need a car in London? It’s so much easier to use public transit. Even getting to and from other major cities in England is easier to do on trains. So I think he was heading somewhere off the beaten path.”

Dax nodded. “Where did he purchase the fuel?”

She winced. “Just outside of London. It looks like he filled up the tank both times at a petrol station on the M25, the highway that runs around London. From there he could have gone anywhere, though I suspect he was heading north from the placement of the station.”