Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(32)
“Do you think Sanders knows? Since he worked there?”
Donald shrugged. “S’possible.”
“Do you trust Sanders?” Michael asked pointedly, because the question had been gnawing at him.
“With my life.” Donald tilted his head, studying the younger man. “But why would you ask? Is there some reason you think you can’t trust him?”
Yes. Because he’s avoiding me. Because he’s avoiding everyone. Because something is up. “No reason. Except I honestly don’t know who to trust anymore.”
Donald shot him a faint smile and nodded, then stepped around from behind the table and gripped his shoulder. “I hear ya, kid. All I can tell you is this—keep on digging; keep on asking. Your dad was like that, too. He was focused and driven. You got that from him. Stay on it, and you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Focused and driven. His dad had used those words, too, to describe him—only his father had been talking about Michael’s quest to keep Annalise in his life. They were also fitting adjectives for how determined Michael had been to follow his dad’s wishes about her. Those words were spelled out in the note he’d found from his dad’s wallet, scattered across the driveway with credit cards and photos the night he’d died.
Annalise was his dream, his one-time reality, and his end game.
Then she was gone, reduced to a memory that haunted him. Now, she’d become real again, and he needed to go meet her at the airport.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We will begin boarding Flight Twenty-Three to New York shortly.”
Annalise turned in the direction of the gate agent, checking her watch as she talked to her sister in Paris, nine hours ahead of her.
“How is Mom doing today? How was the doctor’s appointment?” She paced the boarding area, scanning it for Michael, nerves skating across her skin. It was so weird to be traveling with him. This was what they had dreamed about when they were younger—this sort of freedom, including the freedom to change her flight. She’d been slated for a later one to New York, but had pushed earlier so they could fly together.
She stopped in her tracks, wondering what sort of traveling companion he was, like whether he slept on planes, his head bobbing up and down then crashing on her shoulder? It was an odd image—Michael Sloan dozing on a flight. Did he prefer the window or the aisle? Would he be chatty, or want to watch TV, or work the whole time? Would she want to do the things she normally did on planes—devour magazines like Discovery, National Geographic, and Vanity Fair, which were stashed in the outside pocket of her carry-on—or would they watch some lame straight-to-video release together on the mini-screen? All these details were unknown to her, even though many years ago she’d often imagined traveling with him.
“Her day was all right, but not great, to be honest,” Noelle said on the other end of the line, rooting Annalise to the present. Their father had passed on a few years ago, and their mother was alone in a small flat in Paris. That wouldn’t be a problem ordinarily, except she’d had a bad fall a year ago, and her hip hadn’t been the same since, so she relied on her two daughters. Noelle and Annalise did their best to stay near, check in on her daily, and help with whatever she needed. These efforts were complicated by Annalise’s travel for work, but she picked up the slack when she was in town. “Her doctors are switching her to a new medication,” Noelle added.
“What kind are they giving her?” Annalise asked, since she’d become far too familiar with drugs and dosages while married to Julien. He took several kinds each day to try to stave off the inevitable, and so when her mother had fallen ill, she’d poured her newly acquired knowledge into researching her mom’s meds. As she and her sister discussed side effects and dosage, Annalise wandered through the noisy crowds in the boarding area, weaving through teens slouched on blue upholstered seats, businessmen in rumpled suits hunched over laptops, pecking away at keys, and vacationers playing a final round of airport slots, hunting for that last-chance payout.
Somewhere by the Aladdin one-armed bandit, she spotted him.
Her stone-cold heart thawed again. It shed its jacket like a girl in spring, twirling in the sunshine.
A grin tugged at her lips as Michael walked toward her, dressed in crisp black slacks and a light green shirt with slim white stripes, the top button undone. The man was muscled and sturdy, his chest broad, his arms way beyond toned, his legs strong. Her eyes raked over him, snapshotting every detail, from his trim, tight waist, to his deliciously messy black hair, to the hint of stubble on his face. His jaw was square, his cheekbones strong, his lips so f*cking kissable. His ice-blue eyes lit up when their gazes met, a match setting her ablaze with his heat.
As if a tropical sun caressed her, she warmed all over. A slow and sexy smile spread across his handsome face. That was when her focus on the call was officially shot to hell. Butterflies took flight inside her belly, surprising her. She’d expected lust, raging hormones, or the mad desire that Michael had unleashed in her the other night, but this was out of left field, this strange and new stomach flipping. It caught her off-guard, especially when the butterflies soared to the stratosphere as he stopped less than a foot away from her, said nothing at all, and instead just dropped a kiss on her cheek.
Oh God, how she wanted to cup her hand on that cheek, like a young girl capturing a first kiss.