Читать книгу Undercover Protector - Melinda Di Lorenzo - Страница 15
ОглавлениеThe slightly buoyant feeling in Nadine’s chest faded as they neared Whispering Woods Lodge. It was nestled into a man-made valley, its peaked, full log roof visible from the top of the very long block that led down to its enormous outdoor parking lot. And, usually, just that first glimpse of the rustically styled hotel made her want to go inside. Or it always had when she was a kid, anyway. She remembered how quickly it had been built. How everyone in town heralded Jesse Garibaldi as some kind of miracle worker. The man was still new in town then, his investments in tourism and infrastructure still a novelty. At ten years old, the awe of the town reinforced what Nadine already believed. Garibaldi’s power was endless. Then, it had impressed her. Now, it made her shiver.
“You all right?” Anderson’s warm voice cut through her worry.
“I’m okay,” she replied. “Just thinking about when this place opened fifteen years ago. My dad worked for Garibaldi, so we got a front-row seat. It was amazing. Inspiring and hopeful and...” She shrugged. “I was ten. So it was pretty cool.”
“It’s still pretty cool.”
“Except knowing what I do about Garibaldi makes it harder to enjoy it. Like it’s got a taint. Does that sound funny?”
Anderson’s mouth set into a line before he answered. “The man’s a murderer, Nadine. Everything he touches—or has touched—does have a taint.”
Does that include me?
The question sprang to mind unexpectedly, and she wasn’t able to dismiss it as easily as it had come. After all, Garibaldi had touched her life. He’d paid for her and her mother’s move from Whispering Woods to Freemont. He’d covered her many hospital expenses and the costs of her father’s funeral. Then he’d paid for her entire education. If the man’s taint extended to people, she was probably at the top of the list.
She opened her mouth—maybe to say something about it, maybe not, she wasn’t sure—but stopped as she realized Anderson had bypassed the main lot and was headed for the underground one.
“I don’t think we can park in there,” she said. “Staff and VIP guests only. Unless they’ve changed that.”
He turned a rueful smile her way. “Open the glove box.”
She did as he said, and when she flicked down the door, a laminated parking pass fell straight into her hands.
“Is it fake?”
“No.”
Anderson lifted up the pass and placed it on the windshield, then offered the attendant in the parking booth a wave as they drove through.
“See?” he said. “Perfectly legitimate.”
“Well, then...which one are you?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“Staff? Or suite?”
“Not staff,” he replied, his voice matching his still-rueful expression.
“You’re in a suite?”
“Trust me,” Anderson said as he pulled into a spot, “I didn’t book it that way. It was an accident.”
“Seriously? How does that happen accidentally?” She couldn’t keep the surprise from her response, and she realized she’d been expecting him to say that he’d acquired the pass through some twisty, undercover police deception.
“I guess they were overbooked,” Anderson said. “C’mon.”
Nadine frowned as she let herself out of the truck. It was well-known that as the only real hotel in Whispering Woods, the lodge offered a good-sized chunk of reasonably priced rooms and an even bigger set of moderately priced ones. But it was just as well-known that their block of suites were luxuriously equipped and had a cost to match that luxury. She had a hard time believing that the lodge would just give him an upgrade. Especially by accident.
“What did you tell them?” she asked.
“Tell who?” he replied innocently, moving around to her side of the truck and gesturing for her to start walking.
She planted her feet and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Stop that. Why did they give you an upgrade, Anderson?”
He sighed and ran a hand over his shaggy locks. “Look. It just kind of happened.”
“What did?”
“I was checking in, and the girl behind the counter was friendly. Chatty. You know those dolls where you pull a string to make them talk?”
“Yes.”
“She was like that. Only her string got stuck and she just kept going.”
Nadine fought a laugh. “That’s not very nice.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing. It was just a very full five minutes. She told me all about her life and the guy she was marrying. Her high school sweetheart. And she wanted to hear about me. So I told her my cover story, which is that I’m here visiting a friend at the care center.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with the room?”
“When I said friend, the girl at the counter took that to mean something more.”
“And you didn’t correct her?”
“It didn’t seem important. And actually...”
“Actually what?”
“Let’s get to the elevator first.”
Nadine started to argue, then caught the obvious embarrassment on his face and relented temporarily. “Fine.”
“We should take the service elevator. We’ll run into fewer people, and if someone from the staff questions us, we’ll plead error.”
“Are we really that conspicuous?”
“I’m not.” He cast a pointed look toward her legs.
She looked down and spotted her hospital-issue pajama pants. “Oh.”
“I did offer to get you some clothes a few days ago.”
“Don’t rub it in.”
“I wouldn’t dare. Let’s go.”
She let him lead her across the cement. They moved past a set of slick faux-wood doors that led to the main elevators, then around a corner and up to another, far more utilitarian setup—plain gray metal. Anderson tugged on the handle, then stepped back to allow her to pass through first.
“What, no further criticism of my politeness?” he joked as she stepped across the threshold.
“I’ve temporarily suspended my aversion to it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Don’t be. I might change my mind once I hear what you have to say about what you told the girl at the front desk.”
His expression turned sheepish, and he didn’t speak until they were in the elevator and on the way up.
“Once the check-in girl had put the idea out there,” he said, “it seemed like a better option. Being your boyfriend instead of your friend gave me a better excuse for my vigil outside your room.”
Nadine had to push off yet another need to blush and instead asked, “But if you were my boyfriend, why would you be staying at the lodge in the first place? Why wouldn’t you stay at my place?”
Anderson cleared his throat. “Exactly what she wanted to know.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“The first thing that came to mind. That you and I had a fight.”
“About what?”
“You want to know what our fictional fight was about?”
“I think I have a right to know.”
“What makes you even think I told the check-in girl what it was about?”
“Because you got a suite, and you didn’t get it just because you lied about being my boyfriend. And speaking of lying...” Nadine crossed her arms. “I thought you were Mr. Honesty.”
“Mr. Nice Guy,” he corrected. “And aside from the fake name—which was a necessity—and the fake fight—which was a knee-jerk-reaction kind of excuse—the girl filled in the rest on her own. I mentioned she was chatty, didn’t I?”
She rolled her eyes. “And what did she fill in?”
“That I was getting ready to propose, and you ran off to Whispering Woods to avoid me.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a leap.”
Anderson chuckled. “You have no idea. One second I was single guy, checking into a hotel for a few days, and the next, I was chasing after a woman who refused to marry me.”
“I’m afraid to ask how that led to the suite,” she said.
“Well. When you see which suite it is, you might be able to fill in a few things on your own.”
“Can’t wait.”
“I’m sure.”
The elevator pinged then and came to a smooth stop. But as the doors slid open and Anderson pressed an arm against one of them so she could go by, Nadine had a sudden urge to run. To shove the thick-shouldered man aside and run straight down the hall without looking back. And it wasn’t fear that fueled the need. It wasn’t even some unspecific kind of apprehension. It was anticipation. An unexpected tingle that licked warmly up her feet and hands, moved inward, then settled somewhere in her gut. It was a heady feeling. Dangerous. Unexpected. And directly related to her attraction to Anderson and the fact that she was about to be very, very alone with him.
Well, that...and the gold-plated sign that hung on the wall just in view.
Honeymoon Suite.
And it got worse. As Nadine forced her feet to move her out into the hall, a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty or so bounced into sight, her ponytail wagging and eyes sparkling at the two of them. Even without an introduction, there was no doubt about who she was—the chatty storyteller who was trying to seal Nadine and Anderson into a fake engagement.
* * *
Anderson stifled a groan. In his mind, it was already awkward enough that he’d been forced to confess to having gone along with the assumptions made by the check-in girl. Now he was going to have to own it, too. Taking a breath, he forced a smile onto his face. Then he slung his arm over Nadine’s shoulders as casually as he could manage and bent a little to whisper, “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“It worked!” the check-in girl squealed as she approached. “I told you it would!”
“You sure did,” Anderson agreed.
She turned her eyes to Nadine. “How did he do it? What part convinced you? Tell me the room had something to do with it! It was the room, wasn’t it? Wait—why aren’t you wearing the ring?”
“The ring?” Nadine repeated, her voice almost faint.
“You don’t have it? It’s still stuck down that sink?” Her eyes flicked between them. “Wait. You haven’t even asked her yet, have you? Oh! I let the cat out of the bag?”
“Little bit,” Anderson managed to say.
The girl’s smile only faltered for a second. “Well. It’s a good thing I came up to change the flowers in the nook. Ask her now.”
“Now?”
“She’s obviously not going to say no. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come to the suite. Or the hotel at all. Besides that, I’m the perfect witness. Not so much of a crowd that she feels like she has to say yes, but the perfect person to capture the moment if she says yes. Give me your phone.”
“My phone?”
“How else am I going to record it for you?”
Anderson eased away from Nadine, dug the slim device from his pocket and handed it over. The girl’s grin just about split her face.
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t forget to get down on one knee. You want it to be good.”
Anderson shrugged helplessly at Nadine. Her eyes were wide, her bottom lip tugged in. She looked nervous bordering on terrified, and Anderson wondered how that was going to translate in the recording.
He leaned toward her ear again. “You’re going to have to fake it a little better than that, honey. Even Little Miss Chatterbox won’t be fooled if you look like I’m trying to push you off a cliff.”
Her lips turned up in an almost passable smile. “I might be fighting an urge to strangle you right now.”
“Just a few moments and one proposal and you can strangle away.” He winked, then dropped to his knee and shot a genuine smile up at her. “Nadine Elise Stuart. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve sparked something special in me. I can honestly say you know more about me than most people. I feel like it only took five minutes to get to that point. Literally. So between that and the fact I’ve never seen anyone look quite so sexy in a pair of hospital pajamas, I was wondering if you’d do me the honor of marrying me?”
Nadine’s mouth worked silently for a second. Her gaze was a little soft, a little amused and a little something else that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Finally, she nodded, and Anderson tipped his head toward the check-in girl.
“Good enough?” he asked.
She lowered the camera phone. “Close.”
“Close?”
“You need the kiss.”
Crap.
“We’re not really into PDAs,” he said.
The girl shook her head. “This isn’t public. This is just the two of you, plus your own personal videographer. Posterity.”
“Still not really—”
“It’s fine.” Nadine’s hand landed on his shoulder.
He looked up again. “What?”
“It’s fine,” she repeated.
Anderson pushed to his feet. It was hard to stop his gaze from flicking down to her lips before shifting up to her eyes. Although it hadn’t been directly on his mind before, to say he had zero interest in kissing her—now that it had been put in his head—would be a lie. But to say that he wanted to force her into doing it was an even bigger untruth. In fact, the idea made his gut twist and ache.
“Nadine?” His voice came out a little hoarse.
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but note that now her eyes moved briefly to his lips. “Let’s just not make it something we wouldn’t want our kids to see, okay?”
“All right.”
He stepped forward, then stopped just far enough away that they weren’t touching. He started to tell her he wouldn’t do it—couldn’t under the circumstances—but one of her hands came up to his cheek, stilling his mouth. Nadine’s palm was warm on his skin. It sent a shock of heat straight through him, and articulate thought flew away as she used her fingers to guide his face down toward hers. Instinct kicked in quickly. Especially when Nadine pressed up to her toes, stumbled a little and bumped up against him. Then his hands came up automatically to steady her. To pull her body flush to his.
“Ready?” she breathed.
He tried to say that he was, but her face tipped up then, and her lips grazed his, and words were no longer an option. Action, on the other hand...that was a different story.
Anderson lifted one of his hands up and placed it on the small of Nadine’s back. The other he brought to the back of her neck in a caress. Her hair brushed his knuckles, and as short as it was cut, it was still softer than silk. Her mouth was softer still. Warm, too, and not just yielding. Eager and willing. Her lips pressed to his firmly, then pulled away, then pressed again. She tasted so good—felt so good—that he wanted to keep it going. True regret filled him when the check-in girl’s voice interrupted the kiss.
“That’s perfect!” she crowed. “And I think I got it all.”
Anderson dragged his eyes open and stared down into Nadine’s chocolate gaze for another second before releasing her. As heavy as her lids looked, she didn’t blink. It was impossible to look away, and he couldn’t quite resist the need to drag his thumb over her lower lip.
“Nothing the kids wouldn’t want to see,” he murmured.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“All right!” The ponytailed girl pushed in between them, shoving the phone at Anderson. “Promise her you’ll get her a proper ring. No. Not just a proper one. The perfect one. To go with the perfect proposal and the perfect kiss. Did you hear that? He’s going to get you something absolutely perfect.”
“I heard it,” Nadine said.
Anderson couldn’t help but shoot her a surprised look. “You did?”
“Didn’t you?” She lifted an eyebrow, undisguised mirth evident in her eyes.
“I guess I did.”
“Oh, my gosh!” interjected the girl. “I can’t wait to see it! But you better get going because those strawberries and champagne you just have to order will be up soon.”
Then she flounced off in the other direction. Anderson shook his head in disbelief, then dragged his wallet out to free his key card, apologizing as he opened the door to the suite.
“That was...interesting. I’m sorry if—” He cut himself off as Nadine pushed by him, bent over and let out a strangled gasp, then collapsed to the edge of the couch.
He took a step closer, but she waved him off. Her shoulders shook, and for a second Anderson thought she was crying. He moved closer again, concern flowing in. When she lifted her head, though, he saw that tears weren’t the case at all. She was laughing.
He frowned. “What’s funny?”
She gasped out a sentence between laughs. “That—girl’s—poor—fiancé.”
“What?”
“She must just steamroll him. Can you imagine? Do you think he even meant to start dating her, let alone get engaged to her?”
He felt his lips twitch; it was good to see Nadine so relaxed. “Hard to say.”
“Or maybe he’s just like she is. Scripting his life aloud like that, too. I wonder what happens if their stories conflict?”
“God knows.” He stepped past the couch and sank into the enormous chair on the other side of coffee table. “I really am sorry we had to go through all that.”
“Which part?” she replied. “The running, the sneaking, the lying...or the kissing?”
“Yep.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“I know.”
Nadine laughed again and leaned back, her gaze sweeping over the room. “It really is pretty swanky. Everything I imagined as a kid. We were supposed to take a tour not long after Whispering Woods opened, but I got the flu, and we never found the time to reschedule. I guess I never had a reason to come back. You don’t really visit hotels in your own town, do you?”
“No, not so much.”
“I used to dream about coming in here, though.” Her eyes flicked around again. “I’m not sure if I wish I’d seen it before, or if I’m glad I’m seeing it like this for the first time.”
Anderson surveyed the space himself. Aside from tossing his suitcase to the ground when he’d first arrived, he hadn’t spent much time inside at all. He really hadn’t taken the time to look around at all. Now he could see that it was tastefully decorated with boldly romantic coloring. Not rustically styled like the exterior of the lodge. Instead, the suite was...soft. Cream walls and cream carpet with pops of burgundy that added a touch of sexiness. He wondered absently what the bedroom looked like. Then his eye caught Nadine, and the wondering became a little less absent.
He cleared his throat and made himself ask in a teasing voice, “The honeymoon suite, specifically?”
Nadine shot him a dirty look. “No. Being a bride wasn’t high on my list of fantasies.”
“Not one of those little girls, huh?”
“My dad’s driving job made him keep weird hours. His secret, second family took him away even more.” She made a face and then went on. “When I was little, I thought all fathers and husbands spent that much time apart from their families. I didn’t like it much and didn’t want a life like that. But then I found out the truth, and it was even worse, so... Sorry. You probably don’t want to hear all that.”
Anderson shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. I like to listen to stories about other people’s abnormal upbringings. They make my own seem that much saner.”
“Ha-ha.”
“I’m serious. My parents were high school sweethearts who dropped out of school when they found out they were expecting me. They used to do what they called high-five parenting. My dad would work all night at the gas station while my mom and I slept. Then he’d come home, and she’d go to work at the grocery store. We moved around a lot because they could rarely keep up with rent.”
Nadine winced. “That must’ve been hard for you. And them.”
Out of habit, he shrugged off the sympathy. “It was just life. It wasn’t until I started school that I realized ramen noodles and frozen vegetables and boxed cereal weren’t the only things on the menu. A weird little light bulb went off in my five-year-old brain. I kept my mouth shut about it until third grade. Then I vividly remember coming home and telling my mom about some of the things the kids brought in their lunch boxes and how I wanted them. I’d worked out a whole plan on how unfair it was that they made me so different. She cried. That same night, we moved again. This time from our apartment to my grandparents’ place. I thought it was my fault for wanting some packaged fruit snacks.”
“But it wasn’t. Of course.”
“No.”
Anderson looked down at his hands, recalling the confusion and misguided guilt. It wasn’t a memory he normally shared. Or one he even liked to think about. He got the feeling, though, that it was doing Nadine good to hear it. Her face was open and interested, her body leaning forward. She’d been through a hell of a lot over the last little while. Anderson might not have been there when her brother was killed, but he was more than happy to try to make things a little easier for her now.
And it feels good to get it off my chest, too, he admitted to himself.
That was a surprise. One he didn’t want to reason through right that second. Or even have time to think about. He had a case to concern himself with. A bad guy he needed to keep away from Nadine, a worse guy he needed to connect their current predicament to and fifteen years’ worth of justice to serve out.
He brought his gaze up again with the intention of saying as much. But his mouth had different ideas.
“My mom never told me directly,” he said, “but there were lots of whispers, and I heard them all. The day I came home and complained was the same day my dad left her a Dear John letter.”
“Your dad left the two of you behind?”
“For about six months. My grandparents only took us in on the condition that my mom never have contact with him again. I learned that from the whispers, too. They hated him. Thought he wasn’t good enough for her. So they weren’t very happy when he turned up on their doorstep.”
“But your mom took him back, just like that?”
Anderson laughed. “Not even close. It took my dad a month just to get her to talk to him again. He showed up every morning with a cup of coffee and a single rose.”
“Persistent,” Nadine stated.
“And apologetic. A lot.”
“So what was his excuse for leaving in the first place?”
“Turns out his opinion of himself coincided with the one my grandparents had.”
“He thought you and your mom would be better off without him.”
“Exactly. But it turned out he was more selfish than he thought.”
Nadine’s brows knit together. “What do you mean?”
Anderson smiled. “He hated being away from us more than he wanted to make things better for us, apparently. So he came up with a plan—become a cop.”
“I guess it would be hard for your grandparents to argue with that.”
“Yep. My mom, too. She loved him, and when he told her he’d enrolled in the training program already...”
“What? She was powerless to say no?” Her smile softened the question.
He met her eyes. “Isn’t that what true love is all about?”
“Powerlessness?”
“Yep.”
“I hope not.”
“You sure about that?”
“Why would anyone want to be powerless to say no?”
He leaned forward. “Because it’s two sides of the same coin when you’re really in love. All powerful and completely powerless at the same time.”
“Do you know that firsthand?”
Nadine’s face didn’t change as she spoke, but the air in the room was another story. It shifted. Warmed. And Anderson couldn’t help but wonder if the question held more meaning than a simple addition to the conversation.
