He leaned over her, one hand braced against
the back of her seat, the other resting just above her heart. Within his stare
she saw a tangle of emotions. Worry, relief, victory, suspicion. The mix was
too complex for her to unravel.
“Welcome back,” he said in that deep voice
she’d already come to know.
He eased away and settled in his seat beside
her, and immediately she missed his warmth. She wanted to follow him so she
could huddle in it and let his heat sink into her bones. Disconcerted by the
power of the yearning, she looked away and took stock of her surroundings. She
sat in an unfamiliar SUV parked on the fringe of a half-empty lot, location
unknown. The clock on the dash said 11:20. She had no idea how she’d gotten
there.
“Where am I?” she asked.
He nodded at the building squatting near the
edge of the blacktop. “That’s my hotel.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to make sense
of that answer. His hotel? Why was he
staying in a hotel? And more important, why had he brought her here? She struggled to work it out, but a
deep murk had veiled her thoughts, making it hard to distinguish one from the other.
She’d been at work and he’d come in and then . . .
An avalanche of memory rumbled down on top of
her. The bugs. The stench. The seeping stain and the . . . No. No, no, no. That hadn’t been real. Couldn’t be real.
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