Chapter Eleven
Alayah’s phone rang, and she glanced at it to see Mina’s face on the screen. In the middle of packing her suitcase, she wanted to let it go to voicemail, but she also knew Mina had a reason for calling.
“I need to take this,” she said, pointing toward the hallway, and he nodded as he wrapped cords to store in her computer bag. Leaving the walker behind, she stood in the hallway against the wall and answered. “Secure Watch, Alpha.”
“Secure Watch, Whiskey,” Mina said, her real name being Wilhemina. “How are you feeling this morning? I’ve been worried since Cal said you got hurt.”
“Trust me when I say it was the most minor injury of my lifetime,” she promised. “A barely sprained ankle doesn’t count as getting hurt. I can do that walking down the hallway.”
Mina’s laughter filled her ear and made her smile. “That’s fair, but you have to be careful. The last thing we want is to visit you in the hospital. Cal also gave me an update on what you were doing out there last night. That was a…choice.”
Alayah knew she wasn’t wrong, even if it rubbed her the wrong way just a bit. “If I had a defense other than to say I was following my gut, I’d use it, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“My gut says your gut said Derek wasn’t a killer, and he needed help, so you helped him. Is that accurate?”
“For the most part,” she agreed. “When I looked into his eyes, he couldn’t hide the fear there. Since it was a fair bet he didn’t beat himself up, I opted to get him off the side of the road. The rest was unexpected.”
“As I told Cal, that’s what we teach you at Secure Inc. You’re an educated, smart, sharp, calculating woman who was only doing what we taught you to do.”
“You’re saying you told him to chill out?” With Mina’s chuckled agreement, she smiled. “I appreciate the assist. While he dressed me down, he made many good points, so I need to respect his position. It won’t happen again. At least, not the lack of transparency like last night.”
“We can’t ask for more than that. All of that said, he also told me that he’s paired you up with Derek to work on the Hugo angle. Do you have anything you need me to run down besides Hugo’s beneficiaries?”
“Not yet,” she answered, glancing at the door to her room. “We’re just packing up my stuff to take to his suite, and then we’ll get started. Hopefully, I can run down a lot of it from here, but if there’s stuff above my pay grade, I’ll get it to you immediately to start working on.”
“Your room? His suite?”
Alayah explained the situation and waited for Mina to admonish her or lecture her on something…
anything. She wanted Mina to confirm that it was a bad idea to work closely with him or to stay in a room with him.
Then again, she already knew it was a bad idea, but she didn’t see a choice considering the situation they were in.
Ultimately, she had to do whatever she could to ensure Cal stayed out of jail.
Did she want to be cooped up in a room with Derek for hours on end and sleep just feet away from him?
Her brain said no, but the emotions coursing through her told a different story.
There was something that drew her to him.
She wanted to be his hero. That was the only way she could explain it.
Connecting with men was often difficult for her.
She struggled with self-confidence around men but she didn’t feel that way with Derek.
It was natural, despite her prickly attitude this morning.
That was out of simple self-preservation.
Pushing him away was less painful than allowing him into her life only for her to get hurt.
Self-preservation was no longer an option.
Sure, she didn’t have to agree to move to his suite, but she was also a team player, and there was no bigger team than Secure Inc.
If she couldn’t put her own fear and worries aside for her teammates, then she had a bigger problem on her hands.
“I see,” Mina said when she tuned back into the conversation. “All I will say is, Derek may not be directly responsible for Hugo’s murder, but we don’t know that he isn’t involved in some way, so be careful.”
“I hear you loud and clear, boss,” she promised. “You’ll get frequent updates from me as we start mapping Hugo’s movements.”
“Good. If there is anything you want to hand off to us, do that. The sooner we can find something to clear Cal and Derek, the better. I can’t have everyone tied up for weeks over there. As it is, we already owe you a week off, and this job isn’t finished yet.”
“I’ll forfeit the week off as penance for not being a team player last night,” she said, pushing herself off the wall. “You know I am and will continue to be. Don’t worry about anything other than finding what we need to get out of this bind with life and reputation intact.”
“Now that I can agree with,” Mina said. “Keep me updated. Whiskey out.”
The line went dead, and Alayah dropped the phone to her side and took a deep breath.
She had to remind herself that no one was mad at her for her choices last night, and everyone had moved on.
She should, too. That was going to be easier said than done when working so closely with Derek, but she’d put a smile on her face and put her best foot forward, which today was definitely not her left one.
After checking it over, she made a mental note to ask Selina to come to Derek’s room and wrap it for her so it wouldn’t swell so much.
When she woke this morning and it was still sore, she resigned herself to using the walker, which meant Derek would see her with it.
To his credit, he’d been nothing but helpful on the walk to her room, but she was still uncomfortable and embarrassed.
That was definitely not her usual reaction.
Any other day, she’d be straightforward about her mobility aids, but for some reason, she didn’t want Derek to look at her as different from any other woman.
Then again, she only needed the walker because she’d agreed to help him.
While the walker revealed her dependence on it from time to time, it in no way indicated she couldn’t clear his name and find Hugo’s killer.
And she had every intention of doing that.
Realizing she didn’t have a key with her, she knocked on the door.
When it swung open, he smiled, making his blue eyes light up from behind the shiner covering his right one.
Selina had glued the split above his upper lip, so while there was still some swelling, it looked much better than it had last night.
“Thanks,” she said as she limped into the room and grabbed the handle of her walker.
“Is everything okay?”
“Sure, sure,” she said, walking to the bed to sit. “My ankle is just a little sore.”
He knelt before her. “May I?” She gazed at him skeptically for longer than she should have before she nodded.
When he lifted her foot into his hand, the tenderness of his touch hit her in places it shouldn’t, but she was helpless to stop it.
Growing up with her condition, she equated touch as either painful or necessary when it came to any medical situation.
Her parents were her only source of loving touch.
Even as an adult, there wasn’t much tenderness of touch from anyone now that her parents didn’t live close to her.
Derek touched her not as a fragile doll but as a woman, almost as though he understood her past experiences and wanted her to feel seen.
Silly, since there was no way he could, but she liked it all the same.
“It’s very swollen. If we don’t get this swelling down, Selina will insist on taking you to the hospital. ”
“The thought crossed my mind,” she agreed. “It hurts but not like it is broken. She won’t listen to me, though, considering.”
“Considering what?” he asked, standing and walking to the dresser where the elastic bandage from last night was folded.
“My syndrome,” she answered matter-of-factly.
There was no sense trying to make it something it wasn’t.
Her syndrome was complicated and while her dwarfism was most obvious, it affected many other parts of her body, which made explaining it to people difficult.
Especially when she didn’t want to be written off as incapable.
She was more than capable, but more often than not, it took her a long time to prove that.
Much longer than it would take an abled woman.
That was a shared experience in the disabled community, but even that knowledge didn’t make it less frustrating.
Derek started wrapping the ankle with the bandage while he spoke. “What kind of dwarfism do you have?”
“It’s called Ellis-Van Creveld Syndrome,” she answered, staring at the wall so she didn’t risk catching his eye as he worked.
The last thing she wanted to see was that he felt sorry for her.
Even if she could never have him, his pity would break her.
“Along with other deformities, it causes short-limb dwarfism.”
“I noticed your forearms and lower legs are a bit shorter than mine,” he said as he secured the bandage.
“It would be hard not to notice,” she agreed with a smile. “I have short forearms and fingers, and short lower leg bones.”
“I would be lying if I said I’d heard of that syndrome before.”
“That’s not surprising since it’s a rare one,” she said as he slipped her shoe back on. It felt so much better already. “Thank you. I was going to ask Selina to do that since my T-Rex arms make reaching it difficult.” She waved her arms in the air and roared.
He bit his lip but finally laughed as he dropped his hand to his hip. “That’s not fair. I can’t not laugh at that image.”
“You’re meant to,” she said. “I use humor when I’m uncomfortable, and I’m extremely uncomfortable talking to you about this.”
“Why?” he asked, tipping his head to the side but maintaining eye contact. “What do you think will happen? I’ll stop liking you?”
“If you had grown up the way I did, you would know the answer to that question is absolutely.”
His lips turned down in a frown as he knelt again.
“My heart breaks that you’ve had that experience, but that’s not me.
The only reason I’ve ever stopped liking someone is because they showed me their true colors.
That will never be the case with you. Last night, you showed me your true colors when you picked me up off the road, even though I looked like I had been mauled by a bear.
That was all I needed to know about you, Alayah.
Everything else has shaped who you are, but isn’t who you are. ”
Her brows went up in surprise. “Why did it never occur to me to think of it that way?”
His shrug was lazy, but his gaze never left hers. “Because it’s difficult to separate the two when you’re mired in the pain of it. It takes work to be conscious of the line that separates them.”
“That’s fair. Speaking of fairness, I’m sorry for acting put out in the conference room earlier. Being a jerk is my other self-preservation technique when I feel vulnerable.”
“You were being a jerk?” he asked, feigning surprise. “I didn’t notice.”
Her giggle made him smile, and a little piece of normalcy snapped back into place for her. All the noise inside her head quieted, and she could focus again on the steps that would lead her to find Hugo’s killer and get her back to Secure Inc.
“Honestly, I was embarrassed about using the walker and didn’t want you to see me with it.” That wasn’t easy for her to admit, but she wanted him to understand why she’d behaved that way.
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed about something that helps you, Alayah.”
“Truthfully, any other day I wouldn’t be, but I didn’t want you to see me as weak or incapable of helping to clear your name.”
“I would never think that,” he said with a shake of his head.
She could tell he was upset that she thought he would.
The idea that she’d insulted him got her right in the heart.
“As for the walker, I love the purple glitter. It reminds me a little of your personality when you aren’t being grumpy.
” He added with a wink, “I do have one question.”
“Sure,” she said, climbing off the bed and grabbing the walker handles. “Maybe I have an answer.”
“Why do you pull it behind you as you walk instead of pushing it in front of you?”
She shook her head as she walked to the wall to unplug her charger and stow it in a bag.
“It’s called a posterior walker. It’s normally used more for children than adults, but with my form of dwarfism, my chest is narrow and my ribs are short.
That means leaning over on a walker like this,” she explained, bowing her head, “makes it harder for my lungs to expand. Using the posterior walker ensures my posture stays upright, and I don’t have any breathing issues.
That said, I don’t use the walker that much anymore unless I’m injured or sick.
Cal and Mina require me to bring it on every remote job, just in case something happens. ”
“Like you get dropped from an SUV by some dude looking for the guy you stopped to help.”
“Yep,” she said with a smile. “Just like that. Now, with that out of the way, let’s vacate this room and head to yours so we can set up and get this hunt for a killer underway.
I’m sure you’d like to clear your name sooner rather than later and return to your life in…
” She waited for him to fill in the blank.
“Minneapolis,” he answered, holding the door for her to walk through so he could grab her rolling suitcase and computer bag.
“But I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to returning to that life.
Once I’m cleared of Hugo’s murder, my life changes, and I don’t have a clear picture of what it will look like.
I do know it won’t look like it did when I worked for him.
When we left Minneapolis a few days ago, I already knew I’d outgrown my time there. ”
They walked to the elevator in companionable silence as she thought about what he’d said.
Was she happy with her life? Would she want to change anything about it if the opportunity arose?
When they stepped onto the elevator and he hit the button for the second floor, the answer was obvious.
Derek reminded her that she led a solitary and sometimes lonely life.
Would she love to find a partner to share her life with?
Yes, but she’d learned a long time ago that the path to love was far too rocky for her to navigate.
She’d have to find fulfillment in her work and leave the world of love behind.