Chapter 15
The truth and nothing but the truth.
Heston
“Maybe we should cancel.” I grabbed Dean’s arm, my fingers digging into his flesh.
“Too late. He’s on his way.” My friend was almost salivating at the prospect of seeing the blue car again.
“He has a phone. We could text saying we have to reschedule because of an emergency.”
Dean removed my trembling fingers. “Who’s ‘we’?”
I was the one who decided to use my friend’s contact details rather than my own. There were so many layers upon layers of secrets and deception, and I was worried contacting Roy would come back and bite me on the ass.
Dean didn’t know the full story—not that I did. While I hadn’t given him the deets on our sexual encounter, he knew, unless he thought we were what? Inspecting the plumbing to make sure it was up to code at the same time as messing up the sheets?
I’d wanted to make the bed, already embarrassed at facing Dean after disappearing into the motel room with a stranger for an hour, but Dev, or whatever his name was, said not to because the motel staff might think the bed hadn’t been used.
An image of guests arriving and pulling back the covers had my belly roiling.
How odd that we’d been so drawn to one another and yet caught up in the practicalities of life. Inwardly, I’d been on the verge of hysterics at never seeing Dev again, so my mind had focused on insignificant details.
While I would have been content to meet Roy on our wedding day, knowing the car connected him to Dev made it imperative I find out who Dev was.
If we discovered he was an escaped prisoner, I’d visit him every week.
I wasn’t much of a cook, but how hard was it to bake a file into a cake? I must look that up.
“He should be here any moment.”
Dean was ready to bound outside and wait, but I insisted we stay inside and observe.
Roy had never been here, so he might be wary about meeting strangers at a motel.
But perhaps if he conducted affairs, he might be familiar with motel one-hour stays.
Dean insisted he didn’t run that sort of establishment until I pointed out that was what Dev and I had done.
“That’s him.” Thank gods the reception door was closed or the entire street would have heard Dean shrieking. “Oh, he’s got the car. Did he call the police and they retrieved it from Dev? Maybe your friend Dev is in jail.”
My friend had explained that thieves often dismantled a car’s components and sold them, so that might have been why he was so excited to see the car in one piece.
“That’s weird.” Hope glimmered inside me that it was Dev who’d driven here and not Roy. “We need to figure this out.”
Poor Dean. I didn’t want to thrust him into a car theft ring. What if the guy was here to threaten him? Or worse.
“Is this bad?” My voice wavered as the car idled.
“How? Isn’t this what you wanted?” Dean furrowed his brow as if to say I wasn’t making sense.
I ran over the different scenarios in my head, thinking his love for the car blinded him to reality. Not that I knew any more than he did, at least not about the car and its owner.
The car didn’t drive into the motel parking lot but maneuvered into a space on the street. I gripped my chest, my heart was galloping at twice the normal speed and I knew from Dad’s doctor that wasn’t good.
“She’s adorable.” Dean admired the blue car.
“Why is he just sitting there?” I was only thinking of the guy inside, whereas my friend’s focus was on the car.
“He’s never been here before,” Dean pointed out. “He might be checking our back-and-forth emails and drive away.”
No! “Do you have security cameras?” I glanced around the office. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? We could have studied the footage. Maybe Dev had a tattoo and I could find him by contacting tattoo parlors. That was what they did in TV police dramas.
The driver’s door opened, and I clung to Dean. This was the moment. The first glimpse of my future husband.
Dean’s phone pinged, and he took it from his pocket. Why was he bothering with a message when my future was at stake? But that was being selfish. The motel was his livelihood. He couldn’t afford to ignore a customer or a supplier.
“It’s him.”
“Him who?” I hadn’t taken my eyes off the car.
“Roy. The car owner.” Dean studied the message. “But he sent it to the motel information phone number, not the private email we’ve been using.”
I tugged his shirt. “What does he say?” I almost yanked the phone out of Dean’s hand before remembering this was my doing. He loved cars and being a good friend had helped me track it down. All the other crap swirling around was mine.
Is this a joke? Why am I here? Are you after money because I don’t have any, Dean read out.
“No money,” I scoffed. “Yeah, right? We can use the internet, asshat, and no one drives that car and has no spare cash.” Not that I wanted money, except for Dad, but this was about my heart and my future, whose paths were diverging.
“How do I respond?” Dean bounced the phone in his hand.
“I want answers,” I told him and he tapped away.
One minute, was the response. You have one minute to state your case before I’m gone.
More tapping on the screen and Dean returned the phone to his back pocket.
The tension was getting to me and I wiped sweat from my brow.
My friend appeared just as he always did, so it was only me stressing the hell out.
He was hoping for, at minimum, a ride in the car while I was about to see my future.
Gods, if Roy didn’t get out soon, I’d race to the car and drag him out, pin him to the car and demand an explanation about the car’s ownership before asking him if he was the guy I was marrying.
“Here he comes. He’s got dark hair,” Dean observed. “Oh shit. It’s your man.”
“What?” I wasn’t as tall as Dean and there was a damn hedge in the way. I got on tiptoes as Dev closed the car door and buttoned his jacket. He wore a pair of sunglasses, but his pinched mouth signaled he wasn’t pleased about returning to the scene of the crime.
Conflicting emotions battered me and the edges of my vision went dark until all I could see was a tiny pinprick of light. I must have collapsed because when I opened my eyes, Dean was leaning over me, slapping my cheek.
“Owww.”
“Good, you’re alive.” He hauled me up. “Are you going out there or am I?”
What was happening? I rubbed my head to clear the fog and blinked. Car, Dev. Motel. Marriage. Roy. What the fuck?
“You.” I leaned on the desk. “Find out…” My voice trailed away and Dean sat me in a chair, saying he had this, and went outside.
But despite the room spinning around, I got up and leaned on the counter. Dean had left the door open and his loud voice boomed, “I’m surprised to see you.”
“You asked me to come.” Dev crossed his arms. I wished he’d remove his sunglasses, but maybe, just like his arms, he was using them as protection.
“I was communicating with the car owner, who I’m pretty sure isn’t you.”
“A technicality.” Dev shrugged.
“Nope. Car theft is an enormous industry and is not a ‘technicality.’” He put the last word in air quotes.
“Look, if you’re here to shake me down, you’re out of luck. I can’t and won’t pay you because I’ve done nothing wrong, so whatever this is, it’s over.”
I’d stayed hidden while they spoke, Dev’s voice sending goosebumps spiraling over my skin and my cock engorging. But he wasn’t on the level, spinning fibs into a web of lies.
Dev turned on his heel, but not before glancing at a room on the second floor, the one where we’d had sex. But that was my imagination, wasn’t it?
I should have stayed where I was and let him leave, but I didn’t have any answers.
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he said over his shoulder.
Tearing out of the office, I screeched, “But you owe me one!”
“Hess!” He raced toward me, his arms outstretched.
“Whoa, not so fast. I need answers and then you can go on your merry way and into your fiancé’s arms.”
“It’s complicated.” His eyes pleaded with me to fall into his embrace.
While Dev wasn’t paying attention to Dean, I observed my friend from the corner of my eye as he sauntered toward the car and ran his hands over the hood.
“No. The guy I’m supposed to marry owns this car, so fess up. Who the fuck are you?”