Thea
“Cockroaches!” I scream, running out of the bathroom and jumping onto the bed. “There are cockroaches in the tub!”
Pierce doesn’t even look up from the desk where he’s hunched over his laptop, typing rapidly. “Don’t take a bath.”
“I wasn’t planning on it, but now I think I’d like to sleep in the car.” I cannot do this. Creepy crawly things and I do not mix. Especially ones as big as my fist.
“Sure.”
I pick up a pillow and throw it at his head.
He shifts in the seat to face me. “What?”
“You’re not being very gentlemanly.”
His lips twitch, a smile threatening to break through. I long to see it, to revel in the lightness of humor. “I’m sorry, m’lady. What would you have me do?”
I prop a hand on my hip. “Well, if this were a romance novel, you would have already killed the evil beetles.”
“Okay…?” he says, waiting expectantly for more.
That simple ‘okay’ drives me to say something I’m sure I’ll eventually regret.
He acts so nonchalant about everything. Especially me.
Can he not feel this thing between us? I know, we’ve had a cover story to stick to, and he’s literally risking his life to save mine, but would it kill him to scoop me up in his arms and kiss me just because he wants to?
“And then, you would whisk me off to a nicer place where we’d try to rent two rooms, but only one room with a single bed would be available, so we’d have to share.
You would lie next to me, so close yet so far apart, and your desire for me would consume you, until you could do nothing but kiss me.
” My heart pounds at the admission, but he looks at me as if I've grown two heads.
“What kind of books do you read?” Pierce stands, stalking toward the bed. “We’ve been sharing a bed almost every night, and I’ve been a perfect gentleman.”
It’s not about what he’s done, but about what I want him to do.
He doesn’t get it, and I can’t make him.
I’m mortified. On top of so many other emotions from the four days, and the many many times I’ve humiliated myself in front of this man, this is the worst. I’m putting my heart out there to get crushed.
“Forget it.” I scoot toward the edge of the bed to hop off, but Pierce snatches my hand, tugging me into his chest. He drops his hands to the back of my legs, holding me in place. His expression is as serious as the first day we met. He’s going to break my heart right here, right now.
“If I gave into my passion for you, I may never stop, and I won’t do that to you. I’m not the guy you bring home to meet your father, Thea,” He rasps.
I can barely breathe, barely think with him holding me so close, the pounding of his heart beating against my own.
“You don’t know the kind of guys I bring home. Real losers.” My hands rest against his chest, but I risk a detour up his collarbone and around his neck, my fingertips finding the hair at the base of his head.
His eyes are smiling but sad when he speaks. “I’m the kind of guy who would keep you always looking over your shoulder or sleeping with a gun under your pillow. My life isn’t safe. But I swear on my life I’ll protect yours. That’s going to have to be enough.”
I melt and break at the same time. “What if it’s not?”
“It has to be.” He lets go of me, withdrawing mentally and physically.
“For a man who doesn’t believe in romance novels, you’ve mastered the hero vibes,” I mumble.
His shoulders stiffen. “I’m not your hero, Thea.”
That does it. My body gives out, and I sink to the mattress on my butt.
“I’m not going to give up that easily,” I say, even as my heart whimpers, telling me to run and hide.
What I feel for this man in less than a week is more than I felt for Scott in two years together.
He wants me to forget about him when this is over.
I’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t forget about me.
***
Pierce
Thea sits on the bed, playing with her fingers, pinching the tip of each one. She’s embarrassed, but she has no reason to be. She has no idea how much I want her. I could stop a freight train with all the pent-up tension in my body. There’s a yearning in my chest that feels frighteningly like love.
I’m not good at love. My first wife can attest to that.
We weren’t married long, but I knew instantly it wouldn’t be like my grandparents.
Despite my grandfather’s flaws, he loved my grandmother.
I remember finding them dancing in the kitchen most mornings.
At the time, I was a troubled teenager and thought it was gross.
Now I wonder about that level of affection.
If it’s the same thing I’m experiencing.
My stomach twists with familiar guilt for cutting my grandma out of my life as well. She didn’t deserve it.
I regret leaving her and my cousins behind. It was immature—I can admit that. But that’s what I needed. Space. From the expectations, and the disappointment of the CIA expecting me to turn a blind eye on justice for the sake of a name.
The words from my grandfather’s letter flash in my mind. It’s time to come home. It’s far past time to face my grandfather. I stayed away so long because I knew I couldn’t talk to him yet. It got easier to pretend he didn’t take their side, like he didn’t let me down like my mom did.
I lean back in my chair.
Thea’s had me rethinking the past ever since we met. What’s worse is she’s got me remembering the pain of my old hopes and dreams. She’s got me wanting them, wanting a future with her. I can’t go down that road again because I know exactly what I’ll find.
“You’ve got your misery face on.”
I glance up to find Thea watching me.
“You’re thinking about something that upsets you.
Do you need to talk about it?” She’s adopted a casual, unassuming pose on the bed, and I immediately feel like I’m in her office about to give her a pitchfork to drive into my soul.
“Does it have something to do with your ex-wife? I’m assuming she’s an ex, otherwise we’ve got some weird sister wife situation happening. ”
As if I could handle more than one woman at a time. This one is a handful.
“She’s an ex,” I confirm, interlocking my hands behind my head and stretching my back against the chair. “And there’s nothing to tell. We were young and dumb. Got married at the courthouse. It lasted three weeks. We parted amicably.”
“Three weeks?” she gapes. “Milk has a longer shelf life.”
“We all make mistakes.”
Her expression shifts instantly. “You see it as a mistake?”
“What else could it be?”
She sits up a little straighter. “A learning experience. You know how many times Thomas Edison failed before he created a working lightbulb. This is your lightbulb momen—”
“Stop,” I beg. “I get it. I’ve learned from it. I’ve moved on. Whatever.”
She tilts her head, kicking her feet beneath her. A cockroach skitters out from under the bed, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to scream. But she doesn’t because she’s still fixated on me and my problems. Lucky me.
“So, if it’s not your ex, it’s your mother or your grandfather, isn’t it?”
I’m tired of this game. “Yep. Now drop it, please.”
“You’ll tell me when you want to,” she says, unconcerned.
She’s so confident she almost convinces me.
“So, what did you find?” she asks, mercifully changing the subject as she combs her fingers through her hair. The strands barely reach the top of her freckled and burned shoulder. For a moment, I imagine helping her rub cream on them.
I clear my throat; it almost clears my head as well. “Come see.” I sit down at the desk, and she comes behind me, leaning over my chair, her hair tickling my neck.
“I can’t find anything about the drug itself, but there are two companies fighting over Amnexia. Our friend Cooper—”
“Our mortal enemy, Cooper.”
I bite back a smile. “He works for one of them. Lifeline Laboratories. His uncle is the CEO of the other one.”
“The plot thickens,” Thea muses. “Do you think his uncle sent him to spy on Lifeline?”
“It makes sense. Except that Henry Carter also has a tie to the uncle’s company. He worked construction on the new building.”
“What is this other company contending for the formula?” she asks.
I click on a new tab, bringing up the company website with Cooper's uncle, Gavin Johnson, front and center.
Thea jerks back with a gasp.
“What is it?” I ask, more than a little concern rising to the surface. Did she have a memory or something?
“That’s where my dad used to work,” she says, pointing at the logo for SciTech. A company combining tech with their drugs to revolutionize the medical field.
I rub my jaw. Things just got more interesting. “What did he do there?”
“He developed drugs.” She blinks rapidly, like she’s trying to recall more.
Developed. Past tense. Her father had a stroke.
“How long ago was your father’s accident?”
“A year and a half.”
Whatever this product is, it’s only recently come into play. He won’t be much help. My hope wanes.
But maybe he knows people who still work there.
“I guess I’m taking you home to meet my dad after all,” she says with no small amount of amusement. “But only if you get me out of this motel room.”