Chapter 15
Fifteen
The door of the hotel room opened, and Vivian snapped to attention. She tugged at her skirt and righted her jacket. Her bottom was numb from sitting in this damned chair.
McBride stepped into the corridor, let the door close behind him. “How you holding up?”
“Well, let’s see, I’ve counted the stripes in the wallpaper five times. What does that tell you?”
He crouched down to her level. “I think you can come back into the room. I’m pretty sure no one’s going to try breaking down the door. Birmingham PD and hotel security are making sure the media doesn’t ambush us. There’s no need for you to sit out here like this.”
She produced a smile, mostly at the idea of McBride trying to be sweet. In a totally unsettling way she found this charming. “Thanks, but I’d better follow orders.” Worth had been specific. No one was to come near McBride’s room.
That he was still awake surprised her. She had halfway expected him to drink himself into unconsciousness. Maybe he wasn’t the drunk he wanted people to believe he was. His don’t-care attitude kept everyone at a distance.
She had already decided that he used intimacy as a tactic to ward her off. That whole cocky, swaggering attitude was more for show than anything else, she would wager.
The problem was, it didn’t exactly work. The last time she had been this physically attracted to a guy, she had been seventeen and graduating high school. No one since. All the dates and one-night stands added up to nada.
“I wanted to finish the discussion we started last night,” McBride ventured as if he had read her thoughts.
“Oh no.” She waved off that idea. “I did all the talking last night, and you got off with just listening.”
He already knew too much about her.
“I shouldn’t have made all those cracks about—”
“Don’t you dare,” she snapped. She’d seen that look in his eyes when they had first returned to the hotel. The sympathy. She hated that! “I’m over the past.”
“You’re over Nameless?”
She shuddered inwardly, did all in her power to prevent him from seeing the reaction. “Yes.”
“Then say it.”
This was ridiculous. “Go back in the room, McBride.”
“Say it.”
Fury tightened her lips. “Nameless.” Hot bile rose in her throat. She glared at him. “Are you satisfied now?”
“You’ve had sex since then?”
Was he kidding? It was a damned good thing there weren’t any guests in the rooms on this end of the corridor. Having a balcony put him in a corner room, and this wasn’t exactly prime tourist season.
“My sex life is none of your business.” She crossed her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. The man was unbelievable.
“Just answer the question, Grace. It’s a yes or no response. Simple.”
He was outrageous. But one look at his face told her he wasn’t going to shut up until he had his answer. “Okay. Yes. Of course.” She added in a whisper, “I’ve had sex. Lots of times.”
“Lots of times, eh?”
“Go away, McBride.” There was a crazed fan out there kidnapping people to make him look like a hero, and he was asking her about her sex life? Talk about a trip into the Twilight Zone . . . They were there and checking out T-shirts.
“Did you feel it?”
“Okay.” She shot to her feet. “That’s enough.” She paced, mostly in circles, but it seemed the thing to do. Anger sparked, making her want to kick something.
“I’m not talking necessarily about an orgasm, Grace.” He pushed to his feet, propped against the doorframe. “I’m talking about feeling it. Here.” He patted the center of his chest. “Or do you disappear during sex the way you must have when Nameless made you . . . do those things.”
She stopped, pointed a furious look at him. “There’s nothing wrong with me, McBride. I’m fine. I can do my job. I can lead a normal life. I’m not the disappearing girl.”
Her circle expanded, became more of an oval shape. She had to keep moving or risk hitting him.
She had heard all those questions before.
You need more therapy, Vivian. How can you expect to experience true intimacy if you remain in denial?
Each new voice echoing in her brain made her more furious.
She hadn’t done anything wrong. She had survived.
That was all. Yes, she’d had to do . . .
things . . . she never wanted to think about again. But she was alive!
There were twelve other women lying dead in the ground because of that twisted piece of shit! She had lived to tell about it, and that was what counted.
She refused to think about him or that time. That part of her life was over. She had a career. Building that career was her focus now. A deeper relationship would come later. She wouldn’t be twenty-seven until her next birthday. There was time, dammit.
McBride waited for his answer. Damn him.
“Go back into the room,” she snapped.
He shook his head. “Not until you tell me the truth.” That husky, rich voice slid over her skin, making her shiver despite the fury lashing through her.
“Do you remember the truth? How to really feel? To let go and enjoy the moment? How to savor the pleasure . . . to allow your partner all the way inside?”
“I suppose you know all about the pleasure and getting all the way inside,” she mocked. He was such a hypocrite! Here he was telling her how she should lead her life, and he was hiding behind booze and sex!
“I might be running away from who I used to be,” he admitted, “but I know who I am now, Grace. I feel it more than I want to. I don’t always like it, but I’m damned sure not afraid of it.”
She strode up to him, stared at that face with all its too-intriguing angles and lines. Peered into those assessing blue eyes. “I’m not afraid, McBride. Remember, I kissed you.”
He licked his lips as if he had just remembered that too. “That’s when I knew you did that little vanishing act. I felt you disappear.”
“You don’t know anything about what I feel!” How dare he be so damned arrogant! “If, as you claim, I disappeared during that kiss, it was because my mind wandered. Maybe that was about you, not me.”
He straightened away from the doorframe, put his body close enough to hers that she could feel his heat . . . close enough that he could have kissed her with the tiniest shift of his head.
“When I kiss you, Grace, you’ll feel me.”
Her body humming with the need to let him prove his point, she retreated a step. “Go back into the room.” She took her seat and aimed her attention straight ahead. Just one more hour. All she had to do was get through one more hour, and then Pratt would be up.
Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, 7:00 a.m.
“We’re inside.” Vivian scanned the line at the ticket counter. “He’s at the counter now,” she told Pratt. “We’ll wait for you at the food court.”
She put her phone away and met McBride as he left the counter. “Pratt’s coming from short-term parking. We’ll meet him in the food court.”
Operating on less than an hour of sleep was going to make for a long day. She had relieved Pratt at two thirty. At four thirty they had prepared for the trip to the airport.
Most of that time in between she had either been arguing with McBride or walking off the fury he had ignited with his psychoanalyzing. The part that infuriated her most was that a whole lot of what he had kindled hadn’t been fury.
Her first high-profile case, and she couldn’t keep her head screwed on straight.
Maybe she did need more therapy.
As they followed the signs to the food court, she tried to recall the last time she’d had sex. Last month? July?
Sad. Really sad.
When you had to work that hard to remember, it couldn’t have been memorable.
But she knew where the fault lay. That McBride had nailed exactly how she disappeared made her want to screw his brains out just to prove him wrong.
She grabbed on to the tiny sliver of calm that tried valiantly to recover from her frequent and explosive emotional outbursts. If this was any indication of how she handled pressure, she was in trouble.
Everything about this case was wrong, including his leaving, but some part of her would be relieved when McBride was on that plane headed back to the Keys.
He disturbed her . . . shook up her carefully controlled world.
Somehow she was defenseless against him.
Unlike with Nameless, when the main crux of the battle had been physical, this was completely emotional.
“How about we sit here?” She indicated a table in sight of the main thoroughfare so Pratt could locate them easily.
“Looks the same as all the rest.” He pulled out a chair but waited for her to settle in before taking his seat.
She considered that he had selected the same pair of distressed jeans he had worn on the trip up here, and the same khaki shirt; it made her wonder if that was symbolic . . . him going back to the way things were before she intruded in his life.
Probably just the first thing he grabbed when he rolled out of bed.
“Would you like breakfast?” She hated to put him on the plane hungry. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
One-word answers. He’d certainly had plenty to say a few hours ago.
“So, what’re we eating?” Pratt asked as he sauntered up.
Grace pushed out of her chair. “You guys decide. I’ll be right back.”
She left her purse on the table and walked to the ladies’ room. It wasn’t far. Glancing back, she could still see the table and both men. Pratt had the same orders she did. He could handle babysitting McBride for a few minutes.
The airport was fairly deserted this early on a Sunday morning, so there was no line for a stall. The janitorial staff had apparently just cleaned since the place looked spotless and smelled freshly sanitized.
Vivian took care of business, washed up, and checked her hair. She hadn’t taken time to put it up, and now she wished she had. After a quick finger-combing, she headed for the table. She could use a biscuit with egg. And a massive cup of coffee.
For a moment she was certain her eyes had played a trick on her. Pratt was alone at the table. “Where’s McBride?”