Chapter 10
We woke up bright and early and Tommy grumpily told me that he hated tea, that it tasted like dishwater, that instant coffee was sacrilege, and that it was even worse that I was trying to offer either to him when it was to be made by microwaving water, that we needed to get a move-on quick because he needed real coffee ‘like now’. So we packed up and off we went, deciding that the next time we came we would bring a coffee maker and a few other staples to leave up here.
* * *
The drive back to the city was quiet; he seemed broody, even after he got a coffee. As we strolled in through the front door of the house and he turned his phone on, it made a long succession of text and voicemail alert noises. He scowled at the phone and if it weren’t an inanimate object it probably would’ve run and hid at that scary scowl.
He headed into the office without saying anything to me. A bodyguard I didn’t recognize carried the few bags we had upstairs and I wandered into the kitchen for a glass of juice before heading upstairs. My heart tripped as I walked through the hall, remembering the dead bodies of a few days ago. Now it looked like nothing had happened. The guard smiled at me and gave a business-like nod as we passed one another in the hall. The carpeting was gone and instead there were gleaming hardwood floors. The bedroom doors were open. One of the doors looked the same but was bullet-free, so a replacement door that was just the same must’ve been put in. Our bags had been dropped on the sofa. I got down onto my knees and looked under the bed. Sure enough, there were two guns and a knife up there. I got back to my feet and walked out onto the deck off the bedroom and now the backyard had a glass-like fence that was at least 20 feet higher. You could still see the forest beyond the infinity pool but through glass. My heart sank at that. I wandered into the bathroom to run a bath, wondering where the bodies had gone. I’d never been asked to make a statement to the police about how we were interrupted in bed by gunfire. Clearly, the police hadn’t been involved in the clean-up and there’d been no investigation. I sank into bubbles, trying to put it out of my mind.
You’d think I’d been gone a month instead of two days with all the shit that had piled up. Holy fuck! I got two quick calls taken care of and decided to handle the rest later. I headed upstairs and heard the bath running so my clothes were quickly off and when I opened the door in the buff she looked up from the tub and gave me a sexy smile. I climbed into the tub with her, and we made what she called a “soapy, splashy mess”.
While I was about to get dressed afterwards, my phone went off. I needed to meet with my private eye to discuss the additional information I’d found out from O’Connor as well as follow up on the Earl stuff. I asked Tia to give me the photo of her mom and my pop and she found it for me in the basement. I kissed her goodbye and told her not to wait up, but to talk to Sarah in the morning for help packing for us for Vegas.
I made her promise to be no more than two feet away from her phone at any given time, and then I had a quick chat with the four guys on the house, including my brother-in-law Jimmy who was gonna be my main house security guy, replacing Earl. Until I really knew all was good, I wasn’t taking any chances. Maybe when we got back, I’d take her to the range and teach her how to shoot, too.
The rest of the evening was, thankfully, uneventful, except that Tommy didn’t come home. He texted me at midnight to ask if I was okay. Then he texted me again at 3:30 am, waking me, to say he’d be home in the morning. It sort of nagged at me and I didn’t sleep much after that.
I couldn’t help my mind from wandering to wondering if he was seeing another woman. Was he out somewhere giving someone else the ‘rough’ so that he could give me the ‘sweet’? I knew I’d have to swallow a lot being with him, but if infidelity was one of those things, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. It’d revert to being a prison sentence for me and one I’d never stop trying to find my escape from.
At 7:30 in the morning, I got up because there was no point continuing to lie here and torment myself. Sarah was up so she and I packed. I would’ve done it myself if I had a clue of how to pack for him. She clearly knew what she was doing, what sorts of clothes we’d need, etc. She was being sweet and chatty and tried to broach the topic of my and Tommy’s relationship.
“So, you two? Things better?”
I smiled and changed the subject. “Do I really need all these pairs of shoes for a short trip?”
She smirked. “You can talk to me. I’m like Fort Knox. You tell me somethin’ and it won’t go nowhere. I sat under interrogation for six hours once. I was in a hundred-degree room, and I had to pee. Still not a word.”
I found that hard to believe since she never shut the heck up – like… ever. I didn’t even want to ask her why she was interrogated for six hours.
Tommy strode into the bedroom and saved me from The Sarah Inquisition. He came right to me and folded me into an embrace. Sarah left the room and shut the door.
He ran his hands up and down my back and his nose traveled from the nape of my neck up to my temple, then he kissed it.
“Miss me?”
I stiffened.
He looked down at me. “Something wrong?”
I shrugged.
“Tia?” He had alarm in his voice.
“Where did you stay last night?” I asked. My face felt hot.
He frowned. “I didn’t stay anywhere. I haven’t slept yet.”
I looked down at my feet. “Oh.”
“Tia?”
He let go of me, then backed up and sat on the bed beside the opened suitcase and crossed his arms and stared.
“What time do we have to go?” I tried to change the subject. My face still felt hot.
“In half an hour. Look at me.”
My eyes met his.
“Did you think I spent the night with someone else?” He had his eyebrows raised and he looked on the verge of pissed.
I shrugged my shoulders once, slowly.
“Athena.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek and stared at the ceiling. Weird how in a few short weeks he felt like he could use my given name like this to show he was serious. But it worked.
“Answer me,” he demanded and his voice wasn’t friendly. I looked at him. His eyes weren’t friendly either. He jerked his chin up at me.
“I just didn’t know where you were.”
“So you assumed I was off fucking someone?” His voice was calm but menacing.
“We never talked about fidelity, Tommy, and I dunno; you’ve been really nice to me the last few days and I know you need…” I stopped.
He gave me an incredulous look but was silent for a moment before asking, “We engaged?”
I nodded, chewing my cheek.
“We don’t need to talk about fidelity. It’s a given. I have no desire to be with anyone else. You won’t be with anyone else. Got me?”
“Okay,” I said and looked back down at the floor.
“Whatever it is I ‘need’ I can get from you. I will get it from you.”
“Okay.” A chill crawled up my spine.
“Baby?”
I looked at him and his expression had softened.
“It was three weeks between the day I first saw your picture and the day you came to me. I was with no one during that time. The minute I knew you were mine I wanted no one else.”
My eyes must’ve been like saucers.
“I won’t want anyone else.”
“Okay.”
“Ever.”
I nodded.
“I told you if you played your cards right no cock but mine would be in you.”
He got another nod.
“You played your cards right.”
I gulped.
“It won’t be in anyone else, either.”
“Okay.”
“C’mere.”
I stepped closer to him and he pulled me onto his lap. He inhaled my hair and then kissed me on the neck, saying, “I’m yours. Okay?”
I smiled, “Kay.”
“Is that what you want? For me to be only yours?” His voice was husky.
Goosebumps rose on my body and chills ran up my spine. “Yeah.”
He gave me a squeeze. “Already done. I was working on something, working on figuring things out about our fathers. I had to do a bit of a stakeout.”
“Any joy?
“Nope.”
“You must be tired.”
“I am. I’m running on empty, two nights with almost no sleep and zero sleep last night. I’ll snooze on the flight.”
He lay down onto the bed, taking me with him, and held me close. “It’s kinda hot that you were jealous,” he whispered into my ear.
That surprised me.
“Really?” I asked.
“Mm hm. Maybe more cute than hot, actually. But more than that, it gives me hope. Hope that you’re really being open about this. If you didn’t want me you wouldn’t care.”
I smiled. That was sweet. Then he added in a warning. “But now that I’ve put your mind at ease don’t accuse me of that again.”
Fear spiked. Why did he have to do that? Go from sweet to like that? I let out a little sigh.
“Hey?” He tipped my chin up and held my gaze. His face looked pissed.
“I understand,” I told him quietly. Then he bolted up and hauled me over his knee. I shrieked in surprise.
“Maybe I need to spank you, so you’ll remember.”
Now his voice was very husky. He ran his palm down my back and onto my bottom. He squeezed. Then someone knocked on the door. He let me go and tapped my bum playfully and winked at me.
Phew.
He got up to answer it. James, Tessa’s husband, was at the door. Tommy stepped into the hall and closed the door. I took a deep breath, smoothed out my clothes, and zipped up the suitcase and heaved it onto the floor.
About twenty minutes later he was back and got the suitcases. His whole demeanor seemed way off. He seemed intimidating, fierce. Was it lack of sleep, was he pissed at me, or had something else happened? I got my purse and my train case and followed him out.
When I stepped into the hall, James was still there. He took my case from me and signaled for me to head down the stairs ahead of him. I smiled at him and he returned the smile. We hadn’t really been introduced but I thought it was odd that he was a member of the family by marriage but yet was carrying luggage to a car for me. I wondered if Luc’s husband was a guard, too.
I nodded off and on throughout the flight. I had a lot on my mind, and though I was exhausted, I couldn’t get my brain to completely rest on a plane, when falling into a deep sleep could mean I wasn’t able to react to something going wrong. I’ve flown a lot but always hated it. She got the window seat and was thrilled about looking out.
* * *
“Slot machines in an airport?”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” I told her.
We stepped out into the hot Nevada sun and got into the limo the hotel had sent.
“The city comes alive when the sun goes down. Wait till tonight. I’ll show you why they call it Sin City.”
* * *
We settled into our hotel suite, which had an adjoining room with my two security guys, Jimmy and Nino. I could handle myself so with the exception of Mexico I didn’t typically use personal security. These guys were here for her. I’d leave them with her when I did what I had to do.
Nino was the son of Pop’s former right-hand man and he was married to my Pop’s former partner’s daughter who was like a cousin to me.
I’d filled him and his wife in on who Tia was and I’d filled him in on info I’d just discovered, telling me who her mother was to my family, so I figured he’d be extra vigilant about her. He was eager and had been trustworthy for the past six years he’d worked with us.
And Jimmy, though still working up the ranks, had proven to be a good guy. He’d been a good friend of Dare’s all through school and was good to my sister. These two were the best I could do for the moment from a peace of mind perspective. I had to hope it’d be good enough.
It was like having my eyes off of her for more than a second wasn’t good enough. I had to slow my anxiety. It could be I still wasn’t over the whole Mexico thing. Or maybe it was my gut telling me something else wasn’t right. I was sifting through information from Earl about Pop that I wasn’t okay with, and there was all the shit Greg O’Connor had fed me, too, to contend with. That, coupled with anxiety about Tia’s safety had me off kilter. What I probably needed more than anything was a solid eight hours of sleep.