30. Sydney
CHAPTER 30
SYDNEY
Something is shaking me awake. How very rude. My eyes refuse to open, but there’s something warm resting on my shoulder. “Sydney. We need to go. We overslept.”
Finally, West’s deep voice penetrates my sleepy haze. I pry my eyes open and look at the old clock on the hotel nightstand. It’s six-fifteen. “Overslept?” I manage to croak as I look up at him. My eyes still aren’t focusing, and all I can see are two Wests. It would have been unfair to the world if he’d been a twin. It would have been too much hotness for the world to sustain.
He sets a bag on the bed. “We can’t stay here too long. They could have traced that drive here.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I know. I’ll buy you a coffee as big as you are if you get out of bed and get dressed.”
I manage a smile. “I think I like it when you bribe me.”
He smirks at that and gives my shoulder a gentle shove. “Come on, I think our ride will be here any minute.”
I stretch and sit up, looking at the bag he’s set on the bed. It’s the clothes we bought yesterday. I glance down and realize I’m wearing only a robe, and the tie is coming loose. I jump out of bed and pull it tight as I hurry to the bathroom to get dressed.
By the time I come out, West is standing by the door, peering through the crack down the hallway.
“We better get down there,” West says as he glances at the phone in his hand.
“I’m ready. That reminds me: you owe me a phone,” I say as I point at the one in his hand.
I feel less shaky today and back to my usual self. It feels good to not be on the verge of a breakdown. I’ll save that for when we’re all done with this adventure.
“I ordered a phone for you already. It should be waiting for us at the hotel desk.”
“Look at you, Mr. Prepared. Always one step ahead of me. Why is that?”
“My legs are longer,” he replies with a wink as he holds the door open for me.
I laugh. “Alright. Fair enough. I’ll take it.”
We make it downstairs to the lobby, and the front desk has the phone West ordered for me.
I work on opening the box while I quiz West about our next steps. He’s focused on watching the parking lot through the big glass windows in the lobby. “Are we taking a taxi somewhere?”
“No,” he replies absentmindedly.
“Is this a car rental service that’s bringing us a car?”
He glances down at me. “I called in a favor.”
I raise my eyebrows at that.
He shrugs. “Bodie. He owes me after the boat incident.”
“I thought you were blaming me for that,” I reply as I finally manage to free the phone from its packaging.
West shakes his head. “As mad as I am, I know the boat isn’t your fault. It could have even been your friends who sunk it to make sure we couldn’t get away.”
That thought makes me sick to my stomach. What if they had decided to sabotage it while we were on it? We could have sunk out at sea.
I didn’t see anyone out the front yet, so I asked her, “What did you do for Bodie? Because somehow, you’ve got him in your corner as a staunch defender. He pretty much made sure I was going to treat you with kid gloves.”
“It wasn’t anything major.” She shrugs. “I just helped him buy some chess pieces and not get cheated.”
West shakes his head. “And how did that happen?”
“People talk around me.” I smile brightly at him, hold up the phone, and pretend to tap away on it, throwing an occasional bright smile up at him. “See? When you have a happy disposition, people tend to be comfortable around you, assume you don’t use your brain, and are comfortable spilling family secrets. I’ve learned all sorts of things over the years by being nonthreatening.”
I shove the phone in my pocket. I’ll have to charge it before I can get everything switched over.
“So you’re basically the world’s best eavesdropper?” he asks with a smirk.
“Exactly. And since I helped Bodie buy the right piece and not the dupe, I think we kind of became friends. After that, he saw that I wasn’t going to let him make a big mistake in a business deal like that, and I think maybe he trusts me a little.”
“Bodie King doesn’t trust anyone, but he does like some people, and I think he likes you.” West shakes his head. “In fact, I think his wife likes you too.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet! I met her once. She was really nice to me.”
West turns away from the window to look at me again. There’s a sly look in his eye when he says, “Yeah, Gracen likes to root for the underdog.”
I narrow my eyes and clench my fist, giving it a little shake where he can see it. Hopefully, he catches up on my little unspoken threat. “I prefer to be called the top dog.”
And then something strange happens. West’s lips twitch. The corners of his eyes crinkle, and then his mouth stretches wide in a…grin.
I gasp. “You didn’t just smile, did you?” But it’s still there. A full-blown smile on West’s face. I reach up and rest a hand on either side of his face. His smile only grows, and he starts laughing as I pat and poke his cheeks.
It doesn’t faze him. And I like that.
“What are you doing?” West asks.
“Just checking to see if your facial muscles have been broken somehow. It’s just not normal to see you smile. I was sure something had gone horribly wrong. Should I call the doctor?” I give his cheek an extra-hard pinch.
“Sydney, if we weren’t in public…”
My hands pause in their frenzy, and I look at him with wide eyes. “If we weren’t in public, you would what?”
“Something terrible, probably.”
I release his cheeks and throw my hands in the air. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, if you’re going to make a threat, at least make it a good one. Come up with something creative. You can’t just say ‘something terrible.’ Lacks complete imagination. I expected better from you, West.”
West laughs at that, and I decide there is something more devastating than a shirtless West. It’s a smiling West. I’m pretty sure a combination of those two things would kill me dead.
West looks over my head, and his smile immediately drops.
I look over my shoulder to see a vehicle pulling into the small hotel parking lot.
The car rolls to a stop in front of the hotel. It’s a Mini Cooper. I wonder what it would be like to road trip in a Mini Cooper. The rest of my family would never fit in one. Dad definitely wouldn’t, and small spaces make my mom nervous. My brothers are way too big—they’d have their knees around their ears.
But I’ve always thought that maybe a Mini Cooper was just my size.
“Oh no,” West groans behind me.
Two men—tall men, I might add—step out from the Mini Cooper. One of them is a handsome man somewhere in his 40s. The other one is a little younger, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, and also extremely handsome.
“This can’t be good,” West mutters.
I glance up at him and see that he’s back to clenching his jaw. I reach up and tap his cheek. “You’re going to give yourself a headache if you keep that up.” He glares down at me briefly, but he does relax his jaw, so my job is done.
“That’s our help.” West jerks his head toward the men.
I look back out the big glass window. Well, the help is easy on the eyes. I don’t say that to West, because he doesn’t seem in the mood to joke about whomever these two men are.
Something about them is setting West on edge. “What do you want me to do? We have about two seconds to get our stories straight.”
“Whatever you do, do not tell them about the $30 million. Do not. Absolutely not one word.”
“OK, so you want me to tell them about the money, then.” The look he gives me would scare a grizzly bear back to its den.
I smile.
He shakes his head. “What am I going to do with you?”
I don’t bother to answer him because the two men are walking through the sliding doors. Their eyes land on West, and apparently, they know exactly who they’re looking for.
They walk over to us. I sidle a little closer to West. He places an arm in front of me, reaching over to hold my hand that’s farthest from him, as though he’s going to protect me from these two men with that arm—which he probably could because it’s a great arm.
One of the men holds his hand out to West. Wes doesn’t shake it because he’s being incredibly rude. I pry my hand free from West’s and lean forward to shake the man’s hand. He smiles at me. “I’m Lucky. Bodie is my nephew.”
My eyes widen at that. There can’t be that much of an age difference between them. Lucky could only be ten to fifteen years older. Bodie had mentioned his Uncle Lucky before and made it sound like that man had raised him. This was not what I’d pictured. “I’m Sydney. And Bodie has talked about you before.”
The younger man reaches a hand forward; his smile is slightly devastating. “I’m Crew, Gracen’s brother.” And his hand lingers on mine just a smidge too long. I can tell he’s trying to be charming. When I pull back on my hand, he immediately releases it, which makes me like him. It was nothing like the way Braxton, who latched onto me at the docks, refused to let go. I’ve decided I like both of them, though Crew might be one to watch.
“We heard we’re looking for a few million dollars,” Crew announces with an easy smile.