Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The old dumbwaiter shaft was so narrow that there was barely room for the both of us in there.
My right shoulder was touching Wyatt’s chest, and my skin suddenly felt more sensitive, as if every square inch of it were aware of his proximity.
My fingers twitched with the knowledge that his hand was likely mere inches from mine, well within grasping distance.
This, I knew without a doubt, was a terrible idea.
And not just because I couldn’t prove that Wyatt wasn’t Freddie’s killer.
I had serious doubts about his possible guilt—call it a gut instinct—but no doubts at all about the fact that I found him ridiculously attractive.
The urge to flee wrestled with the temptation to move closer to Wyatt. My flight response got the upper hand, and I grabbed the doorknob and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t budge. I rattled it and shoved my shoulder against the door, but it remained stubbornly shut.
“Did you lock this thing?” I asked.
“I don’t have a key. And why would I do that?”
I ran my fingers over the doorknob. Sure enough, it wasn’t the kind that could be locked from the inside. It was just plain old stuck. I gave it another jiggle, to no avail.
“I’ll have a go.” Wyatt’s hand searched for the doorknob and found my fingers instead.
I sucked in a breath at his touch and let go of the doorknob. Wyatt’s hand fell away from mine.
“Sorry,” he said.
“S’okay.” I barely recognized my breathless voice as my own.
He turned the doorknob and gave the whole door a good shake.
Theo’s voice drifted down the hall. “I’m going to find you!”
I grabbed Wyatt’s hand to stop him from rattling the door. “Shh!”
I wasn’t sure why it felt so important to not let Theo find us. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself that the seventeen-year-old wasn’t better than me at everything in life.
We fell still, listening for any signs of Theo’s approach.
Silence rang around us, making me hyperaware of my every breath, and Wyatt’s too.
When I realized I was still holding his hand, I dropped it like a hot potato.
My heart absolutely wasn’t thudding in reaction to the feel of his skin against mine.
A few more seconds ticked by.
“Should we continue?” Wyatt asked.
“Continue what?”
My brain—probably delirious—shouted possible answers at me. Holding hands? Getting acquainted? Smooshing closer until our bodies are plastered together?
Maybe it was my imagination, but the temperature in the cubbyhole seemed to shoot up several degrees.
“Debriefing,” Wyatt replied.
“Oh.” My shoulders, which had inched up toward my ears, lowered. From relief or from disappointment, I wasn’t quite sure. “Right. Sorry. It’s a little hard to think while…um…playing a game.”
“Not a multitasker then.” I could hear the amusement in his voice.
“I can multitask! It’s just…” I huffed, not wanting to disclose the real reason my brain was more scattered than usual. “Never mind. You go first.”
“All right.” Wyatt shifted slightly in the darkness.
“Freddie has a criminal record. Fraud. Dealing in stolen goods. But nothing from the past five years. He spent a lot of time at the local pool hall and various bars in the neighborhood. Some of his acquaintances are of questionable character, but so far, I haven’t come across any recent conflicts with any of them.
However, Freddie was seen meeting a man on a couple of occasions in the days before he died, a man no one I’ve talked to has been able to identify.
One of those meetings took place at Shanahan’s Suds. ”
I was a little annoyed with myself because it hadn’t occurred to me to study Freddie as a person outside of his role as superintendent of the Deco Mirage.
Some of that annoyance came out in my voice. “How did you find out all that?”
“By asking around. And I called in a favor or two from former associates.”
“Associates?” I echoed with suspicion. “What kind of associates?”
“I’ve got a background in security, remember?”
“What, exactly, does that mean?” I still had trouble picturing him as a bouncer or security guard.
“I worked for an executive protection agency.”
It took a second for my brain to translate that into something more familiar. “You mean a bodyguard agency?”
“I guess you could call it that.”
I wanted to ask why a rich guy like him, with a fancy car and a country club membership, worked at all. Maybe it was to fend off boredom. Or maybe he liked the pop stars and supermodels he probably got to work with.
Thinking about him associating with gorgeous female celebrities made me painfully aware of how ordinary I must seem in comparison. I tried to move away from him, but my back hit the rough wall, and something sharp jabbed into my skin near my right shoulder blade.
“Ow!” I tried to get away from the offending object but ended up pressed against Wyatt. “Sorry!”
I inched away from him, wary of what might be behind me. I was glad it was too dark for him to see my flaming cheeks. Embarrassment had sparked the fire in my face—and the rest of me—but not by itself. Even in the fleeting moment of contact, I’d noticed how perfectly our bodies fit together.
I will not think about that! I will not think about that! I repeated in my head.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that the pain in my back was providing a distraction.
“What happened?” Wyatt asked.
“Something jabbed into my back.” I tried to reach over my right shoulder with my left hand but came up short. “I think it might still be in there. Oh, God. Maybe it’s a scorpion! Is it a scorpion?”
I had to put all my energy into not panicking.
“Not too likely here in New York.” Wyatt woke up his phone, bathing us in blue light. Then he switched on the flashlight app. “Is it all right if I take a look?”
Even though I’d moved away from him, there were still only a few inches separating us, and I had to tilt my chin up to see his face. He held my gaze as he waited for my answer.
“Yes,” I said, telling myself that my heart was galloping simply because of whatever venomous creature might be latched on to my back and absolutely not because of the man sharing my personal space.
I gathered my hair over my left shoulder and drew in a shaky breath as Wyatt moved so close that I could have nestled my face into the crook of his neck. I inhaled his scent, which reminded me of fresh air and the great outdoors. It left me lightheaded.
“Can I…?” Wyatt asked, the hand not holding his phone now hovering close to my neck.
It was simply my overactive imagination thinking I could feel his body heat against my skin, right?
I nodded and used my left hand to slide my loose, wide-neck sweater down my arm, exposing my right shoulder and part of my upper back.
The air buzzed between us, and my every breath suddenly felt amplified.
I tried to turn but could move only a few inches.
Wyatt’s chest touched my shoulder as he leaned in close to get a look at my back with the aid of the light from his phone.
This time it wasn’t my imagination. I could definitely feel the delicious warmth of his body seeping through my thin sweater.
“Hmm,” he said in a way that set off alarm bells in my head. “Maybe I was wrong about the scorpion thing.”
“What?!”
He laughed, and I felt the rumble of it in my arm, which was still pressed against his chest. “Just kidding. It’s a splinter.”
“That was so not funny,” I grumbled.
“Sorry,” he whispered, not sounding at all contrite. He spoke the word so close to my ear that his breath tickled my skin in a way that sent a shiver through my body, one he couldn’t have failed to notice.
I heard him inhale deeply, like he was breathing in my scent. Then his warm fingers touched the skin on my back, lighting a fire along my spine.
“I think I can…” He paused, and I felt the tiniest sting by my shoulder blade. “Yep. Got it.” He ran his thumb over the spot, and the heat simmering in my back shot through my bloodstream, invading every part of me. “No blood,” he declared. “It just pierced a layer or two of skin.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I hadn’t meant to speak so quietly, but his touch had snatched my breath away.
He shut off the flashlight app, but his phone still gave off a bluish light.
I let my hair fall down my back as he shifted the sleeve of my sweater up my arm, his knuckles grazing my skin.
He caught a lock of my hair as it swung into place and let it slide slowly through his fingers.
I looked up at him, my chest rising and falling faster than normal.
He met my gaze and his night-sky eyes seemed to glow with blue fire in the light from his phone.
All the nerve endings near the surface of my skin buzzed like they were overloading.
I could have sworn electricity crackled in the air around us. I half expected to see sparks as Wyatt’s phone went to sleep, plunging us into darkness.
“Emersyn.” His voice was jagged with desire.
The sound of it untethered me from my misgivings and hesitancy.
I slid a hand up around his neck and pulled him down toward me. Except I didn’t need to pull him, because as soon as my fingers made contact with his skin, his lips were there to meet mine, at first with gentle brushes and nudges, then with heat and hunger that stoked the flames burning inside me.
Something hit the floor with a thud, but neither of us paid any attention. I tangled my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck.
Wyatt’s hands slid down my sweater as he changed the angle of the kiss, sending me right to the edge of a chasm that was nothing but him.
Nothing but us. I silently cursed the knitted strands of yarn between us, but then my sweater rode up and his fingers grazed my lower back, skin against skin.
I gasped against his mouth, my eyes fluttering open.
Our gazes locked in the darkness, fire on fire, then our lips found each other again.
Wyatt deepened the kiss and tipped me over the edge of that chasm.
Light flared around us.
For the briefest of seconds, I thought we’d exploded like a supernova.
Then Wyatt let me slide slowly out of his grasp, and I landed with a jarring thud back in reality.
Theo sat outside the now-open door, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Found you!”