13. Marilee
Marilee
Iwas bored. So bored. I spent the whole day at Hazel’s side during roundtable discussions about diplomatic relations and presentations about ‘comparative advantage’ and ‘trade liberalization’ and ‘capital mobility’. I didn’t understand most of it, but Hazel clearly did. She was in her element.
“This all makes sense to you?” I asked her as we walked into the ballroom for lunch.
I spotted Martha, Boris, and Allie standing at different locations in the room, ostensibly looking for a place to sit but actually watching the crowd. We settled at a table near the side door where I could have eyes on the room.
“All what?” Hazel asked. “The presentations?”
“Yeah. You seemed super interested in them, taking notes and stuff. And you didn’t fall asleep once.”
Her face lit up. “Oh yes, this is all so fascinating. I love it. You were bored, huh? I could tell.”
She could? I was sure my face had stayed impassive – I was trained to keep it that way. I wondered if the beginnings of the mate bond were making her more tuned in to me, the same way it was doing for me.
“When I was in the military I once had to lay on my stomach in the middle of the desert for two days not moving while I waited for someone we were trying to capture, and that experience was less boring than those presentations this morning.”
“Did you get sunburned?”
“Huh?”
“When you laid on your stomach in the desert for two days, did you get sunburned? You’re very pale skinned.”
I frowned. “No, I had protective clothing. And sunscreen.”
“You had food and water with you, right?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course.”
I gave a chin tilt to Allie as she wandered by, looking like she was trying to find a colleague.
“How did you pee?”
I tore my gaze away from the room to study my mate. Her expression was serious, but her eyes were sparkling with amusement.
“What do you mean, how did I pee?” I asked grumpily. “The usual way.”
“If you couldn’t move from your stomach for two days, I was just wondering how you were able to eat and drink and pee. Also, at any point did you get a leg cramp from not moving for so long?”
I blinked. “Well, I moved a little. Smartass.”
Hazel started laughing. “I thought so. But I hear you, this is boring for you.”
Some other attendees joined our table, interrupting our conversation, and I picked at my salad while another boring old white guy started speaking on the stage. Jeez, couldn’t we have a single meal without listening to some windbag drone on about trade wars?
I tuned out the speaker and thought about this morning. Hazel and I both woke up early. She wanted to go for a swim, which was apparently her favorite way to work out, and even though I didn’t have a swimsuit with me, I went along to keep an eye on her. As her bodyguard, of course.
It had been torture seeing Hazel in a swimsuit, her curvy little body sliding through the water as she did laps with a focused precision. She was a good swimmer and much fitter than she looked. Her boring diplomat clothes hid tight muscles, strong legs, and the most perfect breasts I’d ever tasted.
Wait no, I didn’t need to think about that kiss last night.
I needed to focus on my job. Plus, Hazel hadn’t exactly leapt at the opportunity to be mates.
She’d seemed more freaked out about the mate reveal than anything else that had happened so far.
The sexual attraction was there, I had no doubt about that, but she wasn’t feeling anything more.
At least not yet. Of course, growing up the way she had, I imagined she didn’t trust easily.
Bite her, then you’ll be connected and she will have to stay with us, my wolf piped up.
We can’t bite her yet, my vampire argued. Humans need time to fall in love. They don’t trust their feelings the way we do. We need to woo her.
I can’t woo her, I have a job to do. I have to keep her safe right now, I argued back.
Great, now I was arguing with my inner demons. I sighed, watching as a man dropped into the chair on Hazel’s other side. He was older, probably mid to late fifties, with perfectly styled white hair and perfect teeth.
“Ah, another Canadian delegate,” he boomed as he shook Hazel’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you. What office are you from?”
“Ottawa.”
“I’m at the Montreal office.”
Hazel switched to French, speaking with the man for several minutes before she said in English, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find the washroom.”
I stood up, following her out of the ballroom. Instead of heading for the ladies room, she pulled me into an empty room.
“That guy next to me isn’t a Canadian delegate.”
“How do you know?” I asked, my guard immediately going up.
“His French is wrong. He’s speaking the Parisian dialect, which is different from what’s spoken in Quebec.”
“Maybe he’s new?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, he claims to have grown up in Montreal, but when I asked him about his favorite local restaurant, he struggled to come up with something. Also when I asked for his business card I noticed that it has an old logo on it, one we stopped using about a year ago.”
“Do you think he’s just using up old cards?”
She shook her head. “We’re required to change them immediately. That card was either stolen or counterfeited. Either way, he’s a fake.”
I looked around, making sure no one had slipped into the room with us while we were talking, then asked, “Do you think he’s one of the mercenaries looking for you?”
I hadn’t gotten a mercenary vibe from the guy.
He was too soft, too out of shape, to be someone sent to kidnap Hazel, unless he had back-up in the crowd who were ready to do his bidding.
Then again, I hadn’t sensed that he knew who Hazel was.
His conversation with her had seemed more opportunistic than anything.
“No, he’s up to something else that doesn’t have anything to do with me.” She handed me the card. “Probably a spy for a foreign government. Let’s have Wanda investigate him.”
I wanted to tease her about giving me orders, but her idea was a good one, so I snapped a picture of the card and texted it to Wanda with a message.
“We should get back,” Hazel said. “I want to see if I can find anything else out.”
By the time we returned to our table the keynote speaker was starting, which left us with no time to talk to the fake diplomat.
It didn’t take long for Wanda to text me back a picture of the person who those business cards belonged to.
It definitely wasn’t the man sitting at our table.
I subtly snapped a picture of the imposter so Wanda could alert the conference organizers.
Ten minutes later hotel security stopped at our table, whispering for the man to follow them. He went without an argument.
“I’m dying to know what’s going on,” Hazel said.
“Wanda will let us know,” I reassured her. “She’ll make sure it’s really unrelated.”
It was. We heard a little while later that the fake Canadian was really a Romanian national trying to get intel on the delegates. Of course it was the Romanians, I thought. We’d run up against them before.
By the time we finished our afternoon sessions I was ready to crawl out of my skin. At least if I was on a stake-out I could have worked on my computer or something. But sitting in this hotel waiting for someone else to make an attempt to snatch my mate was nerve wracking.
The constant commentary from my vamp and wolf only made it worse.
I’d grown used to my vamp’s voice over the years, but now that the wolf had made an appearance, I felt like one of those cartoons where there’s a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.
My vamp was cautious and strategic, just like me, but my newly present wolf was all about instincts and action.
“What should we do tonight?” Hazel asked when we were finally heading up to our room. “There are no conference events tonight. I don’t want to sit around here, but I also don’t want to make myself a target.”
“I’ve got an idea.”
Lois was leaving the office for the day when we ran into her in the lobby, walking hand in hand with her mate Monique.
My boss and her mate were the definition of ‘opposites attract’.
Where Lois was broad and super masc presenting, with a short crew cut and androgenous clothing, Monique was as femme as they come.
She was a tall, willowy blonde wolf shifter with carefully styled locks, a face full of make-up, and a penchant for designer clothes.
They’d met years ago while Lois was on an assignment and had been inseparable since then.
After they found each other, Monique wanted her mate to leave New York and move to Seattle.
She’d used some of her considerable fortune to fund this branch of Sapphic Security to make it happen.
“What are you doing here Martin?” Lois snapped.
Monique squeezed her hand and Lois added with forced politeness, “Hello Martin, Hazel.”
“We’re going to use the gym,” I explained. “We’ve been sitting all day and need to move.”
“Fine, Bella’s in her office finishing a report, but be sure whoever leaves last turns off the lights. I’m not trying to pay for summer houses for whoever the idiot is who owns the electric company.”
Seattle’s utility company was actually publicly owned but there was no way I was going to point that out. Lois hated corporate CEOs as much as she hated most people who weren’t her mate.
“Got it, boss. Thank you.” I smiled at her companion. “Nice to see you, Monique.”
Lois growled, pulling her mate away from me as if I’d just hit on her, which no one would ever do unless they had a death wish.
“Good night girls,” Monique trilled as they headed for the elevator. “Have fun.”
“They’re an… interesting couple,” Hazel noted as I led her down the hallway towards the in-house gym.
“You have no idea. Are you ready to sweat?”