Chapter 12
Lakin drove her SUV into the empty parking lot of the former Shelby Hotel, then looked around before getting out and heading toward the door to the lounge area.
She was pretty sure she was still being followed.
She just wasn’t sure who it was now. A random stalker?
Jasper Whitlaw? Troy or one of her brothers?
They were all worried about her. She was worried, too, but not so much about being watched as about her future plans. She and Troy were stuck in this kind of limbo where he wanted to protect her but not be her partner. So he slept on the couch, and she wasn’t sure that she slept at all.
She lay in bed with her body aching for his. Usually when he returned from being away, they rarely left her bed. This time they had only made love once. She was going slowly out of her mind with frustration and desire for him. She wanted him so damn badly.
She wasn’t at all sure that he felt the same. Maybe it was easier for him to ignore the attraction because he wasn’t fully recovered from his fall.
While he went to physical therapy nearly every day, he seemed to be in more pain, not less, after his sessions. Maybe he was pushing himself too hard to heal. He probably wanted to get right back to work on the oil rigs that had killed his father and had almost killed him as well.
She wasn’t sure she could keep sending him off with a smile and the hope that he would come home to her. Because he might not…
She pressed a hand over her heart at the horrific thought and the physical pain it brought her.
She didn’t want to lose Troy, but she felt in some ways she already had.
She’d lost the Troy that for the past ten years she’d planned a future with; she’d lost the man she’d envisioned as her partner in business and life.
Tears blurred her vision, and she had to blink them away to unlock the door. Her hand trembled, and she still struggled to get the door opened. Then she realized she’d locked it.
It must have already been unlocked.
But how? She was the only one with a key, or so she’d been told. But from the condition of them, it didn’t look as if the locks had been changed recently. Maybe whoever had keys from when it was still the Shelby Hotel had used them to stop in and look at the place.
She hoped that was all they’d done. She wanted to get the place up and running as quickly as possible. She had to if she was going to pay her dad back as fast as she’d promised.
He’d told her to take her time; he’d even offered her more money. But she wanted to do this on her own.
No. She wanted to do this with Troy.
But if he was here, he was probably out in his old truck watching her. Hopefully he was the only one.
A thump and then a tinkle of breaking glass startled her. It came from somewhere inside the hotel.
And she realized she was not alone. Nobody would have broken into a long abandoned hotel to find food.
So why were they here?
What did they want?
* * *
The physical therapist had turned him away today. “You’re exhausted. You need to rest.”
But Troy wasn’t tired because of therapy; he was tired because he couldn’t sleep with Lakin so close and yet so far from his reach. She hadn’t just shut him out of her bedroom; it was as if she was shutting him out of her life, too.
Or maybe he’d shut himself out, just like Hetty had warned him. Being too stubborn and too proud.
He really didn’t want to be Lakin’s hero, like Hetty had accused him of wanting; he just didn’t want to be a burden to her. He wanted her to be happy and, more important, safe.
To ensure her safety, he’d followed her from the RTA office over to the old Shelby Hotel.
He waited until she’d parked and gone inside before he pulled into the parking lot.
Weeds were growing through the asphalt because nobody had been using it.
The building looked as abandoned as the parking lot; its windows were all boarded up.
The wood siding was weathered and, in some places, rotted. The place needed a lot of work.
But of course, Lakin would see the potential in it. Just as she must have seen the potential in him all those years ago. She was always so positive and hopeful until recently. Until he’d hurt her.
His heart hurt more than his back that he’d done that. He’d let her down in more ways than one. First, he hadn’t told her when he was in the hospital, and second, he didn’t reply to her texts and emails about the hotel.
But Troy loved her too much to saddle her with a cripple, which he might wind up being if he got hurt again. He wanted to be an asset to her, not a liability. He just wasn’t sure how he could help her except to keep her safe right now.
While she’d talked to Eli like she’d promised, Troy wasn’t sure what else her oldest brother was doing to protect her. Ideally the ABI lieutenant would have run Jasper Whitlaw out of town, but Troy was pretty sure he’d seen the man skulking around town still.
Whitlaw drove an old pickup truck like Troy’s, like Billy Hoover’s. And Whitlaw was always somewhere in the vicinity of Lakin, like Troy was. Strangely enough, sometimes Billy Hoover was, too.
Troy didn’t trust their old school bully any more than he trusted the stranger claiming to be Lakin’s father. With those two never far away from her, not to mention that bored rich RTA client Eric Seller, Troy needed to stick even closer to her.
He pushed open the door to his truck and stepped out onto the cracked asphalt of the old parking lot.
He waited for his back muscles to tighten from twisting himself out from under the steering wheel.
But he didn’t feel even a twinge of discomfort.
Maybe the physical therapy was helping. Maybe he would recover enough to be the partner Lakin deserved to have.
Feeling a little lighter and more hopeful, he studied the hotel for a moment.
Instead of seeing the boarded-up windows and weathered wood, he saw the potential that Lakin must have seen.
The location was great, and the structure itself looked solid.
The roof wasn’t sagging, and the walls were straight.
It might not take as much time and money and manpower as he thought to renovate it into something special.
Lakin wasn’t just optimistic; she was smart. And she was gutsy as hell to have gone ahead and bought this property at an auction with no chance for inspections or way to back out of it. But because she was so smart and determined, he knew that she would work hard and make it a success.
He felt a yearning to be part of it, part of her dream, of her future with this business and with a family. With a little girl who looked like that little girl in the photograph Whitlaw had given Lakin. He headed toward the front door, eager to see inside the building.
When he put his hand on the knob, he heard Lakin’s scream.
Chilled, he tried the knob. It didn’t move.
She’d locked herself inside with whatever danger she faced.
* * *
“I just want to shake him,” Hetty said, frustration overwhelming her.
Her mother chuckled. “You used to say that all the time about Spence Colton.”
Now Hetty wanted to do more than shake Spence Colton. She smiled but then remembered why she was frustrated and frowned. “I’m talking about my idiot brother.”
Her mother sighed. “He’s more stubborn than your father.”
“He’s trying to be Dad,” Hetty said. “Sacrificing everything to take care of everyone else. He’s going to lose Lakin if he doesn’t realize he doesn’t have to be her hero.
He just has to be her partner.” Like she and Spence were partners.
Equals. Both independent and strong separately but even stronger together.
They’d had to be, or they wouldn’t have survived when a professional assassin had tried to kill them.
“Why would he feel like he has to be her hero?” Mom asked. “Is something going on with Lakin?”
Hetty tensed. Was there something going on with Lakin? Was there a reason her brother felt as if he had to protect the woman he loved? From what? How could Lakin, who didn’t have an enemy in the world, be in danger?
Then Hetty remembered how she and Spence had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and nearly lost their lives because of it. And those women…
The poor women who’d become victims of a serial killer. Had they even realized they were in danger before it was too late? Was that who Troy thought he needed to protect Lakin from? A serial killer?
Or was there another threat against her?
If there was, Hetty had no doubt that Troy would do whatever he could to protect her from it, like putting himself in danger to save her.