11. Eleven
ELEVEN
Wylie was in trouble. I didn’t know how I knew that, but one look at her face, the way she’d gone white and furtive, told me all I needed to know. She was afraid, and it was the guy who’d been watching her all night who had made her that way.
I’d seen him several times. He always stood at the outskirts of the crowd, pretending to mingle, but he never actually talked to any of the other authors as far as I could tell.
I’d started watching him at some point just to see if he interacted with anybody.
It was always possible he was shy. He never did, though, and he didn’t follow any particular author except for Wylie.
It was obvious he liked what he saw because once he caught sight of her, he never stopped following her movements. I didn’t like it.
Wylie, of course, was oblivious. I took to watching her as much as the guy who tracked her from one end of the rooftop bar to the other.
She lit up when she was talking to the readers.
Even when one of the readers dug in on the minutiae of her book — something that always made me uncomfortable because I didn’t always remember what they were talking about — she listened with rapt attention.
When Wylie gave someone her full attention, it was as if she turned into the sun and the reader was a plant that hadn’t seen a single ray over the course of a long, brutal winter.
Wylie had no idea the effect she had on people.
It had me feeling guilty. Why was I so determined to give her a hard time about the freaking Klingon? It didn’t matter. Other people found it adorable. Hell, I secretly found it adorable. I just couldn’t let it go, though, and I had no idea why.
The Klingon didn’t matter now, though. What mattered was that Wylie looked as if she was boxed in, and like all caged animals, she was about to gnaw her own arm off to get away. She didn’t deserve to feel like that. I would make sure she was okay, one way or another.
I was moving before I realized it was going to happen, and when I cut through the crowd, I made sure to use my wide shoulders to bump Wylie’s overenthusiastic fan to the side to clear a path for me to get through.
“There you are!” My voice boomed so loudly that Wylie jolted.
“I’ve been looking for you.” I swooped in and pressed a proprietary kiss on Wylie’s cheek.
Even I didn’t know it was going to happen until I was already making contact.
And, man, why did her skin have to be so soft?
She smelled like something I wanted to eat, something I’d been starved for my entire life.
She was coconut on the surface and something else — limes?
— underneath. Whatever she was using as body wash was divine.
“Hi,” she said, sounding a little breathless.
I smiled and brushed her hair away from her face before realizing what I was going to do. “Hey, sweetheart. I was looking for you.” Sweetheart? Where had that come from?
Wylie looked confused. “Um … this is Chad,” she said finally, seemingly making up her mind that I was here to help.
She might not have wanted to accept help from me — and I didn’t blame her — but she knew that I would never hurt her that way, which made me an acceptable rescuer. “He just offered to walk me home.”
The fear in her eyes at that prospect made me want to start throwing punches, something I’d never done.
One of my mother’s husbands — the fourth one, I believe, Chet — decided I needed to know how to protect myself.
He’d tried to teach me how to box. It hadn’t gone well.
Now, though, I would throw a punch for Wylie if I needed to do it. I didn’t even care if I broke my hand.
“Oh, thanks, man.” I leveled a smile on Chad that was somehow both ice and fire in intensity. “I’m doing that, though. We’re going home together.”
Chad took an inadvertent step back. I might not have been a trained fighter, but I was a solid six inches taller than him, and I worked out, so I had muscles. They at least looked impressive.
“Sorry.” Chad immediately held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t realize you two were together.”
“No harm,” I lied. If he’d instilled even a moment of fear in Wylie’s life, harm had been done.
I was trained in how to handle a situation like this, though, and drawing attention from the other readers wasn’t the way to go.
“You didn’t know.” I slung my arm around Wylie and internally cursed when she fit perfectly against my side.
She felt small but not weak. She was warm, and I could smell her body spray again.
It was unnerving. “I’m glad you were around to offer her protection for the walk. I’ve got it, though.”
“Right. Yeah.” Chad cast one more furtive look toward Wylie. “It was nice meeting you,” he offered lamely.
“You too.” Wylie pasted what I knew to be a fake smile on her face and watched him go, not moving from my side until he’d disappeared down the hallway that led to the elevator. “Thank you,” she said in a low voice. “You didn’t have to do that, and yet you did.”
“Don’t thank me for doing the bare minimum, Wylie,” I replied in a low voice. “I noticed that guy watching you all through the event. I was already leery of him.”
“You were?” Her eyes were liquid and curious when she angled herself to look up at me. Whether she realized it or not, she hadn’t moved out from under my arm.
“I didn’t like the way he was looking at you,” I acknowledged. “I didn’t realize he’d followed you to the bar, though. I was distracted.”
“You still came.” She beamed at me as if I’d cured cancer or something. “Thanks.”
I held her gaze for a beat and hated the gust of cold that washed over me when she slid out from under my arm. She was going to leave, and this was going to be it. I wouldn’t be able to apologize. She would just go on with her life, on with hating me.
“Wylie,” I called out when she’d made it two steps away.
She looked back, her brow furrowing.
“I’m walking you home.” I didn’t phrase it as a question. I would not let her walk home alone with that guy hanging around. “When the event is over, meet me by the elevators, huh?”
For a moment, I thought she was going to argue with me. Instead, she nodded. “Thank you.” I almost couldn’t hear her when she said it.
“Again, don’t thank me for doing the bare minimum. Just don’t leave without me, okay? It’s important.”
“I won’t.” This time, when she flashed a smile in my direction, it was legitimate. “Thanks, Huxley.”
“You’re welcome.”
I WENT THROUGH THE MOTIONS for the remaining hour of the reader event.
I didn’t ignore the readers who were present, but I didn’t go out of my way to engage either.
The second the event was over, I hit the bathroom, then moved to the hallway, where I’d instructed Wylie to wait.
I was relieved to find her waiting for me.
“Ready?” I asked, trying not to read too much into the relief flowing through me. I would have chased her on foot to get her home safely. She’d waited for me, though. That had to be a good sign, right?
She nodded. “Yes. Thanks again for doing this.”
I hated that she was making me sound like a hero for walking 20 blocks. “Do you need to go to the bathroom or anything?” I prodded, rather than comment on what she’d said.
“I already went.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
We didn’t say goodbye to the others. I had no idea if they’d already left or were watching us amble toward the elevator together.
Frankly, I didn’t care. I kept my gaze peeled for Chad when we hit the street, and I was almost positive I saw him down the sidewalk, outside Saddlebags, where there was a line of people waiting to get in.
“Let’s walk down the riverwalk, huh?” I decided, making up my mind on the spot. If this guy was going to follow us, I wanted to be able to see him coming. Either way, I wanted to know.
“Sure.” Wylie’s smile was sweet. “They have an ice cream shop over there, at the hotel.”
That was enough to snap me out of my protective reverie. “What?”
“Ice cream,” she repeated. “I … you probably think ice cream is stupid.”
My heart squeezed at the sadness on her face. Why was I constantly such a dick to her? I couldn’t figure it out. “Ice cream sounds great.”
She perked up. “Really?”
“Really,” I agreed. “We’ll eat it on the riverwalk and talk.”
“You want to talk?” She looked dubious.
That made me grin. “Don’t you think we should?”
“Whenever we talk, it turns into us being mean to each other.”
“I’ve been a lot meaner than you.”
“Not really. You have no idea the horrible thoughts I’ve had.”
“What sort of horrible thoughts?” I was curious despite myself. I’d come to the conclusion that Wylie didn’t have a mean bone in her body.
“Well, I’m a big fan of The X-Files. Some of the monster-of-the-week episodes had particularly gruesome outcomes.”
“Like what?” I prodded her to cross the street. I wanted to get a better look at that Saddlebags line.
“Well, in one episode, a bunch of ancient bugs escaped a tree when it was illegally cut down, and they spun up a bunch of loggers in webs when they were still alive. Then they slowly drained them of fluids and turned them into mummies.”
I blinked. Then I blinked again. Then I burst out laughing. “You really are a geek.”
She shrugged and looked away from me. “I’m okay with that. You’re the only one who isn’t okay with it.”
“No.” I took her hand without realizing I was going to do it and tugged her back. “I’m fine with it.”
“You are not!” Thankfully, she was laughing and didn’t seem angry. “The Klingon drives you crazy. It drove you crazy back then.”
“I don’t get the Klingon,” I acknowledged. “You can’t hold something that happened when I was 17 years old against me, though. I was an idiot back then.”
“You don’t like the Klingon now,” she pointed out.
I led her to one of the openings between the JW Marriott River District Hotel buildings. I cast a quick look over my shoulder to see if I saw Chad, but I didn’t. He’d either gone into Saddlebags or taken the hint and gone home.