In a Fix (19 page)

“Can’t use a cell. Someone might be listening. Hey, how did you find my hotel? I didn’t even know where I was staying until I got here.”

“Dumb luck. I bumped into Kevin and he recognized me as you. Told me I was staying here. I figured you must have been playing Mina to find Trey.”

He shrugged. “It seemed the easiest way to get his attention. I’ve been all over this damn burg, trying to be as visible as I can. Guess that’s pointless now, if you’re sure the Vikings have him.”

“Who knows?
They
seemed sure. And you’re lucky the Vikings didn’t snatch you off the street—Mina is not exactly the safest face to wear in public anymore.”

“So drop her already,” he said, with a tug on my hair.

“Then my clothes won’t fit,” I grumped.

He kicked off his heels and reverted to himself, going from chic to preposterous in a blink of his lovely lashes. “You think you have problems.” He grinned and began disrobing.

“Billy, I’m standing right here.”

“What? You don’t expect me to hang around in this dress, do you? For one thing, I’m about to split it.” He turned his back to me. “Be a pal and unzip me.”

I complied, tugging hard on the zipper, which was strained almost to the breaking point. “What if our new buddies down the hall pay an unexpected call?”

“I’ll switch back and they’ll see a beautiful redhead in a generic hotel robe.” He shrugged and went to the closet. “Here’s one for you, too. Change in the bathroom if your modesty insists.”

I caught the robe he tossed at me and did as he suggested. It was akin to slipping out of too-tight shoes—the relief was profound and immediate. I didn’t even half-mind seeing my skimpy figure in the mirror. It felt right.

What I did mind was putting the clean robe onto my less than fresh body. The gleaming white porcelain of the tub was irresistible. I twisted the hot-water faucet, and poked my head out the door while the water warmed. “I’m going to take a quick bath. Anything you have to tell me that can’t wait ten minutes?”

“Nope. Indulge yourself—go for fifteen. You hungry? I’ll order room service.”

My stomach growled. “Ravenous. Order a lot.”

The hot water felt too good for a purely hygienic dip (besides, there were bubbles) so the fifteen minutes stretched to twenty. Maybe half an hour. Long enough to get pruney, anyway. I heard the door to the room open and close a few times, and picked up on some muffled voices, which I tuned out. Billy could handle the waitstaff without my input.

When I came out, I found a spread fit for a queen. The small table was laden. Excess side dishes, left on trays, overflowed onto the bed. A stand held an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and two glasses, each containing a single raspberry. Next to the glasses was a note in Billy’s careless scrawl.

Taking care of a few details. Back soon to

pop a cork and celebrate your escape.

“Geez,” I said to the empty room. “I said order a lot, not the whole menu.”

Oh, well. Billy was nothing if not extravagant in his gestures. The assortment of breads, fruits, cheeses, pickled herring, smoked salmon, thin-sliced roast beef, ham, hard-boiled eggs, caviar, and—praise God—pastries was not out of character for him.

I sampled small pinches of everything, trying to be polite and wait until he was back to share the meal with him. He’d better hurry, though, because I didn’t know how long I could hold out.

A few minutes and one dry piece of hard bread later, I was pacing when my eyes fell on the champagne glasses. They were the short, saucer kind, not flutes. Maybe it was just my whirling mind looking for a distraction, but the raspberries made the stemware look like nothing so much as inverted boobs. I popped one of the berries into my mouth and considered the glass thoughtfully. I’d read somewhere that the champagne saucer was supposedly modeled on the perfect breast of one of Napoleon’s mistresses.
I wonder …

What the heck, why not? I was alone. I was curious.

I was bored.

So I opened my robe and tried one on for size.
Hallelujah!
It fit. I even overflowed a tiny bit. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all. Inordinately pleased, I ate the berry from the second glass, and poured my other boob into it. Holding the glasses in place, I looked down at myself, thinking it was maybe not so horrible to be less endowed than Mina Worthington. At least I shouldn’t sag much by the time I was sixty or seventy.

A throat cleared, loudly. And it wasn’t mine.
Shit!

My eyes flew up to meet Billy’s. He was standing across the room, staring in shocked fascination, dimples bracketing a wide grin. Damn. I hadn’t even heard the door squeak.

“You win. Your raspberries are better,” he said, eyes aglow.

I whipped myself around, removed the glasses, and resecured my robe. Not looking at him, I stumbled through an explanation of Napoleon and his mistress, which sounded totally stupid when I heard it out loud, so I quickly changed the subject to the humongous amount of food he’d ordered.

The teasing glint lingered in his eyes, but he followed my conversational detour willingly enough. “I wasn’t sure what you were in the mood for. But don’t worry. It’s on Mark.”

“Do you always abuse your per diem when you do a job for him?”

“Pretty much. He’s used to it.” He plucked a raspberry from the dish of fruit and held it between his lips for a second before he sucked it into his mouth. I blushed and gave him a dirty look. He laughed, picked up another and threw it at me.

I dodged it. “You’re never going to let me forget this, are you?”

“Not if we live to be a hundred.” He held out a chair for me, like the gentleman he wasn’t.

I lifted my chin and sat, refusing to look at him. Standing behind me, he leaned down and said, “Come on, cuz. Lighten up. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

I ignored him and reached for the gooiest, sweetest-smelling confection on the table. “I’m not listening to you.”

“So I’ve seen your raspberries. Who cares? What’s a little fruit between friends?”

I pressed my lips together, trying to look mad, but gave up when he started juggling berries from the bowl. He was pretty good. “Okay,” I said. “I can see where it might be a little bit funny from your point of view. But can we please drop it now?”

He caught three berries with his mouth, in rapid succession, and slid into the chair across from me. “Sure. But I reserve the right to bring it up randomly in the future.”

“Hmph. I expect no better of you. Only”—I chewed the corner of my lip—“not in front of anyone, okay?”

He leaned back and cocked his head. “Of course not. It’s more fun torturing you privately.” But his eyes softened.

I relaxed and bit into my pastry. “My sweet Lord,” I mumbled around a glob of creamy heaven. “What is this? It makes getting kidnapped totally worth it.”

“That, I believe, is called a ‘semla.’ It’s made with marzipan.” He poured each of us a glass of champagne while I stuffed my mouth.

“To staying alive,” he said after I swallowed. We clinked glasses and sipped.

I made short work of the rest of the semla, and went for something with a hard chocolate shell on top next. “Oooh, this is even better!”

“Yeah, yeah. The Swedes know their sweets. Now, here, try this. You need to eat something healthy.” He handed me a piece of hard bread topped with sliced hard-boiled egg and caviar.

I looked at it skeptically. “I dunnoh…”

“Come on, cuz. If you don’t want eggs, try some roast beef or cheese. You can’t live on carbs alone.”

“Bet I could,” I said. But I took the sandwich anyway, and even enjoyed it. The salty burst from the caviar was just the thing to top off all the sugar. “How can you eat so fast without spilling a crumb?” My own lap was littered with bits of bread crust, stray crumbles of cheese, and smears of fruity pastry filling.

“Efficiency,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin that was still as clean as when he started, except for a bit of whipped cream he’d wiped off my chin.

I leaned back in my chair and groaned. “I ate too much.”

He eyed the shambles in front of me. “You think?”

“Yeah, and I’d do it again.” I tossed my well-adorned napkin at him, stretched my arms high over my head, and sighed. “You know what would make the evening complete?”

He grinned devilishly. “Raspberries for dessert?”

“Ha-ha. Aren’t you funny. Guess again.”

“A foot massage followed by eight solid hours of sleep?”

“Mmm … you read my mind.”

“Sorry. All you’re going to get is a few hours of shut-eye, sans massage. I’m going out for a bit. I’ll try to contact Mark from a public phone somewhere—they can’t have all of them tapped.”

I pushed myself away from the table. “I’ll come with you. Mark might have questions for me.”

“Nothing that can’t wait a while. You need to rest.”

“No. Trey’s still in danger. Somebody tried to shoot me—no telling what they’ll try to do to him. And speaking of the shooting, the police will probably want to talk to me.”

“Mina has already given all the information required to the nice officer in the lobby.”

“So that’s where you went. God, you’re handy.” I smiled gratefully. I hadn’t really wanted to face an interview with the local constabulary.

“You’re welcome. But while I may seem omnipotent, I’m not actually God.”

I tried to give him an ego-withering look, but wound up laughing instead. “Go away.”

“I will. After you’re all tucked in.”

I glanced at the bed, still covered with trays of partially eaten food. All of a sudden I was too tired to move myself, much less all the debris, and maybe a tad queasy. “No, I’ll just rest here for a second, and then we can go together.”

He shook his head and snorted, then cleared the bed for me.

“I
said
I was coming with you.”

“Just lay down for an hour first—we can wait that long.” He would’ve carried me to the bed if I’d let him. As it was, he held on to my upper arm until I was ensconced up to my chin in the soft linens.

“Don’t you leave without me,” I mumbled as my eyes shut. If he answered, I didn’t hear it.

Chapter 18

It was a tug-of-war, and I was pulling for all I was worth. My fingers ached with the effort of holding on, but it was no good. I was losing.

“Come on, Ciel. It’s time to wake up. Don’t make me get the ice.”

Damn. I let go of the covers—unwillingly—and pried one eye open. Squinted up at Billy. Oh, yeah. I was no longer Mina. I was me. And Billy was himself, too. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black eyelashes surrounding his inky blue eyes. Why did he always have to flaunt his eyelashes at me?

“Go away. You said I had an hour.” I reached behind me for the pillow and pulled it over my head.

“That was six hours ago. Sorry, but that’s all you get. We really have to move now.”

I pushed the pillow down to my waist. “I was out that long? Ugh. It feels like minutes.”

“Yeah, well, exhaustion will do that to you. Not to mention the residual effects of whatever little drug cocktail the Vikings gave you.” He snagged my arm and pulled me to a sitting position. “Up you go. Time to get dressed.” He reached for the belt of the robe I was still mostly wearing and started to undo it.

I slapped his hand away. “Hey, naked under there! Please.”

“Okay, here’s the deal. Your clothes are on the bed beside you. I’ll turn my back while you change. If you don’t accomplish that in two minutes, I’m doing it for you, modesty be damned. Starting … now.”

Yawning, I contemplated my situation. I was normally a fast dresser. Two minutes meant I could technically sneak in another forty-five seconds of sleep.

“One minute, thirty seconds left.”

Crap. Somebody was speeding up time. It wasn’t fair. Still sitting, I dropped the robe from my shoulders and reached for the bra and panties Billy had provided, wondering briefly where they had come from but not awake enough to be overly curious. I was too used to him just happening to have whatever was needed at any given time. He’d always had a knack for procurement.

The bra went on first—a lacy little pink number with good support. Not that my boobs needed a lot of support, except for maybe the moral variety. Still, this scrap of skimpiness actually made me look like a girl. I should let Billy do all my lingerie shopping. “Hey, how’d you know my bra size?”

“I took a champagne glass with me. One minute.”

Oh yeah. Right. No comment.

Next, I slipped into the panties, which matched the bra in both laciness and skimpiness, with both legs at once, rolling backward to bring them over my hips. Same routine with the jeans, which were too long—I was used to that with jeans—but fit well enough otherwise. I automatically double-folded the leg bottoms into neat cuffs, and then went for the zipper.

“Forty-five seconds.”

“Button fly? You got me
button fly
? Hey, I should get extra time for that!”

“Thirty.”

I fumbled with the fastenings, my fingers tripping over themselves. “No freaking fair,” I mumbled.

“Ten.”

I skipped the top two brass irritants and grabbed the shirt. Thank goodness it was a pullover—

“Five.”

—a forest-green, scoop-neck tee. I hauled it over my head and yanked it down over my boobs.

“Four-three-two-one,” Billy finished rapidly. “Ready or not…”

He turned back to me with a devilish glint while I tried to shove my arms through the sleeves. “Not bad,” he said. “I didn’t see a thing. But you’re backward.”

“Aargh.” I pulled the sleeves back off, reached under the shirt from below, and twisted it around, all the while retaining coverage. “Three questions. A, what’s the sudden rush? B, where are we going? And C, why didn’t you wake me sooner?”

“Taking those in reverse order, C, I tried to wake you an hour ago. You assured me—with wide-open eyes and utter sincerity—that you were conscious and capable, so I left to arrange transportation. B, you’ll see when we get there. And A, the police were called away to referee a jousting dispute, leaving the hotel unguarded. I’d like to be gone before the Vikings send reinforcements.”