Safe and Sound (The Safe House Series Book 3) (6 page)

"You're doing the right thing, Max.”

Jason Rockwell, head of Rockwell Securities, had been a comforting presence in Max’s life since his family fell apart on his second tour in Afghanistan. Within a six-month span, his parents and sister had died, all battling demons too great for this lifetime. Rockwell had found a healthy way to channel Max’s anger and superior combat skills. Security became his savior.

"Yeah? I'm not so sure."

Max sat on the edge of the hotel bed, phone pressed to his ear, eyes trained on the cracked door to the shower.

He disliked having to monitor Lola’s every move as much as she did, but it had to be done. It helped matters that he found the woman beautiful to the point of distraction. In fact, Max suspected his eyes would have been on her at all times with or without his suspicion riding shotgun to his every decision. Still, it would have been nice to give her the illusion of privacy.

But he knew he couldn't afford to slip up again, not after her near-escape at the gas station. Granted, she hadn't gotten far. He surmised by her crestfallen expression when he caught her that she legitimately believed she had a shot of outrunning him, but that window of opportunity should have never been left open. Max kept it out of his conversation with Rockwell but planned to note it dutifully on his paperwork.

Now that no one’s eyes were on him, Max allowed a relaxed posture. He slumped forward and brought his free hand up to massage the angular planes of his face, dragging his fingers down until he had tugged his mouth into a frown. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Lola had crashed into his life, and he had been awake longer than that. Sleep deprivation took hold with a vengeance.

"You don't have to be sure about anything, Sterling," Rockwell said, not-so-effectively dismissing Max’s concern. "That's what I'm here for. Stick to protocol. Follow orders. You got Baudin and the woman—Lola Reyes, was it?—out of there. I'll run a full report on her now, just to be sure."

"You won’t find anything. Her story will check out. Then the company will be under fire for
my
actions."

"You did what you had to," said Rockwell. "And if she's anywhere near as decent as you seem to think she is, she'll see things our way. A man's life is on the line."

"So is hers," Max said. "She never asked to be part of this. I brought her into the danger."

"She drove herself off the road straight into danger." Rockwell's voice came across the line as a snarl. Max imagined the man's mind raced with thoughts of company damage control. "She's lucky you were there. You're a capable man, Sterling, otherwise I wouldn't have put you on this assignment. Under your watch, she's at worst inconvenienced. If she can't be appealed to logically or emotionally, then let her hire the best attorney her school teacher's salary can afford. And if that's her ultimate decision, I'd wish her luck on that front. She’ll need it."

Max emitted a low hiss of frustration. The shower tap twisted off.

"I'll check in tomorrow," he replied. "Forward me what you find. And look into her brother Jack while you're at it."

"Easy there with the orders, Captain. Remember who runs the show."

Rockwell signed off without any real words of parting. Typical. Max exhaled as he flipped his burner phone closed, but he didn't have the energy to feel truly angry. Besides, there was no one to direct his anger toward except himself. He supposed there was always Adrien Baudin, but he had already locked the hitman up for the night with orders to stay put. Picking a fight would not only be out of character for him, it would needlessly exhaust them both.

He had just replaced his phone beside his gun in the bedside drawer when the squeaky bathroom door snagged his attention.

Lola emerged in the hotel-issue robe, her curvaceous body filling the pristine white terry cloth in all the right places. The belt cinched around her waist seemed to have forgotten its purpose. Every small shift of her body exponentially increased the likelihood of a peep show. The bottom hem barely seemed to cover the junction between her thighs, and the more Max's eyes scrambled for a diversion the more he saw: shapely legs, profound cleavage.

'Buxom' was too conventional a word for her. She was a revelation.

The image was a stealth attack straight to his cock.

She paused in dramatic fashion in the doorway, her eyes leveled on him.

Lola stroked her fingertips through her dripping hair, blinked dewy lashes, and pursed her voluptuous lips.

"Have room for one more?" She all but purred the question.

The allure of a naked Lola warred with the notion that she might have used her shower minutes to craft a toothbrush shank she now hid in her robe pocket.

In one slow stride toward him, the oxygen left the room. Max braced himself for an epic battle between his moral code and his rampant desire to divest her of the robe and taste every mouthwatering peak and valley on her body. Three steps into her panther-like prowl toward him, the belt of her robe snagged the door jam and yanked her backward.

Lola half unraveled before executing a crisp, ninety-degree military turn that would have put the Marine’s Silent Drill Platoon to shame. Her once beguiling, if slightly unnatural, expression opened in horror, and her hands corralled the robe’s opening as if it were a chastity belt.

It was then Max knew exactly what she was trying to do.

Had the idea to seduce him occurred to her in the shower? The thought shouldn't amuse him as much as it did, but there wasn't a precedence for this sort of behavior from the school teacher to make it seem anything but completely inauthentic. Max crossed his forearms over his chest and acted as spectator to her struggle, amusement twitching the corners of his mouth.

"I thought you didn't want to be roommates?"

Lola wrenched herself free from the door, but the move left her unbalanced. She tottered backward toward the bed. Max half-rose to catch her, but her momentum was enough to send them both toppling to the bed. Lola landed on his lap, her bare belly sprawled across his obvious erection.

Her robe lay in a puddle on the floor.

His eyes scaled from the ample roundness filling her scalloped-lace edged black panties, up her flawless apricot-colored skin to the clasp of her matching black-shell bra. The warmth of her breasts through the two layers of fabric separating them—one hers, one his—was an inferno to gunpowder. He didn’t know if he should extract her or fuck her.

In the end, honor won.

He helped her to turn, to rise to a seated position, half at his knees, half on the bed beside him. Her brows contorted, a mixture of confusion and humiliation, all of it pure innocence. A stab of regret pierced his chest that he could never tell her how much he wanted to nuzzle into her softness and lose himself. He was about to feed her a professional line—something like
I’m flattered, but my job has boundaries
—when Lola sabotaged herself again by puckering her face like a cartoon Betty and running her finger along his jawline, ear to chin.

"What do you say?" She injected her voice with an odd, amorous tenor that sounded like she had just chain-smoked Baudin’s entire pack.

Max raised his eyebrows, a silent invitation for her to continue.

"What do you say we…" Lola faltered, before soldiering on heroically. "What do you say you and I make the most of an awkward situation, Mr. Sterling?"

"And what awkward situation would that be, Lola?"

His deliberately obtuse question, when married to her first name, further proved his tactical advantage. Her cheeks sprouted roses, and her pupils swelled wider.

"Well…" Her breathlessness didn't feel so put-on this time. "I mean. The two of us have to share a bed tonight. We may as well make it official, right?"

"Official?" Max didn't want to admit it, but he enjoyed the game. He laced his hands behind the woman's back and pulled her closer. A warm, lavender scent lifted from her skin—no doubt the flower-shaped soap that adorned the butler’s towels he spotted on his preliminary sweep of the room. Almost every time she had been in his arms since her car accident, he had restrained her. Their current proximity was a welcome change…even if it
was
inappropriate. He shouldn't egg the woman on in her act, but he couldn't help it. Her eyes held the same determined look she had when he caught her in a full run, and he wanted—no,
needed
—to see how far she would press for her freedom.

Also, her nearly-bare body in his arms gave him a tantalizing eye-level view of her pale, plump breasts and beaded nipples straining against the structured but gauzy black fabric. A thousand tactics to reverse advantage raced through his mind, but his blood supply was on permanent override to his groin and every last damned strategy ended with Lola Reyes on her back.

"Official? As in…?" Lola struggled once more to find words.

Max drew her closer. A few more inches and a dry hump was a viable, if maddening, possibility.

"You know," she continued. "We should have it. Have sex."

"Think you'll tire me out, is that it?" Max’s gaze scaled the long, silky column of her neck, admiring the rise of her prominent cheekbones from below. "And then you'll get away. But you underestimate me. I can pleasure you all. night. long."

Lola’s breath caught, causing a delightful swell of her chest. She snagged her full lower lip behind perfectly aligned white teeth.

Lust pooled at his core. He nearly kissed her right there, just to free the fleshy fold, to teach her lips how to be a proper captive, to leave no misunderstanding behind that he desired every liberal curve of her sweet body.

He had called her bluff. A little too well, perhaps. Lola shifted, nearly a squirm. Her tense limbs suggested she might stand, but the rest of her body telegraphed something else, something decidedly
different
.

As an experiment, he tugged her closer.

Lola shoved him back against the mattress. Max fell without protest, an amused smile still teasing the corners of his mouth, until she lunged toward the bedside drawer.

Toward his gun.

Shit.

Max dove after her, but he was too late. Lola seized his M-9 and staggered back from the bed, bringing both hands up to wrap around the handle of the gun. She trained the barrel on him.

He lifted his arms in surrender.

"Don't move." This time, she
owned
her voice’s tenor.

Fuck.
His breath exchanged hard and fast in his throat. This was the
third time
he had let Lola Reyes get the better of him. He almost wished his first suspicion that she was an undercover operative had been true. Clearly
he
was the one going soft if an elementary school teacher could get him on the ropes.

"Give me the gun, Lola." It was worth a try.

"Stay the heck where you are," she ordered as she sidestepped to retrieve her robe. She attempted to pull it back on again—clearly a two-handed feat—so she settled for clutching it in front of her.

She didn't want to shoot him. That much was obvious. What also became increasingly obvious to Max was her comfort grip. She had fired a gun before, likely the one he had confiscated from her bag the previous night. Lola may be susceptible to emotional hesitation, but he knew better than most the sort of reflexive training that came with learning how to use a gun. Even in her gentle hands, he knew it was dangerous.

"Your brother taught you how to shoot," he guessed. "But I'm betting he never taught you how to handle a gun like that. The kick back is unreal. Zero accuracy if you aren’t used to it. By then, I’d be all over you."

Lola snorted as if she didn't believe him, but her eyes were wide and attentive. Max imagined wheels turning in her head, attempting to mill truth from the lies.

"Give me the gun, Lola," he repeated. "I promise, I'm not angry. I'm more impressed than anything." Inspiration struck. "Except with your little performance before. Maybe you should stick to grading finger-paintings."

"Excuse
me?" She backed toward the door. "I would think twice about insulting the woman holding a gun on you."

Max was one calculated lunge between her and freedom.

"It wasn't an insult. I'm just saying a little practice wouldn't go amiss."

"If you think there's
any
chance I was
actually
trying to seduce you, you’re—"

Max rocketed off the bed and shoved her wrist—and the gun barrel—upward. Had she squeezed the trigger, the bullet would have gone straight through the ceiling. Ironically, Max had chosen top-floor rooms to hinder any Lola escape attempts. The only casualty here was his bruised ego.

He wrenched the gun from her grasp and tossed it carefully on the bed. Lola dropped the robe, bringing both of her hands up to act as a shield, but there was no deflecting him. Max wrapped her in his arms, the same way he had hours before in the gas station parking lot. This time, Baudin wasn’t there to distract his attention away from what Max really wanted to do.