Accepting infidelity was not something she would ever do. Things went wrong, but some aspects of a relationship were sacred and that was one. She glanced at Aaron, saw his strong profile and knew in her heart that was a lecture she’d never have to give him. Besides that, he had a good marriage influence in Royal and she was grateful for that luck.
“We’ll let you go,” Aaron said. “You can get back to the family and a few days without any danger.”
“After all, Christmas is right around the corner.” Lowell smiled at her comment but didn’t respond.
Aaron slipped his arm around her waist. He shifted her for a quick exit and she didn’t fight it.
“There has to be something I can do for you,” Lowell said before they’d taken a step.
Aaron pretended to think about it. “Pay your bill.”
“Done, and if you’re looking for a new job, I have one for waiting you. You would be a fine addition at Craft, especially now that the danger has passed.”
Risa struggled to hide her frown. She almost made an unpleasant noise but managed to hold it in. Seeing Lowell now broke her heart. Despite that, the idea of sending Aaron off to work with Lowell each day made her breakfast curdle in her stomach. He was wounded now but his terrible reputation was hard to forget.
“I like being my own boss,” Aaron finally said.
“The deal is always open.”
“A man couldn’t ask for more than that.”
Risa thought he could ask for one more thing. Something from her. If he did, she’d give it to him. She was his. Question was whether he realized that yet.
Chapter Twenty-One
By the end of the day, Aaron was dead tired. He tried to remember another point in his life when he’d fired his weapon this much. He’d be filling out forms for months over this job. The insurance company might send someone to shadow him for a month, although he hoped that threat from his agent was a joke.
As it was, the police had all sorts of questions for him. Apparently finding injured men in bathrooms at Elan had not made them happy. The dead guy in the elevator didn’t help. Hey, he’d warned them before they fanned out through the building.
Both of the bathroom attackers lived, but one was in critical condition from the loss of blood. The kid on the fifth floor had rubbed his wrists raw but was otherwise okay. As far as Aaron was concerned, the dead guys deserved to be dead.
He opened the hotel room door and ushered Risa inside. With her usual flair, she made a dramatic noise and threw her body across the bed. She plopped down there with her arms and hair spread out over the comforter.
The woman sure did like her comfort. Aaron knew that from just a few days of nonstop togetherness. She never demanded, but somehow she made sure she had soft pillows and even softer linens. She insisted the bubble bath had been a bonus for him.
Mighty sweet of her to think of him while naked.
She made a delicious picture. So beautiful and full of life. After seeing so much death, she was a burst of sunshine.
He marveled at how she’d taken all the threats and violence in stride. He kept waiting for some blowback. He’d never known a civilian not to experience aftereffects, even some sort of a posttraumatic reaction. Some just wanted to talk about the situation until he thought his head would explode. The need to relive it was one of his least favorite, so he was grateful she didn’t feel that need.
Whatever he was looking for, whatever symptoms, never came. She shared all the time, so it was hard to see how she could keep something that big from him.
Just one more way she surprised him. She was nothing like Pam or any other woman he’d ever known. The combination of strong, smart and sexy kept knocking him off balance.
If she ever realized how much power she had over him, he was a dead man.
Truth was, she had every right to hate him. Some days when he looked in the mirror he felt a kick of disgust. Taking her to Lowell’s office yesterday had been a mistake. The police had been involved by then and she would have been safe on her own. He just hated the idea of being separated from her.
She spread out on the bed until her fingers and toes touched each end of the mattress. “So, now what?”
“We stick around here, sleep for a month and then eventually, when we think all the gunman have cleared out, we try having dinner again.”
She lifted her head and glared at him. “That gunman thing isn’t funny.”
Worse for her, he was only half kidding on that one. Thanks to the constant attacks on her, he now expected someone to jump out around every corner.
It wasn’t a bad worry to have. It kept him fresh and ready to go. He could be on the defensive and easily switch to the offensive if his battle gear was always ready to go.
“I promise no gunmen for a while.”
She flopped back down. “That’s good news, but I wasn’t talking about anything so specific.”
He sat down on the bed and ran his fingers over her thigh. “What were we talking about?”
“Do you think we’re going to pick up where we left off?”
He’d hoped they had fast-forwarded well past that point. He’d go back to chaste kisses and wooing if she needed that, but he much preferred the heated lovemaking.
He went for a joke because he thought that’s what she wanted. “Don’t tell me I’m still in trouble for not calling you sooner.”
“I was thinking we skip ahead and I don’t just mean in the physical sense.”
He let his fingers trail off her leg and onto the bed. “Okay.”
She scooted until she balanced on her elbows behind her. “Which I take it is some sort of male code for ‘time to run’ because that’s what it sounds like.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Am I?”
“I don’t understand what’s happening here.” They’d morphed from light banter to a serious conversation. He had no idea where this was going or how to put on the brakes before it veered into danger territory. It had already crossed that line.
“Apparently.”
This had to be a male-female thing. That would explain his complete loss for how to navigate through this patch. He was still trying to figure out how they’d even wandered into this patch.
“Can you clue me in as to what you want? What are we talking about? I am a black-and-white guy. If I know what you want, I’ll try to give it to you.” Within reason, and that was the caveat that frequently killed the deal.
Her dark-eyed gaze searched his face. The frown and scrunch of her forehead suggested this was very serious to her.
He was desperate not to get this wrong.
She sat the whole way up, crossing her legs in that pretzel position women loved and men couldn’t conquer without a shoehorn and a lot of screaming. “If I asked you to come to my office holiday party with me, what would you say?”
He could not think of anything in the world he wanted to do less than venture to another party. If he had his way they’d postpone Christmas until he got caught up and Elan was a distant memory.
“You’re still having one after all of this? If I saw a Christmas tree right about now, I might shoot it. Same goes for angels, trumpets and bells.”
“Humor me.”
He wasn’t sure what answer she wanted. He’d hoped honesty would score some points. Amazing how often it didn’t in a world that professed to hold it up as a prize. “Well, it’s not really my thing.”
She picked at the comforter. As the quiet stretched, the plucking grew rough enough to rip the fabric.
“Not your thing?” She mimicked his tone as she said it.
Uh-oh.
“I’m not one for committed couple’s activities. Dinner parties, brunch, going home to meet the family. It’s not my style.”
The words weren’t even out of his mouth before he realized how asinine they sounded. Calling them back wouldn’t work. He debated if adding more might clean it up.
But she was already pulling away. She shifted and let her feet fall to the floor on the opposite side of the bed. “I don’t have any family.”
The words sliced through him. He hadn’t even thought about it enough to be careful, which was obvious by the way he threw it out there. “Sorry. That was insensitive.”
When she stared at him with flat eyes, he tried again. “Look, I—”
She stood up. Her head fell to the side, and her arms slipped across her stomach. It was the least receptive stance he’d ever seen from her. She closed everything off from him. Even her bright eyes and sunny face seemed to have dimmed in his presence.
“You want to know what I think?”
Worst. Question. Ever.
“Not when you say it like that.”
“I think you’re afraid.”
The fight behind the words shattered what was left of their calm existence. She wanted a reaction. That much was clear. Well, she got one. She could have a fight if she wanted one of those, too.
He slowly got to his feet. “Excuse me?”
“A woman hurt you and instead of writing her off as the wrong person for you, you’ve decided to remove yourself from the dating pool.”
She tapped her foot. He could hear it across the room on carpet. That had to be a bad thing.
Little did she know or want to understand, but Pam was the last person on his mind right now. He was having more than enough trouble with the woman in front of him. He didn’t need to add another to his list of responsibilities.
“That is in the past,” he said. “That relationship isn’t about us.”
“The breakup is who you are.”
That would make him a victim, and he refused to be that. He didn’t wallow. He wasn’t like his client, who refused to move on. “That is absolutely not true.”
“How else can I see this?”
He didn’t even understand what they were arguing about. To him, the topic kept jumping around, half the time landing on unrelated issues. “That we’re dating.”
“Meaning?”
He felt ridiculous spelling out the obvious. “We’ve gone out. Hell, we’ve stayed in. So I don’t think your theory about me hating dating applies here.”
“But you intended to keep it casual.” She threw her hands up in the air. “You never even called me back for another date. Without a shoot-out at Elan, I’d still be waiting to hear from you.”
He was going to pay for this forever. “We’re back to this? I said I was sorry. I can say it again.”
“Don’t bother.” She waved him off and went to the chair.
He couldn’t see what she was doing until he heard the zipper of a suitcase. He scanned the room for her clothes and missed the usual stray sock or shoe that usually sat in the middle of the room.
She was leaving and he had no idea why she was even angry.
“Why are we fighting?”
She picked up the suitcase, then threw it back down again. When she faced him, her eyes flashed with fire. Stress showed in every line of her body. Clenched fists and a flat mouth.
Nothing about her was open or receptive to anything other than a yelling battle. Shame he had no intention of playing along.
“I bet if all of this hadn’t happened, you would have found a different place to have coffee. One where you calculated you had the lowest risk of running into me. After all, the D.C. area is pretty big. If you hid and ran, I wouldn’t have been able to find you. I’d have been looking for a tax attorney who didn’t exist.”
The comment knocked him speechless.
But not for long.
Suddenly everything was his fault. Unfortunately for her, he’d picked that same moment to run out of patience. “Would you have looked?”
“Probably not back then. I didn’t really know you.”
Exactly.
“Well, then, what’s the point?”
“That was before everything happened. Before we were on the run together.” She grabbed the bag with both hands and hugged it to her chest.
The defiant look had him backing off. So did the idea of her walking out. His mind shut down at the idea.
“Adrenaline is powerful,” he said.
“So is love.”
Silence fell over the room. He stood there all openmouthed and stupid. She huffed and puffed.
They made a curious pair.
He tried to think of something to say. For a way for his mind to process the words so they didn’t just hang out there. “Risa…”
“Yeah, if you weren’t terrified before, I bet you are now.”
He rubbed his chest. The heaviness refused to ease. “Maybe you could stop taking shots at my level of courage.”
“Oh, you’re great with weapons and anything that involves taking out bad guys. It’s the intimacy part that makes you run screaming for cover.” Her hands dropped to her sides. In one of them she held a suitcase.
It was her ticket out, back home and away from him. He knew that as sure as if she’d said it out loud.
He tried his last bit of logic. This was about timing, not feelings. He had to convince her of that. “We’ve only known each other for a short time.”
“I don’t think the number of hours means anything.” She discounted the idea as quickly as he raised it. “You think I planned to fall for you? I had a man lie to me and turn my life upside down. I am still rebuilding from the fallout.”
She had just turned around and proved his point. They needed time, maybe a bit of space. He wanted to be with her, but he didn’t want the walls to close in. He didn’t want her to see something better away from him.
The ache in his chest ripped as he moved to her. It was as if he’d been sliced open and the gaping wound grew with every step. “See, it’s too early—”
“When a second man came into my life, telling lies and dodging his feelings, you’d think I’d have been smart enough to run, but the exact opposite happened. I want to stay and fight for you. For us.”
That fast, the pain turned to a red-hot anger. “Do not compare me to Paul.”
“Because you didn’t take my money?” She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Aaron, what you did is so much worse. You grabbed my heart and now you’re too afraid to hold on to it.”
The words punched into him. “You’re moving fast.”
“I’m moving forward. I’m ready. I’d hoped you were, too, but I guess not.”
“How did this situation become my fault?”
“It isn’t. You’re right.”
The tone of her voice changed. He wanted to think he was winning her over, but he feared she was giving up.