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The president stood up and put his hands on either side of her face, and kissed her. After sitting back down, he laughed. And continued laughing for so long that she wanted to smack him. Temptation was great, but there was also a room full of secret service there too.
“I don’t know what I should be more thankful for. The fact that you don’t think that I’m a greedy bastard or that all those after me would be. Thank you, my darling. I’ll have to tell my wife. Just this morning, she called me that very thing when I took all the covers from her side of the bed.” He laughed a bit more, then he moaned when his dinner was sat in front of him. “I do love a good piece of salmon grilled to perfection.”
They didn’t talk much after their dinners were served. She’d gotten the salmon as well and thought it the best she’d ever tasted. Barron, however, was having a thick porterhouse steak. No potato, no veggies of any kind, but a side bowl of mushroom gravy that he dipped his bite-sized pieces of steak in as he devoured it. He even offered her a bit of his so that she could know what she was missing. She wasn’t much of a beef eater but did enjoy his.
After dinner, their plates were taken away, and they were offered coffee and tea. She wasn’t a huge fan of coffee but did enjoy the smell of it. Roger had a glass of wine with his scones, and Barron had some tea. That, she had noticed, was the go-to drink for his entire family. Tea, hot or cold, so long as it wasn’t sweetened.
The men talked a bit more about the project that Roger wanted Barron to oversee. She didn’t have much to input but they did pull her in on occasion to ask her what she thought. When her cell phone rang, she got up and went to the bar with two of the men with the president to take it. It didn’t bother her to have company, but it was a little odd.
“I was wondering if you have time for a meeting in the morning with me.” She hadn’t any idea who it was so she asked. There was no shame in asking, she thought. “Now, why should that matter until you tell me if you can meet with me or not?”
“Either tell me who this is, or I’ll simply hang up. I’m not into games, nor do I work with people who think that they’re funny when I’m trying to run a business.” The serviceman with her asked her to put it on speaker. Handing it to him when she fumbled around with it, he stuck a device at the end of it and nodded for her to take it. “Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m working through my anger at you. You don’t want to see me angry, Caitlynn. A great deal is riding on you cooperating with me.” Suddenly, three men were surrounding her, all of them with their backs to her and their guns out. “Now, I’m going to ask you this again, politely, and you’re going to either tell me—”
“No. I don’t have time to have a meeting with you. Even if I had the whole day free, I’d not spend five minutes with you.” When she started to hang up, the serviceman who had fixed her phone shook his head. But she didn’t speak to the man on the other end but listened.
“I can hear you breathing, Caitlynn Royce. It’s a sweet-sweet sound. One that you’d better appreciate before I catch up with you. Tell that boyfriend of yours that I’m coming for you, and once I find you…Well, I’m afraid there won’t be much of you left. You’ll understand when we meet that I’m a person who gets what he wants when he wants it. There will be no way for you to get away until I’m finished with you. Be forewarned, my dear Caitlynn, that you’ll be begging me to allow you to be set free when the time comes.” She huffed. Not meaning to do it aloud but he heard her all the same. “You think that I can’t get to you? Well, let me show you how easy it is by hurting that boyfriend of yours.”
The long case of liquor shattered in front of her, and the young man who’d been helping her with the phone dropped to the floor. She didn’t have to look to know that he was dead. Blood and she hoped that was all it was sprayed all over her face when he was shot. Caitlynn started to scream. She opened her mouth and let go of all her fear when she was suddenly pressed against someone. As soon as she inhaled, she knew that it was Barron.
~*~
Listening to the conversation going on around him, Barron was trying his best to hold tightly onto his temper. He knew that whatever had happened had been beyond his control, that the man who had called her seemed to be harmless right up until he wasn’t. Killing a federal agent was going to get every agency in the United States after him. But for now, he was going to worry about Caitlynn and only her.
“He thought that he was you.” Barron asked her what she meant. “He said he was going to kill my boyfriend. He thought…oh that poor agent. He didn’t deserve that. But the man talking, he thought that he was you. My boyfriend. He—Barron, I’m so afraid I can’t make my own sense.”
“I understand Caitlynne. The man on the phone thought he was killing me. He didn’t understand nor know that you weren’t alone and with agents.” She nodded and laid her head back on his chest. “They rushed Roger home. They didn’t want him to be photographed here with us. I can understand that, but I still worry about him.”
“I’m ready to talk to the agents now. Though most of them were with me when…am I supposed to say that? I’m betting not.”
“No. You just need to say that you were having dinner, and your phone rang. Stopping to answer it on your way to the ladies’ room, and that’s all you know. The man, you don’t know who he was either. They want us to act like, not that it won’t be hard to act like we were having a good dinner, then this man called. They’re saying that the man who was killed was out with his wife, too, when he was suddenly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Christ, I should have gotten up with you. You’ve no idea how sorry I am that I didn’t.”
“You’d be dead if you had. I mean, I hate that the other man is dead, I truly am, but I’m glad that it wasn’t you.” She hugged him tightly, and he did the same to her.
Barron had forgotten that they needed to talk. Actually, he’d been putting things off. Important things that he should have spoken about when they were first together. He wasn’t sure why he’d not told her of their immortality or any magic that they had now that they’d found one another. He knew that they got along very well and had been having fun, but there was something he didn’t know what that was holding him back.
Barron also knew, too, that she wasn’t ovulating. Most of the women he knew only had an ovulation period of sixteen to twenty-four hours. He just—he did want sex, but not with her. There was something there, something that he just couldn’t put his finger on about her. That’s when he realized that something was holding him back from telling her that he liked her. Liked…not loved but liked. He’d been meaning to reach out to one of his mated brothers to ask them what they thought of his thoughts on Caitlynn.
He’d been overwhelmed with grief. Not just that his grandparents had died a couple of weeks before hand, but he’d had one of his goats and her stillborn baby die that morning. It was simply too much for his heart to take that morning, and now here he was stuck…okay, he thought, he was stuck with Caitlynn.
It was nearly three in the morning when he was dropped off at his hotel. He’d been staying there since they arrived in Texas and enjoyed the fact that he could come and go when he needed to. Since he was usually up several hours before Caitlynn, he knew that he would disturb her when he left. She, of course, lived in her apartment.
There was enough about apartment living that he didn’t care for, and that made him stick with his rooms at the hotel. It wasn’t convenient, there were cars and buses to take him about, but it was quieter than her apartment. It felt to him like he could hear every pin drop that happened below and above them. And the best part was, he had his own big bed.
After closing down his computer and looking over the sales that he’d made yesterday and the day before, he realized that it was nearly seven in the morning and reached out to his older brother, Mark. He’d tease him a bit, but once he asked him a few questions about mates, he knew that he’d get the best answers from him. After asking about Jamie, he told him what he’d been thinking about.
“So you’re saying that you don’t have this overwhelming desire to mark her? Nor does your bear? That’s not right, Barron. I’m sure you’ve figured that out on your own.” Barron told him that he really didn’t know if it was because she was his friend first. “No. I don’t think that’s right. Claiming her, that would be a priority for you and your other half. You said you don’t even care if you get to hang out with her. That should have been a big sign for you.”
“Not really. I’ve been around you guys when you found your mates. Each one of you had a different approach. Especially you. I mean, let’s be honest, you were a real bastard to Jamie from the first. Then the others, they were sappy when they fell in love. Maybe I’m a late bloomer or something.” Mark asked him if he really thought that. “I don’t know. I feel like…please don’t say anything to anyone, Mark, but I feel like I could take her or leave her. I love hanging around with her. Sometimes. Talking to her about business is nice, but that’s about it. I don’t mind holding her hand, but I don’t care if I do or not. Sometimes, especially here lately, I find that I want to just jerk my hand from hers and get ahead of her a little bit. You know, now that I say that out loud, it doesn’t sound good, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.” Then he told him how he’d not told her about the magic. “Does she have any? And another thing, do you have more? The one that you can tell for sure is when you shift, are you dressed in your same clothing?”
“I’ve not had a reason to shift while I’m here.” He said he was going to try it now. He did. Carefully shifting to his bear, then back to himself. It was actually a relief to him when he contacted his brother again. “Mark, I’m naked. And I’m happy about it. That’s really…what do you suppose is going on? Why did, at first, I feel like she was the one for me, but now, all I can think about is how much I want to get away from her clinging to me.”
He then told his brother about what had happened at the restaurant. Mark was sort of pissed that he’d not started with that conversation, but he told him that he wasn’t hurt but did have a great deal on his mind. Mark said that he understood, but he should have told them when it happened.
“I suppose so. But this thing with Caitlynn is driving me nuts, like this morning. I just wanted to pack up my shit and come home. But…I have no desire to take her with me. I should, I really should, if for no other reason than to keep her safe. This other person, he doesn’t know who I am or what I look like, so I’m not in any kind of hurry…Mark, I’m not in love with her. Nor do I believe that she’s my mate. What do I do? Please tell me.”
