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When it rains, it pours!
When the elevator doors finally opened on the ground floor, I scanned the lobby for Kai. A jolt of panicked nerves zipped throughout my body when I caught sight of him. His back was to me, but I’d recognize him anywhere and from any angle.
Rachel was with him.
I wanted to race up to him, plug his ears, and drag him to safety where I could spill my guts and beg for forgiveness. But a long decorative table stood between us, and it gave me another idea entirely.
I slipped up to the table. It was waist high and lined with tall floral arrangements in crystal vases. It was the most luxurious indoor jungle I’d ever seen—and the perfect place for a person to hide out and snoop if they were so inclined.
I shoved my nose into one of the bright yellow flowers, pretending to enjoy the pollen bath. It nearly swallowed my face, but I kept my eyes locked onto my target. I strained my ears to tune into the conversation happening a few feet away. I needed to know what I was walking into!
With one hand, I parted some of the greenery, giving myself a clear view of the back of Kai’s head. With the other, I kept the flower in my face to conceal my identity.
My nose wrinkled at the sight of Rachel’s hand rubbing his bicep. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt quite so territorial, but I did. Unfortunately for me, the scrunching of my nose must have stirred up more pollen because I was seized by a sneezing fit I couldn’t contain.
Not a quiet sneeze fit for polite company. No. Big, loud, spit-flinging sneezes that rattled and shook my personal little jungle.
“Miss Ferguson, is that you?” Rachel peered around Kai, at the same moment he spun and locked onto me with his big, brown peepers. I jumped so bad I knocked the vase off balance. In my defense, the thing was ridiculously top-heavy.
I untangled my hands from the greenery and swept my arms around the crystal just in time to keep it from tumbling off the table. Water sloshed all over me and a palm frond found its way into my ticklish nostril.
“I just love bouquets, don’t you?” I tried to play it off as a perfectly normal situation, but I don’t think anyone was buying it. I handed the vase off to a surly woman from the front desk, sneezing one more time for good measure.
Kai took a step toward me, his eyes clouded over with emotion I didn’t recognize. “Is it true?”
My stomach dropped. “Is what true?”
“Don’t play games with me, Beth. Rachel told me everything.”
I walked around the table, ready to stop hiding. “We need to talk.”
His eyes narrowed. “So, I guess that’s a yes.”
“You don’t know the whole story, Kai.”
“Really? What part am I missing? The part where you used me to ruin my grandfather’s business or the part where you seduced me to get what you wanted?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I did not seduce you.” Several heads popped up from their work behind the main desk at my last words. I lowered my voice to a whisper-yell. “That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“Who came onto who last night? I didn’t kiss you, you kissed me.”
Rachel cleared her throat. “I think I’ll go grab a coffee and give you two a little privacy.”
Kai stood taller and crossed his arms across his chest. “No need, Rachel. This obviously isn’t a lovers spat since there was never anything real between us.”
“It was real for me.” I reached out to place my hand on his arm, but he pulled away.
“What was real? The way you agreed to spy for Chucky-boy? Or the way you pumped my mom for information when she was showing you our old photo album?”
He had a special way of making simple questions feel more like indictments. “I wasn’t pumping her for information. She was chatting. I wasn’t trying to…”
Spy. For some reason I couldn’t seem to form the word.
But I really hadn’t tried to use Kai’s mom to gather information for Mr. Peters. If anything, our conversation had played a huge role in my decision to thumb my nose at Chuck.
“What were you trying to do?” He shook his head, but I didn’t have a good answer. “You played me for a fool, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew you were driven from the first moment we met.”
“I never meant to—”
