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“Me too, Bree,” he said, wondering how the two of them could speak volumes with just a glance or simple touch.
While there was no fire to be put out, when he got to the kitchen, he found Aiden had made his own pancake of sorts.
“What, may I ask, is that?” Ice asked, and Aiden tilted his plate covered in breaded bits of pancake, a mix of clumps and strings, all of it a mess.
“Scrambled pancakes,” he said. “Want some?”
“Daddy,” Janie said, “Bree wasn’t murdered, was she?”
“No,” he assured, checking the back of his head where the bleeding had stopped as he went to the freezer for a pack of veggies to put on the swollen lump that had formed. “No, Bree is okay.”
“Can I get another pancake with pockets?” she asked, and he nodded, kissing the crown of his little girl’s head. He would do it one-handed because the frozen veggies were taking the edge off of his headache.
“Did you call the police yet?” Bree asked as she came down in a pair of dress pants and a button-down shirt as if she were going into the office.
“No?” The fleeting thought of calling Nunez was gone almost as fast as it had arrived. “They serve no purpose. They’d come in here, mess up the place, take you to the hospital, and send you right back home.”
“Says the guy with peas on the back of his head,” she countered as she took over holding the bag, pulling it back and inspecting the wound. “I need to at least clean the blood from your neck. Ice, they need to know.”
“Later,” he said, swirling the syrup on the pancake before flipping it over. “Right now we eat. Then we are going to Paris.”
“Being whisked away to France has always been an impractical fantasy of mine,” she joked.
“I know a guy,” he said. “I should be able to get us a couple of adjoining rooms, no VIP suite, but one where we’re safe for a few days.”
“If you won’t call, I will,” the stubborn object of all his desires said, and he spun around to snatch her phone and shove it down the front of his pants. “I know you didn’t just do that.”
“You need to eat, I need a Tylenol or shot, and we are going to hide out,” he said. “And don’t worry; your house is going to have a protection detail.”
“Like the guys who followed me to Mickey Ds and whisked me out?” she questioned. “By the way, they never told me the danger they saw.”
“Cholesterol probably,” he teased, placing a fresh pancake in front of Janie and pouring another into the skillet for Aiden. “We’re all about a healthy lifestyle.”
“Keeping secrets and stuffing my phone down your pants isn’t going to make me trust you, Ice,” she said. Her phone began to buzz, and he wiggled a bit before pulling it out to silence it.
“Things about women are making so much more sense to me now,” he said as she used an antiseptic wipe to clean off her phone. “Rude.”
She cut her eyes at him, and he leaned in close to whisper in her ear.
“Trust me, Luscious, where it was is clean enough to lick.”
* * *
There was little doubt in Bree’s mind that she had completely lost herself. Only she wondered if this is what people meant when they said they fell in love. Free-falling really. She’d dated, thought she’d been in love, and yet never had she been so caught up in being around a person as she was with Ice. None of it made sense. He was rough, crass, inappropriate, and unapologetic about who he was. He’d found a peace in self she’d been afraid to even look for. There was always room for improvement—a new mountain to climb, a new program to learn—and she never found herself settled. It wasn’t as if Ice didn’t want more from life, but he was content in the moment, even with a threat looming over him. For him, that was any random Tuesday, or in this case Sunday, afternoon.
She retrieved her phone and sent a text to her manager to let him know she would be out due to personal reasons for at least the next three days. Even if the killer was caught, Ice kicked out the people in his condo, and the twins had a safe space to live, Bree would need time to recover from all that had happened, and that wasn’t going to happen by 8:00 a.m., especially as she sat on a park bench on a Paris sidewalk. Sure, they weren’t outside because no one wanted that at midday in Vegas, but with Aiden on one side and Jane on the other, she saw Ice speaking to a man in a red bellman’s outfit.
Not a man in the long line where people check in, but a man who had been passed more than one handshake item she knew weren’t bills. He disappeared and came back with two tiny envelopes, and Ice gave her a nod. Rolling luggage gave the illusion they were tourists as they crossed to the elevators away from the sound of slot machines.
“I never knew Paris was so mauve,” Bree joked, “and velveteen.”
“Vegas is nothing if not authentic,” he said as they made their way to the first room and he opened the door.
Modern décor greeted them with double queen beds. Each kid went to crawl on and claim one as Ice opened half of the adjoining room’s door, then went back out into the hallway. Soon the other side was open, and she wandered to the single king bed.
“I say we need a pool break.” Ice clapped his hands together.
“I didn’t pack a bathing suit,” Bree replied, “and I doubt the kids have any either.”
