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Her lungs had collapsed. This was the way Ted had felt. Blindsided and deceived. “That’s my decision to make,” she said.
Instead of responding, he unfastened her pack and set it on the sidewalk. He reached into the saddlebags, withdrew an envelope, and pressed it into her hands. “Everything you need is in here.”
She stared at him.
“It’s two weeks, Lucy. Two weeks. Do you know what I’m saying? I have another job waiting.”
She couldn’t—wouldn’t—grasp his meaning.
He stood before her. Withdrawn. Indifferent. Maybe a little bored. She was one more woman. One more female body. One more job …
GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.
And then something shifted. The smallest furrow gathered between those dark eyebrows. His lids dropped, and when he lifted them again, she saw everything the man she knew as Panda had work
ed so hard to suppress. She saw the intelligence he’d kept so tightly veiled. She saw pain and doubt, remorse maybe. And she saw a soul-deep hunger that had nothing to do with smutty T-shirts and obscene bumper stickers.
He shook his head slightly, as if he wanted to clear away those vulnerable emotions. But he couldn’t seem to do it because he lifted his arms and cupped her cheeks, his big hands as gentle as a butterfly’s wings, those cold blue eyes tender and troubled. He slanted his head and did what she hadn’t let him do last night. He kissed her. At first the softest touch, then something deeper, a hungry joining with her face protectively nested in his palms.
His mouth moved over hers as if he could never get enough. And then he let her go without warning, turned away before she could stop him. He straddled the bike and kicked the engine into life. A moment later, he was gone, roaring out of her world on a beat-up Yamaha Warrior plastered with bumper stickers that no longer fit the man she’d thought she’d known.
She stood on the sidewalk, her heart in her throat, her backpack at her feet, long after he’d disappeared. Car rental shuttle buses passed. Taxis pulled up. Eventually she gazed down at the envelope he’d handed her. She slipped her finger under the flap, opened it, and took out its contents.
Her driver’s license. Her credit cards. And directions to the security office inside, where someone would be waiting to handle her trip back to D.C.
The evidence of her parents’ wonderful, suffocating love stared back at her. She’d known they could find her if they wanted to. Now she understood why they hadn’t. Because they’d known from the beginning exactly where she was. Because they’d hired a bodyguard.
Two weeks, Lucy.
She should have realized they’d do this. Over the years there’d been a few incidents where people had gotten too aggressive around her … A couple of wacko letters … Once she’d been knocked over—nothing serious, but enough to put them on edge. After she’d lost her Secret Service detail, they’d ignored her objections and hired private security for big events where they felt she’d be too exposed. Did she really think they’d allow her to go unprotected through a highly publicized wedding? Panda had been on her parents’ payroll from the beginning. A short-term contract they’d extended to two weeks after she’d run off. Two weeks. Enough time for the worst of the publicity to fade and for their anxiety about her physical well-being to ease. Two weeks. And the time was up.
She gathered her pack, pulled on her ball cap and sunglasses, and made her way into the terminal. Let her have the freedom she needs, she imagined them telling him. But keep her safe.
Now she saw what she should have comprehended from the moment he’d so conveniently shown up in that alley. He’d never left her alone. Not once had he taken the boat out by himself. He’d dogged her whenever they’d gone into a store, and in restaurants he’d been lounging by the door when she’d emerged from the ladies’ room. As for those motels … He’d insisted on one room because he was keeping guard. And when he’d tried to scare her into going home, he’d only been doing his job. Considering how much private security cost, he must have gotten a real kick out of the deal she’d struck to pay him a thousand dollars.
She stopped at a bench inside the terminal doors, her thoughts bitter. With no effort at all, Panda had picked up a great job perk last night. Maybe sex was a service he always provided his female clients, a little something extra to remember him by.
If she didn’t get to the security office soon, someone would be out looking for her. They probably already were. But still, she didn’t move. The memory of that kiss kept intruding, those troubling emotions she’d seen in his eyes. She only wanted to feel anger now, not this uncertainty. Why had he looked so troubled? So vulnerable? Why had she seen a need more complicated than desire?
Nothing more than a trick of the light.
She thought about the way he’d cradled her face, kissed her. His tenderness …
A self-created illusion. She didn’t know anything about him.
So why did she feel as though she knew everything?
He should have told her the truth. Regardless of what his agreement was with her family, he should have leveled with her. But that would have involved being straightforward, something of which he was incapable.
Except just now, as they’d stood at the curb, he’d told her the truth with his eyes. That final kiss had told her these past two weeks meant more to him than a paycheck.
She grabbed her backpack and walked out through the terminal door just as she’d walked away from her wedding.
Half an hour later, she left Memphis in a rented Nissan Sentra. The clerk at the rental car desk hadn’t recognized her name when she’d passed over her driver’s license, but then he’d barely been able to operate the computer, and she knew she couldn’t count on that kind of luck again.
She glanced over at the map spread out on the seat. On top of it lay the phone she’d just used to text her family.
Not ready 2 come home yet.
