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“Do you want to hear my last tip, or not?” he asked in his forever-calm voice, eyes crinkling in amusement.
“Fine.” I glanced at the door behind him. “But make it quick. I’m in the middle of dinner.”
Maestro held up one hand in the air, fingers spread, in front of him. “Mimic me.”
I did as he said, following him movement for movement with my hand as he continued to speak. It should have felt like a childish thing, but nothing was ever that simple with Maestro. “My last tip is the art of mirroring. When you mirror someone, copying their actions, it puts them at ease, making yourself seem more trustworthy and approachable. If you are using this trick with a lover–” he dragged his hand in the air down the front of his body, and I did the same with mine, the action strangely lewd, “it will bring them into your arms that much faster. If you do it with an enemy, you will gain yourself an iota of time and trust that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Trust from both a lover and an enemy can lead you to your heart's true desire: love, or triumph. Do you understand?”
Maestro’s last hand movement was a fluid wave in my direction. After I completed it, I nodded, confused but knowing better than to question his input. “I understand. Thank you, Maestro.”
“You are very welcome, dear Rachel.” He held the door for me and I walked out. As he closed the door behind us and moved to disappear to the opposite side of the restaurant from where I was sitting, he paused. “Enjoy your dinner. I’ve heard the filet is sublime.”
I watched him go only for a second, shaking my head. “The filet. Noted.”
Sometime after 4 a.m. the next morning
The clock on the nightstand read 4:22 a.m. in pale red numbers. My head pounded with the beat of my heart, and my mouth had never been drier.
The last thing I remembered was falling asleep in Gunner’s arms, but when I pushed myself into the sitting position, I was entirely alone. A little bolt of fear hit me, until I heard his slight snoring coming from the couch. He was here, just not beside me anymore. I wondered if I did anything to drive him away.
Desperate for water, I struggled out of the chokehold the sheets have around my body until my feet hit the soft carpet. It was dark in the room, only a thin strip of light from the city outside coming between the closed curtains. It was enough that I didn’t fall as I made my way to the bathroom, but when I flipped the switch to illuminate the small room, it was nearly blinding.
Eyes closed, I fumbled with my hands until I acquired one of the plastic hotel cups and filled it with cold water from the sink. It was just tap water, but I’d never tasted anything more delicious as it slid down my throat and rehydrated my miserable body.
How did I allow myself to get drunk onred wine?How old was I? At this point in my life, it was common knowledge that red wine gives the worst hangovers, but even so, I’d gone and subjected myself to it.
It was nerves. It had to be. Sitting across from Gunner at Nick and Sam’s had been a fun time at first, but the more he spoke, the more he found little reasons to touch me, and the more I was able to look at him in that suit, the harder I started to fall for him. You’d think that it would have started with the mind-blowing orgasm hours before, but while that had cemented our physical compatibility in my mind, it was the moments that Gunner showed me who he really was as a person that I started to think that maybe …
Maybe I was falling for him?
There were a million reasons that was a bad idea, the obvious one being that we were being hunted like animals. While that was a glaring example of why we shouldn’t get emotionally involved, there was also the fact that my fiancé had only been dead for half a year, and I’d only known Gunner for a week.
That was the thing, though. IknewGunner. He gave himself to me with a stark, honest openness that allowed me to connect with him on an almost spiritual level. Over the past week we had worked as a team, like two halves of a single machine, and it had been effortless. He never questioned my intelligence because of my looks or my career, or second guessed my ideas, and it eliminated missteps and misunderstandings.
We had eaten, slept, and breathed each other for seven days, and because of it, formed a bond unlike anything I’d ever known before. So maybe part of that bond was morphing from friendship to something more, but feeling guilty about it wasn’t going to change anything.
I knew Gunner’s heart. Trevor… I hadn’t known Trevor at all. It was much easier to let go of a ghost than I thought it would be, now that I knew the true depth of his deception. Trevor might yet kill me, but Gunner would do everything in his power to keep me safe.
What woman wouldn’t fall in love with someone like that?
I drank cup after cup of water before I trusted opening my eyes. The fluorescent bathroom lighting still burned, but I needed my sight to find the bottle of acetaminophen in my toiletries bag.
With a belly full of water and two extra strength acetaminophen, I started to feel less wretched, and more like a human woman. It was a little past 5 a.m. now, and I was not sure I’d be able to get back to sleep, so I pawed through the minifridge to find the half empty, quarter gallon of orange juice and head out to the balcony to think.
As I slid open the door as quietly as possible, I looked over at Gunner’s sleeping form, and was overcome with a wave of genuine, sweet affection. He was such a powerful man, in body and mind, but asleep it seemed like all of the weight of his responsibilities faded away.
He looked at peace, and I had the oddest urge to stand and absorb this moment, maybe even stroke his hair, because who knew how much longer he and I had together? Life, death, incompatibilities, or any other number of less serious things could tear us apart, and all I’d be left with would be these memories of him asleep on the hotel couch. Or spooned behind me as I fell asleep.
Or maybe my tongue in his mouth as I all but begged him to fuck me while I was drunk out of my skull. Oops. I guessed I owed him an apology when he woke up. I’d pushed his boundaries, even if his member underneath me had said otherwise.
I settled for blowing him a kiss, feeling silly, before I slipped outside to watch the sunrise and drink my juice, hoping it stayed in my heaving stomach long enough to do me any good.
The upcoming day would be filled with more artifact searching, this time in museums, but I still felt like we’re looking in all the wrong places. In my mind, Trevor would have hidden the artifact somewhere readily accessible to him, where it couldn't be damaged, but would also be basically invisible to anyone else.
At a loss, I went through his letter to me in my head again. Reading it had been one of the more painful things I’d ever put myself through, but once I had finished it I was able to release so many things that had been weighing me down. I didn’t think there was more to the letter than just a rambling confession, but maybe.
I remembered one of the last lines sticking out to me:I’ll take it to my grave.
I’ll take it to my grave,he had written, but before he had penned that note, he had already dropped off the piece of pottery that was to be his urn to the funeral home for the finishing touches. The funeral director had mentioned offhandedly that the urn hadn’t come with a top, and one had to be created specifically for it, which meant he had known he wanted a cremation from that point forward at least.
