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“How do you know what I’ve been doing?” the man asks in an angry, accusatory voice and a shiver shoots up my spine.
“I protect my investments and since you’re costing me a pretty fucking penny, I did my own investigating into you and your work practices. You do whatever you have to do to get the job done, you’reknownfor it. So if this is what needs to happen, and you have to become involved with Alyssa to get what I need done, so be it. It's time you show me why you’re known as Bullseye.”
The last thing I hear is a familiar growl. “I'm not a fucking rent-a-cock, Gavin.”
Unable to comprehend what I’ve just heard, and not wanting to even consider the full extent of what it might mean, I pull my shoulders back and stand ramrod straight, and wait until first Gavin’s eyes meet mine, narrowing sharply. It’s then Barrett turns around and freezes.
Despite wanting to see him and thinking about him all morning, this is definitely not the way I wanted to come face-to-face with Barrett Matthews again.
“Alyssa . . .” he says, taking a step toward me. He doesn’t get any further because I put my hand up and he hesitates for a moment.
"There's nothing you can say to make this any better, Barrett. Is that even your name?" I scoff in disbelief and shake my head. "Of course, it won't be. Everything you said to me from the plane until now was probably all just a lie to get what you needed. What a shame you didn't get to sleep with me and collect a bonus."
"Lys--"
"No. You don't get to call me that ever again. Just forget you ever met me, Barrett, or whatever the hell your name is." Then, before another lie can cross his lips, I spin around and get my ass out of there. Twenty minutes later, my bags are packed and I finally feel like I can breathe again once I’m safely in the back of a taxi, heading to destination anywhere but the Sovereign Hotel. Anywhere away from Gavin and Barrett.
My mind is still racing from everything I overheard, and I struggle to work out what it meant, what flashing neon sign I might’ve missed. My relief from being out of there leads to shock, then shame. I’m not even sure why I start crying but what I do know is that driving away from that hotel feels like I’m running away from something much bigger than me. Something that I need to find out more about—if anything, purely for my mom’s sake—but that’s not something I have the brain width of capacity to do right now.
And if I understand what Gavin said to Barrett, my handsome stranger from the plane, the man I’d wanted to sleep with last night, and again this morning, was paid by Gavin—the man my mother has just agreed to marry—to do whatever it took to investigate me and keep me distracted, maybe all of the above. But what does that even mean? And what do I have to do with it?
It's then I make a decision. I need more information before I can do a little investigating of my own, and I know exactly the man to help. Pulling up my phone contacts, I scroll down and make the phone call I never thought I’d need to make.
“Hello?”
“Aiden, it’s Alyssa. I think I need you to run that police check.”
ChapterSix
After checking into another hotel under my mom’s maiden name, I call the Sovereign reception desk and ask them to collect my things and check me out. Half an hour later, my taxi swings back into the hotel driveway, and as requested my luggage was waiting for me.
Hiding away from everyone is for my peace of mind more than anything else. Once I’m safely shut away in my new hotel room, I send Mom a text and apologize for disappearing, feigning a work emergency and promising to call her as soon as I’m back in Seattle. I figure the less information I give her, the less Gavin will know, which is the least I can do to protect myself from whatever he’s hired Barrett to do when it comes to me.
Having already ignored three calls from Barrett and sick of torturing myself by seeing his name on the screen, I turn my phone off. I hate lying to Mom but I don’t have it in me to rain on her parade and sour her good mood. Besides, whatever I end up finding out about Gavin and Barrett and their arrangement and how it pertains to me, I want to know everything before I tell her anything.
The longer I think about it, the more things make sense now. Whatever is going on between Gavin and Barrett, it included—at the very least—circumventing normal hotel security to get to me and getting the restricted rooftop access. At the time it had not struck me as being anything other than a determined and enterprising mind but now I’m kicking myself for not being more suspicious. I should’ve pressed further when he was being so evasive. Was any of it true? Was he ever interested in me at all? Or was he just distracting me from something Gavin doesn’t want me to know? And if that’s the case, then is my mom in danger now that she’s engaged to the man?
I feel deceived and betrayed. For a woman who is normally self-sufficient, confident, and not easily rattled, I feel naïve and uneasy. And even with Aiden’s assurances that he would do everything he could to find out about Barrett Matthews, I still feel used, dirty, and totally duped.
Aiden offered to fly straight to me, volunteering to get the next available flight and be here for me. But I can’t bring myself to admit what an idiot I’ve been. The embarrassment is too fresh. I pride myself for being a smart and savvy thirty-one-year-old independent woman, yet admitting I’ve been conned and misled by my hormones is too mortifying to accept right now. Thankfully Aiden didn’t press me too much, he simply promised to run the check and get back to me when he knows more.
That at least gives me some semblance of relief, enough so that I stop beating myself up, pour myself a glass of white wine, and partake in the room’s deep bathtub to try and take care of at least some of the tension I’m holding in my body. Definitely not the way IthoughtI’d be spending the night, that’s for sure.
There was a small part of me that still held on to the hope that I’d misconstrued what I heard. That somehow it was taken out of context and that—in time—Gavin would explain exactly what he’d meant. It would still never excuse what Barrett had done.
As the night goes on and I plant myself in front of the TV with a room service dinner and the rest of the bottle of wine, I realize that I was blind to reason when it came to Barrett’s dogged pursuit of me.
It’s not as if I haven’t been the object of male attention in the past, just never from someone as zealous as Barrett. I was obviously too swayed by lust and need whenever I was around him that I forgot one of my father’s biggest lessons.
‘Even if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck . . . it still might not be a duck.’
Much later, just as I’m drifting off to the mindless buzz of some Vegas cop show on TV, a hard, loud knock wakes me up. I get out of bed, not caring that I’m still just in the white toweling robe I put on after my bath, and move to the door. Another knock sounds, this time louder, harder, and more impatient.
Looking through the peephole, I’m initially shocked to see an incensed Barrett glaring back at me, wearing the same clothes he was in at the Sovereign—tailored dark gray shirt, black tie loose and askew, and black slacks. In short, he looks irresistible and that just annoys the hell of out me even more.
Despite stewing on everything for hours, I see red and don’t even hesitate to swing the door open to face him.
“You have some n—” I don’t get any more words out because before I can continue, Barrett storms in, hooks an arm around my waist and swallows the sound of my shocked gasp by sticking his tongue in my mouth. The hotel door slams shut under the power of his foot, and then he walks me forward, taking me with him until my back hits a wall.
