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Indy narrowed her eyes after tipping the hotel attendant who’d showed up with her laundered clothes. She closed the door, then turned quickly to Ice, anger rising up her spine, accusation slipping into her voice. “Do you mind? Those are my freshly laundered clothes. I don’t want your grubby fingers all over them.”
Ice showed her his middle finger, drawing an exasperated eye-roll from Indy. She tried to snatch the plastic-wrapped bundle back from Ice, but he held it far out of her reach, then turned and strode over to the sideboard above the mini-bar.
“Benson just messaged me,” he said, slowly turning the package over in his hands, inspecting it closely like a monkey searching its partner for ticks. “Hotel cameras went dead an hour ago. No indication that we’ve been blown, but he wants us to get out of here ASAP.”
Indy took a huffy breath, pushed it out hard and fast. Her heart was beating as if she’d just gulped down ten cups of coffee. Ice had been somewhat jumpy too, and the tension had been thick enough to stop a damn bulldozer.
Especially since Ice had flipped that switch and gone cold again.
Almost like that hot scene in the shower had never happened.
Like he was second-guessing every damn thing he’d said to her in the steamy seclusion of what now felt like a dream, a memory of some parallel universe, a side dimension they’d stepped into and had stumbled out of.
Or beenpulledout of.
By that damn phone call.
John fucking Benson.
“All right, so the cameras went down.” Indy’s hands were on her hips, fingers balled into fists, knuckles digging into her sides as she glared at Ice who was still inspecting the plastic wrapping like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “Can I have my clothes back? If there was a bomb in it, we’d be dead by now. And rudely snatching it out of my hands wouldn’t have saved our lives unless it was a very tiny bomb. Are you even listening to me?”
Indy could feel the tension in her own voice, which was peaked and thin, betraying far more emotion than was warranted by Ice’s mostly reasonable inspection. She hated that he’d switched off again so suddenly, leaving the bathroom to take that phone call almost like he was relieved, like he couldn’twaitto end the tension that had enveloped them the moment he’d turned off the showers, turned off the scene, turned offhimself.
Indy’s gut had clenched when she’d heard Ice dressing unnecessarily fast outside the bathroom as he spoke to Benson. And then when he’d stuck his head back in through the door just long enough to toss a bathrobe at her before continuing his oh-so-important conversation with Benson, Indy’s heart had sunk so low she thought it would slip out of her and circle down the drain with the sad trail of forlorn shampoo-suds. She’d stood there in stunned silence, wet hair flat like seaweed against her cheeks, dripping like a leaky faucet down her back, like she’d been shoved into some surreal middle-ground state of shock and shame, disbelief and dismay, incredulity and indignation.
What the hell had happened?
Sure, she’d made some offhand comment about how much water they were wasting.
Then Ice had turned off the showers.
Then the phone rang.
And then boom, the mood was dead, reality roaring back with that phone call.
Divine intervention?
Cosmic coincidence?
Was it just not meant to be?
Did she evenwantit to be?
What the hell did it even mean tobe?
Were they together?
Could they ever be together?
Did she evenwantthem to be together?
And why did this seem like the most pressing issue when Indy was being framed for treason one moment and marked for death the other!
The questions spun through her mind like sparklers as she watched in building frustration while Ice carefully placed her shrink-wrapped clothes on the wooden sideboard and then unsheathed his vicious-looking knife like he was about to slice and dice her panties into confetti.
“You have got to be kidding,” Indy muttered, pulling the top of her bathrobe tighter around her chest, making sure not to reveal even a hint of her admittedly modest cleavage. She wasn’t surewhyshe was trying to hide anything from him after what they’d just shared—well,almostshared. “Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?”
Ice didn’t reply, instead lightly dragging the edge of his razor-sharp blade over the plastic wrap, slitting it wide open. With the blade’s tip he peeled away the plastic, then slid the knife between each individual garment, raising the neatly folded items one by one and peering into the space between each like he actually expected to find something.
