AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, it’s not Luckhurst,” he said. “This is a very different energy field. Promise me you won’t use the Taser unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you take down some innocent citizen we are both going to end up back at the police station. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend the rest of the night chatting with Detective Logan.”
“Neither do I.”
He listened to the footsteps echoing in the fog. They were louder now; moving more quickly. A moment later a figure went past the doorway, aura snapping and crackling.
Ambrose exhaled and stepped out of the doorway. He watched the sparking energy field until it reached the intersection. Instead of continuing across the street, the figure abruptly turned the corner and disappeared.
“Looks like my first guess was right,” Ambrose said. “Whoever was behind us was looking for a dealer, not us.”
“You’re sure?”
“Not the first time I’ve seen someone in desperate need of a fix. It doesn’t make for a stable aura.”
Pallas put the Taser back into her big bag. They walked the rest of the way to the hotel in silence. He had no idea what Pallas was thinking but he spent the time trying to decide if it was too early in their relationship to suggest an after-dinner drink in his room.
Definitely too early. Besides, there was a very real possibility she would turn him down. He was not up for the rejection tonight.
The front door of the hotel was locked because of the late hour. He used his key card to get them inside. There was a welcoming fire burning in the lobby. His spirits rose when he noticed that the dark, cozy little bar was still open. Maybe an after-dinner drink in there would work. It wouldn’t suggest intimacy the way going upstairs to a room did. An after-dinner drink in a hotel bar was the sort of thing colleagues did. It was a way to decompress after a long day during which they had nearly been killed.
“Don’t know about you, but I could use a medicinal glass of something before turning in,” he said, going for casual. “What do you say we have a nightcap in the bar?”
Pallas came to a halt in the middle of the lobby.
“Crap,” she said.
He took a deep breath. “Okay. Forget I asked.”
“I don’t believe it,” Pallas said.
“It was just a thought.”
“This may not amount to stalking, but it is damn close,” Pallas said.
“What the hell?” Righteous indignation replaced the pain of rejection. “Don’t you think that under the circumstances that’s a bit extreme?”
When she did not respond he turned his head to look at her. He didn’t need to open the window to see what was happening in her aura. Her voice and body language said it all. She was furious.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll take care of this. See you in the morning.”
He finally realized her attention was fixed on the entrance to the lobby bar. When he looked in that direction he saw a man seated alone at one of the small tables.
Ambrose opened the window and took a quick look at the man’s energy field. There was a lot of tension in it, but aside from that there was nothing alarming about it.
“Do you know him?” he asked.
“Theo Collier of Theodore Collier, Architecture and Design.”
“Oh, right. The ex.”
“Precisely. Ex. He has no business being here. I will explain that to him in very clear terms. Good night, Ambrose. See you in the morning.”
She tightened her grip on the messenger bag slung over her shoulder, stalked across the lobby, and disappeared into the shadows of the bar.
Ambrose waited for a moment. When Pallas did not immediately reappear he reluctantly headed for the elevator. He changed his mind at the last minute and took the stairs instead. It wasn’t until he was opening the door of his room that he realized what was bothering him.
When Pallas had vanished into the darkness of the bar, her aura had been on fire. Energy was energy. It wasn’t always possible to identify the emotion that ignited the flames. She was in a volatile mood, but in this case there was no way to know if she was furious or secretly thrilled to see the ex again.
He ditched his jacket and sat down on the side of the bed, trying to predict what would happen in the bar. Reading emotions was never easy, and it was seriously complicated by physical attraction. There was plenty of the latter going on in this situation, at least on his end. They said nearly getting killed sometimes triggered a primal need to have sex. Something to do with adrenaline and other hormones. Not that he’d needed a close brush with death to make him want to have sex with Pallas.
