AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He needed to stop thinking about sex with Pallas.
He finally decided that the scene downstairs would unfold in one of two possible ways. Either Pallas would tell Theodore Collier to get the hell out of Carnelian or else she would invite him upstairs to her room.
Or maybe not. Maybe there was a third option that he could not visualize because he was a hot mess at the moment.
He pondered the problem for a while. If there was one thing he was pretty good at, thanks to his psychic vibe, it was predicting how people would react under pressure. It was the skill set that had made him valuable to Failure Analysis. But when it came to Pallas there were too many unknowns.
He got to his feet, crossed the room, and opened the closet to take out his duffel bag. Unzipping the bag, he started to remove the devices he used to give himself some peace of mind at night.
He had set out the motion detector and the hotel door lock and was reaching for the coiled length of chain and ankle manacle when his phone rang.
He looked at it, a ridiculous flicker of hope igniting. Maybe things had ended early downstairs and Pallas wanted to talk about it. He dropped the chain into the duffel, picked up the phone, and glanced at the screen. The little rush of excitement faded.
“What have you got, Calvin?” he asked.
“Brooke Kendrick definitely existed,” Calvin said. “But six weeks ago she vanished without a trace. The interesting thing is that no one seems to have noticed.”
“Hang on, let me make some notes,” Ambrose said.
He reached for his notebook and pen. “Okay, I’m ready. Start talking.”
He listened closely and wrote quickly.
When the call ended he got to his feet and closed the notebook. His gaze snagged on the open duffel bag. What had he been thinking? No smart woman wanted to sleep with a man who had to chain himself to a bed every night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
What are youdoing here, Theo?” Pallas said, coming to a stop on the opposite side of the small table. “This looks a lot like stalking.”
She had her initial rush of fury under control now. She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t making a scene. She was dealing with the situation like a mature adult. A pissed-off adult, but a mature pissed-off adult.
“I am not stalking you,” Theo said. “I wanted to talk to you in person because I knew you wouldn’t take my calls. I went by your apartment and the manager said you had left town for a few days. She told me you were researching another podcast here in Carnelian.”
Pallas groaned. “I should have known. Bev Shaw is a fan. She loves to keep tabs on our investigations.”
“I went online to check out Carnelian, and the first thing that popped up was the news of the explosion. One of the reports mentioned that two people from a podcast team barely escaped the burning house.”
“So you hopped in your car and drove all the way up the coast from L.A.?”
“I was worried about you. Is that so strange? We’re friends, Pallas. Colleagues. Are you all right?”
She watched him for a moment and finally concluded she didn’t need Ambrose and his psychic talent to tell her that Theo was nervous. Wary. She still scared him. The only reason he would have come looking for her was because he was convinced he had no choice. So, not a stalker—just a desperate architect.
She sat down across from him and dropped the messenger bag on the floor beside her chair.
There were only a handful of people in the dimly lit space. Two men lounged on barstools and talked sports with the bartender. They were not showing any interest in the attractive businesswoman who sat alone in a booth meditating on a martini.
Theo hadn’t changed, Pallas decided. He was still good-looking—toned and fit, stylishly dressed in an on-trend way that managed to walk the line between fashionably edgy and I-don’t-give-a-damn-about-fashion. He might be nervous about sitting here with her, but he still had the ambitious, determined vibe. There was, however, something different about him. It took her a few beats to nail the problem.
He still possessed all of the attributes that had attracted her back at the start, but now she knew he was not the man she had believed him to be.
No, that wasn’t quite true. He was not the man she had wanted him to be.
Let’s be honest. You’re not the woman he believed you to be. Not the woman he wanted you to be.Don’t blame Lucent Springs. You never were that woman.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“I can’t believe you almost got killed because of a podcast story,”Theo said, his jaw tight. “What were you thinking, investigating a drug dealer? You’re not an agent of law enforcement.”
