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“That is kidnapping, Brock, and you can’t do that. It’s illegal, and I will call the police.”
“With what? I saw your mobile phone lying on the little table beside the fainting couch. I picked it up, by the way, and it’s in my pocket,” he said, pulling her phone from his pocket, taunting her with it.
“You don’t know that it’s mine.”
“The abalone shell case was kind of a giveaway; plus, the contact you listed as ‘work’ is the main number for Cerberus.”
Alicia reached across to try and snatch her phone away. “Give me that.”
Brock held it out of reach. “No way.”
Sitting back, Alicia glared at both Brock and the driver. “Let me out, or I’m going to call the police.”
Brock caught the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”
Alicia growled in frustration and annoyance and sat back against the seat with a flounce. He didn’t have the heart to tell her it was kind of cute and incredibly sexy. His groin tightened. He was beginning to have all kinds of erotic fantasies about the woman sitting across the cab from him. He didn’t normally have sexy thoughts about the women he worked with. He’d been able to keep those thoughts at bay where Alicia was concerned until he’d seen her as Sonata Royale.
Sonata Royale was the woman he’d always believed lurked beneath the dowdy and oversized clothes. He’d always known that the woman she showed to the world at large was not the complete picture. Now that she had revealed more of who she was, he wanted to know how the puzzle pieces fit together. More than that, he wanted to know how her brain worked, and if she truly believed she wasn’t a submissive, or if she knew but feared exposing that part of herself to those she worked with.
The driver pulled up to the door, and Brock helped Alicia out. She snatched her arm away from him as he was paying the cabbie. He finished paying the man and retrieved Alicia.
“You cannot keep me here against my wishes,” she snarled as she struggled to break free.
Brock simply continued to hold her upper arm and guided her back into the Cerberus lobby using his security key card to get them in and resetting the alarm before half leading, half dragging her across the polished marble floors and into the elevator to take her up to the third floor.
“Let’s eat in the conference room, and you can tell me what’s really going on,”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Well, then, it will be a quiet, peaceful dinner.”
“I don’t like meatloaf,” she said with the cutest pout—one that was hard to reconcile with the siren who had taken the stage.
“Bullshit. You and I have had a couple of conversations about meatloaf recipes and how you like to make more than one so you have leftovers for sandwiches, which, by the way, was a great idea.”
“Maybe I was lying to you.”
“Maybe,” he chuckled, “but I doubt it.”
The elevator doors opened up on the third floor, and Brock directed her into the conference room. Alicia took the two containers over to the built-in pantry and put both in the microwaves to reheat. She opened the drawer in the cabinet to pull out real cutlery and add the plastic versions to the slots assigned to them. The team always used real silverware when they brought in food but saved the plastic versions for when they had to be on a stakeout.
She opened the fridge. “Are you on the clock or off?”
He smiled at her. She knew him so well. “You tell me—are you going to settle into the safe room or wait until you think I’m asleep to make your escape?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” she answered honestly.
“Good enough. But for the record, you can try to leave before I think it’s safe for you to do so, but you won’t succeed, and I’ll have one of the Moody Tongue Sliced Nectarine IPAs.”
“Do they really have nectarines in them?”
“That’s what they say,” he said, nodding. “It has anauburn color, and you can catch the faintest hint of golden nectarines in the taste and a whiff of white peaches—at least that’s what they told me at the tasting event I went to.”
“What do you say?” she asked, pulling the meals out of the microwaves.
He shrugged. “I just say it tastes good.”
He watched as she smothered a smile. She wasn’t nearly as angry as she wanted him to think she was, which made sense. Alicia was practical and smart. If she was half as afraid of the man who’d called to her as he thought she was, she knew that staying here was the safest bet. What worried him was that she might be so frightened that she just wanted to bolt.
