“Don’t be silly,” he replied. “She couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag.”
“Hey! She’s my best friend.” I supposed it didn’t make sense that she’d be one of them. After all, I’d known her since elementary school. “Are you going to tell me who then?”
“No. But they all moved on after Janice hit you. They failed to do their job.”
Had he meant the people were fired? I sank down in my seat and let the craziness in my head settle. “But Janice wasn’t some spy, was she?”
“No. Janice was a complete fluke—I checked it out myself. She just went crazy.”
From where I sat, crazy was not such a foreign concept. “I thought I’d imagined you, you know. I thought I was losing my mind.”
“I’m sorry, but it hadn’t gone as planned. Your father was supposed to fill you in before I arrived, but then you were hit by that truck, and he got called away to an emergency at the same time. I was under strict orders not to tell you anything.”
“So you just let me believe I was insane and used intimidation to keep me in line?” I said.
“I didn’t have a choice. And as long as I kept you safe, I knew we’d sort the rest out later. Once your father resurfaced, we did. More or less. Your father pulled me off and assigned someone else to you.”
“Why?” I asked.
Paolo shrugged but didn’t reply. Maybe he simply wanted to save me from hearing something unpleasant, such as I was a complete pain in his ass.
“Who took your place?” I asked drearily.
“I can’t discuss the details.”
My mind wouldn’t let that one go, of course. I started to sift through the faces at school. Had there been anyone new my senior year who’d arrived after Santiago disappeared?
“Oh my God! Pierre? The French exchange student?” I asked.
Paolo didn’t respond.
“I kept wondering why anyone would show up so late in the year. And I bumped into that guy everywhere. Mandy said he was following me.”
Of course, I hadn’t cared. I’d been so messed up after Santiago—Paolo left that nothing seemed to matter, not even my raging popularity. I’d tried dating a couple of times, wanting to forget. Even went out with Dax once, but when he’d kissed me there was no spark. Nothing. All I could think of was Santiag—Christ—Paolo. It’s going to take me forever to get used to his real name.
“You’re name is Paolo, right?” I asked. “Because I’m not going through the effort of learning a new name only to find out later on that you’re Bob or Mike or Buford.”
“Buford? If that were my real name, I’d change it anyway.”
“Good point.”
“My real name is Paolo,” he confirmed.
Paolo. Italian for Paul. I chewed on that for a moment. I supposed he looked like a Paolo, but I was still trying to grasp him not being the sexy Spaniard Santiago.
“How old are you?”
“Just turned twenty-three.”
Well, at least that wasn’t a surprise. “How long have you been working for my dad?”
“I met your father when I was nineteen, but started working for him when I was twenty. Next question?”
“What’s your last name?”
“I prefer not to say,” he replied. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
“Why would knowing that hurt me?”
“If you’re ever…captured.” He spat out the last word like a curse. “I have family to protect, too.”
“Oh.” Captured. Because my father was some very powerful man who probably had tons of enemies just itching to find a crack in his armor.
Paolo must have noticed the horror on my face because he reached over and put his hand on my thigh. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
I expected him to remove his hand, but instead he left it there. Did he realize what he was doing to me? The gesture wasn’t nearly as intimate as what we’d done last night, but it somehow felt like it. I stared at his large, powerful hand for what seemed like an eternity, remembering how he’d touched my breasts and hips, remembering how he’d taken his hard, hot flesh and rubbed it against me through his jeans.
My stomach began to flutter wildly and my nipples tingled into sharp little points like giant lighthouses, signaling that I wanted him now just as much as I’d wanted him last night.
Shit. What am I thinking? I moved my leg away and turned my head toward the window, closing my eyes.
I didn’t know why he wanted to touch me, since he’d made it clear we could never cross that line he’d drawn. But then he promptly removed his hand.
Breathe, Dakota. Just breathe. I wanted him to put the hand back immediately. It felt comforting, and I was beginning to realize that my feelings were much more than simple lust. I was falling in love with my ghost.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Just after sunset, Paolo pulled into a small motel away from the main highway on the east side of Las Cruces, New Mexico. We’d made a quick stop for supplies, picking up toiletries, sandwiches, clothes, and a backpack for me. It had been the fastest Target shopping trip of my life because I was simply too tired to care about what Paolo might think of me wearing sweats, which is what I bought. Three sets. Lord, how far I’d sunk in fashion. They weren’t even cool, vintage-looking sweats, like those fun 1970s-style Puma jogging suits. And given where things had ended up between Paolo and me—not the steamy, hot place I pined for—I’d grabbed a couple sports bras and those really super-comfy panties in the multipack. I’d be damned if I’d be on the run, picking a thong out of my ass—not even to appease my ego.