Finally,twohoursafter ETA, there was a knock at the motel door.
The shower still ran with Scarlett inside as I walked over. She’d given up waiting and had been in the bathroom for nearly forty minutes while I busied myself out here reading goddamn travel magazines.
I hated when people wasted my time.
Almost as much as I hated the asshole who was on the other side of that door.
Flipping the lock, the door swung wide with Derek fucking Fresco’s smug face peeling into view.
“Heard you needed some help handling your women, Reyes.”
Derek smirked at me, the sight of it filling my whole chest with air so hot, I thought I might breathe fire all over his dipshit face. I pushed my rage into the door knob caught in my grip, squeezing and squeezing until I heard a pop and imagined it was Derek’s head instead.
“Hey man. Come on in.” I nodded inside, stepping over to let Derek in against every other instinct in my body screaming at me not to.
Agent Avery could have sent any agent, and he chose Derek Fresco, the sleaziest asswipe I’d ever worked with.
He waltzed through the room in slow, dissecting steps.
“You couldn’t do any better than this? This place is a shithole.”
“We’re not staying here for pleasure. It’s just a place to sleep.”
He nodded, throwing his shit all over my bed and adjusting his dress shirt collar. Derek observed the room, judging as if he was judging my performance as an agent by my choice of fucking motel room.
He turned back to me, murky green eyes shifting in curiosity.
“Where’s the girl?”
“Shower.” Fucking moron.
Sure, he could throw judgment at the motel room I’d chosen but wasn’t smart enough to deduce that if the shower was running, the missing person from the room was probably in it.
I fucking hated new agents—ego out the ass and nothing to back it up.
“Must be quite the handful if you and her daddy needed me to swoop in and save the day.” Derek cocked a slick brow and winked, and I’d never wanted to punch anyone square in the face so badly.
God, the crack of his nose would be a fucking symphony to my ears.
“We got sidetracked and stuck without cell reception for a night. I’d hardly call that a cause for concern.”
Derek shrugged mid-turn, craning his head over his shoulder. “Boss didn’t seem to agree.”
The rush of the shower shut off, the squeak of the curtain pulling to the side following behind. After getting ourselves out of that preserve and to a nearby McDonalds—where Scarlett scarfed down two Big Macs—we made a pit stop at a local store to pick up a few more clothes and basic necessities.
I was already regretting Scarlett coming out of that bathroom. She’d stocked up on more lavender scented body wash, and I just knew it was going to fucking ruin me.
Her smell had been glued to my skin ever since she spent the night in my arms—
Fuck.
That sounded bad.
It sounded romantic and flowery and like it was something it most certainly fucking wasn’t. She was cold. I was warm. It was a transfer of heat. Basic human decency, and anything else my brain tried to call it was an outright lie.
She only slept until sunrise and until I couldn’t take it anymore. Her small body curled into my chest, breathing soft sighs into the slope of my neck and smelling like a field of wild lavender, was a new brand of torture.
It was up there with one of the dumbest ideas I’d ever had, and I regretted it as soon as I caught myself absentmindedly stroking the chill out of her snowy skin as a shiver ripped through her body.