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  “Would you like assistance getting back to your room?” Antonio sounds so formal, I almost giggle. Nothing like Lukis.

  “No, no thanks.” I shove the phone back in my backpack and roll up the towel.

  Antonio stands and passes me a small white business card. “Let me take you out to dinner. Tomorrow? Will you be here?”

  “Yes . . . I mean yes, I’ll still be here. Dinner, I’m not so sure.” I don’t foresee Lukis letting me go to dinner with a guy he warned me about over the phone. Of course, Antonio could be the wrong guy. Also, when did I allow Lukis to decide for me? Just because he’s hot and I want nothing more than to run my hands over his tight body doesn’t mean he can tell me what to do.

  “Take my card. If you change your mind, call me. I think we could work something out.” Antonio gives me a slow wink I’ve only seen happen in movies.

  “Thanks . . .” I stammer through a few more words while slinging my backpack over my shoulder and sticking his card in a back pocket.

  I shove the business card way down in the pocket hoping to hide it in case Lukis is watching me right now and seeing what I’m doing. There is no way he’s gonna like this. And even though I shouldn’t care, there’s something inside of me that does.

  4

  I do my absolute best to walk back to the room at a reasonable pace. I am, after all, on my way to call back my crazy mother. Not tell off the asshole I’m sharing a room with in this godforsaken motel. I’m forced to turn a corner and Antonio’s view is blocked from seeing what room I’m staying in from the corner of the restaurant blocking his view Lukis has the only key, an actual key, not those handy-dandy key cards every other motel has used since the nineties.

  At moments like this, I miss my slightly classier hotel. With the nice carpet and indoor pool, I could have lived there. Since I’m trusting Lukis to have the door unlocked and be waiting for me, with his hard-laced smirk — or frown since they’re the same — I don’t slow my steps as I get closer. I turn the handle on the door and throw it open to the room. The heavy wooden door files against the wall, banging loudly.

  “Have a good time?” Luk asks with his smirky frown.

  I want to wipe the filthy smirk off his face. “How in hell did you get my phone number?”

  “Your phone,” he answers and looks as if it’s an obvious deduction I should’ve discovered.

  I toss my bag on the floor and close the door. I need my hands free for strangling. “When?”

  Lukis shrugs. “While you were sleeping.”

  “While I was sleeping?” I screech. “You realize that’s against the law?” Who knows if it is or not, but it should be. That’s private.

  “This is my room.” His arms widen to encompass the space. Like he’s so proud to claim ownership of the orange seventies bedspread and décor.

  “Well, it’s not your backpack.”

  The shoulder goes up again, and it pisses me off with his attitude. “It’s in my room.”

  “It’s password-protected!”

  Lukis smirks at my comment. A small chuckle escapes his lips when he puckers them. “Yeah, you should pick a new one. The four digits of your address isn’t smart.”

  “How the fuck do you know my address?” I will seriously kill him. Tonight, in his sleep with a pillow.

  “I checked your license.”

  “Now you’ve gone through my wallet?”

  Lukis leans back in the motel chair he’s been sitting in since I barged in the room. He doesn’t look flustered at all. The man is at ease. “The license was in the backpack.”

  I resist the urge to charge at him, considering I couldn’t take him when he’s awake. Or asleep, if I’m being honest. This will require a sneaky offense. “Stay the hell out of my stuff.”

  Lukis rolls the chair back in front of his laptop and clicks a few keys. “No problem, Sugar Lips. Already gone through it all.”

  He wants me to hurt him. This man obviously doesn’t have people skills. Maybe he was never socialized as a child.

  “Are you always like this, or are you on a secret mission to annoy the hell out of me?”

  Lukis rolls the chair to the side. This time, he looks annoyed, like I’ve interrupted his life work on whatever dastardly plan he’s hatching in this motel room. “First, stop yelling. Secondly, I had to go through your bags for my safety.”

  Psft. “Your safety? I’m the woman who is staying in a motel room with a guy I’ve never met.” Actually, when I lay it all out like that, I am crazy.

  “See? Either you make horrible decisions or you’re working for Antonio Gambo. I was trying to give you credit.”

  I ponder his words for a second. “Are you saying you’d hoped I was working for Antonio so I wasn’t so stupid to stay with you?”

  Lukis tilts his head to the side, not denying it. “The idea would have made our little game of cat and mouse more fun.”

  “We are not playing a game of cat and mouse.”

  Lukis could not be more confusing. First, he has a bag of guns. Then a crazy story about why he’s out here. The only thing he is right about is that if I had any brains at all, I would run away. And hell, if I wasn’t in the middle of the desert with no chance of survival, maybe I would.

  He props his feet up on the edge of the bed and leans further back in the chair. “Oh, Sugar Lips. Make no mistake about it. We’re playing a game of cat and mouse.” He drops his feet from the bed and stands. Luk walks by me to get to the mini fridge but stops and leans over, whispering in my ear, “and I will catch you.”

  The words flutter against the edge of my earlobe, his breath warm, and my upper body shudders and jumps. I shoo him away with the back of my hand, unwilling to even think about what his words mean. There’s no way I’m addressing the warm fuzzy feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when he’s this close.

  “Who is Antonio?” This is not the time to remind him who I talked to at the pool, but I’m too curious not to ask.

  Lukis pops open the mini fridge and pulls out a bottle of water. There must be a stash somewhere since I emptied the room earlier. “The guy you were getting cozy with at the pool.”

  Damn.

  He twists the top of the water off and flicks the lid in the trash after bouncing it off the wall. “So are you working for him or not?”

  “Me?” I question with a hand to my chest. “I just met him.”

  “That’s a rather convenient story. Isn’t it?”

  Who is he to question my story? Lukis doesn’t know me. I stand my ground with a hand on my hip. “Antonio asked me out on a date.” I grab the business card with Antonio’s phone number on it from my back pocket.

  “A date?” Lukis laughs until he sees the card sticking out from between my fingers. “No.”

  The boyish smile disappears. He snatches the card from my grip before I pull it back. “No, what?”

  “No, you can’t go on a date with him.”

  I don’t remember telling him I planned to go on a date with Antonio. There’s no way. Something was off about him at the pool. Now that I know Lukis is following him around with enough ammo to take out a football team, I’m not having any rendezvous. I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.

  But the idea Lukis — a guy I met yesterday — thinks he can tell me who I can and can’t see is enough to boil my blood. My temperature rises just standing in the room next to him. This is not from the sexy little ear whisper a moment ago. We’ve hit hard core annoyance. I’m almost thirty damn years old. He can’t boss me like this.

  The two of us stare at one another in silence, a standoff between two stubborn ass people. Lukis sips from his water bottle without a care in the world. His gaze flickers from the writing on the card to my face and back again. Then, without warning, one side of his lips pop up, and he smiles. With the water bottle placed on the edge of the room’s dresser, he hands the thick cardstock back.

  I hesitate but take it, not removing my eyes from his. Lukis is up to something.

>   “Okay,” he says, taking up his position back at his computer, all his earlier tension gone.

  I’m not buying his sudden change of mood. “Okay, what?”

  Lukis growls. At least, I think it’s a growl. Low and under his breath, I barely catch the deep vibration. “Go on one date with Antonio. Tomorrow night so I can prepare.”

  “What?” What the hell would he have to prepare for my date? And why is he giving me permission to go out with Antonio now? I don’t even want to go on a date with the creep from the pool, but if I did, I wouldn’t need Lukis’ permission.

  But it’s also not like I can admit that to him now. Not when I was all gung-ho a minute ago. He’ll see right through me. I am not willing to admit I’m not interested in Antonio because I have my own tall, good smelling, hot guy right here in this room.

  “You go out with Antonio and distract him while I break into his room and plant surveillance gear. The acoustics in this place are shit, and I haven’t been able to get distinct audio. Just make sure he takes you somewhere away from his room and don’t distract him too well. I’ll give you a signal when it’s safe to come back.”

  That fucking does it.

  “What!” I yell, this time stomping a foot. “I am not your patsy.” The butterflies he spawned earlier all die in my stomach. This man doesn’t care about me at all. Lukis is sending me off with a bad guy for his job. He’s using me. I’m not going anywhere with Antonio. Never.

  “If I recall, you wanted to know what I did for a living.”

  My eyes roll of their own damn accord. His statement is that stupid. “You bug rooms for a living?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I’m not doing anything with Antonio if he’s dangerous.” I drop the card on the table he’s using as a makeshift desk. “He doesn’t seem as cute now that I know he’s involved with you.”

  “Oh, come on now, Sugar Lips. Think of it like an adventure. Remember you’re looking for one of those, right?”

  “What makes you think so?” I lean against the table, staring at him while he ignores me for his computer.

  “A woman, on her own, deciding at the spur of the moment to drive to Vegas for the weekend?”

  Psft. “I needed a weekend away.”

  He turns, skepticism in his eyes. “No, you needed to run away from all the shit going on in your life back home. You wanted an adventure. Well here is your chance.”

  “Fine.” I steal the card back from where I dropped it. If Lukis wants me to go on an adventure with Antonio, I will. “I’ll call him right now.” I lean down to my bag in a helpless game of chicken I’m sure I’m losing and grab my cell phone.

  Lukis laughs turning back to his computer. “See, horrible judge of character.”

  What an ass.

  5

  The diner looks the same as it did when I ate here with Lukis. Probably because it happened two days ago. Except this time, rather than eating with a man who has a shady past that makes me curious, Antonio’s past makes me nervous. Sure, I haven’t seen Antonio’s bag of guns, but what is he doing to have somebody chasing him with an arsenal of them? It can’t be good.

  “This one is nice,” Antonio says to the large man following two steps behind us as he walks with his hand on the small of my back, guiding me to a booth in the middle of the restaurant.

  I try to sit on the seat opposite him, but he waits until I pick a side and sits next to me. His big honking goon slides across from us, scowling in my direction. Antonio didn’t take time to introduce us when I met him by the office five minutes ago. The longer this goes on, the more I’m assuming we’re supposed to pretend he’s not there.

  The restaurant is nowhere near full but enough people are here to create a small noise level, which filters around the room and covers up any conversation we have. I worry it’ll interfere with the small listening device Lukis put my pocket along with a hundred instructions of what to tell and not tell Antonio before he agreed to let me out of the motel room.

  He cares . . . at least about his recorder.

  Not that I care he cares. I stick my hand in my left pocket and run my finger along the edge of the device.

  Although if he cared, I doubt he’d let me be here in the first place.

  “No need to be nervous, Hannah.” Antonio nearly reaches into my pocket, his fingers wrapping around my wrist and pulling my hand out, setting it on top of the table. My skin crawls where he touches it, but at least he doesn’t feel the small recording box.

  I giggle from nervousness and the ever-increasing desire to puke. Let’s hope he thinks my nerves are from being next to him and not the fact I worry I will be shot. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be nervous.”

  Antonio smiles. “Do not fear. Many women have the same reaction when they find themselves in my presence.”

  Ewww.

  The disgusting comment is enough to pull me out of my nervous stupor. “Well, Antonio, you’ll find I’m not like most women.” I’ve never been a great at flirting, but I smile and lean casually in his direction. Ha, record this Lukis.

  “That’s what I hoped.”

  Antonio taps the plastic covered menu on the laminate booth countertop to get our waitress’ attention.

  Last time, I had the three-cheese omelet with Lukis, and it was delicious. I’ll stick with breakfast, but I do eggs and toast this time. Breakfast is one of those meals you can eat any time of the day. Even at four o’clock in the afternoon.

  The waitress pulls up her order pad and stops at the end of our table. The woman looks at me, nodding her head and waiting for my order. “What can I get y’all?” I’m thankful she’s not the same person as when I was here with Lukis. We don’t need anyone asking about the hunk I ate with before.

  With an open mouth, I get ready to order, but Antonio beats me to it. “We’ll all three have the turkey club, coleslaw on the side, and a glass of water.” He collects the three menus and hands them back across the space.

  Oh. I guess I’m getting a club sandwich.

  She leaves, and Antonio smiles, beaming a set of pearly whites in the seat beside me. “I hope you like turkey clubs.”

  The time to ask would have been before he ordered. Any other day, I would’ve gotten up and started on my way out. I don’t date men who order my food. But I can’t do that today. Lukis was adamant I have to keep them distracted any way possible until he gives me the okay to leave.

  With that on the forefront of my mind, I smile, rather than slap him and make nasty comments. Lukis owes me eggs.

  “I love turkey clubs and a man who takes charge.” I’m not sure if it comes out sultry like I intended or like a stripper on drugs, but I have to work with what I’ve got, which in the case of flirting, it isn’t much. With an ego already inflated enough to order for a woman at lunch, I’m sure Anthony will pick up the signals I’m flashing.

  “So, what brings you to this neck of the desert?” Antonio asks.

  “Well . . .” I fidget with my silverware until Antonio places his hand over mine. “The trip wasn’t planned. I was on my way to Vegas and my car broke down on the side of the road.”

  “So, it was fate then?”

  “Twenty-four hours ago, I would’ve said it was horribly bad luck.” I smile and do a sexy slow blink in Antonio’s direction. Psft, and to think my parents wouldn’t put me in acting classes in seventh grade. I could have an Oscar by now.

  “And now?” he asks, continuing to hold my hand over the top of the table.

  Now I worry fate really is fucking with me. Why else would she dump me out here in the middle of nowhere? The woman threw me right in the clutches between two madmen.

  Of course, I can’t tell him any of those thoughts. I stare down at my napkin, hoping Antonio will think I’m being shy, not that I can’t look him in the eyes and lie. “Now maybe she knew exactly where I need to be.”

  Gah, it’s so sappy, I could be a Hallmark movie. Again, if only someone would have put me in fucking acting class.


  “I agree, my dear. But tell me what will you do now?”

  “Oh,” now I look up, this not needing to be a lie. Lukis wanted me to stick to as much of the truth as possible. “Wait for my dad to return from a vacation and take me home.”

  “And the car?”

  I shrug. “Still on the side of the road where I left it, I guess.” I’m hoping if I ignore the car for long enough, it will rust out and blow away.

  Antonio shakes his head in disbelief. “That will not do. We must buy you a new one.”

  “Oh, I can’t afford a new car. I lost my job.”

  “Nonsense, I will buy you a new car.”

  “What? Oh no. Definitely not.” There’s no explaining to Lukis how I came back from a lunch date with a car.

  What kind of guy is Antonio to offer someone a car on a first date? Creepy. I’m never letting Lukis talk me into being his distraction ever again. No matter how hot my bedmate, this is a one-time deal.

  Antonio squeezes my fingers again. “Hannah, you are a young woman stranded in the desert of Nevada, no job, no family. Here all alone . . . You are here alone, correct?”

  His eyes slice through me, and I hope to God he doesn’t catch my flinch at the question.

  “Yes, but only for a few days. Until my dad gets here.”

  The waitress comes, breaking up the intent stare Antonio has focused on me. She puts down three plates, each with a club sandwich cut into fourths and a small cup of coleslaw on the side. “Here you go. If you need anything else, let me know.”

  The goon, who I’m calling Gooney, wastes no time biting into his sandwich. I stare at mine, not sure if it’s safe to eat, and hope my phone will hurry and ring saying it’s time to come back to the room. How long could it possibly take for Lukis to bug a room?

  “If you belonged to me, all your cares in the world would be considered and cared for.”

  Belonged? Thank fuck I wasn’t eating when he said it. I’d need an ambulance and who knows how long one would take to make it way the fuck out here.