He nodded in nervous agreement. We got out and I slipped the valet $500, telling him my car was a coveted collectible and needed to have extra special attention away from prying eyes. The valet enthusiastically agreed and told us he’d keep it out of sight. Good.
Once inside, we got a room under his new ID. He obviously couldn’t use his real credit card, so I decided to be Ellen Waits and slipped them my (well, her) credit card to hold the room. I thought there was no space on that card but it still went through fine.
Our room was on the seventeenth floor and beautiful. I pressed a button for the light-blocking, automatic blinds and they withdrew, leaving us a view of the pool area and the impossibly glassy hotel next door. We flopped our stuff onto the beds.
“What’s our first step?” he asked, stretching his arms behind his head. Once again, I tried to not look at the tattoos around his abs. Once again, I failed.
“Well, we’ll need to go out and get some nice clothing. I mean, really nice. High roller kind of nice. You’re going to look like James Bond.”
“Does James Bond wear glasses?”
“If he does, they’re probably x-ray vision. You’ll have to pretend.”
He grinned, the first smile I’d seen on him in a while. “I don’t need x-ray vision. Now that I’ve seen you naked, I can picture it real well.”
I rolled my eyes and started going through the bags and sorting stuff. Yep, I’d have to get a whole new wardrobe. And my boots would definitely not do.
Camden walked over to the window and gazed out of it. His broad shoulders and narrow torso made quite a compelling silhouette. “Isn’t it a bit early in the day to go gambling?”
“We’ll go tonight.”
“What are we going to do until then?” He turned his head and looked at me.
I shrugged. “There’s a lot to we have to do.”
“We’re going to the pool,” he said, and walked away from the window, brushing past me.
“What? We can’t go to the pool!”
He fished out a wad of cash from his suitcase and put it in his wallet. “Why not?”
“Because. This isn’t a vacation, Camden.”
He folded his arms. “I know it’s not. But we don’t have much else to do and I’m not sitting in the hotel room. Come on, I’m tired and I probably stink. I want a shower, I know you do too. I want to go to the pool for an hour and relax. What’s wrong with that?”
“Uh, everything,” I told him. “We don’t get to relax. We’re on the run.”
“You’ve been on the run practically your whole life,” he said, stepping closer to me.
“Yeah, so?”
“So, I think you need to rethink the way you’re doing things. It’s just an hour.”
Now it was my turn to cross my arms. We did have the time. I did feel gross from the day’s journey. It would probably do me good to just try to relax and clear my mind. But, aside from the fact that there’s no way I could relax knowing Javier was out there…I hated swimming pools. It sounds dumb, but when you’ve tried your hardest not to show your deformity in public, you tend to avoid situations where your pants are off. Other than as a child, I’d never even owned a bathing suit.
I looked at the clock on the wall. “Okay, you go down and I’ll join you soon.”
He pursed his lips in suspicion. “You promise?”
I nodded. He snapped his key off the desk and strolled out of the room. Once he was gone, I fell back onto the bed for a few minutes. I didn’t understand how Camden could be so relaxed about everything. Lying by the pool? How the hell could you lie by the pool when you knew there were men looking for you? I mean, they weren’t looking for him specifically, but still.
I started to get anxious again. What if he was acting all cool because he was setting me up? What if he asked me to go to the pool on purpose? He knew about my scars. He knew I wouldn’t do it. He knew I wouldn’t come down. What if he was planning something with Javier right now? I’d be a sitting fucking duck.
“I’ll show you,” I said out loud. I grabbed my purse and everything I needed to run then headed out the door. After the elevator and walking through half the hotel, I found the level for the pool and stormed out into the overbearing sunshine. It was so damn white I felt like I was in my own hell disguised as heaven. The waitresses were in white, the towels were white, the chairs were white. The pool was such a pale blue that even it seemed white. My eyes were burning until I slipped on my shades.