“Well,” Chelsea said, “first you can go take a flying leap. Second, you can pay the bill.” She ticked the items off on her fingers. “And third, you can hang around here until Dan can wire Kozlov’s room. Just in case Kozlov decides to leave the premises beforehand and you need to follow him. Sound like a plan?”
“Uh…parts of it,” Zoelner said, rubbing a hand under his chin. Dan couldn’t tell if Zoelner wanted to strangle her or strip her naked. It was definitely one or the other.
“Good.” Chelsea batted her lashes. “So should we all put our hands in the middle of the table and yell Break?”
And Dan finally saw his chance. “Wait a goddamn minute here. Penni hasn’t agreed to any of this.”
He didn’t want to look over at her. He didn’t want to see pity or regret or…who knows what in her face. But he’d spent quite a long time hiding from the hard things, the things guaranteed to hurt him. And by God, he was hell and done with being a yellow-bellied coward. He turned to face her, girding himself for whatever awful expression she wore.
And there it was. That look. But inexplicably, and despite the fact he’d always prided himself on being able to read people, he hadn’t the first clue how to decipher it. It certainly wasn’t awful. It was…contemplative, maybe? Sort of…curious? He felt the movement of her eyes across his face like a physical touch, hesitant and warm. Goose bumps erupted up his arms and across his back.
What the hell, he figured. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“Do you still want to help us?” And even though he didn’t say it, they all knew he was really asking if she still wanted to go upstairs and discuss the reasons why she’d come all the way to Cusco to talk to him.
She lifted that cute, kissable chin of hers, and with her dark eyes still searching his, she hesitantly asked, “Do you still want my help?”
Once again, and despite the fact that it made him sound a bit desperate, he gave her God’s honest truth. “I do.”
Chapter Six
Palacio Mario Hotel, Suite 402
Friday, 8:02 p.m.
She was a prize ass.
Like, seriously. Take her to the county fair, pin a blue ribbon on her, and name her Best in Show. Because she could not think of a worse way to respond to someone admitting they had a drinking problem than with a brilliant muttering of Oh…oh well.
I mean, who in God’s name does that?
Penni answered her own question with, Me, apparently. Prize Ass Penelope Ann DePaul.
But she’d been so…shocked, she guessed was the word. The Dan Currington she knew was not only confident and sexy as hell, but also the most self-controlled, steadfast, and disciplined man she’d ever worked with. To find out he struggled with sobriety stunned her, quite frankly. Stunned her straight into idiocy apparently. Because if her brilliant muttering of Oh…oh well hadn’t been bad enough, her extreme embarrassment over that far-less-than-stellar response had caused her to act all stilted and weird during dinner. So much so she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t the one who’d taken that awkward pill Chelsea spoke of.
And to make matters worse—oh yes, they got worse—the whole time she’d been checking into the room next to Kozlov’s, the whole time she’d ridden the elevator up to the fourth floor, the whole time she’d fumbled with the key in the door, Dan had stood silently beside her.
Which wasn’t the worse part.
The worse part was the way he’d stood silently beside her. Close but not too close. Maintaining his distance instead of crowding her like he usually did, like he was a magnet and she was metal and it took everything in him not to slam into her until there was nothing left between them but a paper-thin sliver of electrically charged air.
You bet your ass she’d felt that distance the way one might feel the loss of a limb. Like something she depended on had suddenly been stripped from her, leaving her raw, shocked, and completely off balance.
She was still feeling that distance as she sat on the bed in the lavishly appointed suite with its colorful Incan-inspired textiles, watching Dan pull out all manner of things from his backpack. But for the life of her, she didn’t know how to bridge the gap.
How about you jump his bones? This time the voice in her head was definitely her own. Thank God! She couldn’t imagine her father offering her that advice.
And sure, if she wrestled Dan onto the big four-poster bed and had her way with him, that might make up for her prized assedness. But she hadn’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere to knock boots with him. Or at least she hadn’t traveled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere just to knock boots with him. She’d come here to talk to him about…so many things. Some of which he’d already guessed, but some of which he hadn’t.