“That’s what I do. I don’t know how to do anything else.”
I lifted her chin and kissed her. “Go put some clothes on. I’m going to show you the Riverwalk, and we’re going to relax. Forget about all this; forget about the emails and the threats and whatever else. Let’s just pretend that we’re a normal couple on a brief vacation on a Tuesday morning. Okay?”
Her smile was back, that smile that had melted my heart from the moment we first met.
“Okay.”
I watched her cross the room, slipping a pair of well-worn jeans from the bag we’d stopped by her place to pick up last night. I liked them, liked the way they looked on her. So much better than the dresses that made her so uncomfortable. It was time I got to know the real Adrienne.
I was looking forward to it.
Chapter 20
Adrienne
“It’s almost peaceful down here.”
Lucien smiled like it was a secret he had known all along. And I guess he probably had.
“Better than hanging out at my office all day, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
He cut a corner off of his waffle and offered it to me. “Peaceful and great food, too.”
“Okay, enough patting yourself on the back.”
He just smiled like he’d created this entire place just for me. And that made me smile because I could almost believe he would have if he’d been given the opportunity.
We were sitting in an outdoor café on the Riverwalk, sipping the most incredible cinnamon lattes and eating food I would never indulge in under normal circumstances. But these weren’t normal circumstances, were they? This was me and the guy who made my heart do funny things in my chest whenever he looked at me. I never thought I would find a guy who would make me feel that way. When I was in the Army and my fellow soldiers were greeted at the airport after a deployment by lovers who cried when they jumped into their arms, I thought that was a romance that couldn’t be sustained over the long run. It was great then, after a long absence. But things would be so different in a couple of months or even a year after their departed soldiers were around the house, bored, getting on their nerves.
I could almost imagine Lucien waiting for me in a hangar somewhere, roses in his hand, an anxious expression on his face. I could almost imagine that I had finally found my reason to stay alive and come home in one piece. I could almost imagine that he could be my person back home, my one.
“What?” he asked, a slightly puzzled look coming into his eyes.
“I was just thinking that the Riverwalk is beautiful and all, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the inside of the hotel room again.”
“The hotel room is…”
It took him a second. But then he smiled. “Waiter!” he called, pushing his plate away and reaching for his wallet. I laughed, almost feeling like a carefree teenager for the first time. Ever.
The hotel we were staying in had a lobby that opened onto the Riverwalk. It was crowded—I guess some sort of conference was happening in one of their conference rooms—but we managed to bypass the chaos and make our way to an empty elevator. Lucien pulled me into his arms as the doors began to close, but then someone stuck a hand between the doors and barged his way onboard.
“Sorry,” the guy said, a knowing look in his eyes as he tried not to look too closely at us. But he wasn’t the only one. A woman called out for someone to catch the door as it began to close again. Lucien, the gentleman that he was, pushed the open button on the panel.
The woman was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. She dragged one of those fancy suitcases with the attached handle behind her. She smiled shyly at Lucien when he asked what floor. Turned out our new companions were on two different floors, both below ours, so we were in for a bit of a ride.
Lucien slipped my hand into his, intertwining our fingers and rubbing my palm suggestively with one of his fingers. I glanced at him, but he was focused intently on the floor indicator above the doors.
“Business or vacation?” the man asked.
“A brief vacation,” Lucien said.
“Lucky you,” he said. “I’m at the conference. Have to give a speech later tonight.”
“Hope you don’t have stage fright,” Lucien said. “I hate giving speeches at conferences. The entire audience would often prefer to be somewhere else.”
The man laughed. “Isn’t that the truth.”
The elevator door opened, and the woman, who’d been silent and intent on staring at the doors, stepped off without so much as a glance over her shoulder. There was something odd about the way she moved, the way she behaved. I don’t know why it bothered me. She just seemed…well, rude. Maybe that’s what it was.
When the elevator stopped two floors later and the man started for the doors, he was polite enough to lift a hand to us. “Enjoy your time off,” he said with a little wink meant—I was pretty sure—for Lucien.