by Fiona Quinn
“I’ve been at this job for well over a decade. I’m going to let you off whatever hook you might think you’re hung up on. You were doing your job, exactly what you were supposed to be doing.”
T-Rex shook his head. He felt sick about what had transpired. True, he had one job, protect the senator. True, he’d been warned at the outset that he was not responsible for anyone else, and he wasn’t to be distracted. He had one principal. He followed orders, even when he hated them because he believed in the chain of command.
“I liken it to the medical workers,” Remi said. “Could I lend a hand and help the doctors and nurses working in the aid stations? Yes. Do they desperately need an extra set of hands? Yes. But then, I wouldn’t be doing my job, which is to observe with sang-froid. To assess. To interpret what data I’ve gathered so others can better understand the circumstances. If I’m embroiled in the middle, it hurts my objectivity. Even if I want to, I can’t involve myself. Other than, I suppose, doing something like shielding a child with a metal chair or offer the senator the protection of my ballistic vest.”
T-Rex didn’t know what to say to that. T-Rex’s mom would call this little speech ‘gracious.’
“We each serve a purpose, and I never expected security to be extended to me.”
He nodded as he gathered his thoughts. “When you were getting in the vehicle, I grabbed you by... It was unfortunate.”
“I’m not writing an article about you grabbing me between my legs. There was no other way you could have hauled me into the SUV. And right after that, the passing car slammed that door shut. So, if anything, I would like to thank you for not leaving me behind and then protecting my legs. I can’t do my job if I can’t walk.”
“Or run away.”
“Exactly.”
“But you are writing an article about the incident?”
She canted her head, focusing curious eyes on him. Was he going to ask her not to? “I already wrote the story and submitted it to the Washington desk.”
“So fast?”
“It was an hour's drive from Oxford to London. I composed it in my head on the trip back to the hotel. I dictated it into the computer, cleaned up the grammar, and sent it with the videos along to Liu, my editor.”
T-Rex stilled. His heart pounded in his chest. They hadn’t had a talk yet about making sure that she didn’t take any photographs of the team. He’d never seen a camera in her hand before the Oxford incident, and with the photojournalist left behind, he hadn’t anticipated it being an issue. “The faces of the team—”
She held up a hand. “I doctored the tapes, removing the team from any frame. I’m not putting you in danger for zero reasons.”
“Remi…can I sit and talk to you for a minute?”
She pointed toward a chair at her table. “Pull it over, so I don’t have to yell. These walls are as thin as paper.”
T-Rex brought the chair along the bed. He was sitting about where her ankles crossed; her naked legs stretched out long and shapely on the bed.
“First, I thought you’d like to know about the girl that you protected at the airport.”
“The bird attack?”
“She needed stitches and antibiotics. She’ll be fine.”
“Good.” She nodded. “Thanks.”
“There’s already been arrests from today’s incident.”
Remi reached for a notepad. With a pen poised, ready to take notes, she lifted her chin.
“They’ve arrested the three men you encountered at the elevators, the one down in the garage, and the two who were making the gas. Scotland Yard was able to put your video through their systems and pop up their names. Syrian refugees.”
She nodded and scribbled. “Can I get those names and the charges?”
“I’ll get that information to you as soon as it comes through.”
Remi lifted her gaze to meet his.
“The guy in the security office was knocked unconscious. The interior video feed was cut off. The only way that anyone will be caught and punished will be through your videos. Thank you for that.”
She smiled a flat-lipped smile. Obviously, she didn’t need to be congratulated or stroked.
“They would like to interview you.”
“They…?”
“Scotland Yard. They’ll be involved in security now until we leave England. They’re interviewing Diamond as we speak.”
“Yeah, no thanks. If you get me an email, I’ll send them a copy of my article and notes. Other than that, I’m not getting tangled in that.”
At first, T-Rex was surprised by her refusal, but that had to be something that journalists did, maybe. If they were testifying in every event they reported out, there would be no time for them to report on other stories. Possibly. He’d never given it much thought.
“I have a question for you.” She laid her pad and pen down. “Why didn’t the garage mob follow us out? I might have been wrong, but there were so many people. Forty?”
“There were a lot. You might not be far off with that count. My team analyzed the video you captured. Some of the men were slow to get out of the trucks. It looked to us like there were only a handful of men who were really invested, and they had been on the elevator. They concentrated on Havoc and me.”
“Yep, that was my impression. Not to say I was unscathed. Maybe I was just surprised that they didn’t kill me.” She offered a nervous laugh. “On the planning board, people think they’ll be able to follow through. I’ve found planning and doing are two very different things. I think of it as ‘talking a big game.’ It takes training to go from concept to fruition.”
T-Rex couldn’t fault what she was saying.
“Maybe they picked the men that would be first on scene. The guys in the elevator seemed the most trained or most aggressive. Perhaps they thought that by showing a good example, the others would follow suit?”
“Could be.”
“Not really sure what dynamic was at work,” Remi said. “I’ll be interested to know what Scotland Yard learns. But do you know why they didn’t leave the garage? I’m guessing that there were street security cameras out there that the mob couldn’t access to turn off.”
“That was Scotland Yard’s conclusion. The assailants didn’t want their faces on camera.” He paused, and they just looked at each other for a long moment. T-Rex felt emotion streaming between them like a ribbon, tying them together in this moment. That impression was awkward for him; he didn’t know what to do with these feelings, so he brushed them away. “You handled yourself beautifully. All day. That was a lot. But you seem okay.” He stopped and leaned forward. “Is that a bruise forming across the bridge of your nose?”
She lifted her index finger and rubbed the spot, then tipped her ear toward her nightstand.
There, T-Rex saw her tactical glasses. Surprisingly, a crack snaked from the bridge toward the outer edges of the lenses.
He stood and went to pick them up. “These are the same kind I use. They shouldn’t be damaged.” He examined them closely, trying to imagine what level of impact was required to break the lenses.
“Some guy had a metal baton. It hurt like hell, but the glasses did their job.”
T-Rex let the fear swim through his veins. That could have killed her. She could have died. He had been right there. He opened his mouth to exhale.
He put the glasses in his lapel pocket then withdrew his own pair from the inside pocket of his jacket.
He caught her eye for permission, then slid them onto her face, observing how the earpieces fit. He gently lifted them back off and bent his head to adjust them to fit her properly.
“If you’re planning on giving me those, I can’t accept a gift.”
“Not a gift. An equal exchange.”
“But you—”
“I have backup pairs.”
“That’s right, the whole ‘One is none, and two is one’ philosophy.”
Having finished his adjustments, he reached out to set the pair onto her t
able. As he lifted his hand away, his gaze settled on her vibrator lying next to the phone.
He stalled.
When he turned toward Remi, a little smile played across her lips. There was a question in her eyes; did he want to do anything about that?
Damned straight, he did.
“Remi…” Man! This was torture. “I have to be downstairs in ten minutes.” It sounded moronic to his ears. The tension in his voice was him restraining himself. It was taking all of his willpower.
She lifted her brow seductively, moving the computer off her lap, leaving her stretched out and inviting. “Ten, huh?” Her voice was welcoming.
He’d had his engines cranked up since Washington. Ten minutes was enough to get his rocks off. But it wouldn’t be much fun for Remi.
Remi obviously took care of her own needs. He got that. That’s how he handled the hormonal part of his sex drive. What he’d been missing since he became a widower was the intimacy of making love. The deep satisfaction of making his lover come. Hard.
For him, it was the best part of sex. And that took time. Patience. Focus.
A quicky? No. It’s not the kind of guy he’d ever been. He liked sex to be savored. And he liked sex in a committed relationship.
His body twitched to attention like a bull in the china shop kind of way.
Remi was watching him. Unabashed. And that was all the more arousing.
For the first time, he was looking at another woman and feeling desire. Desire to know her and spend time with her. To hold her and listen to her thoughts. He wanted her to sleep in his arms.
Would she be okay with that?
If they did find a way to be together, and then they parted to go on about their lives, was T-Rex okay with that?
Chapter Nineteen
Remi
Thursday, London, England
If Remi could read T-Rex’s body language, Remi thought there was a moment of shock and confusion when his eyes landed on her vibrator, replaced by curiosity. She wasn’t quite sure what that was about. But he was obviously thinking hard.
She’d reported out on the exploits of the Secret Service and the special forces operators and how sex got them in trouble. Was he running through the ethics of his acting on that hard-on his trousers did little to conceal? No. That didn’t ring right. And yes, while he was on a protection detail, that didn’t mean he worked 24 hours a day. The three-man and one K9 team were round-robining the work.
Sex wasn’t inebriation. Inebriation was problematic because if there were an emergency, they’d be a man down. But sex was just sex.
Though, honestly, Remi knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with just sex. She wanted to know him. All of him. And that would take a long time. Maybe…their whole lives?
What a novel idea that was for Remi. Brand spanking new. Never before contemplated with any man.
Should she make a move?
Was he worried she’d put this in an article? She didn’t write articles about herself.
Nope. No article, no ethics issues—not even for Remi since the close protection team wasn’t the topic of her being here. They were simply fellow travelers on the same journey.
It sure would be nice to assuage her curiosity. She’d wondered what T-Rex would be like in bed ever since he looked her up and down at the airport in D.C.
His rare smiles lit her heart. His beautiful straight white teeth. His soft, full mouth. When he smiled, the emotion warmed his hazel eyes and took her breath away.
Deciding to dip a toe in the water to see how an overture might be received, Remi smiled with a tip of her head. A question and an invitation.
She was wet, and her nether regions were humming. Remi parted her lips as she became breathless and tingly.
With one more glance her way, T-Rex turned on his heels and headed toward the door. His hand landed on the knob. Another long hesitation, then in a voice, low and lusty, he said, “You have my cell phone number should there be an emergency.” And he left.
Remi picked up her little red mouse. “Don’t take this the wrong way," she told her toy, “but I’d rather have fucked the Delta.”
After T-Rex left her room to go babysit the senator in the bar downstairs, Remi decided to dress and go down, too. She needed to see if she could make inroads on any of the stories she’d queued up with Liu.
Maybe Remi could pick up on some advance information about the stop in Iraq so she could get some research in place, a few skeleton words on the page, lighten her load, so she’d have more time at the hospital with Jean Baptiste.
That’s what she told herself.
The truth was, she wanted to be where T-Rex was. That in itself was a revelation. Remi hadn’t felt this goofy around a guy since Benny Woolstencroft in freshman biology class back at Yale.
Years later, here she was, giddy with discovery. And, thoroughly disappointed that when the sexual electricity was arcing between them in her room, that T-Rex hadn’t made a move.
He was right to walk away. There were too many reasons why Remi’s crushing hard on this guy wasn’t just wrong but improbable. The hormones she could take care of herself.
And the emotional connection?
It would probably sever quick enough when it became evident that their lives went in opposite directions.
Still, Remi was bummed.
***
“No. No. No. I hate everything about this speech.” Senator Blankenship was sitting at the end of the bar in an otherwise empty hotel pub. There was a major scowl on her face and a visible tick under her eye. “Look, I’m taking the girls home to Iraq. I’m getting off the plane, saying fifteen minutes of uplifting crap, and getting back on the flight to Lebanon. If I regurgitate the speech I gave at Oxford, no one will cover it, not even Remi.” She lifted her tumbler in a trembling hand, extending her index finger to point at Remi. “Already this has gone cattywampus because of the damned ‘Save the Earth’ folks railing against Texas. Texas of all places. Texas is the closest thing you can get to God this side of Heaven.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Diamond was obviously having her patience tested. Today had been hard on everyone. And they were dealing with jet lag on top of everything else. “I need another angle,” Diamond said.
Remi wondered why the senator thought that the attack in London had to do with the Climate Crisis. Maybe that’s what Diamond had told the senator.
Diamond hadn’t been in the stage wings while Remi had offered other possibilities.
Scotland Yard had confirmed that at least three of the assailants were Syrian. Were they Syrian forces, radical extremists? Remi would have to ask when more information had been gathered.
Blankenship snapped her fingers in Remi’s face.
Remi jerked her head back away from the noise and the personal space violation.
“Give me something,” Blankenship demanded.
“An angle for a speech?” Remi asked. She was here to gather a story, not write speeches. But sometimes, reporters needed the rails greased. If she helped, she could make an ask in return. It was a simple psychological ploy. People don’t like to be beholden.
“Well, duh.” Blankenship gave me an overly dramatic look as if she were a child making faces in the schoolyard. This conduct wasn’t anything Remi had seen from the senator in the past. Maybe this was what she was like when the cameras weren’t rolling. It seemed…odd. Remi wasn’t sure what to make of this or how she could portray this in a piece. Maybe it was fatigue. Or stress from the event. Or perhaps the sardines on the senator’s finger sandwich at high tea were bad.
Diamond was looking at Blankenship with concern and a little surprise. Maybe she’d never seen the senator in this state before, either.
Remi let her gaze crawl up the wall until it reached the ceiling. She wanted to help Diamond out. “Okay. Let’s see. You’re trying to support women in the region.”
“In the world,” Blankenship emphasized.
“Right. World. But do you want to make this a global sp
eech or one that focuses on Iraqi women?”
“Iraqi, if you have something.” Diamond’s voice floated softly across the bar.
“Iraq…okay, how about the Iraq Women’s Chamber of Commerce?”
“The Chamber is one of my biggest benefactors.” Blankenship licked her lips.
“This isn’t associated with anything going on in America,” Remi clarified.
“Still, just getting that name into the speech. Folks at home won’t parse this,” Blankenship said. “They’ll think local Chamber of Commerce. It’s good. This is good. Run with this. What about the Iraqi Women’s Chamber? I’ve never heard of it.”
“The purpose of their organization is to energize women-owned businesses.”
“Do you have any stats on that?” Diamond asked.
Remi scratched her forefinger along the part of her hair. Then reached into her bag for her netbook. Powering up, she dug through her research files. “There are over 50,000 female-run informal businesses. Think of that as piano lessons in the women’s homes. Tutoring. Eldercare. That kind of thing.”
“And formal?” Diamond asked.
“Mmmm, around three-thousand. Formal would be shops. I know an American woman from Texas who went to Iraq to teach English and decided to open a tattoo parlor. She would be one of the three thousand. These numbers are associated with the chamber. Surely, the numbers of women in both formal and informal business will be larger around all of Iraq.”
“Is that safe?” Diamond asked. “I mean, do the men allow women to succeed in business?”
“Is anyone giving that Texas gal a problem?” Blankenship interrupted. “Bet she’d show them a thing or two.”
Remi focused on Diamond, giving a slight shrug. “Is anywhere safe?” Remi turned to the senator. “The Texan hasn’t had an issue yet. She keeps a baseball bat next to her in the shop. Last I heard, she hadn’t needed to use it. Anyway, these businesses that I’m telling you about are new. Last five years or so.”
“Supported by the United States?” The senator asked.
