by Megan Hart
“They shouldn’t have even gotten that close. They should never have been allowed in here. How’d they pass the background checks?” Nina demanded.
Ewan had been looking back and forth between them, increasingly concerned. Now he turned Nina to face him. “What are you talking about?”
“Two of the waitstaff attacked me while I was giving my speech,” Nina said, forcing herself to calm down. “Al helped me. Neither of us got hurt.”
Ewan looked toward Al, who’d gone back to standing by the buffet table again, surveying the room. He glared at Katrinka. “We’re leaving.”
“There are still people who want to meet her, especially now,” Katrinka protested. “I mean, even if it wasn’t planned, Nina, it’s admittedly brilliant. All of them have heard about what you can do, but I guarantee you most of them haven’t ever had the chance to glimpse you in action. It’s not what I’d have chosen, it’s in fact the opposite, but I’ve never been afraid to admit when I’m wrong.”
Nina didn’t push herself out his arms, but gently stepped away from him. “This is not about me being in action. It’s about getting them to support the repeal. . . . Listen, I’ve had enough of all of this. I’m barefoot, my dress is torn, I’m starving because the food here was excremental—”
Katrinka let out a shocked gasp and put a hand over her heart. “I hired the best chefs!”
Nina would have laughed at the other woman’s clear affront, but she didn’t have any humor inside her. “And someone tried to stab me. Twice. I’m out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Villanova’s going to vote in favor.” Ewan clapped his hands together in triumph and came around the side of the desk to kiss Nina’s surprised face. “Turns out that almost everyone at the party who saw you get attacked lent their support to the initiative.”
Nina kissed him but then drew back. “I guess I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome if I’d planned for it.”
“Katrinka did ask me again if we’d staged it,” Ewan admitted.
“Of course she did.” Nina shook her head and tugged him by the front of his shirt to give him a longer, more thorough kiss. “She’ll think we planned the whole thing no matter what we say, and she won’t care either way, because it got the results she wanted.”
Ewan stroked her hair off her forehead and over one shoulder. “Also the results we wanted, baby. This is a good thing. And we’ll figure out who was trying to get to you, and why.”
“I’m less concerned about why. It doesn’t matter, really, does it? If someone’s coming after me, I don’t need a history lesson on their messed-up rationale.” She frowned.
He’d seen her be firm and serious plenty of times, but he’d never seen Nina this downhearted and concerned. It killed him to know that something was bothering her and he couldn’t help. Kissing distracted them both, but he knew she was still thinking about the attacks.
Nina got up to look out the window of his office, her arms crossed over her chest. Today she wore a loose-fitting caftan, her feet bare and her hair pulled up into a glorious tangle of curls with several pieces falling artfully down her back. She didn’t usually wear cosmetics and normally didn’t need to, but in the glow from the window her eyes looked hollowed.
“I was thinking we could go out for lunch today,” Ewan said. “Celebrate. We can get a high-speed transpo, head north and grab a bite at this little place I know on Lake Erie, great view of the water. Hell, we can make a weekend out of it, baby. There’s a terrific bed-and-breakfast resort there where all the bungalows are on pilings in the middle of the lake. The only way to get there is by boat. It would be—”
“Safe?” She half-turned to give him only part of a smile.
Ewan crossed the room to her and settled his hands on her waist. “I was going to say romantic. Sexy. Luxurious. Fun. But yes, also safe.”
“I love you,” Nina said.
Ewan pulled her close to nuzzle at her neck and breathe in the delicious scent of her. “I love you, too. I hate that you’re feeling scared. Anxious. Whatever it is, baby, what can I do to help you?”
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds that seemed to last forever while he waited. Beneath his fingers, the thin fabric of her caftan did little to shield her curves from his touch, but although he still adored the feeling of her body, now was not the time to press for lovemaking. He wanted to comfort her.
“Something isn’t right,” Nina said finally. “I haven’t felt right since the hospital.”
“More glitches?”
She shook her head. “This is different. The glitches . . . I could feel them happening. I could tell, after, what they’d done.”
Frowning, he tipped his finger beneath her chin to lift it so he could look at her eyes. No signs of threading crimson, to his relief. “I can call the doc. Get you checked out. Are you having the memory losses?”
“Nothing new that I’ve noticed. No headaches. If anything,” she said after a second, her expression serious, “all of that seems to have gone away.”
“That’s good, baby. Isn’t it?” he added when her face showed she didn’t exactly agree with him.
Nina’s brow furrowed. “I . . . I don’t know. Yes. It should be. Except I’m worried.”
It meant a lot to him for her to admit that, even though it sliced at his heart. “Let’s get you an appointment with the doc. Get you checked out.”
“Yes. All right.” Her expression still showed she wasn’t convinced that it was going to make a difference, but she smiled up at him and offered her mouth for a kiss. “You said something about lunch. How long will it take to get there?”
“In a high-speed transpo, about forty minutes. Can you wait that long?” He cupped her face in his hands and looked into her eyes, searching them for any signs, anything at all, that something was wrong. Of course there was nothing, so he kissed her mouth as she laughed at him.
“Yes, baby,” Nina said, “I can wait forty minutes. But it’s going to take a little longer than that, because if you’re whisking me away for a romantic weekend, I need to pack a bag.”
Ewan shook his head, letting his hands slide up her sides to rest just beneath her breasts, delightfully full and and soft beneath the caftan. “You don’t need anything, because I’m going to want you naked the entire time.”
“Oh my. The entire time?” She laughed again, this time breathlessly, as he slid his tongue along her throat and up to the corner of her mouth, where he tickled her lips with a lick.
“Yep.”
“Mmm,” Nina said in that low, contemplative tone he loved so much. “Sounds like fun.”
“I’ll call the transpo as soon as I make you an appointment with the doc.”
“That can wait until we get back,” she said. “Really. I’ll be shiny fine.”
He didn’t believe her and was unconvinced she believed herself, but before he could argue the point, her personal comm pinged from its place on the arm of the couch where she’d left it. When she went to answer it, he went to his own to tap in a message to his doc, asking for a rec of someone close to the resort. They could still have their weekend away, and she could still get checked out. Next, he pulled up the information for the resort itself so he could book one of their bungalows. By the time he’d finished and looked up, Nina had also stopped typing on her comm.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong. It was my sister again. Patrice. She really wants to get together with me. She sent me a long letter of apology.” Nina held up the comm to show him a screen full of text.
Ewan couldn’t read it from this distance, but he could see there were several exchanges following the initial message. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Apologies are good, when they’re sincere.”
“You don’t think hers is?”
Nina shrugged. “She took the time to write it. That says a lot, anyway. She’s making an effort at something, and even if her endgame is to get money out o
f me, I can appreciate what it must have taken for her to send it. She’s never been good at saying she was sorry. When we were kids she’d hold a grudge for weeks.”
“You’re not kids anymore,” Ewan said.
Nina’s smile tipped more on one side than the other, but at least it was genuine. “No. I guess not.”
“Could be she really wants to patch things up.”
“Yeah. Could be.” She kissed him, teasing his tongue into her mouth so she could nip it just the way that made him crazy. “I told her I was getting ready to go away for the weekend with the love of my life, and I’d get back to her when we were home again.”
He paused, his gaze searching her face. “Did you mean that?”
“Of course. She can wait a few days,” Nina told him.
“Not that.”
Her answer came after a second or so, but a broad smile and shining eyes accompanied it. “Yes. You are the love of my life, Ewan Donahue.”
“Good,” he said. “Because you are far and away the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He loved the way she smiled when he’d done or said something that made her happy. He’d done his share, and beyond, of making her sad. If he had his way he would never do it again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Despite her protests, it hadn’t taken Nina very long at all to pack for the weekend. She’d done a quick bit of research on the place Ewan wanted to take her, and she wasn’t going to need more than a few flowing maxi dresses and some sandals. The resort had individual cabins private enough for nude swimming, if they decided to get in the water—which was sure to be chilly.
When she told him so, Ewan chuckled. “There’s a hot tub.”
“A hot tub isn’t like swimming in the lake.” Nina settled against the transpo’s synthleather seats and looked out the window as the vehicle prepared to exit the highway it had taken to get to the magrail system. When it had settled into the tracks, waiting for the space in the constantly monitored traffic to allow them entrance, she relaxed.
“You want to swim in Lake Erie, we’ll get you into the water. Whatever you want, baby.”
“I’m not saying I want to. I’m just . . . saying. It wasn’t so long ago that nobody would have dipped a toe into that water, much less built a fancy, exclusive vacation resort on it. I mean, it’s no garbage beach,” she added, referencing the California coastline, which had been ravaged in the last decade by new current patterns that kept dragging waste onto the shores. “But it’s still a pretty new thing. Feels like my grandparents talked about spending summers visiting Lake Erie. It was closer to them than the ocean. We’re going to be passing very close to where I grew up.”
Ewan ran his arm along the back of the seat to tickle her shoulder with his fingertips. “Do you want to stop there?”
“I don’t think we can get a transpo back. We’d be stranded.” She pursed her lips, still looking out the window, trying to decide if she wanted to laugh or cry.
“I can always call private transportation, Nina. If you wanted to go home . . .” Ewan cleared his throat, and she looked at him. His face was serious, his expression genuine. He brushed her hair with his fingertips. “I’ll make sure you get there.”
She shook her head. The twisting surge of her emotions still threatened, the way the sea will pull far, far back from the shore before the rush of the tsunami. She knew it was coming, whatever it was—a swirl of anger that could leave her shaking, a plunge into despair, a soaring flight of giddy, frantic joy. For now, though, she was able to simply twist her fingers together in her lap and keep her gaze on the scenery outside.
Ewan pressed a kiss to her shoulder, but moved along the seat to give her some space. He pulled out his personal comm and tapped away on it. Occasionally, a blip of music or dialogue told her that he was looking at the viddy news streams. She caught the sound of what she thought was her own name, and that turned her from the window.
“Did we make the gossip pages again?”
He held up the comm. “You did. That interview you did on kitten heels went viral.”
“Oh, for . . .” Nina rolled her eyes. She knew the ridiculousness could only help their cause, in the long run, but that didn’t stop any of it from feeling stupid.
“Traffic alert. Rerouting.” The transpo’s neutral voice spoke.
Nina looked out the window again. The magrail system was elevated here, and she glimpsed the lineup of other transpos as they filtered from eight lanes into one. The other vehicles headed in different directions. Theirs was going down in the next minute, reaching a lower portion of the tracks that ran alongside regular highways instead of above. According to the digital display showing their estimated arrival time, the delay added only a couple minutes to their journey, but Nina couldn’t recall ever being on a transpo that was taking the lower route before.
Fascinated, she watched as the vehicle passed the backs of what looked like old strip malls, then houses. She glanced at Ewan, who was still engrossed in his comm. “Are we on old railroad tracks?”
He looked out his own window. “Looks like it.”
“Wow.” She put her fingers to the glass.
They passed through the residential section at a speed much slower than normal, probably for the safety of the residents. Nina saw a pack of school-aged children on the street, standing well back from the crossing gate that came down to prevent anyone from being run over by the transpo. They pointed, small faces delighted and surprised.
“It’s like they’ve never seen one before,” she said.
Ewan leaned over until he could also see out the window. “Maybe they haven’t. These rails are kept up for use in emergencies and for rerouting, but it’s unlikely they see much traffic. And those kids . . .”
“Are poor,” Nina finished when he seemed reluctant to. “They probably have never ridden in a transpo.”
“Probably not.”
“I never did, not until I got out of the army.” Nina waved at the kids as they passed and was happy to see them wave back. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Maybe I forgot, until just now. It feels like I’ve forgotten a lot about what it’s like to not have money.”
“It’s my goal to make sure you never remember that,” Ewan said.
* * *
He was making good on his word, and even though Nina knew it was better to remember that not everyone in the world had their advantages, these reminders made her more determined than before to make sure the differences she made in this life were the good kind. Not bad. For now, she was letting him pamper her.
The resort, as promised, was remote, private, and luxurious. The only way to reach their assigned cabin was by a special over-water transpo. The cabin itself was built on sturdy pilings, the floor, transparent in places, only a few feet from the lake’s oddly still waters.
“What happens if the baffles break down?” she said, but off-handedly, since she knew it was unlikely the equipment that kept this part of the lake from having waves would fail. Too many rich people came here for it not to be safe.
Ewan stretched as he looked around the small living space. “We swim?”
“Very funny.” Nina peeked into the fridge and let out a small coo of delight. “Oh . . . yum.”
“I had it stocked before we got here. You can cook for me . . .” Ewan grinned at her expression. “Or, I can cook for you. There was an option for catered meals, but I figured you’d want more privacy. Just the two of us.”
She crossed the tiny but decadently appointed kitchen to fit herself into his arms. “I like that. Yes. The two of us, out here in the middle of a giant lake, feeding each other. Watching the sunset. Dipping in the hot tub . . .”
“Making love,” Ewan added.
She laughed, letting her head fall back a moment before she offered him her mouth for a kiss, into which she murmured, “Yes. That too. Now, please.”
How was it possible that no matter how often their bodies connected this way, i
t only got better and better? Nina had been with Ewan a hundred times, and she learned something new about him with every encounter. She took as much pleasure from pleasing him as she did from allowing him to bring her to climax—and while Nina would never have considered herself to be a selfish lover, she certainly had been happier, in the past, to get her own without worrying overmuch about someone else.
“Wait,” she told him now when he moved to slide between her legs with his mouth. “Wait, let me . . . I want to see you.”
Ewan’s brow furrowed, but he stood up straight at the edge of the bed. They’d shed their clothes hastily, the way they almost always did, and the sight of his naked body was one of the most beautiful Nina had ever seen. Long, lean, muscled. His belly had the slightest hint of a curve—too many charity dinners she knew he’d say, self-conscious, but this, the tiniest of physical flaws, only endeared him to her all the more, because it proved to her that Ewan Donahue was real. A man.
Her man.
Nina got to her knees on the bed’s vast, plush expanse and moved in front of him. Before he could move or protest, she took his shaft in her fist, holding him steady while she slowly drew the head of his erection into her mouth. She moaned at his flavor, savoring it. He groaned at the suction she gave; he put his hands on her head, but gently, until she reached to take his fingers and twist them into her curls.
She’d never been the sort of woman to get off on a man directing her orally, but she let out another low moan when Ewan used her hair to set the pace. Slow, slow, then a little faster, Nina used her mouth to pleasure him, until his cock had gone so thick and hard she could barely take it all in.
“I want . . . inside you . . .” Ewan muttered, tugging at her hair to get her to pull away from him. He looked down at her, his breath coming fast. Eyes blazing. “Baby, I want to be inside you. I want you to feel good, too.”
She did, close already, as aroused as if he’d been the one using his mouth on her instead of the other way around. Nina shifted onto her back, reveling in the way his gaze dropped to the gift of her body she was offering. She parted her legs in silent invitation.
