by Desiree Holt
“That will be fine. They’ll like that, especially if you tell them you’ll be posting on Facebook. And I know there will be some who will want selfies with you.”
He had talked to her about this. He didn’t want to risk upsetting his fans and she agreed she’d supervise it.
The moment they were out of the little hallway and into the store proper, the noise level rose exponentially.
“There he is,” someone called out.
Sam skimmed her gaze over the crowd. She figured the ages ran from early thirties to mid-seventies. Of course, thrillers appealed to all age groups so the crowd was a real mixture.
Sam had been to other book signings so she was familiar with the setup—a roped-off section with a table for the author, pens and water at his elbow. The books had already been purchased by the readers, who held them tightly as they waited their turn. Blake was introduced and he gave what he’d explained to her earlier was his usual presentation, calling for questions at the end. Then the rope holding back the line was lifted from the stanchion to let the first group of people move toward him, with two of the store employees guiding them to maintain order.
How does he do this? Chat, sign, take pictures, move on to the next one.
She had his messenger bag behind her against the wall, away from the crowd, so this time no one could leave a note. While Blake did his thing, she took pictures. She was constantly checking the crowd, mainly looking for a man who would be big enough and strong enough to carry Grant Kennelly across the yard. But she also kept her eyes peeled for anyone who gave off weird vibes. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the stalker had an accomplice.
Sam made sure she was never far from his side, continuing to take pictures of the crowd with her phone. At the end of the night she’d send them back to Avery. Vigilance could run them through their sophisticated facial recognition software. She didn’t expect they’d get one to pop up with a label that said “stalker,” but you never knew what you’d get out of one of these searches. And at the upcoming signings she’d do the same thing. If they were lucky they might spot the same face in more than one place.
Finally, the last person shook his hand, had their picture taken with him and left with their signed book. Blake put down his pen and flexed his hand, no doubt cramping from writing all that time. Chelsea Hanover asked if they could take some pictures of him with the display of his books and with some of the store personnel. Then his final chore—sitting in the office and signing the presolds, for people who could not make the opening.
“Thank you so much for doing this, Mr. Morgan.” Chelsea shook his hand enthusiastically.
“My pleasure.”
“Our regional manager wanted to be here. He’s a big fan of yours. Unfortunately he had a business emergency that required his attention. He did, however, ask me to pass along that he’d be contacting your publisher about dates in some of the other stores.”
“Tell him thank you very much. I’ll look forward to it.”
“See?” Sam nudged him with her elbow as they left the store. “It was a good night and you were a huge success.”
“I’d like to think so.” Blake breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” he told her. “Maybe some maniac to come running in screaming about whatever it is I’m supposed to have done. But it was just a normal book signing. Thank the lord.”
“Do you always get a crowd this big?” She was curious about that.
“Usually. That’s why Henry asked for the signings to be at larger stores.” He chuffed a laugh. “On my first tour, I was happy to get ten people.”
“Hopefully, all the rest of the signings will go as well.”
Sam held her breath as they approached the car, but the windshield was blessedly free of any notes. She pressed the remote, opened her door—and took a step back.
Holy hell!
A book lay on the passenger side of the front seat. Not just any book, but the one he’d been signing tonight with a note folded on top of it. A knife had been stabbed through both items.
Blake had stored his messenger bag in the back seat and opened the front passenger door to climb in. The moment he spotted the little display, he took a step back. “What the hell?”
“Don’t touch anything,” Sam told him. “And don’t try to get in.”
“Fuck.” He spat he word. “He’s done it again.”
Sam looked at him. “What do you mean? Has he left you a little, um, present like this before?”
“No, not that. It’s in the stuff I told Avery about. He left one of his notes in my trunk, taped to the spare tire. Crap.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Do you know that for a hundred dollars you can buy a little gizmo online that will unlock any car door?”
“Unfortunately, yes. They make for all kinds of problems.” She set her tote on the ground.
“Damn it all to hell.” He smacked his fist on the roof. “He used this new book. Is the knife supposed to mean he’s stabbing me in the heart? Or I figuratively stabbed someone in the back? Or maybe, God forbid, he’s planning to kill?”
“Careful,” Sam warned. “He could be watching. And for God’s sake, don’t look around. He wants to see your reaction. Remember?”
“Hell.”
“I think any of those choices are possible,” she answered. “Or maybe none of them. With someone like this, where the reason behind everything is so vague, it’s hard to make a determination. And I don’t want to eliminate any possibility too soon.”
“Shit.” He let out a long sigh. “How did my life get so screwed up? Sam, I swear to you, I know I keep saying this, but no matter how much I dig through my brain, I can’t think of a thing I’ve done to warrant this kind of stuff.”
“It could be something totally insignificant to you, but so enormous to this person that he keeps blowing it out of proportion.”
“Swell. Just swell.”
“Be very, very careful here. Don’t touch anything. Just stand back for a minute. The first thing I want to do is take a picture and shoot it to Avery. She’ll call back soon, I promise you.”
She could almost see the tension rolling off him in waves as she took her pictures and sent them off in a text to Avery.
“People coming.” Blake inclined his head toward the back of the store.
She looked up as two of the salespeople walked out the back door.
“Lean on the car like we’re talking, maybe discussing whether to go out to eat or something.”
“Everything okay, Mr. Morgan?” one of the women called.
“Yes, we’re all good. Thanks. Just figuring out if we’re hungry or not.”
“I can recommend some good places around here,” the other woman chimed in.
“We’ve got it, but thanks.” He waved at them.
Sam hoped they got the message.
“Oh, okay. Well, good night. Thanks again for tonight.”
She and Blake waited until the women had climbed into a car and driven off.
“That was good,” Sam told him in a low voice. “We don’t want to get anyone else involved in this and start some kind of panic. Or worse yet, a gossip train.”
“No shit. The next signing is day after tomorrow and we can’t let anything derail it.” He shook his head. “You never know what attracts people and what turns them off.”
“Agreed. We don’t want to give this guy any publicity until we have to. We should hear back from Avery in a second.”
Even as she said the words, her phone chimed.
“Looks like he’s making use of his little gizmo again,” were Avery’s first words.
“Yeah. Blake said the same thing.”
“He’s got balls. You have to give him that. He did this whole thing in a parking lot where anyone could have seen him.”
“It’s a
strip center,” Sam told her. “The bookstore is the anchor and the parking for it is in the back at the end. The store had a space for us right by the back door, so whoever this is took a major chance on being discovered.”
“The knife disturbs me,” Avery told her. “It’s an indication that, as we expected, he’s escalating. The problem with people like this who are unbalanced, once they get a taste of the excitement danger creates, they often find it hard to stop.”
Sam let out a sigh. “Great. Just great. We’ll be on the alert and I’ll start vetting the bookstore sites better.” She shifted the phone to the other hand. “We shouldn’t stand here much longer. You want me to send this to you?”
“Please. Use the same person you met with this afternoon.”
“That’s my plan,” she told her boss.
“How’s Blake?”
Sam turned away and lowered her voice. “About how you would expect but keeping it together.”
“Take care of him, Sam. I don’t want him to fall apart.”
“I’m on it.”
She disconnected the call, shoved her phone in her pocket, and opened her tote.
“Now what?” Blake asked.
“Now we remove this very carefully and get it ready to overnight to Avery.”
She took out a pair of latex gloves and a large plastic bag. After snapping on her gloves, she slid the book and knife toward her and eased it upright into the bag. Then she placed it on the floor in the back.
“You just going to leave it there?” Blake asked.
“Of course not. But the box I need to put it in is back at the hotel. Come on. Let’s take care of this. Then we’ll get something to eat.”
Blake shook his head as he slid into the car. “I don’t think I could eat anything. Not after this.”
“Maybe a slice of pizza?” She had to get him to eat or he’d be sick.
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes.
In the light from the parking lot she could see the lines of tension etched into his face. “We’ll see. Let’s do this first.”
“Where are you going to ship anything this time of night? Everyplace is closed.”
She grinned. “Our friend from this afternoon has many resources.”
Blake glanced at his watch. “You’re going to call him at this time of night?”
“The word is he never sleeps. Let’s take a detour to his place. Then we’ll revisit the food thing again.”
* * * *
Blake wanted to wait in the car while Sam carried the sickening package into the house, but she vetoed that.
“You don’t know if he’s out there, watching, waiting for an opportunity to attack you.”
“Before he tells me why he’s doing all this?”
“It’s not worth the risk. Come on, big boy. Let’s get this done.”
“Avery called,” Fred told them at the door. “I know what needs to be done. Come on, Sam.”
They left Blake sitting in the living room while Fred ushered Sam to a room in the back. Blake leaned his head back against the couch and tried to find some measure of calm. Most of the good feeling from the successful book signing dissipated with this latest episode. If he only knew who or what was behind this, but no matter how he beat up his brain, nothing came to him.
He wished he could just shut that same brain off for a few hours and forget about all this for a while. At the signing tonight, he’d found himself looking at the people who brought their books for him to sign and wondering if it was one of them. Or, like Sam, mentioned, was it someone who didn’t come to buy a book but just to watch him, study his reaction to everything? The idea gave him the creeps and a tiny shudder raced over him.
He knew Sam would try to feed him, but the last thing he wanted right now was food. What he really wanted—needed—was to take a naked Sam to bed and lose himself in her exquisite body. Each time they’d been together the coupling had been close to frantic, as if they were trying to satisfy a desperate need. Something left over from the past. A desire to find out if what they’d carried around all these years was more than the vestiges of teenage horniness.
What he wanted tonight was to shut out all of this craziness, block the anxiety that dogged his every minute, and make slow, delicious love with Samantha. He wanted her to leave Sam in the living room and bring Samantha into the bedroom.
He felt as if he’d been sitting there, waiting, for an hour, but when she finally came to fetch him, he checked his watch. Only fifteen minutes had passed.
“Well?” he asked, looking from Sam to Fred.
“All set,” she told him.
“I have a private plane flying someone’s client to Fort Myers tonight. Avery will send someone to the airport to meet the plane and collect the package.”
Blake lifted an eyebrow.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Sam thanked Fred, and then they were back in the car and headed down the quiet residential street. Neither of them spoke on the drive back to the hotel, as if there was nothing to say. Blake knew they still had way more questions than answers, and he was sure Sam was as tired of the questions as he was.
“Food?” she asked as they reached the downtown area. “If you don’t want to stop anywhere, the hotel has room service 24-7.”
“Let’s get inside first. I have the feeling that creep has eyes on us and I want to get out of his sight.”
“No one followed us when we left the bookstore,” she told him. “But I understand where you’re coming from.”
“But if you’re hungry, feel free to order something.”
“We’ll see. Like you said, let’s get inside first.”
He did his best not to keep looking over his shoulder when they parked the car and moved from the garage to the hotel. He was glad it was just the two of them in the elevator going up to the suite. Before he even stepped into the hall he had his tie off and stuffed in his pocket, the top buttons on his shirt undone, and his jacket off and draped over his arm.
“I hope you’re planning to wait until we get into the suite before going any further,” Sam teased.
“Barely.” He managed a wink.
She might have thought he was teasing but far from it. The moment they were inside and had dropped their things by the couch, he reached for her and took her into his arms.
“I don’t want food, Sam.” He wrapped her long braid around one hand and tilted her head back. “I want you. Naked. That’s better than any food or drink you can order for me. That’s all I need. Just you.”
She stared back at him, her brilliant blue eyes now the color of a stormy sea with all the emotions swirling in them.
“That sounds…serious.” She wet her lower lip with her tongue, and his cock immediately leaped to life.
“As a heart attack,” he told her.
“We don’t want any heart attacks here, do we?” She stroked his cheeks with her slender fingers.
“Definitely not.” He couldn’t take his gaze from her. “Could I interest you in a shower? Something to wash all this crap out of our lives for a while?”
He held his breath, waiting for her answer. She had to know how he was feeling. She had seemed to pull back a little. He was glad that right now she wasn’t giving him a hard time about what he wanted. Make that needed. The more he was with her, the more he knew this was real. The trick would be convincing her. Her reluctance had to be about more than what happened all those years ago. He didn’t know if she wasn’t sure of him or herself, but he planned to figure out how to make damn sure she knew this wasn’t just an itch he was scratching without scaring her off. When the time was right he’d make her tell him.
But not tonight.
“I think I could be persuaded,” she said at last.
“Good.”
B
efore she could change her mind, he swept her up in his arms and carried her into his bathroom. He didn’t know what the one looked like in the other room, but this one was big enough to hold a dance in and the shower even had a convenient bench built into it.
He stood her by the vanity and very slowly removed each article of clothing, paying careful attention to every area of her body as he exposed it. He kissed his way down her neck and from shoulder to shoulder, drawing a light path with the tip of his tongue before lightly licking the valley between her breasts.
Her breasts! God, he’d never seen such wonderful breasts, round and firm with dusky pink nipples turning a darker shade of rose as he teased them with his tongue. On impulse, he sucked first one then the other into his mouth, tugging on them, grazing them with his teeth as he released them.
Kneeling, he undid the button of her slacks and eased down the zipper, pushing the fabric over her hips, down to her feet. He couldn’t stop himself from smoothing his fingers over the tiny swell of her stomach or the angle of her hips. Her skin felt like the richest satin and her scent, a light floral, was driving all his hormones to charge ahead full speed. She braced herself on his shoulders as she kicked off her shoes and stepped out of the pool of material, then kicked it to the side. She was left standing in just the tiniest lacy blue bikini panties he’d ever seen.
When he took the lace edging in his teeth and dragged it down his eyes nearly popped out of his head. Both times he’d been in bed with her he hadn’t paid enough attention to details, but tonight, that’s what he was all about. Details. Like the fact that she obviously waxed bikini style, with a tempting strip of dark blond curls framing her delicious slit. Holding her hips to steady both her and himself, he drew a line down the wet length, delving in just slightly to tease her clit with the tip of his tongue. Then he did it again.
God! He could do this forever, but he had so much more of her to taste and explore.
“You still have your clothes on,” she pointed out in a shaky voice. “Would you like some help taking them off?”
“I wouldn’t say no to that.”
He rose on legs just slightly unsteady from the desire coursing through him. He forced himself to stand still while she eased the fabric over his shoulders and down his arms. She mimicked what he’d done, peppering his shoulders and chest with soft kisses and pausing long enough to swirl her tongue around his nipples. An involuntary groan slid from him as every lick of her tongue sent a spear of fire straight to his groin.
