Dirty Driver: Dark Crime Romance

by Alice May Ball

  Ryan’s jaw tightened to as he said, “Do you have two of those next to each other?”

  Melissa looked down at the register and smiled brightly back up at him, “At this time, sir, we don’t. The three luxury double suites that we do have are in different regions of the facility. One is poolside, on the first floor. There is one on the second floor at the rear, and the third is on the top floor, on the opposite side of the pool to here.”

  Tynie tugged on Ryan’s sleeve. “You and me, Ryan,” he said. “We will take a double. She will have the other one. I think I want the one poolside, Ryan. How does that sound?”

  Ryan didn’t flinch, but Tynie’s face was so close to his, it made me uncomfortable. He didn’t seem to mind. Ryan lifted a hand in a soft gesture.

  “Tynie, I need to take the room with Haley. I have to keep an eye on her. You know that, right?”

  “You said you have to keep an eye on me,” Tynie said, pushing his face nearer to Ryan’s.

  “I know, that’s right, Tynie.” Tynie nodded with enthusiasm. Ryan said, “And I do. But we need to keep an eye on Haley for different reasons.”

  Ryan turned back to the receptionist. “Do you have any suites that are not deluxe?” Ryan asked.

  “No, sir.” Melissa smiled. “All of our suites are deluxe.”

  He inhaled, “And do you have any rooms that are not suites?”

  “No, sir. All of our deluxe suites are suites.” She held back a giggle.

  Blinking he said, “We’ll take the room on the top,” Melissa looked into his eyes. “Excuse me,” he corrected himself, grinning. “The deluxe suite at the top.” She returned his grin. “And the suite at the back, thanks, Melissa. “

  Melissa then recited an array of prices and booking options complicated enough to sedate a County Hall bookkeeper. I watched with amusement as Ryan didn’t lose his temper. Finally she asked, “And how will you be paying for the deluxe suites, sir?”

  Tynie sulked in the corner, looking down at his gamepad. The screen was dark. He was jealous of me. He wanted Ryan to himself, and he saw me as a threat. It didn’t make any sense, but I guessed Tynie was the kind of person who might see any kind of change or disruption as a threat.

  No part of this was going to be easy. I wondered why I had agreed to hiding out with Ryan the first place. It disturbed me to think that it was just because he was so gorgeous. What the hell was I thinking? He was a criminal, for Christ’s sake.

  ~<>~

  Ryan took us all up to the third-floor room. When he opened the door, he put his hand on my back to show me in. It felt protective. Warm. Or maybe I just imagined it. At that time, I may have been clutching at anything I could find for comfort or reassurance. He did make me feel reassured, though. And comforted.

  Tynie followed me in and stood by the big window. It had a view of the courtyard.

  “I like this room up here, Ryan,” he said. “I should stay in here,” and he nodded.

  The top floor room was right at the front of that floor. Tynie stood at the window, holding back the net curtain and looking down at the pool.

  Ryan leaned against the shelf where the teakettle was, along with two mugs and a few little sachets of sugar and coffee, by the TV. There was a small bathroom at the back with no window. In the main room was a big, square bed, a couple of chairs, and a short, two-seat couch. The shelf with the TV and kettle on top had a couple of drawers underneath. On the wall over the bed was a large picture of some landscape with mountains.

  ”Tynie,” Ryan said, “the view is more interesting from the room in the middle of the floor below. But it’s important that you stay there, because if we have to leave in a hurry, I want to be able to go down to your room, collect you on the way, and we can be out of here. If I have to run from there up here and then back down again, then we’re wasting time. Do you see, Tynie?”

  Little waves drifted over Tynie’s brow.

  “I can do this for a few days,” Ryan said, more to me now. “Pay for the rooms and take care of us all. It won’t be a problem ’til after the weekend, at least. I hope we won’t need to be here that long.”

  “Are we going to Los Angeles, Ryan?” Tynie’s face brightened as he asked. “Are we going to Hollywood, are you going to be a stunt driver? Are you going to make it big in Hollywood movies?”

  Ryan said, “I don’t know, Tynie,” and he looked at me. “It’s something that I plan to do.”

  “You’ve done it, Ryan.” Tynie looked intently at me. “He’s done it. Ryan drove stunt cars in a movie. Because they needed a stunt driver for the big action movie. Flash and the Flames VIII. That was Ryan. All that stunt driving.”

  I hadn’t seen that particular sequel, or any of the Flash and the Flames franchise, come to think of it. But I didn’t mention it.

  Ryan smile was quiet and modest. “It wasn’t all me.” He let me see a little grin so that I knew he didn’t want to put down what Tynie had said.

  “There were a lot of great drivers on that movie. There is a part there, where I’m the center of the action. Well, the car that I drove, I mean. Several cuts.” He looked down. “It was a key sequence.”

  “Ryan was the hero driver.”

  “Tynie, have you played ChemRaid today?”

  Tynie looked at the floor. Shuffled his feet like a schoolboy. Odd moments, I thought I could warm to Tynie. I suspected that he would do what he could to change my mind about that, though. It was obvious that it was more difficult for Tynie to be around people, especially people that he didn’t know, than it was for the people.

  Except, I guessed, Tynie must have expected difficult reactions from strangers. When you saw somebody coming toward you, you never really knew what to expect, but Tynie was likely to be a surprise for most people.

  “I got to the main floor level eight today. Cleared it in no time.” For the first time I saw his face brighten and open. He was relaxed. He pulled the gamepad out of his pocket. Tapped on it to bring it to life. Started finding his way through some screens, hunched in concentration.

  Ryan said, “Tynie, take that down to your room. Play it there, okay?”

  “I want to show you the main floor. Level eight. It’s toast, Ryan.”

  “Later, Tynie. Show me later.” Ryan didn’t move, except to lift an eyebrow. Tynie’s head dipped to one side.

  Ryan said, “You remember now, Tynie, don’t do anything that will make people notice. Nothing that makes people interested or will make them pay attention to you.”

  Tynie took a bit of persuading to get him to leave. I think he wondered why Ryan wanted him out of the way. I wondered, too. Maybe. In the end, Ryan walked him down to his room to settle him in.

  As he left and closed the door behind him, I saw Ryan look hard at me. He must’ve been thinking that I might bolt or make a run for it.

  ~~~~

  I fished my iPhone back out of my bag. Turned it over in its cheap, sparkly case. Switching it back on, that would be bad. That would bring the cops. I sat on the bed and it occurred to me for the first time that there was only one. A wide double.

  My mom must have been worried. She was bound to have heard and seen on the news what happened. Mom was never one to take a crisis lightly, or to underestimate a worry. She would drive herself nuts fretting about things that wouldn’t even affect her, if she weren’t fretting about them.

  Aileen would be kicking up a minor tornado of fuss about her missing car and her missing help. There would be a little pool of hysteria to follow her all the rest of the day. I turned the phone over again. Looked around the soulless room.

  The sky outside was bright blue and cheerful. And here I was, holed up with a kidnapper and his sidekick. His very tricky sidekick.

  It didn’t matter how hunky and hot Ryan was. I should just get the fuck out of there. I should be gone. What was holding me back? Was I just doing what I was told, or did the little frivolous part of me, deep down inside, the part that thought about me and a bad boy like Ryan—was
that really able to rule me?

  Maybe I could get out to a café or a bar or something, find a payphone. Did payphones even still exist? How did people do this? Everyone’s tracked everywhere now. You couldn’t go anywhere and not have half the world know about it.

  Me hiding out with a criminal—how was that ever going to turn out well? Would that make me into an accessory? I should get gone. Get out and head back to the small, predictable, narrow little life that I knew and understood.

  There was a staircase at each corner of the building. And no elevators. If I ran into Ryan while I was leaving, or if he saw me and chased me, he would be mad. Would he bring me back by force? An alarming splash of sensations drenched the inside of me as I thought about that.

  About him catching me. After a chase, maybe. And then dragging me back. Now I really was being idiotic. I should just get gone.

  The door opened and Ryan stood on the threshold. Looked at me.

  He knew. He could see in my face what I had been planning, I was sure of it.

  “I wouldn’t have blamed you,” he said stepping in and slowly closing the door behind him. “I can see how you might want to make a run for it.” He stepped closer.

  His sad eyes glimmered. “I’d have to stop you. It isn’t hard to understand you wanting to run, but I wouldn’t be able to let you.” Standing so close in front of me, he was somehow bigger than I expected. The scent of him filled my head. Set off alarms all over my body. My mouth was dry.

  “Of course it’s hard for you to believe, but I really do want to keep you safe.”

  My voice stuck in my throat. I wanted to ask him, would he really drag me back by force? Would he really hold me captive, against my will?

  He leaned back against the door and his hip jutted as he looked at me. I wanted to ask him, I wanted to know. I didn’t ask, because I was afraid of what I would hear.

  Worse than that, I didn’t know which I feared more: his answer, or the judder in my voice as I asked the question.

  Chapter Nine

  Ryan

  SHE HAD THAT DEER in the headlights look. I knew she had been thinking about making a run for it. The question was why she hadn’t done it. What kept her?

  She was angry and upset. With me. Anyone could see that. And she had good reason. The day she’d had already? How could I blame her?

  It must have taken me ten or fifteen minutes to settle Tynie into his deluxe suite. Explain that everything was going to be okay. Make him understand that we were just three people who were in this together.

  Reassure him that Slave Girl was not a threat to his very existence. It was going to be hard to get him to call her by her name. Not to call her Slave Girl. It wasn’t easy for me, either. All the time that I’d staked out the BMW, I’d gotten pretty comfortable with the idea of her as Slave Girl. Seeing her now, trying to deal with her as a real person, it was taking some adjustment.

  Adjustment was not something that Tynie did.

  He kept asking me about Gregor. “We won’t do the other car for Gregor, will we, Ryan? Not now. We won’t do it now, will we, Ryan?”

  I still hesitated to tell him, “No, Tynie, we won’t do any more work with Gregor.” And I couldn’t really tell why. There was still something I was uncertain about. Maybe it was obvious. Maybe it was now. It wasn’t at the time.

  So when I got back up to the room, a part of me wondered if she would have run away. For a moment, I thought about which ways she might have gone, how hard she would be for me to track down and find – not too hard, I figured – and how far she could have gotten. I think somehow I knew that she was still there, but I would have caught her anyways.

  As I closed the door behind me, I leaned back against it. Took my time looking into her eyes.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, with a look on her face like a cornered cat. She jumped up, lunged toward the door. Toward me.

  There wasn’t any way she could get past. I lifted my hands, palms toward her. And watched her.

  She could see that she wouldn’t get by me. It was like she couldn’t help herself. Like she had to try, even though she knew there was no chance it would work. My hands were out and she stopped.

  She ducked left then lunged right, like a basketball player. It couldn’t work. But she couldn’t stop herself trying.

  She was close. Close enough that I could feel her breath on my chest. Close enough that I could smell her hair. So near that I could feel the heat of her body. Her face reddened and she bit her lip.

  We were definitely too near. That black shirt dress, man, I was falling in love with that. The way that it hung loose at the front. The belt around her waist. Those curves—oh my God, those curves. I was determined not to look down. It was definitely a strain. I felt the strain in my jeans.

  Her eyes were jumping. But I still kept focused on them. Even though that sweet scent drifted up from between her breasts—her gorgeous, soft, round breasts, her lovely breasts just fractions of an inch away—I didn’t look at them.

  And then I did. They were sensational and they deserved to be appreciated. And, more to the point, standing this close and holding myself back, I deserved a little looky-snack.

  I mean, I could have just fucked her, right? And, man, I really wanted to. But there were all kinds of possible charges that could go along with that. Down the line, she could say that she was kidnapped – well, technically, she was. If she said she was assaulted too, sexually assaulted, I couldn’t ever lose sight of how badly that would go for me.

  When I looked back up, her eyes had been waiting for me. And that wasn’t all. Her lips had parted, moist and soft.

  If this kept up, I was thinking I might have to go down to the office and fuck Melissa, just for some relief.

  I gave her a grin. “I respect you trying,” I said. “But I can’t let you go. You know that, right?”

  She pressed her lips together as she shook her head, fast.

  “You’d head back for the mall, where I took the BMW. Or to the Dragon Lady, right?”

  Still with her lips pressed together, unwillingly, she nodded.

  “Gregor would find you.”

  “Why would he even look for me?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? He would guess that you might lead him to me, or give him leverage.”

  “I don’t see what there is for him to connect us.”

  My jaw tightened. “When I took the BMW to him, I didn’t say anything about you.”

  “So what?”

  I hesitated. “So, he knows that I kept something from him. He doesn’t have anything else to go on to find me. To find Tynie and me.”

  “But he’s done the job, he robbed the bank. What does it matter now?”

  “Witnesses, for one thing. And…” I couldn’t tell her there was going to be another job. You just don’t ever talk about a thing like that. Never. “And something else.”

  As she licked her lips, her eyes flashed at me.

  Her chin tilted up and she showed me her throat. I could’ve reached out and taken hold of her, right there. It was a fight with myself not to do it. Fuck.

  The challenging look in her eye made me want to do it more, made me think it was what she wanted. I was on fire. I mean, I had more or less kidnapped her. Technically, at least. In the eyes of the law, there would be no question.