“One of those nice-guy faults.”
“Must make it harder to be a cop.”
“Being honest?” He felt his mouth tip up even more. “Shouldn’t that make me a better cop?”
“Don’t you sometimes have to manipulate people?” she wanted to know.
“I prefer not to.”
“And it works not to?”
“I think I’m pretty damned good at it.”
“So then...when don’t you like it?”
“I didn’t say I don’t like it.”
“You said you like it most of the time. That means that sometimes you don’t.”
“Ha. Busted. The truth is, I really like the investigative end of things. It always fascinated me as a kid, to see how my dad got from point A to point B. But if I’m being really honest, until my dad was killed, I always thought I’d take after my uncle and become a firefighter.”
Sympathy softened her voice as she asked, “Why didn’t you?”
“You already know my story.”
She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t. We just met, remember?”
“Right. I forgot.”
“So. Tell me.”
“Not gonna let it go?”
“No.” She said it softly enough that he thought she might, if he pressed it.
He decided not to. She did know already anyway—she’d heard it from his partner, Brayden, during their previous run-in with Jesse Garibaldi—and sometimes it just felt good to say things aloud.
“Fifteen years ago, my father—a detective like me—was killed. Murdered via pipe bomb. Along with two other men. Those men’s sons, myself included, vowed to find out why, and we vowed to do it by the book.”
He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until he felt Nadine’s warm grip on his forearm. “So you became a cop.”
He lifted his lids. “I did. We did.”
“What else?”
“Does there need to be more?” It wasn’t a bitter question, just a serious one.
“I guess there doesn’t have to be,” she conceded. “You’ve already said a lot for having just met me.”
“That’s way truer than you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guys and I don’t typically share any of that info. Only a handful of people know about the case.”
“Well, then, I’m glad I inspire that kind of trust after knowing each other for five minutes.” She flashed him a smile that, if he didn’t know better, Anderson might’ve called saucy.
He fought a chuckle at the unexpected expression. “All right. It’s your turn.”
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Okay. Well. I’m Nadine Elise Stuart. Twenty-six. I like dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Yes. And sunsets.”
“Okay...”
“Oh. And long walks on the beach, and—”
He cut her off with a groan. “Really?”
She blinked innocently at him. “What?”
“That’s the angle you’re going to take?”
“We just met. So I don’t want to give away too much too soon.”
The chuckle wouldn’t stay down this time. Anderson let it take over, rolling through his chest, up his throat, then out into the truck. It felt good. And it felt even better when Nadine joined in, her musical laugh mixing pleasantly with his, making it easy to forget the pressing issues at hand. As his mirth tapered off, though, his gaze slipped out the window just in time to catch sight of a navy sedan as it whipped by. Maybe it was the same one that had tried to run her down, maybe not. Either way, it was a sobering reminder that in spite of the light conversation, they were far from safe.
Chapter 4
The slightly buoyant feeling in Nadine’s chest faded as they neared Whispering Woods Lodge. It was nestled into a man-made valley, its peaked, full log roof visible from the top of the very long block that led down to its enormous outdoor parking lot. And, usually, just that first glimpse of the rustically styled hotel made her want to go inside. Or it always had when she was a kid, anyway. She remembered how quickly it had been built. How everyone in town heralded Jesse Garibaldi as some kind of miracle worker. The man was still new in town then, his investments in tourism and infrastructure still a novelty. At ten years old, the awe of the town reinforced what Nadine already believed. Garibaldi’s power was endless. Then, it had impressed her. Now, it made her shiver.
“You all right?” Anderson’s warm voice cut through her worry.
“I’m okay,” she replied. “Just thinking about when this place opened fifteen years ago. My dad worked for Garibaldi, so we got a front-row seat. It was amazing. Inspiring and hopeful and...” She shrugged. “I was ten. So it was pretty cool.”
“It’s still pretty cool.”
“Except knowing what I do about Garibaldi makes it harder to enjoy it. Like it’s got a taint. Does that sound funny?”
Anderson’s mouth set into a line before he answered. “The man’s a murderer, Nadine. Everything he touches—or has touched—does have a taint.”
Does that include me?
The question sprang to mind unexpectedly, and she wasn’t able to dismiss it as easily as it had come. After all, Garibaldi had touched her life. He’d paid for her and her mother’s move from Whispering Woods to Freemont. He’d covered her many hospital expenses and the costs of her father’s funeral. Then he’d paid for her entire education. If the man’s taint extended to people, she was probably at the top of the list.
She opened her mouth—maybe to say something about it, maybe not, she wasn’t sure—but stopped as she realized Anderson had bypassed the main lot and was headed for the underground one.
“I don’t think we can park in there,” she said. “Staff and VIP guests only. Unless they’ve changed that.”
He turned a rueful smile her way. “Open the glove box.”
She did as he said, and when she flicked down the door, a laminated parking pass fell straight into her hands.
“Is it fake?”
“No.”
Anderson lifted up the pass and placed it on the windshield, then offered the attendant in the parking booth a wave as they drove through.
“See?” he said. “Perfectly legitimate.”
“Well, then...which one are you?” she asked.
“Which one?”
“Staff? Or suite?”
“Not staff,” he replied, his voice matching his still-rueful expression.
“You’re in a suite?”
“Trust me,” Anderson said as he pulled into a spot, “I didn’t book it that way. It was an accident.”
“Seriously? How does that happen accidentally?” She couldn’t keep the surprise from her response, and she realized she’d been expecting him to say that he’d acquired the pass through some twisty, undercover police deception.
“I guess they were overbooked,” Anderson said. “C’mon.”
Nadine frowned as she let herself out of the truck. It was well-known that as the only real hotel in Whispering Woods, the lodge offered a good-sized chunk of reasonably priced rooms and an even bigger set of moderately priced ones. But it was just as well-known that their block of suites were luxuriously equipped and had a cost to match that luxury. She had a hard time believing that the lodge would just give him an upgrade. Especially by accident.
“What did you tell them?” she asked.
“Tell who?” he replied innocently, moving around to her side of the truck and gesturing for her to start walking.
She planted her feet and narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Stop that. Why did they give you an upgrade, Anderson?”
He sighed and ran a hand over his shaggy locks. “Look. It just kind of h
appened.”
“What did?”
“I was checking in, and the girl behind the counter was friendly. Chatty. You know those dolls where you pull a string to make them talk?”
“Yes.”
“She was like that. Only her string got stuck and she just kept going.”
Nadine fought a laugh. “That’s not very nice.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing. It was just a very full five minutes. She told me all about her life and the guy she was marrying. Her high school sweetheart. And she wanted to hear about me. So I told her my cover story, which is that I’m here visiting a friend at the care center.”
“Me.”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with the room?”
“When I said friend, the girl at the counter took that to mean something more.”
“And you didn’t correct her?”
“It didn’t seem important. And actually...”
“Actually what?”
“Let’s get to the elevator first.”
Nadine started to argue, then caught the obvious embarrassment on his face and relented temporarily. “Fine.”
“We should take the service elevator. We’ll run into fewer people, and if someone from the staff questions us, we’ll plead error.”
“Are we really that conspicuous?”
“I’m not.” He cast a pointed look toward her legs.
She looked down and spotted her hospital-issue pajama pants. “Oh.”
“I did offer to get you some clothes a few days ago.”
“Don’t rub it in.”
“I wouldn’t dare. Let’s go.”
She let him lead her across the cement. They moved past a set of slick faux-wood doors that led to the main elevators, then around a corner and up to another, far more utilitarian setup—plain gray metal. Anderson tugged on the handle, then stepped back to allow her to pass through first.
“What, no further criticism of my politeness?” he joked as she stepped across the threshold.
“I’ve temporarily suspended my aversion to it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Don’t be. I might change my mind once I hear what you have to say about what you told the girl at the front desk.”
His expression turned sheepish, and he didn’t speak until they were in the elevator and on the way up.
“Once the check-in girl had put the idea out there,” he said, “it seemed like a better option. Being your boyfriend instead of your friend gave me a better excuse for my vigil outside your room.”
Nadine had to push off yet another need to blush and instead asked, “But if you were my boyfriend, why would you be staying at the lodge in the first place? Why wouldn’t you stay at my place?”
Anderson cleared his throat. “Exactly what she wanted to know.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“The first thing that came to mind. That you and I had a fight.”
“About what?”
“You want to know what our fictional fight was about?”
“I think I have a right to know.”
“What makes you even think I told the check-in girl what it was about?”
“Because you got a suite, and you didn’t get it just because you lied about being my boyfriend. And speaking of lying...” Nadine crossed her arms. “I thought you were Mr. Honesty.”
“Mr. Nice Guy,” he corrected. “And aside from the fake name—which was a necessity—and the fake fight—which was a knee-jerk-reaction kind of excuse—the girl filled in the rest on her own. I mentioned she was chatty, didn’t I?”
She rolled her eyes. “And what did she fill in?”
“That I was getting ready to propose, and you ran off to Whispering Woods to avoid me.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a leap.”
Anderson chuckled. “You have no idea. One second I was single guy, checking into a hotel for a few days, and the next, I was chasing after a woman who refused to marry me.”
“I’m afraid to ask how that led to the suite,” she said.
“Well. When you see which suite it is, you might be able to fill in a few things on your own.”
“Can’t wait.”
“I’m sure.”
The elevator pinged then and came to a smooth stop. But as the doors slid open and Anderson pressed an arm against one of them so she could go by, Nadine had a sudden urge to run. To shove the thick-shouldered man aside and run straight down the hall without looking back. And it wasn’t fear that fueled the need. It wasn’t even some unspecific kind of apprehension. It was anticipation. An unexpected tingle that licked warmly up her feet and hands, moved inward, then settled somewhere in her gut. It was a heady feeling. Dangerous. Unexpected. And directly related to her attraction to Anderson and the fact that she was about to be very, very alone with him.
Well, that...and the gold-plated sign that hung on the wall just in view.
Honeymoon Suite.
And it got worse. As Nadine forced her feet to move her out into the hall, a girl who couldn’t be more than twenty or so bounced into sight, her ponytail wagging and eyes sparkling at the two of them. Even without an introduction, there was no doubt about who she was—the chatty storyteller who was trying to seal Nadine and Anderson into a fake engagement.
* * *
Anderson stifled a groan. In his mind, it was already awkward enough that he’d been forced to confess to having gone along with the assumptions made by the check-in girl. Now he was going to have to own it, too. Taking a breath, he forced a smile onto his face. Then he slung his arm over Nadine’s shoulders as casually as he could manage and bent a little to whisper, “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“It worked!” the check-in girl squealed as she approached. “I told you it would!”
“You sure did,” Anderson agreed.
She turned her eyes to Nadine. “How did he do it? What part convinced you? Tell me the room had something to do with it! It was the room, wasn’t it? Wait—why aren’t you wearing the ring?”
“The ring?” Nadine repeated, her voice almost faint.
“You don’t have it? It’s still stuck down that sink?” Her eyes flicked between them. “Wait. You haven’t even asked her yet, have you? Oh! I let the cat out of the bag?”
“Little bit,” Anderson managed to say.
The girl’s smile only faltered for a second. “Well. It’s a good thing I came up to change the flowers in the nook. Ask her now.”
“Now?”
“She’s obviously not going to say no. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come to the suite. Or the hotel at all. Besides that, I’m the perfect witness. Not so much of a crowd that she feels like she has to say yes, but the perfect person to capture the moment if she says yes. Give me your phone.”
“My phone?”
“How else am I going to record it for you?”
Anderson eased away from Nadine, dug the slim device from his pocket and handed it over. The girl’s grin just about split her face.
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t forget to get down on one knee. You want it to be good.”
Anderson shrugged helplessly at Nadine. Her eyes were wide, her bottom lip tugged in. She looked nervous bordering on terrified, and Anderson wondered how that was going to translate in the recording.
He leaned toward her ear again. “You’re going to have to fake it a little better than that, honey. Even Little Miss Chatterbox won’t be fooled if you look like I’m trying to push you off a cliff.”
Her lips turned up in an almost passable smile. “I might be fighting an urge to strangle you right now.”
“Just a few moments and one proposal and you can strangle away.” He winked, then dropped to his knee and shot a genuine smile up at her. “
Nadine Elise Stuart. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve sparked something special in me. I can honestly say you know more about me than most people. I feel like it only took five minutes to get to that point. Literally. So between that and the fact I’ve never seen anyone look quite so sexy in a pair of hospital pajamas, I was wondering if you’d do me the honor of marrying me?”
Nadine’s mouth worked silently for a second. Her gaze was a little soft, a little amused and a little something else that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Finally, she nodded, and Anderson tipped his head toward the check-in girl.
“Good enough?” he asked.
She lowered the camera phone. “Close.”
“Close?”
“You need the kiss.”
Crap.
“We’re not really into PDAs,” he said.
The girl shook her head. “This isn’t public. This is just the two of you, plus your own personal videographer. Posterity.”
“Still not really—”
“It’s fine.” Nadine’s hand landed on his shoulder.
He looked up again. “What?”
“It’s fine,” she repeated.
Anderson pushed to his feet. It was hard to stop his gaze from flicking down to her lips before shifting up to her eyes. Although it hadn’t been directly on his mind before, to say he had zero interest in kissing her—now that it had been put in his head—would be a lie. But to say that he wanted to force her into doing it was an even bigger untruth. In fact, the idea made his gut twist and ache.
“Nadine?” His voice came out a little hoarse.
She smiled, and he couldn’t help but note that now her eyes moved briefly to his lips. “Let’s just not make it something we wouldn’t want our kids to see, okay?”
“All right.”
He stepped forward, then stopped just far enough away that they weren’t touching. He started to tell her he wouldn’t do it—couldn’t under the circumstances—but one of her hands came up to his cheek, stilling his mouth. Nadine’s palm was warm on his skin. It sent a shock of heat straight through him, and articulate thought flew away as she used her fingers to guide his face down toward hers. Instinct kicked in quickly. Especially when Nadine pressed up to her toes, stumbled a little and bumped up against him. Then his hands came up automatically to steady her. To pull her body flush to his.
Undercover Protector Page 4
