Tate swallowed and jerked his hand away, holding his arm across his stomach and trying to look anywhere but down. For the love of God, though—he was a red-blooded male, and the panties of the woman he was rapidly becoming hot for were inches away, in plain sight.
He had to look—of course, he had to look. It might as well be written out in plain black and white in the Dude Handbook.
So Tate snuck another peek, trying to determine in two-point-five seconds what type of underwear it might be. Thongs didn’t seem like Lyla’s style, but maybe some kind of low-cut bikini was? Perhaps those sexy things chicks called boy shorts?
Sadly, the lingerie was too crumpled to tell. If Tate had been at all alert this evening, he might have thought to spread them out a bit when he first pulled away, so at least his rabid curiosity could be satisfied, if not the sudden and uninvited stowaway behind his fly.
Lyla, the perfect noticer of all things inconvenient, suddenly announced, “Oh, that’s where those went. I’ve been looking for them. Thanks!” She hooked the panties with a finger, then marched over to drop them into her open suitcase before plopping back down on the sofa again.
Tate sat paralyzed, willing himself to stop debating which situations, exactly, might cause Lyla to lose a pair of panties in her own bed. He commanded himself to cease inserting himself into said situations immediately.
He threatened grievous bodily harm to his own person, for even considering how fucking amazing it would be to sweet-talk Lyla into sliding a scant four feet to the left right now, so he could have her under him in this bed.
Fuck hockey. Fuck the Rangers and Lord Stanley. Tate would give his right eye to be able to fuck Lyla right now, but that was about the worst thing he could do, short of admitting to everyone what the Army really thought was wrong with him.
Tate clearly needed to beat a hasty retreat before this got even further out of hand. He stood up.
“Okay, Slick. I’m just going to—”
Lyla roared, leaping up and pointing at the television. “Yeah, baby! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
Jesus. He sank right back down again. He couldn’t leave this room now, even if it was the right thing to do, and the smart thing. Tate had the distinct feeling he was seeing a side of Lyla very few people got to see, and there was no way he wanted to miss a single second of it.
He kicked off his shoes, settled back against the headboard, and focused on the television. Maybe getting busy with the hot chick wasn’t in the cards tonight, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still enjoy himself.
Watching the playoffs with Lyla promised to be as fun of a birthday party as he ever could’ve hoped for.
THE SIGNING IN Baltimore the next day wasn’t nearly as good a time. Tate and Lyla hit traffic on the highway and arrived there late, the bookstore staff was disorganized, and the people waiting were getting testy.
Tate hadn’t been able to find Lyla anything good to eat for lunch on the way, so she was running on fumes before they even got started, and it showed.
He couldn’t leave to see if he could grab her a snack, either—not when her stalker would be looking for exactly that kind of opening to get to her.
If the asshole had even followed them this far.
Tate positioned himself behind Lyla, as he normally did, and mulled over what he’d learned about the stalker, so far. While Lyla worked, he sifted through possibilities and likelihoods, testing out how different theories might play out.
Because of that, it took him longer than it should have to realize the person sitting across from Lyla at her table was gripping her a little too maniacally.
The lady must have been sixty-five, with iron-gray hair sprayed into a cloud around her head, bifocals dangling from a beaded chain around her neck, and a lumpy sweater buttoned all the way up to her neck.
Her arthritic fingers were fastened around Lyla’s forearm, and as Tate focused in on them, he saw Lyla subtly try to pull away without much luck. She listened to the woman some more, then tugged again.
Tate stepped closer to hear what she was saying.
“Now, I want you to listen to me, Mrs. Lawson. I counted fifteen instances where people were having unmarried S-E-X in this book. Fifteen. You’re doing the work of the devil with writing like that,” she said. “I bet you didn’t know. But now that you do—”
Lyla interjected, “Mrs…uh…”
“Mulvaney, dear. It’s Mrs. Mulvaney.”
“You’re hurting my arm, Mrs. Mulvaney. Can you please—”
“Oh, I know that I have a firm grip when I get worked up, dear. All my friends say so. But this is important, and you have to listen. Now that you know what you’re doing—”
Tate leaned in and pried the woman’s bony claws from Lyla’s arm, then instructed her, “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from touching Ms. Lawson again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she protested, “We’re just having a nice discussion. Aren’t we, Mrs. Lawson?”
Lyla was trying to rub some circulation back into her arm, but she still mustered up a smile for the wack-job. “I do thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Here’s your book, and I hope you enjoy it. Now, who’s next?”
“Oh, but I’m not finished yet,” Mrs. Mulvaney declared.
Tate rounded the corner of the table and held out his hand to help the crazy old broad up, and nodded at the next guy in line to step forward.
Lyla was already greeting him with a cheerful smile. “Hi! Thanks for waiting. How are you today?”
Huge surprise—Mulvaney didn’t want to relinquish her seat.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Tate told her. “But it’s time to go now. Ms. Lawson has a lot of other people she has to sign books for.”
The lady got really loud, really fast. “Just who do you think you are?” she cried.
“I work security for Ms. Lawson.” Tate set a hand on her arm to steer her away from Lyla—who was studiously avoiding making eye contact—and toward the bookstore’s security guard, who’d started over when he heard the raised voices.
When Tate touched her, the woman screeched like a scalded cat. “Let me go! Don’t you touch me! Let me go!”
Tate held up both hands and stepped back, but he kept his eyes trained on her. The last thing he wanted to do today was drop a sixty-five-year-old crackpot, but he’d do it in a heartbeat if she made one move toward Lyla.
“I’m sorry I startled you,” Tate said, as calmly as he could. “But let’s let some other folks have a turn.”
By now the store cop had arrived. “Hey, Mrs. Mulvaney,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She scowled and fixed Tate with the evil eye. “Hello, Paul.”
“Just thought you’d want to know that your bus is stopped at the light out there. It’s going to pulling up to the stop any minute now—and you don’t want to miss your ride, do you?”
“No, no, no,” Mrs. Mulvaney muttered, hustling away at top speed.
Tate and his new BFF watched her go, and sure enough, a city bus came rolling to a halt outside, not two minutes after she’d cleared the store’s front door.
“You know her?” Tate asked the guy.
“Sure do. The old bat never misses an event here. She comes to every signing and reading, and even to the story hour for little kids on Saturday mornings.”
“Lucky you.”
“No shit. It took me two years before I figured out her schedule, but thankfully it hinges almost totally on the #9 bus.”
Tate shook his head and checked on Lyla. She looked a little rattled but seemed to be powering on.
“Anyway, thanks for coming over. I appreciate the backup,” Tate told the guy.
“No worries. Let me know if you need anything else. I’d keep an eye on those assholes in the back, there—I caught a whiff of them when they came in, and they’ve definitely been to happy hour already.”
“Terrific.”
“Welcome to my world.” With that
, Paul strolled away, and Tate went back to looming as intimidatingly as possible over Lyla’s left shoulder.
TEN
“WHO KNEW BALTIMORE had so many one-way streets?” Tate complained under his breath for the third time.
They’d left the bookstore behind a while ago, but Lyla’s bad luck appeared to be following them—they’d been circling the same set of streets for ages now, trying to find their hotel for the night without much luck.
At the corner, the GPS told them to make a left. Tate snorted and banged a right.
Lyla was tired and she was out of sorts after that whole thing with the strange old lady, but she still had to acknowledge that this trip was going a far sight better than they usually did.
Most of the time, she was trying to do all this stuff by herself. And while this afternoon hadn’t been fun, exactly, it hadn’t been as bad as it would have been if Tate hadn’t been there.
Lyla broke the silence in the truck with what she hoped sounded like a joke. “So—having any second thoughts, yet?”
She studied Tate’s focused profile and hoped to hell he’d stick this out, even if he was.
Tate smiled. “Well, if I’d known you were out there peddling devilish sex books all this time, I might’ve tried looking for work at a hardware store or something. But you know how it goes—desperate times, and all that.”
Lyla shook her head. “Oh my God, Tate—you don’t even know. The S-E-X that lady was complaining about is as vanilla as it gets, and it’s all between consenting monogamous adults. How could she take exception to that, and not to all the murder and mayhem in the story?”
Tate glanced at her in amusement, saying, “I really need to start reading more.” Once again, when the navigation system indicated a left, he turned right.
“Let me know when you’re ready to get started,” Lyla told him. “I’ve got some great recommendations.”
Making their way up the busy street in the big SUV was a bit like trying to thread a needle with a corn cob, and Tate was taking it slow to avoid all the randomly stopped cars, sudden appearances of bicycles, and wandering pedestrians.
Eventually, he spoke again. “Lyla, listen—I’m sorry I didn’t step in sooner before. I didn’t realize what was going on at first. I thought she was just…emphatic, you know?”
“It’s okay,” she told him. “That kind of thing doesn’t come up too often, so it didn’t occur to me to warn you.”
She sighed, remembering Mrs. Mulvaney’s avid face. “I could tell as soon as she sat down that it was going to go off the rails, but I thought I could keep it from getting out of hand by myself. I should’ve asked for your help before she really got going, though. It might’ve made it easier.”
Tate thought about that. “We should have a code word, so it doesn’t happen again. Or some kind of signal.”
He looked so excited about it, Lyla had to laugh. “You are loving that idea, aren’t you?”
“What?” Tate squawked, affronted.
“Any time there’s a chance for you to get all cloak and dagger, you jump on it. You do realize that?” she chuckled.
“I beg your pardon.”
“Admit it—you probably loved Scooby-Doo when you were a kid. Didn’t you?”
Tate paused, looking around at the street signs on the corners, then said grudgingly, “Maybe. But for what it’s worth, I promise I won’t ask you to split up so we can catch the villain.”
“Amen to that.”
He reached over to tap her on the knee. “So, how about it? What can you do, so I’ll know it’s time to jettison some knucklehead from your orbit?”
Lyla thought about that. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. It might even prove helpful, going forward.
“How about…I push up my glasses.”
“No dice. You do that all the time.”
“I do?”
“Affirmative,” Tate said. “Pick something else.”
“Huh. Okay, well—I could do something with my hair. Push it over my shoulder or something.”
“Nope. That won’t work either.”
Lyla frowned at him. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Then, I could shake my foot. Or crack my back.”
“No. And…also no.” Tate slammed on the brakes to avoid a couple of kids with backpacks who’d darted out between the parked cars to cross the street.
Lyla demanded, “How did I not know what a twitchy person I apparently am?”
“Beats me,” he shrugged. “But sweetheart—you hardly ever sit still.”
She crossed her arms over her chest in a huff. “And naturally, you just had to notice that.”
“Lyla, it’s literally my job to watch you all day long. I’d be an idiot not to notice it.”
“I feel very exposed right now.” Tate just laughed at her, but it did beg the question, “What else do you know about me, that I’m not aware of?”
“Nothing!” he answered quickly, and she could swear his neck flushed red. “Don’t be paranoid.”
Lyla threw up her hands. Now he told her.
“Okay, listen—” Tate continued, “for the signal to work, it has to be something you’d never do otherwise. Something that will stick out to me.”
She blew out a long breath, trying to think, but her brain was completely fried. “I could break into song?”
“Something that won’t stick out to other people, you dork,” he groaned.
“Um…what about…”
“Shh. Let me think.”
“You just shushed me!” Lyla balked, completely offended.
“Yes!” he fired back, “That means you’re supposed to be quiet!”
Lyla just shook her head at him. “You get mean when you’re lost.”
“I’m not lost,” he claimed, rather hotly given the circumstances.
“Tate, we’ve circled this block three times,” she pointed out. “You’re definitely lost. Stop ignoring the GPS.”
“I’m not. Look—here’s the parking garage for the hotel.” He slapped on his blinker, then cut off a bakery truck to make the turn. “And now, I also know what your save-me signal should be.”
“Please don’t let it be something weird,” Lyla begged.
“It’s not. All you have to do when you need a bailout is crack your knuckles. You never do that, so I’ll know right away to step in if I see it.”
Lyla leaned back against her door and looked him up and down, impressed. “Wow, that is good. No one would even think it was strange—not if I’ve been signing books for hours.”
“Exactly,” Tate agreed, proud as a peacock. “And that’s why they’re paying me the big bucks.”
“Awesome. I think I just felt your ego expand even more, all the way from over here.”
“I mean…is there really any limit to how far it can grow?” he wondered. “Should there be?” He parked in a spot near the elevators, then turned off the truck.
Lyla shook her head yet again. “God, this day needs to be over sooner, rather than later.”
Tate turned to her, instantly switching into caretaker mode. “You want to stop in the lobby bar and have a drink before we go upstairs? You had a rough day today.”
It was tempting, but Lyla had figured out by now that she’d definitely be drinking alone, and that was far too depressing an end for today.
“Thanks, but…I think I had plenty last night. Let’s just check in and find our rooms. I’m too whipped to even contemplate cocktails.” Not to mention the fact that the memory of her hangover from that morning still loomed very fresh in her mind.
“You got it, Slick,” Tate said, agreeable as ever.
Even as cocky as he was, Lyla didn’t know how she would have made it this far without him. Too bad she couldn’t tell him so.
ONCE THEY MADE it upstairs, Lyla swiped their keycard in the door, edged into their room—and then froze. Tate bumped into her back as the combination of his bulk, their combined baggage, and the heavy d
oor swinging shut behind him jostled him forward.
“Shoot,” Lyla said.
“What? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, but…”
Tate dropped their stuff and shoved past her, placing his body in front of Lyla as he planted his feet and scanned the small room. In moments, he was turning back, though, utterly confused.
“What’s wrong? Did you forget something in the truck?”
“No, nothing like that.” Lyla gestured expansively since he clearly hadn’t picked up on the glaring issue staring them in the face. “But look, Tate. There’s only one king in here.”
“Is it me?” he grinned.
“Tate!”
“Okay, okay. So…what’s the problem?”
“There were supposed to be two queens,” she explained.
“Even better,” he teased.
“PR said they called ahead,” Lyla moaned. “I’d better call the front desk and see what happened.”
“Sweetheart…I’m not sure that will accomplish anything. Didn’t you hear the lady at the front desk say we got the last room?”
Lyla thought back. Crap. She had heard that.
“It’s okay,” Tate told her, “I can just crash on the couch.” He said it so casually, too—as if his oversized frame would easily fit on some dinky hotel loveseat.
“Are you blind?” Lyla inquired morosely. “There’s no couch either.”
Truly, this room was about as big as her living room at home and, given that she had a miniscule one-bedroom on the Upper East Side, that was not saying much.
“The chair, then,” Tate offered, looking around with narrowed eyes and not finding one of those, either. “Or on the floor.”
Lyla was tired, hungry, and beyond frustrated. The last thing she needed was a martyr on her hands. “Tate, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t sleep on the floor.”
He stuck out his chest, looking capable and manly and not the least bit ruffled. “Sure, I can. I’ve done it for years.”
Lyla rolled her eyes. Freaking men. “Yeah, except this isn’t the Army,” she reminded him.
The Hero Was Handsome (Triple Threat Book 3) Page 9
