The Lost (14 page)

“Would you like to come up?” she said, at the same time that he asked, “Can you do lunch tomorrow?”

They both smiled, and because she realized it made sense to sleep on their attraction and take a step back from
what had transpired that day, she quickly replied, “I’d love to have lunch.”

His smile broadened and a playful dimple emerged on the right side of his face. “I’ve never eaten at your family’s place.”

Although she loved her family, she thought about all the conjecture that would occur if she brought in a man. The last time she had done so it had been Gil, at a time when they thought their relationship would lead somewhere. It hadn’t, and she wasn’t sure if whatever was going on between her and Adam would lead anywhere, either. Because of that she said, “Unless you want a replay of the Spanish Inquisition, we might be better off going somewhere else.”

“How about I pick you up at twelve and then we can decide where to go?”

She nodded and opened the passenger door, hesitating, but he quickly put an end to her doubt about how to end the night.

Leaning over, he whispered his lips against hers, the kiss filled with possibilities rather than the unbridled passion of before.

It still managed to curl her toes.

“Number 301,” she said with a shaky caress of her hand along his cheek, and forced herself to leave the cockpit of the car.

Adam watched her enter the building and immediately felt her absence, almost as if she was a part of him that had been missing and suddenly found. Ridiculous, he thought. It was just an overreaction to spending too much time working and not enough time with the right kind of women. But as he pulled away from the curb, he couldn’t deny that Bobbie was just that—the right kind of woman.

B
obbie had awoken to a beautiful spring day. The cloudless sky was a brilliant cerulean blue, and a refreshing breeze off the ocean had blown away the heat and humidity from the day before. It was too beautiful a day to spend inside.

Bolstered by the renewed strength in her arm and hand, she had taken a long stroll along the boardwalk, enjoying the solitude of the early morning. She pushed herself as long as she could before heading back for a wickedly steamy shower that melted any achiness from her body but only added to the excitement of seeing Adam as she recalled his kisses and imagined where they might lead.

He rang her bell precisely at twelve and she tamped down the rush of eagerness as she advised over the intercom, “I’ll be there in a second.”

She hurried down in the elevator and out the door to find him leaning against the bumper of his car. The Bentley gleamed in the bright spring sun, but so did he, she
realized. An intense aura of deep royal blue shot through with bits of silver and red limned his body. His eyes had gone from that amazing rain-forest green to an almost neon shade.

She approached him, and as she grabbed hold of his hand, the hum of his power greeted her. Glancing down, she noticed a pale blue surrounding her own hand—the aura he had mentioned the night before. Rising on tiptoe to brush a quick kiss across his lips, she playfully whispered, “Does this mean you’re glad to see me?”

He left no doubt about that as he encircled her waist with his arm, dragged her close, and kissed her. Warmth and power washed over her, immediately dragging forth intense desire. Almost unable to control herself, she rubbed her hips across the erection nestled tight to her belly.

A low growl erupted from him, rumbling through her body. The vibration strummed the parts of her that were already aching for more. With a shaky exhalation, she put some needed distance between them and said, “How about we walk to lunch?”

He grinned and said, “I think that’ll give us time to cool off.”

Although Bobbie suspected an Arctic nor’easter wouldn’t do the trick, she nodded, grateful that he hadn’t questioned her ability to do the walk. She was tired of being coddled all the time.

Holding hands, they pushed away from the car, and as they did so, she said, “I can see it this time. Your aura and part of mine.” She glanced down at their joined hands to emphasize her point.

With a measured breath, Adam said, “Emotion makes me lose control.”

A second later she could feel him reining his power back in, and the glow that had surrounded him disappeared, as did the weaker shimmer of her aura at their hands. With that, some of the intense need within her abated as well, and in a way she was thankful. She wanted to get to know him better without the specter of need interfering.

Adam breathed a relieved sigh as he gauged that his power was back where it should be, nestled deep inside him and not visible to Bobbie or anyone else. He hadn’t realized just how much being with her could affect him. Restraining the power had also tamed the need that had been ravaging his insides from the moment he had laid eyes on her. He supposed that was a good thing, since he didn’t want to be a powder keg with a short fuse, ready to blow the moment she touched him.

And she would touch him. Make love to him. He was sure of that, because there was just too much attraction for it not to happen. It was only a question of having it occur when the time was right and not before.

For now, as they walked hand in hand toward the center of town, he would enjoy the kind of quiet human time that couples were supposed to share—something he hadn’t done before, but he suspected being with Bobbie would provide him with a lot of delightful firsts.

As they strolled up Main Avenue, they opted to eat at one of the outdoor tables at Nagles in light of the gorgeous day. After they ordered, Bobbie tilted her head up to the skies and with a heartfelt sigh said, “Can you feel that? How wonderful the sun is on your skin?”

He realized that she didn’t even recognize that she was gathering power. It was obvious to him from the way the
rays of the sun brightened the pale blue of her aura as it grew stronger. It made him wonder why she didn’t know and what she was, because as similar as they were, he was certain she didn’t possess the same abilities that he did.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, and trailed his finger along the smoothness of her cheek, which came alight at his touch.

She gazed at him then, those amazing golden eyes alive. “If you keep that up, we may need to get our food to go.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Are you always that direct?” he said, not that he would want her any other way. In the short time he’d been in business, he had spent too much time with people who were too afraid of losing his favor to be honest.

“Life is too short to be anything else.” With her words, some of the joy faded from her eyes, and he knew without asking that she was thinking of her platoon. Of the men who would never come home.

The quick service of the waitress spared him from having to reply, because in all sincerity, he didn’t know what he could say to her that wouldn’t be just like the platitudes she had likely heard thousands of times before. A few minutes of silence followed as they both dug into their meals, but then she brightened up and started asking him the kinds of questions that he suspected most people asked on a first date.

A first date, Adam thought, the idea warming him inside, since it was such a normal concept. He had never done normal, and maybe that was part of Bobbie’s appeal. Even knowing what he could do, she wasn’t treating him differently.

He answered the routine questions and asked some of
his own, but as he did so, he noticed that her attention was pulled toward the street off and on in a way that was more than just a casual glance. The third time she did it he tracked her gaze and realized why.

A Jeep Wrangler with two men in it crept slowly past the restaurant. Even across the distance separating them he saw a faint hint of murky red surrounding them. Not as powerful as that of their attackers from the day before, but definitely there and impossible to ignore.

“When did you first see them?” he asked, after the waitress had taken away their empty plates.

Bobbie’s lips thinned into a tight line and a ridge of worry wrinkled her brow. “About fifteen minutes ago. The first time I didn’t think much of it. The second…”

And this made a third, he thought. “Direct and observant.”

Bobbie shrugged. She had been a Marine for too long and some things never left you—like being uberaware of your surroundings. Maybe if she had been more aware that Christmas morning in Baghdad her men would be alive, but she drove that guilt away. It wouldn’t change the past. It wouldn’t help her now.

“Semper fi,”
she said, and then added, “Always a Marine, Adam. Some things just become part of who you are.”

Her hand was resting on the tabletop and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Whenever you need to talk, I’m here, Bobbie.”

While she appreciated the gesture, she wasn’t ready to unload on him. It wasn’t in her nature to show such weakness, just as it wasn’t in her nature to run from a problem.

Adam was definitely a problem.

Or at least, the people following him were. If they wanted to grab him again, he had to be ready. Or better yet, he needed to head off the attack in the first place, and the one way to do that was find out where their home base was.

“You need to tail the tail to find out who sent them,” she said, and he nodded.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

Leaning toward him, she whispered close to the shell of his ear, “They need to think we didn’t see them, so act naturally.”

“Like this?” He cradled the back of her head in one big hand and urged her close, nuzzled her nose with his before taking her mouth with a kiss that had her forgetting everything but him.

When she finally broke away to take a breath, she murmured, “Like that.”

He chuckled, and when the waitress approached with the bill just a second later, the knowing smile on the young girl’s face said that at least she had bought the lovey-dovey act.

Adam tossed several bills on the table, rose, and offered Bobbie his hand. She took it, experiencing again that rush of his power that had her heart racing. As they had earlier, they strolled slowly back toward her condo, only this time they were vigilant. She caught sight of the Jeep one other time before they reached the door to her building.

Once there, she walked with him to his car and said, “You’re not going back to the office. You have errands to run.”

“I do?” he asked, and leaned on the bumper, hauling her close once more.

“You do. Pick up some dry cleaning. Go to the
drugstore. You park this very obvious car somewhere and spend a few minutes in each place. I’ll be watching, and once I make them, I will call you.”

He reached into his pocket and said, “Let me call you now so you have my number.”

He did, and she ignored the buzz of the phone in her back pocket. “I want you to make a few stops. I’ll make contact when I think it’s time and you’ll have to find a back way out of whatever building you’re in. Then I’ll pick you up so we can tail them once they realize you’re not coming out.”

He narrowed his eyes, considering her. “You learned this in the Marines?”

She shook her head and said, “No, from my brother who had a private security company. I worked in his office one summer before joining the Marines.”

“You’ve had an interesting life, I see,” he said, leaned toward her, and kissed her once more.

“Got to make it convincing, is that it?” she teased when they broke apart.

“Totally,” he said, and after a brief hug, he stepped away and walked around to the driver’s side of his car. She quickly did the same, heading down the block to where her Sebring was parked. One of Adam’s people had returned it earlier that morning.

She was about to slip into her seat when her phone chimed to announce a text message. She pulled it out of her pocket. Adam had sent her the address for the dry cleaner.

Perfect. That would allow her to hang farther back in the hope of spotting the Jeep Wrangler.

Texting back “k,” she watched him pull away from the
curb, eased into her seat, and waited for a moment before taking off in the same direction as Adam. As she drove, she could see him quite a distance ahead of her, but no sign of the 4x4 that had passed them earlier. She continued, keeping a discreet distance and parking several yards away from the dry cleaner on Main Avenue. She exited her car and approached the display for the store closest to her. As she made believe she was eyeing the assorted clothes in the window, she watched the reflection of the vehicles that drove by, on the lookout for the Jeep.

Nothing, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe the two men had realized that they had been made and were being more cautious. After a few minutes, her phone chimed again. Another text from Adam with his next stop: the Macaroon Shop in Avon-by-Sea. Even though she had just eaten, her mouth watered at the thought of their almond macaroons.

She slipped back into her car, and as he came out of the dry cleaner holding his shirts, she pulled out of her parking spot and drove by him. She kept to the right, moving slowly to keep him in her rearview mirror.

At the bakery he once again stopped, entered the store, and came out with a box while she parked and watched out for the suspicious vehicle. Not a thing, and they repeated their steps, Adam running errand after errand until she finally caught sight of the Wrangler pulling into the parking lot of the local grocery store. It was an establishment she knew well, and after making sure Adam walked in and the two men were waiting for him, she drove to a spot around one corner of the building where there was a little-known entrance, one that was out of the line of sight of Adam’s stalkers.