What He Protects (What He Wants, Book Six) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (3 page)

The door was shut, the blinds were
closed.
 

And Noah was gone.

I swallowed hard, wondering where he
could have gone at two in the morning.
 
He’s probably just in his office,
I told myself,
working.
 
I didn’t need to go and check on him.
  
It would have been perfectly normal for him to have
had trouble sleeping, to decide it was better to get some work done than to lie
in bed tossing and turning.
 
He was
a grown man in his own house.

A
grown man who’d just been arrested for murder.

I slid out of bed, making my way to the
bedroom door and opening it slowly.
 
The apartment felt eerily quiet, the kind of quiet that came from an
empty space.

“Noah?” I called.
 
But there was no answer.
 
My heart started to pound, wondering if
I’d been wrong about him, if maybe he
was
a murderer, one who’d decided to just
skip town and take off in the middle of the night.
 
I started down the hallway, using my phone as a guide.

I crept into the kitchen, peeking into
the office as I went, but it was empty, the door open.
 
The kitchen was neat and tidy, with no
sign of anyone.

I was clutching my phone so hard the hard
plastic of the case was digging into my palm.
 
I was about to call Noah’s name again, when I heard a
muffled voice.
 
It took me a second
to realize it was coming from the terrace outside – the one off the
kitchen.

The door to the terrace was closed, but I
could see the outline of a figure through the glass.
 
A scream threatened to spill out of my throat, but then I
realized it was just Noah, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

But my relief was short lived.
 
Why was Noah out on his terrace, the
rest of the house locked up tight, at two o’clock in the morning?
 
My eyes were beginning to adjust to the
darkness, and I realized now there were
two
figures on the terrace.

Someone was out there with Noah.

“…shouldn’t have come here…” Noah was
saying.

The other figure was a woman, dressed in
black jeans and a black leather jacket, her hair pulled back under a black
baseball cap.
 
She was leaning back
on the railing, her elbows perched on top of the bars.
 

“It was important,” she said.

“Shhh!” Noah said.
 
“I told you to keep your voice
down.”
 
He looked behind him into
the house, and I quickly crouched down behind the island, holding my breath and
praying he wouldn’t see me.
 

The woman’s reply was muffled, and I
couldn’t hear what she was saying.
 
I peeked around the island, hoping I could see or hear something
else.
 
But they moved out of my
sight just a little bit, obstructed now by the side of the counter and the
furniture out on the terrace.

“…not to come here…”
 
Noah said again.

“...wanted to see you in person, Noah…
the phone….”

I watched as she put her hand on Noah’s
arm, and he shook his head and grabbed onto the railing of the terrace, leaning
over and looking down at the street below.
 
He was still wearing his pajama pants and no shirt, and I
hated that she was touching him, hated that she had her hand on his bare
arm.
 
It was also too cold to be
outside dressed in just a thin pair of pants and no top, and I realized whoever
this woman was, she must have shown up completely out of the blue.

I couldn’t hear any voices now, even
muffled ones, and it seemed as if the two of them were just standing there in
silence.
 
After a moment, the woman
let go of Noah’s am and grabbed a black duffle bag that was sitting on the
chair.
 

She unzipped it and pulled out two items
– a bulky file folder, and a dark green scarf.
 
It was the kind of scarf that was made more for warmth than
aesthetics -- it was bulky, with tassels on the ends, and I couldn’t tell from
here, but it looked like maybe it had been hand knit.

She handed Noah the file folder, and he
took it.
 
When she handed him the
green scarf, she did it slowly, almost reverently, like it was of great
importance.
 
He stared down at it
for a while, and she put her hand back on his arm.

I felt like I was spying on some kind of
intimate moment, like I was seeing something between two people that was
supposed to be private.
 
At the
same time, there was obviously something untoward going on, since this woman
was showing up in the middle of the night with documents, and Noah had
obviously done his best to keep her from me.

“You should go,” I heard Noah say very
clearly.
 
His voice was a little
more raised now, and it broke the spell.
 
They began to head toward the terrace door, and I made my way quickly out
of the kitchen and back down the hall to the bedroom.

I shut the door behind me, wincing at the
noise it made.

I climbed back into bed, my heart
pounding so fast I could feel the blood rushing in my ears.

I lay there for what seemed like forever,
afraid to move, afraid to even breathe.
 
I watched as the clock on my phone moved from two to three to four in
the morning.
 
Noah still hadn’t
returned to the bedroom.
 
I
wondered what he was doing – had he left the apartment?
 
I hadn’t heard anyone leave, but it was
impossible to know – with the door shut, the lights off, the blinds
closed, the room felt more like a cave than a bedroom.
 
Was that woman still here?
 
Was she going to turn up dead?
 
Was
I
going to turn up dead?
 

Finally, at around five in the morning, I
heard the sound of the bedroom door opening.
 
I kept my eyes shut and my breathing shallow, hoping Noah
would think I was still sleeping.
 
My pulse raced.

After a moment, I heard Noah moving
across the room toward his dresser, then the sound of water running in the
bathroom.

I stayed still.

The bathroom door opened a few moments
later, and I heard the sound of Noah leaving the bedroom and moving down the
hallway.
 
This time, he kept the
bedroom door open.
 
There were
rustling noises in the kitchen before the sound of the front door opening and
closing echoed through the apartment.

Noah was gone.

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I
was holding.
 

I sat up in bed, not sure what to
do.
 
I was tempted to start
snooping around his apartment, going through his things, seeing if I could find
anything that implemented him.
 
The
lawyer part of me wanted to.
 
The
part of me that was in a relationship, if you could even call it that, wanted
to trust him enough not to do that.

My phone buzzed, and I almost jumped out
of my skin.
 
I picked up my phone.

One new text.

Noah.

I’d
like to have a meeting with you this morning.
 
Meet me at my office at 7.

**

I arrived at the offices of Cutler and
Associates promptly at 6:55.
 
I
wasn’t sure what this meeting was going to entail, and so I’d made sure to be
prompt.
 
I had class that morning,
and I couldn’t afford to be late.
 
Whatever this was, I wanted to make sure I got it taken care of
quickly.
 
Even so, adrenaline
coursed through my body at the thought of a private meeting with Noah.
 

I fiddled with the strap of my bag as I
waited for the elevator, wondering if I should bring up what I’d seen the night
before out on his terrace.
 
Noah
was so temperamental, I couldn’t tell if me confronting him would force him to
explain, or just cause him to push me away.
 
My instinct was that he would push me away.
 
Obviously if he’d wanted to tell me
what was going on, he wouldn’t have gone so far out of his way to hide it.
 

My phone rang as I was about to step onto
the elevator.
 

Professor Worthington.

“Charlotte,” he barked into the
phone.
 
“Where are you?”

I wasn’t sure what to say.
 
Since I had no idea why Noah wanted to
meet with me, I didn’t know if it had to do with the case or if it was
something of a more personal nature.

“I’m about to meet with Mr. Cutler,” I
said finally, taking a chance.

“Good, so he’s been in touch.”

“Yes.”

“I emailed him this morning to let him
know we’re going to begin preparing his defense, and he indicated he would only
be speaking with you.”

“Oh.”
 
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.

“I’m going to need you to get as much
information out of him as you can.”

“Okay,” I said, almost laughing out loud
at the absurdity of being tasked with trying to get information out of Noah
Cutler.

“Thank you.”
 
Professor Worthington paused.
 
“Is this arrangement okay with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean are you okay meeting with Mr.
Cutler alone?”
 
His voice was
tinged with concern.
 
It was the
first time I’d heard Professor Worthington show any kind of nervousness about
me being involved with Noah.
 
Up
until this point, he’d been very clear that I was to do whatever it took to
make sure we had what we needed for the case.
 
It made me wonder if perhaps Professor Worthington knew
something that made him worried for my safety.

I wondered if I should tell him about
what happened last night, about the mysterious woman who’d shown up at Noah’s
house, how they’d been talking out on the terrace.
 
But to do that would make it clear I’d spent the night with
Noah.
 
And I was suddenly getting
the vibe that something had changed with Professor Worthington – now that
Noah had been arrested, Professor Worthington seemed a little more
cautious.
 
If he knew how close I
really was with Noah, he might take me off the case.

“I’m fine,” I said, stepping into the
elevator and hoping I sounded confident.
 

“Do you want me to send Josh?”

I laughed.
 
“Are you serious?”

He laughed as well.
 
“No, you’re right.
 
What was I thinking?
 
Do you want me to come down there?”

“No. I’m okay.
 
I can deal with Mr. Cutler.”
 
The words sounded so strong and forceful coming out of my
mouth, that I almost believed them myself.

“Well, then,” Professor Worthington said,
back to being all business.
 
“I’ll
expect an emailed report from you as soon as you’re finished.
 
Then we can talk about next steps.”

“Thank you, Professor.” I hung up the
phone and stepped out into the carpeted hallway of Cutler and Associates.
 
I thought about the last time I was
here, before any of this had even really started.
 
I almost laughed at how much things could change in such a
short time.

I walked down the hall and was stopped at
the reception desk.
 
There was a
new receptionist there, young and blonde with shiny hair and an enthusiastic
smile.

“Can I help you?” she asked me.

“I’m here to see Noah,” I said.
 
“He’s expecting me.”

“Your name?”

“Charlotte.”

“Last name?”

“Holloway,” I said, trying not to be
offended by the fact that I was being questioned while trying to get access to
the man I’d been sleeping with.

She turned toward the computer screen,
her perfectly manicured nails tapping over the keys.
 
I suddenly felt self-conscious of my own nails, which I was
always biting.
 
I swallowed.

“Ah, yes,” the receptionist said.
 
“I see here you’re part of his legal
team.
 
You can take a seat over
there.”