Reality (The Girl in the Box Book 52), page 27
“Yeah, me too,” she said, breathing deep of him. Her fingertips were resting just above his belt, and she looked into his handsome face.
He drew her closer, kissing her deeply. A wave of heat ran through her body, tingling her in all the right places. He reached a hand up to her shoulder, hooking a finger under the strap of her dress and started to tug it off the shoulder...
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO
Scott
“Great Scott,” Tommy Rolniak said, greeting him with a smile as he walked into the security monitoring room in the New Orleans Superdome. “How's it hanging, big guy?”
Something about Rolniak reminded Scott of J.J. And in a mostly good way. “Hanging in there,” he said. “Listen – this is my last night on the job for a bit. Maybe for good.”
“Oh?” Rolniak furrowed his brow, letting his walkie-talkie fall to his side. “You quitting?”
“Getting relieved, actually,” Scott said. “New team comes on duty tonight, and I guess the big bossman is hiring a specialized group to deal with star protection.”
“Wow,” Rolniak said. “Expanding the business. Look at you guys.” He shook his head slowly. “Probably shouldn't be surprised. If there's one thing Sienna Nealon's name gets you, it's a certain amount of cachet in the field of security and safety. Not a shock, I guess, that you'd be one of the two players actually growing right now.”
Scott knew the other was Jeremy Hampton's company, Blackguard Protection. He knew Hampton only in passing, really, though they obviously had an ex in common. “Any additional detail on that weird box that showed up on day one?”
“The creepy one?” Rolniak asked. “No. But on the plus side, there haven't been any more of them, so maybe it was just a weird stalker who lost focus?” He shrugged. “Or at least that's what we hope for, right?”
“Yeah,” Scott said, frowning. “Hate to leave that thread untrimmed, though, y'know? Like, before I leave it would be nice to snip it off.”
“Right, right,” Rolniak said, grimacing. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. Like I said, we get crazy stuff like this all the time. Probably just a nutter that wanted a moment's attention.”
“Yeah,” Scott said. “I guess you're right.”
“Well, happy trails,” Rolniak said, extending his hand. “I guess it'll feel good getting back to your normal life, right?” He chuckled. “No more guarding til all hours, keeping up with the vampire set? Unless you have to do that in your ordinary day to day, too?”
“Less than you might think,” Scott said, taking his hand and shaking it. “And yeah...” he smiled, though he did not feel much like it, “...it'll be nice to get back to normal.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE
Heidi
“You're looking pretty glum, boss,” Sarah said. They were standing by the craft services table next to little sandwiches, some cucumber, some crab salad, some turkey, everybody going about their business like usual here, Heidi's mind half in the town, rallying together what she needed from them, when Sarah's comment came in, jarring her out of her preparations.
“I've got Sienna on my mind,” Heidi said. The townspeople were just full of ideas on how to stop her; most seemed unlikely to work, but crowdsourcing that to them was a better option than taking her mind off her true focus: love, and making it happen.
“I mean, yeah, you do,” Sarah said, fingering her styrofoam tea cup awkwardly. “But – forgive me – you always get this way when Stardust Suites are happening.”
Heidi sighed. “I just don't have any use for...this, I really don't.”
Sarah giggled. “Well, why not do away with it, then? Let that happen naturally, no camera follows to the suite, none of the ceremony–”
“If I could, I would,” Heidi said, clutching her pumpkin spice latte. “But the men are so much more difficult to...deal with...when they don't have that. Some of the women, too, but less. It's like you almost can't get a guy to walk down the aisle without...that...first. So I don't fight it. I let them have it, it helps bond them together, makes the guys more malleable, and I just...” she shivered, and not from the cold, “...I try not to think about it when it's happening. I care about the love, enduring, soul-deep, not...that. That's for them, not me.”
“I don't know that I would walk down the aisle without that, either,” Sarah said. Her face looked a little pinched.
“Well, there you go, then,” Heidi said, forcing a smile. “See? You're the answer to why it's still in the program. Just let me grimace and bear it while–” She gasped, dropping her coffee.
“What is it, boss?” Sarah asked.
But Heidi was already moving, already running, back into the house, and a shout escaped her lips as she went:
“SIENNA!”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR
Scott
The day went quietly, the concert went off without incident, and the limo ride from the Nashville airport where the private plane dropped them proceeded in absolute silence, with Scott and Traverton occasionally meeting eyes while Scarlet stared out the window, leaning on her hand in the darkness.
“Looks like they're here,” Traverton said, with just a hint of disappointment as the limo pulled up to the house. Sure enough, Angel was out front, pistol on her hip below the waist-cut denim jacket she was wearing on her small frame. She grabbed the door and opened it for them as the limo came to a halt.
“Hey,” Scott said, hurrying to get out first. He offered Scarlet a hand, which she ignored as she got up and stepped right past him. “Didn't have any trouble getting in?”
“Lock code you gave me worked fine,” Angel said in that businesslike manner she had. “Ms. Sahara, I'm Angel Gutierrez, I'll be working your protection detail for the next few days.”
Scarlet just nodded to that. “I'm tired, I'm gonna go in.”
“Olivia Brackett is waiting inside for you,” Angel said, closing the limo door after Traverton had squirmed out. “We swept the house already, so everything's good here.”
“Augustus said I should turn over my arms to you,” Scott said.
“No need,” Angel said. “He armed us at the office before we came out.” She patted the pistol at her side, evincing a hint of distaste in her expression. “Just check 'em back in – oh, and whatever you do, don't leave them in your car. He was very clear about that.”
“Roger that,” Scott said, and called after Scarlet, who was almost to the door. “Wait a sec.” He jogged over to catch her; she was moving slow.
She turned to face him, and she just looked...indifferent. “What?”
He didn't how to take that. “I guess...this is goodbye,” he said.
She made a show of stifling a yawn. “Guess so. Later on, white boy.” And she turned to leave.
He caught her arm. “That really it?”
She tugged it free; he didn't try and stop her. “What else is there?” She leaned a little closer to him, smiling slyly. “We both know I wasn't the only girl you had a good time with this week. You don't need to make this into something more than it is. I was a job, you did it, we had a little fringe something on the side, and now we're moving on with life.”
“It wasn't like that for me,” he whispered, not because he was ashamed, but because it felt like she'd hit him in the gut, like he was realizing something was wrong for the first time and finally the words were coming to him to say it. “I didn't just think of you as another...waystation or whatever. Yeah, I've been with a few women in my time–”
Her eyes danced with amusement and she stifled a laugh. “A few, huh?”
“Maybe more than a few,” he said. “But that doesn't matter.”
“No,” she said, patting him on the arm in a condescending way. “You're right. None of it matters. Not them, and certainly not us. Sorry if you got a different idea. It was just one night. I didn't think it meant anything. Sorry if you did.”
“Yeah,” Scott said, his throat suddenly scratchy, an ashen sensation falling down his face. “I'm sorry, too.”
“You'll be fine,” Scarlet said, patting him again. “Why don't you call that girl you were supposed to meet last night? Tell her you got delayed. Blame it on me. You get together with her tonight, you'll feel right as rain tomorrow.” She stared at him, impassive. “I know I will.” And she turned, slipping inside the house, leaving him out in the dark.
“Uhm,” Angel said, appearing beside him in that damned, eerie way she had of moving fast and without warning, “sorry to break in, but...anything we ought to know before we take up the task here?”
“She's a huge pain in the ass,” Scott said. “She'll steal your tea from you in the morning if you don't make her an extra cup. She'll treat you like a servant if you let her, so don't. She sings like an angel and has the mouth of a trucker–”
“I was really looking more for job pointers,” Angel said, frowning, and waving a hand in front of her to stop him, “not commentary, so...if that's all...?” And she moved toward the door. When he didn't say anything more, she slowly shut it behind her.
Scott turned to find Traverton waiting on the driveway loop, grimacing. When he drew close to the smaller man, Traverton said, “Sorry, man. If it makes you feel better, that's the sort of rejection I get when asking a woman out, so you still look like a hero to me.”
“I need a beer,” Scott said. And he did.
“Any chance I could catch a ride with you?” Traverton asked, looking a little pained. “I tried my car this morning and it's kinda dead. Battery, maybe. Or the alternator. Gonna need a tow – once Augustus pays me tomorrow. Cuz I'm kinda–”
“I'll buy you a beer,” Scott said, beckoning Traverton toward his car. “And I can drop you wherever.”
“Thanks, man,” Traverton said. “I'll drink the cheapest thing they got, and try and stay quiet.”
“You drink as much as you want,” Scott said, feeling particularly dark looking back at the house. It looked dark, too. “I know I will be.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIVE
Eilish
We were on the bed now, more undressed than not, his weight pleasantly atop me in all the right ways. I struggled to breathe as he kissed me again and again, but some of that was from excitement and just a little was because of his weight, and it was a little uncomfortable but definitely not enough to make me want him to stop–
CRASH.
The window shattered and I jerked, looking to the side to see–
“Ew, gross,” Sienna said, hovering in the middle of the room, jacket blowing behind her, hair that reached the nape of her neck waving in the breeze. She'd opened the window in a grand way, shards of glass everywhere on the floor.
“What the hell are you doing here, you shrew?” I asked, snatching up Val's jacket, which had been discarded on the bed. “You cannae even let me have a moment of happiness, can you?”
“I'm willing to concede that this might result in thirty seconds of elevated blood pressure and mild grinding, but that's all,” Sienna said. “I've come to stop you from making a terrible mistake that you'll regret, and probably drink hard to forget.”
“I'm Irish, drinking hard is not exactly an imposition, okay?” I sat up, clutching the jacket over me teats. “And the only thing I regret is coming here with you, you lovelorn harpy.”
“Why couldn't you have just given us that thirty seconds,” Val said. “I could have been done in thirty seconds.”
Sienna made a smug, self-superior sort of face. “I rest my case.”
Then she blasted him with her bloody light web, anchoring him to the wall behind us.
I screamed. “Why must ye always ruin everything for me? Breandan, the show, Val's erection–”
“I've still got it,” Val said, struggling against the light webs. He tried to point down at the small lump in his boxer briefs.
I looked back at Sienna. The look on her face was insufferable. “My thirty second estimate might have been high.”
The doors thundered open, and there stood Heidi, face red with rage. “You – ruin – everything!”
“That's what I said!” I shouted to make myself heard.
“No, I'm ruining your show,” Sienna said, firing a light web at Heidi's feet; she dodged. “There's a difference between that and everything. Here, let me show you.”
Waves of fire came blasting off of her hands, which were pointed out to either side like she was on the bloody cross. It struck the walls and seemed to disappear, but it made Heidi scream, and a second later I saw it–
Fire. Fire on the walls, fire on old, dusty curtains I hadn't even seen a moment before.
And then, about two seconds later...
...It was bloody everywhere.
“Now I'm ruining everything,” Sienna said with a gleam in her eyes. “Or at least everything in close proximity.” She was channeling her powers, making the fire spread throughout the Stardust Suite. “What do you think, Heidi? Should I bring your world crashing down around your ears?”
I looked at Val, anchored to the wall, but something had happened. Light was flickering about his face, and suddenly it changed before my eyes from some handsome, slightly rugged, muscled, bare-chested dream...
...to a stubby, slack-jawed, spotted, distinctly pot-bellied fellow with a less than lantern jaw. I blinked, trying to reconcile my vision and memory of Val with what I was seeing now. It was night and day, and I had a hard time putting the two together.
“Why?” Heidi shouted back at her, drawing my attention away from my suddenly less-than-stunning beau. “So everyone else can live as miserable and lonely a life as you? Sitting in your bed at night in the dark, mourning a husband you don't even remember and half-wishing you were dead?”
“Husband?” I asked, my voice coming very near to cracking. “She's never had a husband.” I looked right at Sienna and her face...
...her face had crumpled, her lip was quivering, a very distinctly un-Sienna expression of pure, mourning sorrow.
She looked right at me with teary eyes and said, “Hold on.”
With a whip of her hand I felt light webs slap me across the midsection, anchoring Val's jacket to my chest. My bare, pale legs chilled in a breeze and I felt a yank as she ripped me out of the house through the shattered window, wind cutting across me as she blew right out of the Stardust Suite and inertia made me its bitch.
“AHHHHHHHHH!” I yelled, because being ripped out a window at a hundred miles an hour in your panties is not an experience I could ever recall having in my life...and it was not a good one. Certainly not a trade up from having a man pleasantly weighing upon you, the anticipation hanging in the air – to this. This dread feeling.
“I need to get you away from her,” Sienna said, carrying me along. She jetted above the trees, giving us a margin enough that I didn't club myself against the branches.
“What the hell did I just see back there?” I asked, the first terrible, gnawing inkling that something was wrong clawing at my stomach. The vision of Val, his face and body utterly changed, the look upon Heidi's face, her loss of control... “What the hell is happening?” I felt tears streaking down my cheeks, and a sick feeling in the pit of my gut.
“You got duped,” Sienna said, carrying me along, her voice cracking. “We all did.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX
Scott
“Have I told you yet that you're still a hero to me?” Traverton asked again. He'd only had one beer, and he was already slurring his words a bit. They were sitting in Old Burd's, Scott's favorite Nashville bar, right on Broadway but half as visited or less than the surrounding ones. “I mean...you went for it, man. Swung for the frigging fences.” He was wobbling on the barstool, his thin frame shaking. “You bagged an A-list celebrity. Do you know how out of reach that is for a guy like me? Watch this–” And he beckoned the bartender over.
She was probably mid-twenties, was wearing a tank top, and had full-sleeve tattoos on both arms. Her dark eyes scanned Traverton, and with a polite tone that definitely had an edge to it she asked, “What can I get you?”
“You're beautiful,” Traverton said, oozing.
“Get the hell outta here,” she said without missing a beat.
“Sorry, my friend's drunk,” Scott said, drawing a look from her that turned from scathing to relatively soft when she looked him over. Not that she hadn't noticed him before, but the effect was immediate.
“He's had one beer,” she said.
“He's a lightweight.”
“I'm a lightweight,” Traverton repeated, slurring for effect.
“Any more of that and he's cut off,” she said, giving Traverton a warning look. While she didn't quite smile at Scott, her look definitely lightened, then lingered on him for a moment before she turned away to deal with another customer. The jukebox was playing in the background, and when Scott turned to give Traverton his full attention, he could see an empty stage through the light crowd to his right.
“See?” Traverton said once she was out of earshot. “I know you feel like dirt right now, but doesn't that make you feel better?” He sat up a little straighter at the stool. “You're not flat-ass broke and sleeping in the trees with a car that doesn't start, right?”
“Shit, Traverton,” Scott said, cringing. “What the hell happened to you, man?”
“Hey, don't feel bad for me,” Traverton said. “Augustus is going to pay me tomorrow, and if you give him a good report, he might, like, hire me. Do you have any idea what that would mean to me?” The thin man's eyes got watery. “I could get a place of my own, y'know? No more going bird mode at night – unless I wanted to, of course. I could work with you guys, maybe invest in a wardrobe from this century.” He waved at the ragged flannel jacket. It was the same one he'd been wearing when he'd been shot by the Chinese capture team. “Maybe style myself up some if things go well, you know? I'll never look as cool as you, but,” he gulped. “Man...it could be a lot better than it is.”
