When Twilight Comes - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,17
to her collarbone. He could see her listening like an animal, alert, prepared to fight. Or run.
She bit down on her lower lip. Her eyes filled with tears, and after a moment, her fingers came out of the bubbles to cover the spot where he had touched her lips. Tears threatened to spill over just before she ducked under the water and bubbles.
She had felt him! How was that possible?
He watched her dark hair float on the surface as he waited for her to come up for air.
Her head burst up out of the water and she gasped for breath, flipping her mane of wet hair back in a wave of warm scented water that splashed onto the floor.
Her eyes were closed, the lashes dark on her pale skin, as she wiped soap bubbles from her face.
In all these years, he’d never wanted to have substance and warmth—all the things that had once made him human—more than he did at that moment.
He stepped back, surprised not only by the strength of that long-suppressed emotion, but by something else that had been foreign in him: desire.
He watched her grope for the towel hanging on the rod within inches of her fingers. Without thinking, he pulled it down so it fell into her hands.
Her whole body went rigid again. Holding the towel out of the water, she sat up, wiped the soap from her face and opened her eyes to look anxiously around the room once more.
Keeping the towel in front of her, she stood up in the tub. He backed out of the room. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the feel of a woman’s skin. Jenna Dante’s cheek had been soft and warm, just like her lips. God, how he’d missed warmth.
In her bedroom, the covers were turned down. A long black nightgown lay across the pillow. Silk. He heard her pull the plug in the tub. The water began to drain noisily. Even the bedroom smelled of almond from her bath. He inhaled the last of the scent as if it was water and he was a man dying of thirst.
He felt a strange intimacy with this woman. Why, after seventy years of a kind of hell?
Her purse was on the nightstand. He could hear her in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. He knew without looking that she had dried her body quickly and wrapped herself again in the guest robe.
In her purse he found the usual female stuff, along with two grand in traveler’s checks. Her driver’s license said her name was Jenna McDonald. Not Johnson, the name she’d registered under.
In a manila envelope in her purse he found copies of vaccinations and medical histories for herself and her daughter. Also in the purse were her birth certificate and one for her daughter, Alexandria, two plane tickets in the names Nancy and Alicia Clark, and two passports with the kid’s and her photographs, in the new names. The woman had to have a connection to get these—a criminal element.
He glanced toward the bathroom as she finished brushing her teeth and shut off the water. She was running away all right. Far away, from the looks of it, and not planning to come back. From the husband?
A quick search of her suitcase turned up nothing of interest. He glanced in the closet and spotted a large, heavy-looking, navy blue duffel bag on the floor. Interest piqued, he took a look.
The duffel was filled with hundred dollar bills, used ones, banded together in what he would guess were ten or twenty thousand dollar stacks.
He’d never seen that much money in one bag before, but he’d always wanted to. He felt that old pull like a bad ache. Once a thief, always a thief.
Her black clothing had been thrown over the chair near the bed. He picked up the jacket, wondering what was so heavy that it pulled down one pocketed corner.
A gun. The woman had a gun! He didn’t need to pick it up to see that it was fully loaded.
For all he knew she was running from the cops. Or even the feds, given that wad of money in the closet.
What kind of trouble was this woman in?
She came out of the bathroom wrapped up tight in the bathrobe, just as he’d known she would be. Nor was he surprised when she checked the suite again. He watched her open her daughter’s bedroom door.
He could see the relief in Jenna’s body as she knelt over her child, tucking