Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,24

his head. “Anti-American, my ass. I’ve been here for weeks. That was not about us being American. That was about you being gay. I’m not leaving you here alone.”

Jules rolled his eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

Sam held out his bandaged hand. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

This was going nowhere fast, but Sam couldn’t let it go. “Jules—”

“Don’t you get it?” Jules asked, leading the way up the stairs to Sam’s hotel suite. “This is my life. I could be jumped, beaten, and, yeah, even killed for being gay—not just here, but in any town in virtually any country in the world. Particularly in the United States, by the way. Are you going to follow me home to DC, Sam? Lots of hate crimes happen there, you know.”

“Then maybe you should have a beard.” Sam knew as soon as the words left his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say. But then he unlocked the door to his suite, and the situation went from bad to worse.

Chloe, dressed in only a pair of leopard-print thong panties and some very high heels, was dancing to music on the radio while fixing herself a drink at his wet bar.

A drink? Another drink. Clearly, she’d had quite a few already. “There you are,” she said, as she caught sight of Sam. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Once again, Jules stepped in front of Sam. “You must be Chloe. I love your shoes.”

She grabbed—apparently just as Jules had hoped she would—for her robe. In fact, he even helped her into it. “Pack,” he ordered Sam over his shoulder, as he led Chloe out onto the balcony. “You remind me of Scarlett Johansson,” Sam heard him saying to the girl. “You must get that all the time—you don’t? Really? You look a lot like her …”

Sam was almost completely packed, but he wasn’t going anywhere without Jules. He stood in the bathroom. It didn’t make sense to pack up his toilet kit, only to unpack it again tonight when he went to bed. His clothes were no problem. He could easily live out of his suitcase. He’d look slightly more rumpled than usual, but …

“I got you on the four o’clock flight to London.” Jules stood in the door.

Sam looked at him in the mirror. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

Jules nodded. “I appreciate your loyalty, but Chloe had a little confession that, well, she asked me to share with you.”

Sam waited.

“The bride and groom have apparently eloped,” Jules told him. “The wedding party is indefinitely postponed. Your services are no longer needed—as of last night, as a matter of fact.”

“What?”

“Apparently Chloe neglected to tell her sisters about this, too. She wanted to stay a few extra days, and … She’s young and misdirected. Apparently she’s got quite the crush on you, cowboy.”

Sam used one arm to sweep what Jules would call his “products” off the sink counter and into his bag. “The four o’clock to London will only get me home in time if nothing goes wrong,” he said tightly. No delays, no canceled flights, no screwups between connecting flights. “And I’m still not leaving unless you’ve got a flight out of here, too.”

“Yeah, about that,” Jules said. “Confession part two. Apparently she hired those men to, well, as she put it, make me go away.”

Sam looked at him. “Young, misdirected—and vicious.”

“She is a little socially disengaged,” Jules said. “But she’s leaving, too. With her sisters. I thought I’d hang for a few days. Maybe get to know Paolo a little better.”

“Paolo?” Sam asked.

“He owns that restaurant,” Jules admitted. “While you were washing out that cut on your hand, we got to talking and … he, um, offered to give me cooking lessons.”

Sam laughed. He hadn’t even realized that the restaurant owner—an older man with gray at his temples, good-looking in an Italian Tom Hanks kind of way—was gay. “That’s a new way of saying it.” He sobered fast. “Are you sure you want to …?”

“Sweetie, the only thing I’m absolutely sure about is that I don’t want a beard,” Jules said.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Sam told his friend. “I didn’t mean it. But I worry about you.”

“I know. I forgive you. I just … I want a relationship with someone like Paolo who’s not afraid to be himself,” Jules said. “God, I really want someone I’m in such a hurry to go home to that I’ll pack in that horrific way that you just did.” He laughed, but then sobered. “You know, before? When you