Secure Location - By Beverly Long Page 0,13

They’d already been apart for six months but she’d known that she needed to be there.

Hadn’t been able to do anything but stand over him, surrounded by humming machines and blinking lights, and will him to live. When she’d been sure he would, she’d left again, knowing for sure what she’d believed six months earlier when she’d left the first time. He was better off without her.

Perhaps cutting her hair had been symbolic of cutting the last thread that connected her to this man. Damn him for saying he liked it. He should have hated it.

Hated her.

Maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to walk away but he couldn’t. He had always been guided by a sense of duty. That was what made him such a good cop. He’d been promoted through the ranks and had made detective faster than most but hardly anyone seemed to begrudge him the success. They knew he worked hard, pushed hard, made it tough for the bad guys.

She opened her dry cleaning and pulled out a simple black dress. She left the matching jacket on the hanger. Even at night, the temperature would hover near eighty. If they ate outside, she would roast in the jacket. She left her legs bare and slipped on the heels that she’d already worn for twelve hours.

Two sharps raps on the connecting door signified Cruz’s arrival. She opened it and saw that he’d showered, too—the ends of his hair were still a little damp. He’d changed into a pair of gray cargo shorts and a white T-shirt.

“You look tired,” he said.

Great. What every woman wanted to hear. “I’m fine.” She crossed his room and opened the door. “You should definitely spend some time on the River Walk. It’s really fabulous.”

“I’m not here as a tourist, Meg.”

“I know that,” she said. He was here because she was an obligation. She was a tired-looking obligation. Be still my heart. “Look, let’s just go.”

While the evening air was still warm, the sun was low in the sky and had lost its intensity. The skyline was a wild combination of pinks and reds with a little purple creeping in. As they strolled past the open-air restaurants, sweet flower smells combined with the scent of rich food. The gentle murmur of conversation and laughter was punctuated by the rumble of the small guided riverboats filled with gawking tourists. The guide would fill their ears with facts and trivia about the city and the river and how the town had practically died out in the fifties before a few visionaries had figured out how to channel, literally, the area’s greatest natural resource.

Texas wasn’t for sissies. When she’d arrived a year earlier, they’d been in the middle of a horrific drought with wildfires burning across the state. Tourism dollars were tight and there was talk at the hotel that layoffs were imminent. Accepting that Mother Nature could be wicked, she and Scott had vowed to worry about the things they could control.

No guest left less than delighted. When there was the occasional complaint, either Meg or Scott or one of their highly trained managers immediately investigated and employed every service recovery trick in the book. As a result, there were almost all glowing reviews on the external websites and business had been better every month. With both of them working twelve hours a day, six days a week, they had managed to swim upstream and last quarter, their sales had been up thirty percent, year over year.

As a result, she hadn’t spent much time strolling along the stone-lined riverbank and she wasn’t much of a guide.

“What are you hungry for?” she asked. “There’s Italian, Mexican, steaks and seafood. You name it, we’ve got it.”

“Steak,” he said.

Some things never changed.

And some things could not be changed. That’s what had led them to this crazy place where they were almost as polite as strangers to one another but had a familiarity that no amount of time or distance could seem to diminish.

The restaurant she picked had indoor and outdoor seating. The hostess said both were available. Cruz raised an eyebrow, letting her make the choice. She always preferred to eat outside, no matter how hot. The young woman led them to an open spot and Cruz pulled out her chair. She glanced around and hoped that he didn’t get the wrong idea. There were candles on all the tables and soft lights were strung through the branches of the trees that lined the sidewalk. It was romantic. The