Shadow Woman A Novel Page 0,105
a cat with a ball of yarn. She wasn’t safe; she might never be safe again. But at this moment she felt safer, better, than she had since she’d looked in the mirror and seen a stranger’s face staring back at her. Her heart beat at a steady rhythm; she wasn’t poised to leap from the tub and flee. Maybe tomorrow she’d be on the run again, but for tonight she could enjoy a simple hot bath, real food, and sleeping in a decent bed.
When she sat back up—because her knees really needed the heat more than her ears did—she opened her eyes and looked around the bathroom, all white marble and polished chrome. There was this big bathtub and a shower, double sinks, and a separate room for the toilet, as well as more thick, fluffy towels than two people could use in a single day. She’d say this for Xavier: when he found a place to hide out for a night, he had much better luck than she did.
Luck, hell! He was prepared for anything and everything. Having a fake ID and credit cards under a false name was much more effective than lying her way into an unrentable hotel room where she had to sit with the lights out, no sheets, and one crappy towel.
Xavier. X. The man of her dreams, literally. She was still highly pissed at him for letting her pedal that damn bike for so long before stopping her, furious with him for terrifying her, and yet—he was here.
Without him, she’d been bereft, and hadn’t known it. Only now that he was back in her life could she look at the interval between then and now and see how drab and joyless it had been. Xavier was the color in the colorless world they’d stuck her in. In spite of everything, she was relieved that she could now remember … some of what had happened. She remembered him most clearly.
She still didn’t know how things stood. Were they the good guys, or the bad guys? Xavier certainly could break either way. Maybe both; maybe neither. She thought about that, and realized it didn’t matter that he wasn’t a certified White Knight. Her life wasn’t a black-and-white movie from the fifties where good and bad were easily defined and identified. White hats for the heroes, black ones for the villains. The real world was much more complicated than that. Her world was complicated.
No, complicated didn’t begin to cover it. Her world was a cluster-fuck.
The door opened and Xavier came in—without knocking, of course, but even though she was a little uneasy at being naked in front of him, she didn’t grab a towel, or otherwise show the modesty that felt out of place between them. He’d seen her like this before. She might not remember exactly when, but she knew it had happened.
“I ordered food. It’ll be here in forty-five minutes.”
She looked up at him. The man towered over her, fully dressed, armed—she didn’t know where he’d had the weapon hidden, unless it was in the small leather kit he’d carried in, but she was glad he had the big handgun. Even though logic said they were safe, he’d found her, so it followed that someone else could.
“What did you order for me?” She was grumpy enough that she wanted him to have ordered something she didn’t like, so she could snap at him.
“Crab cakes. And cheesecake for dessert.”
She loved crab cakes, and cheesecake was one of her favorites, too. He’d remembered. Did she know his favorite foods? Out of the murkiness swam an obvious answer: steak. He wasn’t a picky eater at all, but he loved steak, rare.
Because she was still grumpy, she said, “I get first pick. I might decide I want the steak. I earned it today, calories be damned.”
His lips twitched. “Yes, ma’am. So you remember about the steak?”
“Not specifically, but generally … yes.”
He lowered himself down to sit on the floor beside the tub, taking her by surprise. He no longer towered over her, in a position of obvious authority. They were on the same level, almost face-to-face. She was naked and he wasn’t, which she might have been naive enough to think put her at a serious disadvantage if it weren’t for the way his gaze grew heavy-lidded as he looked at her breasts, and the dark hair between her legs.
He’d be naked too, before much more time had passed; sex between them had always been immediate and demanding.