Edge Of Oblivion

16

He gritted his teeth again. Why in God’s name did she have to be wearing a skirt?

He went to the door, let the bellman in, and indicated where the man should set the bags. There was an inordinately large amount of them—all Morgan’s—and he had to make several trips back and forth from his bell cart in the hallway. The man kept throwing heated glances at the sofa, where Morgan perched while she watched him like a cat when it hears the can opener, all eyes and appetite.

Xander went to get his billfold from the duffel bag on the desk. When he turned back, the porter stood slack-jawed and silent in front of Morgan, stupidly gaping. She brushed her hair back from her face, a gesture that seemed somehow unnatural, as if her hands had just been doing something else, and smiled at him.

“Porter,” Xander snapped. Watching men fall to pieces all over his mark was going to get old, fast.

Blinking, the man turned. Xander held out a fistful of euros and jerked his head toward the door. “Yes, sir,” the porter murmured and walked over to him—more correctly stumbled over—his face gone a curious and very unnatural shade of green. Xander frowned.

And was able to leap out of the way just as the porter opened his mouth and sent a jet of hot, yellow vomit spraying onto the vanilla carpet in the exact spot he’d just been standing.

Disgusted, he barked a string of curses. The man went to his knees, coughing and spitting, blathering apologies in Italian. From the sofa behind him came a laugh, low and pleased, and he looked up to find Morgan smiling at him, sweet as saccharine and just as fake.

“Oh my,” she said, still casually swinging her foot with its finely turned ankle back and forth. “I wonder if it was something in the water. Too bad you weren’t able to assist him with a dose of your wonderful acupressure. It looks like his ‘inner gate’ could use a little oiling.”

He felt the tiniest twinge of admiration that she would risk something so bold purely out of spite, right before it was swallowed by a wave of blistering anger so strong he had to curl his hands into fists to control the itch to curl them around her neck.

“Try something like that again,” he said, his voice very low in his throat, “and you’ll find yourself missing a pair of hands.”

She flushed red, and he was gratified to see it. The porter struggled to stand. He found his footing and backed away toward the door, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his beige linen uniform, still stammering apologies and assurances that someone would be up directly to attend to the mess. He reached the door and disappeared through it at a run.

Morgan bent and retrieved her handbag from the floor, then rose, all without the slightest bit of haste or discomposure. She retrieved one of her smaller suitcases from the row against the wall, then walked in easy, graceful strides to the door of the master suite. Inside the door she paused and turned, her hand on the doorframe, a smile on her face, the picture of untroubled elegance.

Only her eyes gave her away. The heat in her emerald gaze scorched the air between them like a lit fuse.

“And if you ever threaten me again, errand boy,” she said quietly, swinging the door shut, “you’ll find yourself missing your di—”

The door slammed closed before he heard the final word, but he didn’t have to. He knew exactly what it was.

When the woman from housekeeping arrived twenty minutes later to clean the carpet, Xander was still standing in the middle of the living room, staring hard at the closed bedroom door.

It was two hours before she was sufficiently calmed to leave the master suite, and by then Xander was gone.

The shower helped. It was a mosaic-tiled, glass-enclosed expanse of luxury with silky lavender shampoo and French-milled grape seed oil soaps and three sets of jets set at various heights, the better to massage a body with hot, pulsing water from all angles. Seething, she spent what felt like forever under the sprays before she began to relax. When she emerged—puckered—there were Egyptian cotton towels, plush and pristine white, there were ivory cashmere robes hung from a gleaming silver dowel, there was a marble fireplace and what appeared to be a real Picasso hung above the dressing table. There was even a window with a view to the faraway, sunset-emblazoned hills.

What there was not was a gun. Which she very much would have liked to find hidden in one of the vanity drawers.