“I don’t believe in that kind of failure.”
“How can you not believe in failure? It exists.” He’d always known that. Just hadn’t been personally privy to the experience. “Here’s an example, that while maybe over the top, explains my point. Kids get abducted and no matter how hard their parents and the cops try to find them, they aren’t always successful.”
Sometimes bad things happened in life and you were powerless to fix them.
“They only fail if they stop trying to find them.”
“What if they turn up dead?” What if...in the end... Tabitha didn’t find her Jackson? Or didn’t find him well and happy?
“They didn’t fail, then, did they? They found the child.”
Alex thought they were talking analogy—something Johnny had been doing with his father since grade school. He had no idea that what Johnny had failed at was finding a child.
Failing the partnership set up to find the child.
“The results of our ventures might not be as satisfying as we’d hoped, but the only way we fail is if we quit trying,” Alex added. “As long as you’re trying, the chance for success is there.”
His dad was right. Although the partnership with his temporary neighbor seemed to be hitting a rough patch, overall it was working. He had his food truck success. And Tabitha had a potential lead to follow on Jackson. They weren’t failing.
He just had to keep trying.
Chapter Fifteen
They worked according to Tabitha’s schedule and since she had the next weekend off she had a total of seven days before she had to be back to work.
They’d work the truck all week including the upcoming Sunday, park it and then drive home so she could go to work Monday morning, which meant she had six whole days to be close to Jackson, to share the suite with Johnny. She wanted to savor every minute of her time with Johnny.
And yet it felt as if she and Johnny were barely friends now. The partnership was thriving, but since that kiss, he hadn’t looked her in the eye for more than a second. And he hadn’t touched her at all. Not even brushing by her in the truck.
She understood. His physical state would become unbearable if he had to walk around with a semiconstant hard-on.
Maybe she’d been wrong to think she wouldn’t be able to handle unconditional sex with him.
She’d handled everything else life had handed her. Good, bad and in between. Including tragedies that would stop a lot of people. Surely she’d get through saying goodbye to Johnny. Even if she had sex with him.
Leaving her room on Thursday morning, she made up her mind to hit on him that night. She’d get a bottle of wine—not the pricey nectar they’d had the week before, of course, but something nice that was within her budget. And she’d suggest that, instead of snacking in the truck and eating out on the way home, they close up a little early and head back to the suite for room service.
She was considering the idea of pleading fatigue so he’d be amenable to dinner in the hotel, half afraid she’d have to concoct some reason to get him to agree, when she saw him come out of his room with his phone to his ear.
Johnny on the phone wasn’t all that odd. The completely serious and focused expression on his face was downright scary.
Thoughts of seduction fled immediately as she approached him.
He was telling his caller to contact him immediately with any news and then he hung up.
“Who was that?” Something told Tabitha it had to do with her. Probably the way he was looking at her...
“Montgomery.”
The private investigator. Tabitha stumbled as her tennis shoe caught on the marble-tiled entryway. “What’s going on?” Her skin cooled, and it felt like shards of glass were stinging her.
“Matt didn’t leave at his normal time this morning. His van is still in the driveway. When the guy on night watch noticed the discrepancy, he was too late...”
“Too late?” The blood drained out of her body. She could actually feel it leaving.
“When he didn’t answer the knock on the door—a would-be wrong address for a delivery if he had answered—Montgomery’s entire team began canvassing the area. They got a local bus driver who said Mark and the little guy boarded about six this morning. He let them off at another stop, several miles away. Montgomery and his group lost track of him from there.”
“So...maybe his van didn’t start, and he had to take the bus to work.”