A painful clenching in her chest nearly took her breath away. She was a nurse and she knew she wasn’t having a heart attack, but it felt like it anyway. A vise squeezing down and not letting up, the pressure nearly debilitating.
“Don’t say things like that to me. You can get any woman you want to sleep with you. There’s a smorgasbord of women right out that door. Go to the bar, Zale, and find somebody. I was honest with you when I said it hurt when you left. That should satisfy your ego enough that you don’t have to come back for more. Find someone else.”
“What did I write on your leg?”
His voice. So quiet. Gentle. Almost tender. She took a deep breath. That was a mistake. She drew him in. The scent of fresh snow. Fresh rain. The woods. Cedar and pine. He was . . . Zale.
“ ‘You’re not listening to me.’ That’s what you wrote on my leg. ‘You’re not listening to me.’ And something else, but it was in another language.”
“I wrote the same thing in French and Italian.”
“You’re such a show-off. I am listening.” She wasn’t. Or she was trying not to.
“Then you’re deliberately not hearing me. I didn’t want to leave you, Vienna. In my head, in my heart, I didn’t leave you. I haven’t been with another woman since, nor do I want to be. I’ve been looking for a way to make a relationship work between us without putting you in danger. There has to be a way, because I’m not willing to lose you. Not if you feel anything at all for me.”
They can’t be trusted. They lie to you. They’ll say anything they think you want to hear in order to get their way.The voice came unbidden into her head. She didn’t even know who told her that.
Vienna had to look at his face. Into his eyes. Would he lie to her just to sleep with her again? Their chemistry had been off the charts. Men lied all the time to get women in bed. This was Vegas. Maybe he had a bet going with his friend Rainier. She knew better. She was just afraid. It had hurt too much when he’d walked out, and she was used to protecting herself.
Zale rolled over onto his belly again, laying his head in her lap, arms around her waist. “I know you’re scared, Snowflake. I don’t blame you.” He’d called her Snowflake because of the color of her hair. As a term of endearment, she preferred it to baby. Although, once or twice he’d called her baby as well, and in that voice of his, she hadn’t minded that much.
He turned his head and pressed a kiss over her T-shirt into her belly button before resting his cheek on her again. That sent a shiver of heat down her spine.
“I don’t give my word lightly. I’m telling you, Vienna, I mean every single word I’m saying to you. I left without telling you I’d be back because I had no idea if I would survive what I was walking into. I couldn’t make you promises I didn’t know if I could keep. I didn’t realize I would feel the way I did about you when I first followed you. I only knew I had to see you again. It was a compulsion to talk to you again that had me seeking you out. You’re so damn intelligent. You’re good at the things that matter to me. We were out there in the woods and there wasn’t a single complaint about ticks or mosquitoes. You follow the code of leaving no footprint behind. On top of that, to me, you’re so beautiful, you take my breath away.”
Vienna found her fingers buried in his thick hair, massaging his scalp. That had been their nights, talking together just like this. He would lay with his head in her lap, and they’d talk about everything and nothing.
“Obviously, what you’re doing here in Vegas is dangerous. Is this the same mission you left to go on?” She didn’t know if she should even be asking that much of him.
“No. I completed that one without a hitch. We were sent here recently. It was a get-in-and-get-out to collect information, but we aren’t getting anywhere.”
She heard the frustration in his voice.
“As a rule, I’m able to find the right people to talk to and get what I want from them. Rainier has a few talents as well, but neither of us has gotten a single lead that has brought us any closer to what we need to know.”
Vienna frowned, that strange note of discord reacting immediately, brushing at the insides of her mind. “That isn’t true, Zale. You talked to someone recently that was very close to your answer, or you and your partner wouldn’t have been targets. That person had an association with the three people who tried to kill you. If their boss didn’t order the hit on you and Rainier, and the three took the initiative on their own, it had to be because they were careless in some way. Maybe the person you spoke with wasn’t supposed to know anything and one or all of them had been loose-lipped.”
She was throwing out ideas aloud the way she did to herself when she needed to find the best chance for a rescue. She’d talk herself through every possibility until one felt right to her. Then she’d map it out and ensure it was correct and doable in every way.
She continued to rub his scalp as she puzzled it out in her mind. “Of course, it’s entirely possible the boss ordered the hits. If so, that means the association leads straight to him—or her. I don’t get that vibe though.”
Zale scooted into a sitting position facing her, his expression serious. Dark. Almost scary. “What vibe? What kinds of vibes do you get, Vienna?”
At least he wasn’t making fun of her. That was something, but his tone and his demeanor had gone to a remote, controlled interrogator—one that sent chills down her spine.
She tried a casual shrug and looked around for the water bottle. She’d set it on the side table, and it was too much of a stretch to reach it. “Sometimes I get strong feelings. I call them vibrations because I feel them that way. I’ve learned that I can trust my intuition. In this case, the feelings I get point to someone you talked to associating with the three men who attacked you, rather than their boss. I have no idea what you’re into, so I can’t help you any further than that.”
Zale’s dark, enigmatic gaze drifted over her face. She had the feeling he could look right into her and see every hidden secret she had in her soul. “You already hold our lives in your hands, Vienna. You know we’re here undercover. You know we were attacked outside the hotel. You allowed us into your suite. If I didn’t get all the cameras, and someone managed to get footage of us, and somehow security saw us at your door, you could be compromised.”
She waited while he weighed the risks of telling her more. At first, she hadn’t wanted to know, because that would only tie them together further. But now, when she was contemplating gambling her heart all over again because yes, she was that big of a risk-taker, she wanted to know how much trouble he was in and what she could do to help.
“In a nutshell, we’ve had two agents disappear. The owner of the hotel, Daniel Wallin, contacted our employer over a year ago and reported there had been two attempts on his life. He wanted to know who was behind them and he wanted a personal protector from our agency. He had his own security, but he wanted one of our men added. Our agent disappeared. No one was supposed to know who he was or where he came from. He would never have talked to any of the other security guards around Wallin.”
Vienna’s stomach knotted. She didn’t like the sound of what Zale was telling her. “How did Wallin communicate his request for help, do you know? Was it through a secretary? Was it private?”
“All communication was private. Wallin to our boss. No one else was privy to his request other than Wallin’s friend, who is a personal friend of our boss and was able to get Wallin an introduction. A second agent was sent to look for the first and to cover Wallin. He disappeared within two weeks of his arrival. He was experienced, Vienna. Not years of experience, but he knew what he was doing.”
Icy fingers of dread crept down her spine. That same boss had sent Zale to investigate. She needed her bottle of water, and this time she stretched to get to it. Her throat felt dry. There was a lump almost too big to swallow.
“Our boss told Wallin he was going to launch a full-scale investigation. He was furious over losing two men, but he wasn’t including Wallin in his reports. He cut off contact. He didn’t agree to send more protection to Wallin. Rainier and I came to the hotel as guests, Rainier pretending to be a wealthy man who likes to gamble and has quite the hefty bank account. If he’s investigated, his background will hold up.”
Vienna cleared her throat. “He needs to learn to walk with a cane correctly. I spotted he had a fake injury immediately, but I can help him with that.”