Obsession (Explicitly Yours 4)

“I want the same for you. Look who’s standing right in front of you, who’s there for you whenever you or I call. It isn’t me.”

“That’s what he gets paid to do. I’m just a nuisance to his boss. He gets stuck dealing with me.”

“Maybe in the beginning, but much of the time he spends with you isn’t because I send him. He wants to do it.”

Brigitte stayed quiet. He didn’t believe it’d never occurred to her that Warner loved her or that she could have him if she let herself. But Beau obviously knew less about the women in his life than he realized, especially when it came to love.

When it was clear she had nothing to add, Beau went to leave the room.

“Lola,” she said suddenly.

He turned around. “What?”

She looked at him finally. “You said if I know what would make you happy, I should tell you. That’s what love is, right? Your happiness over my own?”

“Neither of us is happy, Brigitte. Can you honestly tell me this is the life you want? You living here, keeping house, while I work myself to death?”

She shuddered, but her expression didn’t change. “You’re the only person I have.” Her voice was soft. “I don’t know how to be without you.”

“Warner could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you, but you’ll never know if I’m in the way.”

“And what about Lola? You’re going to send a complete stranger after her when she’s alone in the middle of the country? I don’t understand your fascination with her, but I don’t need to. I see you’re going crazy without her.” She took a deep breath as if it’d required effort to speak that much.

Beau’s eyes were dry. He blinked, the first time since she’d started talking. It was the last thing he’d expected to hear from her, but if one thing had always remained true, it was that she loved him even more than she did herself. She just rarely showed it in a non-destructive way.

“You think I should go after her,” Beau stated.

“I don’t want you to.” She held his gaze, also unblinking. “That’s how I know you have to.”

10

Beau pulled into a parking spot and rubbed his eyes with tense fingers. After a sleepless night at LAX and hours of flying and driving, he still didn’t know what the fuck he was going to say to get the information he needed. He got out and shut the door behind him. It’d been daylight when he’d left Los Angeles, but it was almost evening now. The parking lot was dark with storm clouds. The Moose Lodge’s exterior could

almost pass for a cozy hotel, except that the buzzy glare of its neon sign gave it away as something seedier. The word Vacancy was lit underneath it. He hated to think of Lola here by herself, in this slow-life Missouri town, where there was an unwelcome chill in the air.

Across the street, a man in hunter-green camo pants leaned against the wall of a liquor store, watching Beau. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He could’ve easily been one of Hey Joe’s beer guzzlers, the ones Beau’d seen leering at Lola as she’d wound through two-top tables, her effortless confidence drawing eyes.

Men like that and places like this had gone round and round in Beau’s mind the last nine days, a haunted carousel with Lola trapped in the center. The homeless man from the gas station was always on it, and the guy across the street looked eerily similar to him. Him, with his hands on Lola while Beau had stood there, helpless.

* * *

Through the gas station’s glass door, Beau watched Lola approach, her purse swinging in her hand. The corners of her pressed-together lips curved slightly upward, as if it was a real effort not to smile. In the split second before she pulled open the door, her movements were airy and light, like a woman—he hoped—in love.

Beau would’ve shouted at her to run if he hadn’t thought startling the cagey man who held a gun to Beau’s head would earn one of them a bullet.

She breezed in and stopped dead.

“I told you, there isn’t a single thing in my car.” Beau had been trying to convince the man to stay inside with him instead of going out there, where Lola was. She’d come to them anyway. Beau attempted a discreet but firm jerk of his hand in her direction.

He pleaded with her however he could—with a quick glance, with a stiffening of his body. She should’ve been far away from there. Leave. Go.

She didn’t move an inch. Beau sent the man on a hunt for his wallet as a distraction.

Leave. Get the fuck out of here.

She didn’t budge, but cried out, “I have it,” and the gun was no longer on Beau.

* * *

Beau’d barely slept on his one-way flight out of LAX. After talking to Brigitte, he’d called Bragg to stop him from getting on a plane, but the Midwest storm had done it for him. The detective’d been at the airport for two hours trying to get to Missouri. Beau took his place, waiting out the snow, every passing hour another chance for Lola to slip back into the night. When he couldn’t take another minute of that, he demanded a flight that would get him closest to this little lodge in the Missouri mountains. He’d flown into Dallas and driven his rental car eight hours. In the meantime, the storm had mostly passed.

Beau walked up to the front office’s glass door and stood just outside of view. That memory of the gas station was always too ready, too easy to call up. Beau still hadn’t figured out why he was there. He’d know when he saw her. He just needed to lay his eyes on her again—that was step one.

A potbellied, balding man sat at the check-in desk, a phone lodged between his ruddy cheek and his shoulder while he pounded on a computer keyboard. He said something into the receiver and slammed it down.