Infinityglass (Hourglass 3)

Feeling too close and too obvious, I pulled away from him. My body went cold without his heat. He rubbed his arm, like he was missing my warmth, too.

Or I was losing my mind, or something worse.

“Anyway, neither of my parents had big families. So it’s just us.” I walked into my bedroom, looking over my shoulder to see if he’d follow. He hesitated, but he came in. Then I dropped the bomb on him. “How do you feel about staying with me in the hotel this weekend?”

He blinked a couple of times. “Non sequitur much?”

“Sit.” I took the tiny vanity stool, partly from guilt that it was so small it barely supported him, and partly because I wanted to see what he looked like on my bed.

“A hotel?”

“Yeah.” I did a nervous side to side spin. “For a job. We need to retrieve something from the lobby.”

“When your dad hired me, he told me there was a good chance I would end up going on a Chronos job. I think he said many of them were questionable. He never said anything about taking his daughter to a hotel.”

“If you want to bail …”

“No! No, I don’t want to bail.”

My slow grin was answered with an immediate blush.

“I mean, I’m going to do the job. You’re stuck with me. I just … if I’m going to get arrested for a ‘retrieval,’ I should maybe make arrangements for bail ahead of time.”

“No one said anything about stealing. A family donated an antique crystal ball for display, but there was some kind of mix-up, and the hotel got the real thing.”

“Were they supposed to get a copy?”

“Yes,” I said. “The family needs the original back. They can’t waltz in and get it, you see, because they’re respectable now, with political aspirations. None of them wants the public to know what kind of value they place on it, or that it tells the truth about the past and shows the promises of the future.”

“We’re doing a bait and switch, then?”

“Just a switch.” I grinned. “You really don’t know much about breaking the rules, do you?”

He shook his head.

“Well, then. I look forward to teaching you.” I meant it.

Except … every time a Chronos job came up I felt torn. There was a constant pull between the desire to get out of my house and do a job well and the need to define myself beyond Chronos and my father’s expectations. Dance allowed for that, but only within the boundaries of my studio.

Taking Dune on the Bourbon Orleans job was necessary to keep him on Dad’s good side, and to keep him around. While I was the one who suggested he go on the job with me, it had been before he and I had become … whatever we were now.

He was the only part of my life that wasn’t solely connected to Chronos, and suddenly, I didn’t want him to see me in light of what I did there. I didn’t want him to forget the Hallie he’d managed to discover over the past couple of weeks.

And I didn’t want to forget her either.

The hotel was just off Jackson Square.

We caught a cab instead of using my dad’s driver. Maintaining anonymity was a bitch. The rain had cleared out, and the sun was shining. The cabbie dropped us off on the corner of Orleans and Bourbon so we could walk to the main entrance from the side street.

“I brought my computer,” Dune said, lifting up his backpack. “Did you look at the file I sent you? If we have time, we could go over it.”

I had a vision of us sitting, our heads bent close together, staring at his laptop screen. It progressed to our hands touching accidentally, and then our shoulders, and then …

He was looking at me, and I was standing on Bourbon with my mouth hanging open.

“Sure. If we have time.” I’d only skimmed it. I pushed my sunglasses up on my head so I could see his eyes. “We’ll check in first. I need you to scout the case the crystal ball is in. Make sure it’s movable, see if there’s a lock, that kind of thing. It’s in front of the check-in desk. We’ll do some observing, and later, I’ll create a diversion in the lobby while you take the crystal.”

“If that doesn’t work?” he asked.