stopped. Stared at her. “Twenty-seven years older than you?”
He was good with the math.
Erica nodded.
“And here I’ve been picturing you with some hotshot young stud tearing up Capitol Hill. This kind of reminds me of that song by the Eagles. ‘Lyin’ Eyes.”’
Hand in hand, they walked to the door.
“Except that I’ve never visited the cheatin’ side of town.”
The New York air was crisp. Cool. Forty-seventh Street was almost deserted. With the minutes closing in on her, Erica felt caged, claustrophobic.
“Let me walk you to your hotel?”
“Of course.”
But there was no “of course” about it. Always before, he’d hailed her a cab on Fifth Avenue and wished her good-night.
A twenty-minute walk to her hotel—if they took things slowly—and then her soul mate was going to walk out of her life forever. How could she possibly make it through a lifetime of never feeling this way again? Of never feeling the intensity, the rightness, she felt when she was with Jack?
This wasn’t the youthful passionate love she’d felt for Shane. It went deeper than that. Deeper than what she’d known as love.
Jack made her feel complete.
THEY WERE NEARING her hotel. Jack spent the last couple of blocks wondering whether he dared to kiss her good-night.
He was going to have to leave her without doing what he needed most—take her to bed. He didn’t even question that.
Jack didn’t sleep with married women.
And she wasn’t the type to cheat.
Jefferson Cooley might not have passionate love from her, but he had her loyalty. And of the two, loyalty won out.
As he believed it should.
“See that guy over there?” Erica said, gesturing as they approached her hotel.
A man, dressed casually in a pair of well-fitting jeans and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, leaned against the corner of the building.
“Yeah.”
“My first night here, he tried to get me to go with him, supposedly to pick out some earrings for his mother. I had to tell him no three times before he finally gave up,” she said, her voice not quite steady, though from wine, their imminent goodbye or something else he couldn’t be sure. “He’s been hanging around the hotel all week.”
She slowed her steps until they were barely moving forward at all. “For a while I thought he was out here smoking, but I’ve never seen him light up. A couple of times since that first night, I’ve caught him watching me. And then last evening, I’m almost certain he followed me into the hotel. He came in right after I did. I slipped into an elevator just as the door was closing and lost him.”
Once a cop, always a cop. Jack checked the man out. Erica was right. He was watching them. Or rather, her. The guy hadn’t been hanging around his place all week.
“I’m walking you inside,” Jack said brusquely, putting an arm around Erica to lead her through the front door of the hotel.
He glared at the guy as they passed, warning him off in no uncertain terms. The other man shrugged and looked away.
The man might be perfectly harmless. Just a hotel guest appreciating a beautiful fellow guest.
But Jack had learned the hard way that you could never be sure.
Glancing back as they entered the hotel, Jack wasn’t pleased to see the man still leaning there, still watching them.
It was odd, the way he’d been leaning against that wall all week. Was he a threat to Erica? And if so, why?
“I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d just let me see you safely up to your room.”
Erica looked at him uncertainly, lightly chewing her lower lip, and he knew it wasn’t just the man loitering outside that was troubling her. With every moment they prolonged this goodbye, they were giving temptation the edge, challenging a strength that might not be able to sustain them.
She nodded, silently leading the way.
Not another word was said as they rode the deserted elevator up to the twelfth floor. She paused outside a double door about halfway down the hall.
A suite. At least Jefferson Cooley kept her in style.
She slid her electronic entry card into the slot above the door handle. “I can’t do this,” she said suddenly, resting her head against the door.
Jack reached for the card with shaking fingers. “Here, let me.”
But the green light was already on. She’d unlocked the door.
Erica turned, her eyes bright with unshed tears as she looked up at him. “I can’t just go in there and leave you when I still have another six hours before I have to be at the airport….”
“What are you saying?”
“I just wish we could go somewhere and talk.”
He had to work tomorrow. Lives were at stake. He had to be sharp, decisive, alert to every nuance.
But he’d have a long plane ride to recover from a sleepless night….
“It does seem criminal to waste six perfectly good hours,” he said.
“We could go to that place we passed a few blocks back, the one with the yellow and green lights,” she said.
Jack thought of the man hanging around outside. “I’d rather you didn’t leave the hotel again, not while that guy’s still down there. He’s probably harmless, but just in case…”
Erica frowned, her dark-brown eyes filled with so many conflicting emotions he couldn’t decipher. “Nothing in the hotel will be open this late.”
Temptation battled resolve with no clear victor.
Jack took a steadying breath. At the agency, they called him a man of steel. They joked that his middle name was self-control. And it was true. A hostage negotiator had to be cool under pressure.
He reached around her to open the door of her suite. “I’ll bet you have a fully stocked bar in here,” he guessed, “and a perfectly good table and chairs we can use.”
He glanced around the corner of the entryway. He’d been right. The bar was along the far wall. The table was glass, with four chairs around it and a big bowl of fresh fruit in the center.
“We’ll pretend we’re in the bar down the street, the one with the yellow and green lights, but I’ll know you’re safe.”
She
