The response was out, warm and friendly, without a trace of her “haughty demeanor” cloak.
“Everyone needs a champion. Those children are lucky to have you on their side.”
Whether it was the close confines or something more, Landry didn’t know, but she sensed something underneath his words. Treading carefully despite the curiosity that ran hot in her veins, she nodded and kept her tone neutral. “All children deserve that.”
“Even if there are too many who don’t get that opportunity. Or a chance to shine.”
And there it was.
That subtle suggestion of something indefinable. Of something more.
“You speak from experience?”
“My work revolves around missing-persons cases. There aren’t nearly as many happy endings as there should be. Or beginnings, for that matter.”
The urge to remain distant was strong, but something long dead inside her sparked back to life. “It sounds like a taxing profession.”
“At times. But it’s also one I’m good at. Your aunt was a part of that.” She shifted into another lane, the sign for their exit coming up, and he continued on. “I was on her protection detail, but she saw something in me. She knew I had ambitions beyond security, and when a job opened on the FBI’s missing-persons team she gave me a glowing recommendation.”
“You must have impressed her. Kate Adair doesn’t do ‘glowing’ lightly.”
“She’s a special woman.”
Landry risked a glance at him as she slowed for her exit ramp. His face was set in hard lines as he stared straight ahead, his gaze set on something only he could see. Once more, the realization that something hovered just under the surface tugged at her.
The hotel came up on her right, and she pulled into the valet station. Two valets rushed to open their doors, the man on her left all smiles as he gave her his hand. “Welcome back, Miss Adair.”
“Thank you, Michael.”
Landry didn’t miss Derek’s widened eyes over the top of the car or the assessing gaze that accompanied his perusal. Annoyance speared through her at the speculation she saw there—and the surprise that she’d know the name of a hotel employee.
Whatever he thought—or whatever she believed she’d seen—vanished under a facade that was all business as he rounded the front of the car. With swift movements, he took her hand. “Come on, darling.”
Heat traveled up her arm, zinging from her fingers to her wrist to her elbow before beelining straight for her belly. She kept her expression bright and her smile wide, even as she clamped down on her back teeth. “What do you think you’re doing?”
His grip tightened, his smile equally fierce as another set of employees opened the hotel’s double front doors. “Why, escorting you, of course.”
“I hardly think this is necessary.”
“Of course it’s necessary. People see what they want to see, and we’ve got something for them to talk about. You’re showing off your new love, whom you can’t bear to be parted from.”
While she’d later admit to herself she had no excuse, in that moment she could no more stop herself than she could have voluntarily stopped breathing. The combative imp that liked to plant itself on her shoulder—the one that regularly whispered she needed to push against convention and what was expected of her—couldn’t resist putting her earlier impressions into words.
“So it’s all about distraction, then.”
The rich scent of lilies filled the air around them, dripping from the six-foot vases that filled the lobby of the hotel, a vivid counterpoint to the foul stench of her father’s murder that had seemingly clung to her—to all of them—for the past two months.
“Distraction?” Derek’s eyebrows rose over the almost-black depths of his eyes.
“Of course. It helps hide the secrets. Like a sleight of hand, it focuses attention elsewhere.”
“Are you suggesting you’re hiding a secret?”
“No. But I think you are.”
Landry had to give him credit, he held it together, his poker face firmly intact. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she wouldn’t have even noticed that slight tightening of his jaw that gave him away.
“Everybody’s got a few, you know. But in this case, I’d say your secrets are more present. Recent, even,” she said.
“I don’t have any secrets.”
“Oh, no?” Landry waited a beat or two—her father had taught her the effectiveness of the approach—and watched as his attention caught, then held on her. “Then what is a big, bad FBI agent doing here on babysitting duty?”
Secrets.
The word whispered over and over through Derek’s mind, filling up every nook and crevice until he barely knew who he was anymore.
Hell yes, he had secrets. And an endless series of questions that always culminated in the biggest query of all. When had it all gone so wrong?
Six months ago he was a man with a plan. A career he loved. A fiancée he was planning on spending the rest of his life with. And a series of cases that gave him purpose each and every day.
And now he was a glorified babysitter, living with the memories of a child who was still missing, a perp wounded by Derek’s own hand and a leave of absence while the FBI investigated it all.
Did he have secrets? Bile choked his throat at the raw truth of that question.
He had a boatload of secrets, and every damn one of them was eating him alive.
“Stay with me, Ace.” Landry’s sultry voice whispered in his ear moments before her hand came to rest on his forearm. “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
“I haven’t gone anywhere.”
She cocked her head, the motion almost comical if it weren’t for the well of compassion she couldn’t fully hide beneath her gentle blue gaze. “You keep telling yourself that.”
She turned away before he could respond, and then there was no need when the governor stood before them, his crisp black suit as perfect as his smile.
“Governor Nichols. So lovely to see you again. I so enjoyed catching up at Congresswoman Meyers’s home last November.”
“As did I, Landry.”
Landry made quick introductions and Derek sensed the question that hovered in the air among all three of them.
Who was this man with one of California’s
