“Someone just jacked fifty thousand dollars worth of jewelry, of course you have a sick feeling,” Lori said.
Avery waved both hands in the air. “No, it’s not that. I don’t care about the stuff, I have insurance . . . but if it was Rogelio . . . damn it. Am I that naive?”
Shannon took a seat beside her. “Hon, we all met the guy. He seems normal to me.”
“Me too.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed. And I’m the cynic in the group.”
Avery dropped her head in both her hands. “I knew it was too good to be true. A hot cruise fling, no strings. Just fun. After my year and a half of purgatory, I deserve some fun, right?”
“Think that was the point behind this trip,” Trina said. “Have fun, slip out of purgatory.”
Avery pinned Reed with a glare. “You’re a dude, what do you think?”
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself. If he is behind this, chances are he’s done it before. That doesn’t suggest you have an inability to judge character. It means he’s a professional at manipulating. He had all of us fooled.”
Avery’s chest deflated. “Yeah, but I slept with the man.”
“I bet he shows up by morning,” Shannon offered.
Lori would bet her next paycheck he wouldn’t.
Miguel and Rogelio never reboarded the ship after the stop in France.
Reed wasn’t surprised.
Sasha, for lack of a real name, had labeled Miguel as an amateur thief. Thief, yes . . . amateur? Well, that was left to interpretation. And if Reed had been anywhere other than on an assignment, he would have picked up on their game and called them out on it. But to do so would have brought attention to his own game.
The last stop of the cruise was on the island of Majorca, in the city of Palma.
Instead of any activity, the women decided to sit on the beach and drink rum by the buckets.
Reed made it a point to hand them water to keep them from getting sick from too much liquor. Keeping an eye on them had become his mission. Well, one of his missions, in any event.
They were being reckless in their scorn, and as much as he wanted them drunk enough to start talking about their connections, and possibly clue him in to something to bring back to the person paying him, he didn’t want to see them hurt.
“Make sure we’re back on that ship before it takes off,” Avery charged him with the task.
“I have my watch set.”
“You’re not wearing a watch.”
He smiled at Trina. “My phone. My phone is set to alarm us when we need to leave.”
“I can’t believe I fell for that asshole.” Avery’s statement was burned into Reed’s mind. She’d been repeating it every fifteen minutes or so since they arrived on the beach. No, make that since they met before leaving the ship.
“All men are assholes,” Shannon told her, and Trina agreed.
He looked at Lori, who was slightly less inebriated. “Should I be here?”
“You’re fine.” She offered a drunk smile.
“You know, things might not have ended that great, but I sure am glad we all came to Lori’s little get-together.”
“I’m glad you can find the bright side, Avery.”
“I’m not looking forward to going home,” Trina said.
Reed kept an ear on the conversation, his eyes in a spy thriller book he’d brought with him.
“We have some things to figure out, but you’re going to be fine,” Lori said.
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
“We have a long flight home to think,” Shannon told her.
“Is Sam sending her jet?” Avery asked.
Reed followed the conversation, had to think about the name Sam for a moment.
“I spoke with Sam last night. The jet will be waiting when we arrive in Barcelona.”
“Good, cuz I have a feeling I might not be up to playing nice on a commercial airline.”
“That’s because you’re going to be hungover at this rate,” Trina told Avery.
“Blame the asshole.”
Reed glanced up to see Avery tipping her cocktail back. She reached for the pitcher they’d ordered, and he stopped her. “Uh, how about some water?”
She scowled but reached for the water instead.
He pretended to go back to his book.
“You’re dropping me off in New York?” Trina asked.
“Yep. Your bodyguards are picking you up while we refuel.”
Reed looked over the edge of his book. “Bodyguards?”
“Hey, maybe I should have one of them.”
“Don’t wish that on yourself,” Shannon told Avery. “I always had guys around when I was married to Paul. It’s overrated.”
“I don’t want to hear that,” Trina said. “I like my privacy.”
Lori set her drink down. “It’s not that bad. Neil’s team is the best. Discreet. You’ll be fine.”
“Hey?” Reed caught their attention all at once. “Why do you need a bodyguard?”
For a moment they all just stared at him like he was an idiot.
“Should we even be talking about this?” Avery, the drunkest of them all, asked the logical question.
Trina rolled her eyes. “I came into a little bit of money. And clearly there are people out there who think nothing of taking what isn’t theirs.”
“A little bit of money?”
Avery spread her hands wide and mouthed the words a lot.
“Huh . . . so maybe it’s a good thing you cut Miguel off,” Reed said.
Again, the women were all silent as they contemplated his words.
Avery broke the silence.
“I can’t believe I fell for that asshole.”
Then came the chorus.
Reed found himself joining in. “All men are assholes.”
And he was one of the worst of them all.
He met Lori and the others after they cleared customs the next day.
Avery and Trina were huddled under the dark shades of their sunglasses, shielding their eyes as if the clouded sky burned their retinas. Shannon appeared slightly better, and Lori looked almost normal.
“I see you’re all alive,” he addressed them while a valet gathered their bags and put them in the back of a massive SUV.
“I probably have you to thank for that,” Avery told him.
He grinned. “You’re welcome, then.”
She waved a hand in the air and moved toward the car. “I need to sit down.”
Trina offered him a quick hug. “Thanks for watching over us.”
Guilt sucker punched him. “Take care of yourself.”
Shannon said her good-bye next. “Thanks for not bringing up the obvious.”
He hugged her. “I didn’t vote for him, if that makes you feel any better.”
She sighed and got into the car.
Then there was Lori.
“I don’t envy their flight home,” he said.
“They’ll be okay. Probably sleep most of the day.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “And you?”
“I have a lot of work to catch up on.”
“Back to business?”
“Yeah.”
He took up position in her personal space and placed both hands on her cheeks. “I want to see you again.” Which was true. They hadn’t shared five carefree minutes alone since Italy.
“Do you think we can work back in LA?”
“Not sure, but it’s worth trying.”
She pressed her frame next to his. “You have my number.”
He leaned in and kissed her, felt his chest tighten with guilt or pleasure, he wasn’t sure. Probably a little of both.
He heard the trunk of the SUV shut and ended their kiss.
“Safe flight home, Counselor.”
“Good-bye, Reed.”
He waved as the car pulled away.
He turned back toward Barcelona . . . where he planned on finding out more about Miguel and Rogelio . . . the amateur thieving assholes who gave all men a bad name.
Chapter Fifteen
Jet lag was a combination of the hangover of a lifetime and receiving an injectable dose of caffeine at two in the morning.
Lori looked at her bedside clock as two in the morning turned into two thirty. She’d punched her pillow, turned it a few times to see if cooling her face would lure her to sleep.
Nothing worked. She had an early morning meeting followed by lunch with Sam to go over all the details of her trip, and at this point Lori was fairly certain she’d be dozing off in her soup.
Giving up, she switched on the dim bedroom lamp and grabbed her cell phone.
Was he thinking about her?
Did Reed toss and turn in his bed, close his eyes, and sense her beside him?
On the ship, she’d been inundated with responsibility and still managed a little romance. Now that she was home in bed . . . without the swaying of a ship reminding her that she had a job to do, her mind kept flashing back to Reed and his smile, the way he held her, kissed her.
The problem with the thoughts milling about in her head wasn’t the lift she felt in her chest, or the schoolgirl excitement that made her smile, it was the possibility that she was alone in her joy. Was Reed a weeklong fling?
Would he call?
The clock slipped closer to three.
She opened up her text messages and found Reed’s name. She reread his texts from the ship several times. Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she started typing.
I can’t sleep. My body is still in the Mediterranean.
She pressed “Send” and tapped her thumb against the side of her phone for ten minutes, willing Reed to respond with her mind.
Nothing.
At 3:10, she set her phone aside, turned off the light, and forced her eyes to close.
With one ear open to catch the buzz of a response from her phone, Lori finally fell asleep thirty minutes before she needed to get up to go to the office.
Reed timed it so he left his apartment after the morning traffic was done clogging up everything. Although, in LA it was always a crapshoot when you aimed your car toward a freeway, even at two in the morning.