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“Let’s go.” Emily pushed her stool back and stood, picking up the backpack from the floor that must’ve held her conference materials.
“Ah, sure. Okay.” I hadn’t been planning for company and was pretty certain the rooms I inhabited were probably not fit for guests, but Emily was so eager. I also worried that it could be awkward for her, being in my room alone with me. “I don’t want to put you in a weird position,” I said, facing her as we both stood. “Taking you to my room, I mean.”
She tilted her head to one side, a wavy strand of her dark hair just touching that pointed chin as she looked at me. “That’ssweet. I wasn’t even thinking about that...does it make me naïve if I say I trust you?”
“We hardly know each other,” I pointed out, pushing my mind away from all the other reasons why I might take a woman to my room. Of course, in all the time I’d owned the resort, I never had. In fact, there’d only been a few times since I’d left the navy, none of them meaningful, and all three of them unsuccessful at making me forget the one thing I’d been hoping they’d erase from my mind.
“True, we don’t know each other well.” She smiled, and the concern inside me melted. “I’m really not worried. But I guess I should tell you I always have pepper spray on me, and I’ve taken a few self-defense classes.”
“Noted. Want to just let your roommate know where you’ll be?”
“Sure,” she said, pulling a phone from the front of her bag and firing off a quick text. In the meantime, I signaled Wiley, who was at the other end of the bar.
“Hey,” he said, grinning as he looked between us.
“Hey,” I returned. “Just wanted to give someone a little heads up. I’m taking Emily here up to my room to run her through the details of the hunt Uncle Marvin left us.”
Wiley’s eyebrows shot up, but his easy grin stayed in place.
Emily had pulled her pack over one shoulder and was listening now, ready to go.
“I wanted to let someone know where we were in case she tries anything.”
Wiley laughed, and Emily’s hand surprised me, delivering a swift whack to my chest as a little exclamation burst from her lips. “Really?”
“Just kidding,” I told Wiley. Then I turned to Emily. “Really, though. I just want to make sure you’re comfortable. I’m not the kind of guy who takes women he just met up to his room.”
“I think I already knew that,” she said. “But I told Christine that if she hasn’t heard from me by midnight to alert the front desk.”
“Good plan,” I said, swallowing down the nerves suddenly erupting inside me.
I motioned Emily ahead of me, and we left the wood-paneled coziness of the bar and strode out into the lobby, where groups of writers gathered in seating areas and near the entrance for the restaurant.
“Did you eat?” I asked Emily.
“Not yet.”
“I can get something sent up,” I suggested, guiding her toward the elevator.
“Sure we shouldn’t take the stairs?” she asked.
“This is the other elevator,” I pointed out. “This one’s pretty reliable. And I think we’ve got the other one working smoothly now.”
“If you say so.” She flashed me that wide smile that lit her eyes, and stepped into the small space as the doors slid open. That tiny act of trust did something to me, made me feel protective of this woman I’d met not even twenty-four hours earlier in a way I hadn’t felt toward anyone in a while. Except maybe Aubrey. But this wasn’t the same.
The doors shut behind us, closing us in the intimate space, and my mind wheeled back to the night before, when I’d been on the brink of kissing Emily. That same tension was still there, like a rubber band between us, pulling us closer, threatening to snap. Her body was across the space from mine, her dark eyes shining.
I cleared my throat as the doors open, and ushered her into the hall and toward the staff wing. “How much do you know about the hunt so far? We haven’t really talked about it with anyone outside the staff and those involved in the clues. I know there’ve been some vague mentions in some of the articleswritten about the hotel.” A few of the writers that had attended the soft opening had mentioned it, but none had dug for details.
“I only know what you’ve told me and the little bit that’s been written about it.”
We came to my door, and I pulled out the key, wishing I wasn’t so painfully aware of the warm nearness of Emily’s body, the fact that we were about to be totally alone together. I shoved away the nerves, opening the room, and hoping I’d managed to tidy up that morning.
“But you want to go into detail,” I suggested.
“I want to help you solve it,” she said as the door swung open, revealing the front room of my suite. There was a long table scattered with books and papers—much of them related to Uncle Marvin’s goose chase—and a few things I’d dropped there because I was too lazy to put them away. The little counter to one side held a collection of mugs around the sink and coffee maker, and there were a couple shirts draped over one of the armchairs near the window. Otherwise, it wasn’t in too bad of shape.
Emily looked around appreciatively, regarding the peeling wallpaper and beat up crown molding as if it was something to be impressed by.
