CHAPTER EIGHT
“NICE PLACE,” MARIO SAID, his tone tight and uncomfortable as he slowed his cab in front of the famed Sherry-Netherland hotel.
Roman nodded but didn’t speak. He handed Mario a few bills, making some sort of gesture of male-to-male understanding and exited the cab.
On her way out, Rachel placed her hand on the back of Mario’s seat. He stopped her.
“You’re all right with this?” he asked.
Rachel watched Roman just outside the taxi, scanning the street methodically as he waited.
“He won’t let anything happen to me,” she said, completely convinced of that truth, if nothing else.
Mario harrumphed. “Damn straight he won’t. Before I agreed to play a part in this, I told him there was no place on God’s green earth he could hide if you got even a scratch on your pinkie.”
Rachel wiggled her littlest finger at him. “Me and my pinkie will be fine. I have your cell phone number in my pocket. I’ll call you if I need anything, I promise.”
Mario didn’t seem happy about letting her go, but he didn’t interfere. Rachel knew she needed to do this and she couldn’t deny the way her heart lightened at knowing that Roman wanted to talk, too. Hadn’t he come when she called? Hadn’t he taken the care to move them to a location where they could speak freely? Clearly, he wanted to explain. Or at the very least, he believed she deserved his time.
She hadn’t forced him to come back for her, and from what she could tell by the hurried way they dashed through a side entrance to the hotel’s back stairwell, Roman was still concerned that he might be recognized. After they’d climbed several flights of stairs, he immediately slid a card key into the nearest guest-room door on the sixth floor, and in seconds they were inside.
Safe.
Alone.
He reached into the closet, pulled out a mechanical device she didn’t recognize, attached it to the door and flicked a switch that activated a blinking red light.
“What’s that?”
“Combination alarm and jamming device. No one will come in without us hearing and no one will be able to listen from the other side to what we say.”
Rachel cursed at herself for allowing such a libidinous thought into her brain. This wasn’t going to be about sex. She’d arranged to meet Roman so that she could understand why and how they’d ended up together-and if anything beyond the lust had been real.
Or especially if lust had been all they shared.
Luxury hotel rooms weren’t exactly an everyday occurrence to Rachel, so she couldn’t help but be swept away by the plush carpets, antique furniture and glistening chandeliers. Except for a stack of barely touched magazines on the coffee table-
“Whose suite is this?”
“A friend’s,” Roman replied. “We have until morning.”
Spying a flash of material under the bed, she leaned down and gingerly retrieved a tiny pair of black thong underwear.
“A female friend? Good God, not the woman who kissed you.”
“She only kissed me to piss you off,” Roman explained.
Rachel dropped the panties as if they were a dead bug and rushed into the bathroom to wash her hands, tossing a spiteful, “She succeeded” over her shoulder as she flew by him.
Roman was close on her heels. “She’d had me under surveillance and knew you’d followed me from your apartment. She was trying to discourage you.”
Rachel wiped her hands on a clean towel. “She could have just told me to back off if she wanted you so bad.”
The burst of laughter erupted from Roman’s gut before he could call it back. He certainly didn’t want to go into the dynamics of his interactions-couldn’t call it a relationship by any stretch of the imagination-with Domino, but the thought of the woman playing possessive with him was hilariously funny.
“She’s been through with me for a long time, Rachel. And vice versa.”
“But you were lovers once.”
“Yes, we were. So were we. And it wasn’t so long ago, either.”
“Don’t change the subject,” she snapped.
“I’m not. I’m actually getting to the subject. I came here to talk about you and me, not about my past.”
Rachel took a step closer to him, her gaze darting between the walls on either side of her, as if they might close in at any moment. He sidestepped and she squeezed past him with such haste, he felt a cold wave of wind.
“Do you have a past?” she asked rapidly.
“A varied one,” he replied, knowing he’d be breaking contracts, agreements and regulations up to his ears if he told her one single detail. And yet, he was willing to share some of what led him here-what led him to Rachel.
“Can you tell me about any of it?”
Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest and her lips were frozen in a lethal line.
“Does it matter?” He winced. His reply had been automatic, practiced, grilled and ingrained into him. Could he ever revert to the man he used to be? Honest? Forthright? Real?
“Stop it!” she said, stamping her foot in such a way that she didn’t look the least like a petulant child, but a woman on the edge of losing control. “Answer the question! Stop hiding behind the persona some phantom agency cooked up for you. They’re not here now. It’s just me. Me and, please, for the love of God, the truth. I want to know who you are, Roman. But if you can’t tell me that, I at least deserve to know who you were, once, before you turned your life over to people who probably don’t give a damn if you live or die. I made love to you, Roman. Not once, not twice, but more times than I can count. So many times that my body still reacts to the air you breathe.”
He could hear her voice shaking, could see the force of need in her eyes, and he wondered how he’d gotten in so deep, so fast. And yet, his own passions matched Rachel’s point for point. What had started as sex, somehow, despite all the lies and omissions, had turned into something more.
He gestured toward the love seat in the center of the room. She sat, her hands tense on her knees, her shoulders tight. He dug into his pockets and decided not to sit beside her. He couldn’t possibly be that close and not take her into his arms.
“I work for a division of Homeland Security.”
Her eyes widened. “The terrorist people?”
With a nod, he started to pace. “Smoking out terrorist threats is our main directive. I was recruited to a joint FBI and CIA task force specifically investigating reports that a certain, deadly terrorist network has been using televised images in order to send messages to sleeper cells here in the States.”
Rachel sat back in the love seat, her stare disengaged from his. He knew this was a lot for her to process, but he’d decided to go for broke. Since he’d been shot at, he knew his position on the task force had been severely compromised. His cover had been blown. He suspected that the next time he reported to headquarters, he’d be taken off the case he’d worked since the first report came to his desk. But right now, there was no real harm in him letting an average citizen know that the government was actively pursuing potential killers.
Too bad Rachel wasn’t the least bit average or he wouldn’t be in this mess.
“What kind of messages?”
He stepped forward. This part, she’d understand. “Messages imbedded in the graphics.”
The whites of her eyes suddenly contrasted starkly with the dark, hypnotic green. “Graphics…where?”
“In the opening credits of certain productions.”
“Like documentaries? Like the one I was working on when we met?”
