Cornelius motioned toward the curtained window. “But this woman’s going to have to agree to go into the forest with some huge guy she just met. You think that’s going to be easy?”
“Easier than you might think.” Maximus shot him a grin. “She already wanted to go on a date with me anyway.”
Chapter Eight
Selena flopped backward onto her hotel bed, her arms outstretched. Insane. She was totally insane. That was the only explanation.
First, she was planning to wander off into the forest alone to investigate. Even if there was no grand conspiracy other than bitch bureaucrats, that wasn’t a good idea. From what she’d read, even though Hawaii didn’t have a lot of dangerous animals on land, that wasn’t the same thing as none. There was always the possibility of running in the most dangerous animal of all, a crazy person.
She rolled onto her side with a sigh. “What do I think I’m going to do? Find a secret warehouse labeled ‘Bad Guy Cocaine Storage’? Life’s not a movie, and that doesn’t even happen in movies.”
As far as she knew, she didn’t require any special permits to walk around that part of forest, only for the filming. If she didn’t find anything suspicious, that would be to her advantage. She could show the staff at the office and force them to give her the damned permits. That would fix everything.
But traveling to some random spot in a rainforest wasn’t the only crazy thing she was thinking about. It might not even be the most dangerous.
Selena had asked some random man out. She didn’t know anything about him, and she couldn’t shake the idea that he wasn’t who he claimed. Every instinct she had told her he wasn’t.
With a groan, she sat up. If only he wasn’t so ridiculously hot. It was like he’d been dressing to tempt her with his t-shirt. It made sense given the weather, but it exposed much of his thick, muscular arms. Every part of Max she could see was huge. That made her wonder about the parts she couldn’t see. A flash of warmth spread through her, and she fanned herself with her hand.
“What if he is a hot mobster?” Selena mumbled under her breath. “He wouldn’t hurt me. I don’t know anything. Not really. Mobsters don’t kill random women without special reason, right? They must have some sort of rules about that.”
A loud knock sounded from her door. Selena shot to her feet, trembling. Her hot mobster might have decided to take her out before she even found the cocaine factory. Criminals didn’t need any rules other than protecting their profits.
She tried to tell herself that didn’t make sense. If he wanted to kill her, it’d make more sense to do it when she went to the forest, not at a hotel with cameras everywhere. He also knew she was working closely with other people. Someone would come and check on her, or housekeeping would stumble upon her body.
They were on an island for crying out loud. If he didn’t immediately flee to the mainland, he’d be in a relatively small area with a lot of evidence pointing at him as a murderer of the greatest adorable slash sexy production assistant ever.
Crap. Selena was going to die in a hotel room. That embarrassed her for some reason, but she wasn’t sure where she preferred to die. She winced at another loud knock.
After taking a deep breath, she crept up to the door and looked through the peephole. It was time to stare Hot Death in the face. The fear drained out of her, including the stiffness in her neck. Chris stood on the other side, his arms folded.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t a Mafia assassination. Fake Butt couldn’t kill anyone. He’d order an assistant to do i and then bitch about the method. Only artisanal assassins for him.
Selena opened the door with a weary sigh, relieved but anticipating another kind of annoyance. “Did you need something, Chris?”
“We need to talk.” He nodded toward her room.
“Do we need to talk right now? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“Yes. I insist.” Chris looked around. “And it doesn’t look like you’re in the middle of anything more important than me.”
“Fine.” Selena stepped back and gestured inside. “Then be my guest.”
Chris entered the room and closed the door behind him, his smug smile all but demanding a slap. He carefully surveyed the room with disgust. They were in the same hotel, he just had a nicer suite on a higher level, so the arrogance was misplaced. But misplaced arrogance defined Chris.
He sauntered into the center of the room, the vague look of distaste not leaving his face. His face twitched into something approaching a smirk, and he sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Things aren’t going well, you know,” he said.
“Meaning what?” Selena asked.
“Meaning Bill is furious over the location. He’s continued to say how you’re ruining his artistic vision.”
“I’m working on that. I’m still working some angles. I have to go somewhere later, and I’m hoping by tomorrow morning I can get this all cleaned up.”
Selena didn’t get why the talent and the director didn’t seem to appreciate or care about practical considerations. She was supposed to be the inexperienced one, but was far more in touch with reality.
Chris clucked his tongue. “I’ll admit that I understand how hard it can be to get things, so I appreciate your efforts. Bill can be a tad… unreasonable. I mean it is a perfume commercial.”
“Exactly.”
“Before we continue, let me thank you for everything you’ve done for me so far. I understand that I can be a bear, too, and I wanted to reset our relationship.” Chris offered her a winning smile. “I think I got caught up in Bill’s negative energy, and it made me a sour man.”
“Oh.” Selena blinked, taken back by his sudden politeness. It was the longest he’d gone without insulting her in days. “Uh, you’re welcome.
