He opened the door for her and followed her into the hotel. No one paid them any attention as the crossed to the ballroom doors.
“The princess will be at the XX Café tomorrow at one.” She removed his jacket and held it out for him. “Would you like me to hang it up for you?” She motioned over her shoulder towards the coat room. “I’m familiar with the process.”
He laughed and took it, brushing her fingers in the process. “No thank you. Will you be at the café?”
“Maybe.” She glanced up through lowered lashes, looking coy and so breathtakingly beautiful his heart almost forgot how to beat.
“Then I’ll be there.”
Smiling, she walked past the guard at the door, who did a double take before turning angry bull eyes on him. He gave a small salute, collected his coat from the attendant in a gray vest and white shirt. He berated himself for believing she was a coat check girl in the first place. His mistake was one more testament to the fact that he was well out of familiar waters.
Maybe fate hadn’t brought them together.
Maybe it was a simple mistake.
The best of mistakes.
As he waited for the attendant to bring his car around, he realized that, despite dodging a pitiful excuse for an assassin, he’d had a great night. The best night in a long time. Which told him one of two things. Either he had the most pathetic life ever, or Neese was something special.
He kind of thought it was the latter.
Chapter Seven
The morning after the ball, Tatum ran the streets at five. Running in the early morning was more than a routine. The city was quiet at that hour, the streets often slick and shiny from the large trucks that swept and sprayed during the night to remove the filth. Other runners kept to themselves and their music or audio books, sounds were muted, drivers rarely honked, birds chirped, and there weren’t shadows. The sun hadn’t come up, yet there was light. All of this combined to allow Tatum to be in public but alone with his thoughts.
Ninety percent of his thoughts circled around and through Neese. He’d imprinted her face, the arch of her eyebrow, the curve of her hip, the smell of her skin, the texture of her hand in his, the rise and fall of her sentences. All of her carried all of him through twelve miles of pavement.
He lifted in the hotel gym at six, incorporating the physical training exercises. He’d do them again at noon and then five.
And at seven he was on a video chat with Nelson, sweaty but not caring. Nelson had seen worse. “I’m telling you, it was him.” He caught himself rubbing his scar. “A man doesn’t forget the face of the guy who shot him. Especially that ugly mug.”
“Was he on a new hit?”
Tatum ran back through the evening, starting with his improper introduction to Neese. He could see every detail, including the way the light shimmered down her hair like a waterfall.
“Hey.” Nelson snapped his fingers. “You still with me?”
Tatum glared at the screen. “There were no obvious signs that he was trailing a target. He seemed to be searching for someone, but I don’t know if he ever found them.”
“Why not?”
“I, uh, was focused elsewhere.”
Nelson folded his arms and waited.
Tatum matched his body posture. He wasn’t going to dish about the woman he met last night to his best friend like they were thirteen-year-old girls at a slumber party. “Speaking of being shot at …”
Nelson held his glare for just long enough that Tatum knew he was allowing the change of subject. “The royal family of Riodan submitted a request for an escort. Low-key. One-man job. And you’ll never guess where.”
Tatum had seen Prince Marius last night. He had a pretty good idea where Nelson was going with this. “Washington, DC,” he deadpanned.
“How’d you guess?”
“Who are you sending?”
“Only the best.”
“If you mean me, I’m busy.” He wasn’t yet, but he hoped to take Neese out to see some of the sights. She’d been so disappointed about being in America and not seeing more than the inside of the hotel. He’d spent the morning run planning a sightseeing trip that would fill her with memories.
“You’re never busy.”
“Well, I am this week.”
“You don’t even know when it is.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Come on. I had a transfer in Russia and had to send B-Group. A-Group is still with me and we’ve had a rough couple of days. I’m out of guys.”
Tatum let out a low growl. “What’s the gig?”
“The prince has a date on Friday.”
“Good,” Tatum grunted. Maybe Prince Marius had moved on from Neese. He grinned, remembering her description of a boyfriend versus a suitor. She may have put Tatum in the “friend zone,” but at least she hadn’t called him a suitor.
“Good?” asked Nelson.
“I mean, good for him,” Tatum recovered.
Nelson’s face took up the whole screen as he leaned in. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing. So what are we going to do about the trigger man? I can’t have him arrested because it wasn’t a US crime to shoot me on foreign soil.”
“If he doesn’t know you’re there, you have the upper hand. See if you can find out who hired him.”
“Right. Then what?”
“Then we take care of it. Nobody shoots my partner.”
Tatum contemplated his partner. They’d lived life within the harsh shadow of death—coming out on the good side of a them-or-us standoff more than he cared to count. Blatant bloodlust wasn’t their thing. Protection first. Survival second. Capture if you can. Those were the rules they lived by, because they kept them from turning into the men they fought against. “And by taking care of it you mean …”
“We maroon him on a desert island and leave his life in God’s hands.”
That seemed too lenient considering the pain Tatum experienced. “How about we have him thrown in a South American prison?”
“Even better—the survival rate is lower.” Nelson laughed—the sound light. If he
