Deadly Testimony (9 page)

“Huh.” Isabelle’s eyebrows had risen during his description. “I have no idea how Maylin would’ve managed to put that together for us to enjoy easily under these circumstances. Might have to go to an actual restaurant to find it.”

“Agreed.” He had a sudden urge to offer to take her to one or two restaurants he knew of, but didn’t. It seemed...awkward.

Under other circumstances, he’d want to pursue her and enjoy further conversation over good meals. Here, like this, it was both more intimate and limiting at the same time. He had no idea whether they’d be in contact after this was resolved.

“What was the other dish?” Isabelle started putting covers back on the dishes and stacking them.

“A true comfort food.” He shook his head. “It’s a very simple sort of egg dish. Steamed in the stone or earthenware dish.”

“Yeah, I can see how that’d be hard to serve this way.” She reached for the grilled fish and started to flip it over, presumably because they’d finished taking all the meat from one side.

He reached out and touched the back of her hand. “Don’t turn over the fish.”

Isabelle looked up at him but didn’t withdraw her hand from his touch. “Why?”

“It’s a Chinese superstition. Your chef friend is Chinese, right? To turn over the fish is to symbolize the capsizing of a boat.” As he shared the etiquette consideration, a chill ran down his spine. Disturbed, he withdrew his hand.

Still watching him, Isabelle finished covering the dishes but she didn’t flip the fish.

“In any case, thank you for pausing in your research to join me for this meal break.” He stacked the dishes and took them to the mini refrigerator.

Silence stretched out over several moments before Isabelle broke it. “What do we feed Frederick?”

Chapter Ten

Lizzy woke out of her light doze to a familiar sound, which shouldn’t have been in the room. She opened her eyes, drawing in air as she did to wake herself up completely.

No lights. The curtains were still drawn and there was little to no daylight peeking in around the sides of the windows. Just a hint from the indirect lighting fixture installed underneath the counter in the bathroom to make sure guests didn’t break their necks getting up to go to the bathroom at night. Kyle must’ve left the bathroom door open to give him something to see by.

Meaning it was still early morning.

It was the breathing pattern that woke her, Kyle’s. It’d changed to a slow intake through the nose and sharp “oosh” through the mouth. Controlled. Conscious.

She found him in the darkness, on the floor between the bed and the sitting area, doing push-ups. Shirtless.

“What are you doing?” She whispered the words into the dark.

Kyle continued for a few more repetitions before halting in a plank position and quietly chuckling. “I’m guessing you know what a push-up is. This is part of my morning routine.”

Lizzy sat up straighter and stretched. “Hmm.”

Her vision in darkness was good. So was the view. The man had a solid physique with incredible muscle definition. He kept in very good, very attractive shape.

Have mercy.

He went through another set of fifteen push-ups, pausing again in the plank position. “Am I disturbing you?”

A plank was core work all on its own so using it as the resting position between sets of push-ups had to be a challenge. She considered giving it a try herself. “Nah. As morning habits go, there are worse things than physical activity. Go for it. You can even turn on more lights if you like.”

She wasn’t too worried about shadows. The drapes in front of the windows were heavy and completely opaque. No chance someone was going to see anything through them.

“Well, there are workouts and then there are other, more interesting, forms of physical activity in the morning.” He left his bait out there as he rose smoothly to a standing position and started doing squats.

“Uh-huh.” She stood then, unable to just sit there and keep watching. Instead, she checked her laptop to see if any of the searches she’d set up had resulted in any hits. Some data there but not a lot yet. Her queries might require more time before they turned up something useful. “Question is, do you still go through your exercises whether you indulge in other forms of physical activity or not?”

He laughed. “Would you?”

“Maybe after I’ve got some time to myself, yeah. A partner doesn’t generally react well when cuddle time is cut short so I can get my workout routine in for the morning.” Although she had used it as an excuse to leave when she hadn’t wanted to linger. She wasn’t going to bring it up if he wasn’t though. When it came to casual encounters, there was a certain understanding among participants that outstaying a welcome was awkward. She tried to avoid the feeling as much as possible.

“I...used to travel a fair amount for business.” He paused for a moment. She didn’t blame him since he was going to be testifying against his former employer. He currently didn’t have a job. And one never knew what the next position in a given career was going to bring. It probably took some getting used to. Maybe it was only just starting to really sink in. “In any case, the gyms in hotels are usually mediocre at best and I don’t enjoy adjusting my routine based on equipment available so I tend to design my workout for limited hotel room space.”

She nodded. “I can see that. I do the same for basic stretching and some strength training, but access to a gym and free weights can provide a lot of variety.”

“True.” He moved from squats to burpees, stretching his arms far up to the ceiling then bending to touch his toes. He placed his hands on the ground and jumped his feet out behind him to plank position. He executed a push-up and jumped his feet back to his hands before returning to a standing position. “And I make sure to do strength training at least three times a week at an actual gym.”

He did another burpee.

Burpees were an exercise she loved to hate.

Everyone added their own little zing to it. Some lifted their hands and jumped at the end of each burpee. Others did various kinds of push-ups as part of the exercise. Still others did things with their footing as they went through it.

Kyle kept to the simple form with just the added vertical jump at the end. What she had to appreciate was how smoothly he was going through the exercise. And silently. Sometimes people would do these at the gym and just two or three people could sound like a stampeding herd of grunting, groaning wildlife.

It took a lot of strength, balance and agility to make this exercise look that easy.

And he had the reserves to continue conversation. “I’ve memberships to one or two chains so there’s always a decent gym reasonably close to my hotel when I’m traveling in the US.”

Lizzy rolled her shoulders. Watching him make burpees look easy made her want to join him in working out. “Any particular reason a businessman like you maintains this level of fitness?”

He was as fit or better than most servicemen, even on active duty. His level of cardio looked to be very good based on the way he was able to maintain a conversation with her through each exercise. And any of those exercises might be simple but they weren’t as easy as he was making them look. She appreciated the dedication it took to keep up a routine alone, with no one around to keep him accountable. Hard to persist in pushing oneself without a workout partner or personal trainer. It took a driven sort of mind-set.

Damn it, he was doing more burpees than she usually did and she wasn’t sure if she was more irritated by the realization or that she was keeping count.

“There are a lot of reasons.” He snorted. “None of them are particularly witty or clever when I think about them. There’s a decent amount of conceit behind it, perhaps. Some past friends have called it narcissism. I prefer to look in the mirror and appreciate what I see. I want to be proud of myself, both in appearance and in performance.”

On the surface, his statement was flippant and she thought it was deliberately intended to allow a person to think of him as shallow. But there were a lot of kinds of performance, and she didn’t think he was only referring to the obvious innuendo.

“You’re very good at the things you set out to do, huh?” She tossed it out there experimentally.

“Of course.” The man was finally starting to sound short of breath.

With the light from her laptop screen supplementing visibility in the room, a fine sheen of sweat shone on his skin. Candlelight would be a fantastic idea at the moment. She loved the way a flickering flame could show off the human form and it’d been a long time since she’d had a partner patient enough to set up small details like that in a room.

Nope. Kyle was not a partner and this was not headed in the direction her thoughts seemed to be going on their own. There would be no fantasizing.

“If something is worth doing,” Kyle huffed, “It is worth doing well. I’m not satisfied if I haven’t done my personal best. In anything.”

Oh, but he was very good at inspiring all the naughty fantasies.

Turning back to her laptop, she attempted to focus on something else, anything else. “Maybe tomorrow morning I’ll go through my routine at the same time. We can draw the curtain between the sleeping and sitting areas.”

She disliked doing it because she preferred to have line of sight on the person she was protecting as much as possible, but so far he’d been careful to honor her instructions on staying away from the windows. He hadn’t once asked to leave the room.

He paused and faced her, his hands on his hips as he stood there with a relaxed posture. “You prefer your workouts without an audience?”

“Correct.” She bit the inside of her cheek. She’d just watched him go through his and hadn’t even thought about whether it’d be rude or not. She shouldn’t have made the assumption that he’d want an audience. Maybe she should’ve at least asked if he minded.

He shrugged. “Okay. I can take my time in the shower if you’d like time to work out now.”

“I’m not sure the hotel’s hot water heaters can handle it.” She gave him a small smile though. He really was surprisingly considerate.

“Ah well.” He lifted his hands, palms up. “I’ve always showered with a lady sharing my room. To conserve water, of course.”

She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “Pass.”

He grinned at her. “Consider it a standing offer, with global conservation in mind.”

Irritation warred with a tiny spark of interest. She immediately squashed any and all thoughts resembling fantasies of the man. She’d let him lure her in some but he was a player and a womanizer and she was having none of it.

Standing, she stalked toward him. To his credit, his grin didn’t fade and he didn’t give ground, but the look in his eyes turned wary. At least he wasn’t idiotic enough to think her approach was some sort of triumph for him.

Without a word, she reached for the curtain and pulled it across most of the room, leaving a small space for a person to slip through if necessary. Not completely blocking him out, but still a definitive shutdown.

Argh. She was as irritated with herself as with him. He had a knack for getting under her skin. One minute his charm seemed sincere and genuinely engaged her. She found herself drawn to him, liking him even. Which she would not be letting him know anytime soon. Then he’d switch gears, turning vapid and transparent. Shallow.

It was infuriating.

And it shouldn’t be.

Normally, she had no fucks to give about what a man did with his time. If he was a player, well, there was a certain accountability to the women who fell into his bed willingly and she tended to figure it took two to make the decision. As far as she could tell, Kyle was up front about his intentions. No strings attached. He wasn’t the type to lead a girl into thinking there was a committed relationship of any kind. It wasn’t like he was a bad person, just not relationship material. So there wasn’t any of the duplicity there to set off her anger.

No. That wasn’t quite right. He was being dishonest in a way. Not in what he said but in what he wasn’t saying. She got the sense there was more to him. He wasn’t shallow. He wasn’t an asshole. But he was far too good at letting people think he was.

Maybe what was pissing her off was that he might’ve been pretending so long, he was starting to believe his own bullshit.

* * *

He needed to stop being an asshole.

Hot water ran down his back as Kyle let the shower wash away the sweat of last night’s nightmare along with what he’d worked up doing his morning exercises. It had been less of a concern with his police escort or with the bland deputy marshal. None of them had been kind to him, or considerate, or thought much of him. And so, it was easy and even amusing to encourage the string of little judgments they would make about his character based on his jokes and innuendos.

They hadn’t considered him as a person from the outset and he felt no compulsion to prove himself in their minds.

Isabelle Scott was proving herself to be even more unique than he’d first thought. It was refreshing, intriguing and uncomfortable. She’d met him and given him a blank slate as far as he could tell.

Oh, every person made judgments based on their impressions. It happened within seconds of first meeting. There was a certain wisdom in learning to assess people within moments of an encounter. He considered it a survival skill, whether out on the city streets at night or in a high-powered business meeting.

Perhaps what was different about Isabelle Scott, or Lizzy as her commander called her, was her attitude. She hadn’t dismissed him out of hand when they first met. She’d been fairly brusque to all of them in turn. There had been no singling him out. Each one of them had been met with the same level of professionalism, impersonal and efficient.

Perhaps Austin and Weaver were put off by her lack of deference but she also didn’t give respect before it had been earned. A sentiment he shared.

Wetting his hair, he grimaced at the idea of using the hotel shampoo but was slightly mollified to find it was a reasonable brand at least. Working up a lather in his hair, he dug his fingertips into his scalp in an attempt to massage away the headache he’d woken up with this morning.

He’d dreamed of gunfire. He’d fallen to the street with Austin and Weaver standing over him, looking down as he bled out onto the pavement. Decker had been nearby, making an impersonal report of his death. Isabelle Scott had been nowhere to be seen until he’d looked up and beyond them. She’d been up on the roof of a building, shooting at someone else.

All he’d been able to think was that he had others to keep safe. Lizzy would care about his family, protect them, if only he could ask her to.

But he hadn’t had a chance to tell her how to find them.

He ducked his head under the hot spray, rinsing away the shampoo.

It wasn’t necessary and there was no reason to mention it now. In any case, there’d be no need to remain in protective custody once he’d completed his testimony in the trial. Only a few days and this would be behind him. At least he hoped it would. Follow-up trials would take much longer and there’d been no mention of him remaining under witness protection. Perhaps if she continued to prove as effective a bodyguard as she already had, he would look into keeping her on retainer.

Even though he couldn’t imagine a reason for needing personal security, it never hurt to keep good resources in easy contact if unforeseen circumstances arose. He maintained a record of any number of services for the same reason. You never knew when you were going to need something, anything. And it was best to have an idea of who to call.

The heat of the shower had eased tight muscles in his neck and across his shoulders. He rolled his head to stretch, hearing a few pops as his cervical vertebrae adjusted on their own. Standing with the shower spray directly on the back of his neck, he rolled his shoulders to encourage circulation in the area.