She rage-whispered, “Those red boots you liked so much had five-inch stiletto heels and an inch of platform under the toe box. I was at least five-seven in them, maybe five-eight.”
Tristan chuckled, “Yes, those boots,” and then he practically growled through the headphones, “That must be why you thought I’m taller now. I was only eight or nine inches taller than you when you wore those boots, but we have more like fourteen inches difference between us now.”
“And you had a British accent, which you hid when you walked into my GameShack.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t hiding it. I just didn’t let myself speak that way because it’s distinctive. I’d been in three other GameShacks that morning, asking about business and what sorts of inventory they had. The last thing I needed was for employees to start talking to each other about some British guy coming into their stores and grilling them about things that would affect the stock price. So I went back to my roots and put on my Midwestern Iowan accent for the day. Once we started talking, I couldn’t switch back.”
The adrenaline from being shot at by Russian mobsters was slowly leaking out of Colleen’s bloodstream. “I did think it was weird that you said chunder and gormless when you were yelling at my manager at GameShack. Those are British swears. You just said gormless again to Micah.”
He shrugged. “I got carried away, but that cockwomble was mistreating you and was racist to boot. If he’d have come after me again, I was prepared to take him out behind the barn as his uncle should’ve.”
Colleen chuckled and shook her head. “That sounds more like an Iowa farm boy. But you had a beard under your mask in the Devilhouse.”
He nodded. “I shaved it off the next morning before I did reconnaissance at the GameShack stores. Again, it would have been an identifying characteristic if employees talked to each other.”
“Huh. I guess so. I can’t believe neither one of us figured it out. God, I’m an idiot.”
His voice lowered to a Twist-like growl. “You’re not an idiot, and don’t talk about yourself like that. That’s a punishment later.”
Now that sounded like Twist.
Tristan relaxed farther into his seat. “I never lied to you. That night at the Devilhouse, Sherwood Forest forum decorum dictated that I couldn’t tell you anything else about who I was. And ever since, I’ve had no reason to mention a username that I use on exactly one minor internet forum. So it never occurred to me that you were my debauched Sailor Moon.”
Colleen was glad he hadn’t added, and I’ve had my tongue in your twat. She said, “I was wearing some pretty advanced cosplay makeup that night. And you had on that mask.”
He chuckled. “It got in the way.”
“I still have your tie,” she admitted.
He braced his arm on his knee and turned toward her, a hint of a smile on his lips. “No, you don’t.”
“In my luggage.”
One side of his mouth turned up behind the microphone. “Like serial killers display trophies of their kills on their shelves?”
It was Colleen’s turn to chuckle. “Maybe kind of like a souvenir, I guess. Just something to remember that night by.”
He twisted more toward her. “So it was memorable, then.”
She stifled a laugh. “Yeah. I mean, I obviously liked it.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Even after you met me?” Colleen asked him, pointing to her soggy dress over her sternum to indicate her Colleen-self.
He chuckled. “I couldn’t get you out of my mind, even though I was thoroughly infatuated with you,” Tristan said. “But that night in the Devilhouse was one for the ages.”
She risked a glance up at him, and he was watching her face. “I liked last night more.”
One side of his lips rose, and water slid from his wet hair down the side of his face. “Did you?”
“Yeah. Because it was really us, you know? Not makeup and masks.”
Tristan drew a breath to say something more, smiling as his eyes searched hers, but Micah threw out his arm and whacked Tristan across his chest.
A click sounded in Colleen’s earphones. Micah said, “The pilot wants to know whether to head for LAX or San Francisco.”
“LAX.” Tristan retrieved his phone from the pocket of his suit jacket, shaking off the water. “I’ll have Jian meet us at the airport with the luggage. He’s been driving around for an hour, awaiting instructions on where to meet us.”
Micah raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you think the airport will be safe? Maybe you should come back to my apartment in San Francisco for the night. At least no one will know you’re there.”
Tristan glanced at Colleen. “I think we have other plans.”
She shrugged. “I just want to get into some dry clothes.”
Tristan reached over and took Colleen’s hand in his huge, warm one. “Definitely LAX, then. I’ll text Jian to meet us at the plane.”
And he was holding her hand.
That was awfully . . . intimate.
Rivulets of panic trickled upward from Colleen’s weak knees, infested her belly, and crawled over her scalp.
She jumped, trying to crawl out of her harness and her skin to yank open the sliding door of the helicopter and jump the hell out.
Tristan didn’t need to be holding her hand. Rolling around on a bed and enjoying friction on nerve endings was one thing, but this—whatever this was—this grabbing onto her hand like he might dangle her off the side of the cliff was something she had not signed up for.
Before they’d left the hotel, she’d been too wound up by him toying with her body to think about what he’d been saying, but his words had snapped into crystal clear focus on the limo ride over to the restaurant.
She hadn’t been freaking out about them being kidnapped by the Russian mafia, though that was far from inconsequential. Sweet Baby Jesus, these were Vladimir Putin’s henchmen, the kind who forced commercial flights to land in old Russian Federation countries so they could kidnap journalists off the plane and murdered people fighting for democracy and freedom in Russia. They pushed lawyers out of windows and poisoned people who escaped with chemical weapons.
The Russian mafia wasn’t morally gray. They were just plain evil.
But she hadn’t taken her opportunity to escape. That bathroom window caper had been Colleen’s escape plan until Svetlana had needed it more. Since that hadn’t worked, she’d have to figure something else out.
Colleen was a farm girl who’d worked in a feed store her whole life. She’d been delivering receipts from her mom at the cash register to her father in the storeroom when she could barely toddle.
“Self-reliant” didn’t begin to describe her.
She was a polar bear, just fine being cold and frosty and only interested in other polar bears to screw and then throw the hell out. Don’t let the cave door hit you on your fluffy butt, Mr. Boy Polar Bear. Just get the hell out of my den.
But the things Tristan had said.
How’d he put it? What were those terrifying and claustrophobic and exhilarating things he’d said?
I want you to sit at my feet and hold onto my leg like I’m your everything, because you already are mine.