The Blonde Identity (29)

“No.”

She wanted to laugh. Was he blushing? It was hard to tell between the dim room and the five o’clock shadow. “You have multiple firearms, and rose petals scared you?”

He grimaced and grabbed a blanket from the bed, dragged it to the balcony and tossed the remaining petals overboard.

When he came back, she had a full-on smirk. She wasn’t even trying to hide it. “You were scared!”

“This is my first fake honeymoon, okay?” He actually pouted as he closed and locked the door.

“Well, at least you’re mostly clothed.” She tried to laugh, but he didn’t make a sound. He just stood there, a dark look on his face as his gaze slid from her eyes to her lips to her nearly nonexistent nightie and then landed on the bed. The one bed. And leave it to her brain to yell nipples again for good measure.

She grabbed a pillow and held it in front of herself and tried to keep her voice nice and even. “So there’s only one bed.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound bothered by that fact, probably because they’d been in the suite for hours and he’d done this math ages ago.

“So obviously we’re in an only-one-bed situation.”

“Yes?” It sounded like a question but he looked at her like he was starting to wonder if she’d lost her good sense as well as her memory.

“So this is a classic only-one-bed scenario . . .”

“I’m confused,” he said.

“There’s only one bed.”

“Yeah. I can see the bed. It’s right there. And . . . oh.” Suddenly, it must have dawned on him. “You can have it.”

“Oh! No!” She couldn’t do that. She was ninety-nine percent certain she was a feminist and also a heavy sleeper, so . . . “You take the bed. It’s only fair. I had it all afternoon. I can sleep on the floor. You can sleep—”

“I don’t,” he said quickly then added, “sleep. I don’t sleep.”

She ran the words back, sure she’d misunderstood them. “Of course you need your sleep.”

“No. I don’t.” He was so matter-of-fact that she was starting to second-guess tiny pink drinks two through five.

“Of course you will. You have a very dangerous occupation and sleep is essential for motor function and reasoning and decision-making and—”

“Take the bed, Zoe.”

“No! You need your—”

“I. Don’t. Sleep. I never sleep. Ever.”

“Ever?” Moonlight filtered in through the curtains and surrounded him in a shimmering glow. She saw pain on his face but no worry. This was just his normal, as odd as that may be. “That is biologically impossible,” she told him.

“I sleep some.” Sawyer gave a shrug. “But not a lot. So please. Take the bed. I’ll sleep just as well on the floor, trust me.”

Zoe wanted to fight but knew she wouldn’t win, so she crawled beneath the petal-less sheets and stretched out in her basically nonexistent nightie. She turned off the sconces and all that was left was the moonlight.

“Are you a vampire? A zombie? If you are in any way undead, I have the right to—”

“No.” The word was hard but the tone was soft. She might have even heard a chuckle in the shadows.

“Are you a werewolf? Is there a full moon?”

“Good night, Mrs. Michaelson.”

But she couldn’t stop from rolling over and staring down at the man who had taken off his shirt and lay bare-chested on the soft carpet beneath a blanket that still smelled like roses. In the glow of the moonlight, his skin looked soft but his muscles looked hard, one arm crooked behind his head, bicep bulging, like at any moment he might spring to his feet and take on the world, and Zoe was tired just thinking about it.

“You can take the night off, you know.” She wasn’t teasing anymore. “You don’t have to be on duty.”

She actually thought he might have drifted off because it was a long time before she heard, “I’m always on duty.”





Chapter Twenty-Four





Her


Maybe it was the jet lag or the three-hour nap or the many, many, many pink beverages, but sometime in the night Zoe had to get up and use the bathroom. Sure enough, eyes were staring back at her in the dark. She would have apologized for waking him, but as she made her way back to bed, he was smirking, a look that said told you so. So Zoe stayed quiet as she crawled beneath the covers.

It was her first memory of silence. There had always been shooting or running or talking. Even the sounds of the ship—room service carts, and guests passing in the halls—had gone dormant in the middle of the night. But now Zoe could hear her own thoughts. She wasn’t sure she liked them.

Because the longer she lay there, the more they piled on top of one another, a wall of questions with no answers. Like where was she supposed to be sleeping, and what was she supposed to be doing, and, most of all, who was she supposed to be doing those things with? She couldn’t stop wondering if someone was out there—missing her, needing her, wondering why she hadn’t come home? What if—at that very moment—there was someone going crazy without her?

Or, worse, a tiny, terrible part of her wondered, what if there wasn’t?