They managed two full flights down before the door they’d just escaped through opened up and a young man poked his head into the stairwell. Though Annabelle and Jack were out of sight of the man, they were definitely not out of sound. They could hear him and he could hear them.
And they didn’t sound as if they were supposed to be there.
Annabelle felt panic rising up inside of her when she heard the man above them speak into some sort of hand-held radio. At least, that’s what she assumed it was.
“Martina, someone’s going down the stairs. Just got off of level fourteen.”
Jack and Annabelle kept moving, even as they could hear “Martina’s” amplified voice echo through the stairwell. “Yeah? So?” she asked, clearly not understanding why it was such a big deal that someone was taking the stairs.
“I don’t know, chica, it’s just that whoever it is, they’re running down them like El Diablo is at their back!”
“Eduardo, just check if everything’s all right.” Martina told him, her tone one of annoyance.
There was a pause in communication that Annabelle figured was Eduardo looking around on level fourteen. “Yeah, I guess so-”
And then Jack was punching through the stairwell door on the first floor and leading Annabelle out through the building’s lobby. When they were safely beyond both the elevators and stairs, they slowed and Jack put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her near.
“Cozy?” she asked. Her voice shook. That had been too close.
“More than you know,” Jack replied, his Sheffield accent teasing. There was a casual grace to the man that blew Annabelle away. She wanted to break into a sprint and run like a mad woman until she was long gone from Columbia University, but Jack meandered them at a maddeningly slow pace toward the front doors of the building and then, just as slowly, out into the night.
“You’re killing me, Jack,” she muttered, feeling her blood pressure rise.
He laughed, deep in his throat, and let his arm slide down until he was again holding her hand in his gloved fingers.
“Always wanted to hear that from you, luv. Different place and circumstances, perhaps, but I’ll take what I can get.”
Chapter Twenty
As much as Annabelle would like to get excited over the prospect of getting a hotel room with Jack, the truth was, she was exhausted. And it wasn’t the first time Jack had ever spirited her away to a hotel. Never had it been for overtly romantic reasons, either.
Every time they’d checked in some place together, Jack was either married at the time or had just finished killing someone and she had mistakenly witnessed it. Okay, so that had only happened the one time. Still, she counted it as a weekend away with Jack, even if she had spent the entire time reasoning with herself that a man could still be a good man, even if he murdered others for a living.
Over time, Annabelle had simply grown used to the fact that human beings needed to sleep somewhere, eventually. And people who moved around a lot, the way Jack did, needed hotel rooms. She and Jack had ended up in a lot of hotels over the last ten years. Every time, out of respect for her privacy, Jack had either asked for two separate rooms or one large suite with two beds. And, out of a staunch need to establish her independence around him – and a gnawing nervousness about accepting any kind of monetary favors from Jack Thane - she’d always insisted on sharing the cost.
But when Jack had rather covertly slipped a bundle of large bills past her tonight to pay for the adjoining suites they would use, Annabelle had found herself unable to care a whole lot. Maybe it was the fact that she realized that a room in a hotel like this would cost a fortune that she couldn’t afford. Maybe she realized, along with a jolt of painful anguish in her gut, that she no longer had a job. Or maybe it was that she was tired. Or maybe it was all of those things and she was more than a little depressed and she simply couldn’t care.
She’d caught the surprised but frankly pleased expression on Jack’s handsome face when she hadn’t spoken up and insisted on paying her half. And he’d been gentleman enough not to say anything about it.
Now, Annabelle pulled off her jacket and un-did the belt loops holding the shoulder holster in place. She gently took the gun and placed it atop the bed stand, and then unclasped the snaps that encased it in the holster. She wanted to be able to pull it quickly if the need arose.
Then she sighed and her shoulders dropped. As she peeled off her clothes in the warm, dark room and let them drop to the plush carpet beside the bed, she turned to stare out the tall windows across the room. The glass was floor to ceiling, affording an amazing view. The twinkling sky line of New York City beckoned with its majesty. She wondered what all of those lights meant. All those windows and the people behind them, living their own separate lives.
She moved to the tall windows and stood gazing out. How many of those people were in trouble? Hiding? How many of them were lonely? Wasn’t it in some song that New York was the loneliest city in the world?
At that moment, Annabelle felt more lonely than she could have imagined.
And, it was at that moment that the door adjoining her room to Jack’s opened.
She turned at the sound. She’d left the door unlocked so that Jack could get in if there was an emergency.
Now he stood, framed by the light behind him, still fully dressed but for the head wrap, which he’d taken off at some point, and the gauntlet gloves, which he’d also shed. His blonde hair fell in loose curls to his shoulders. His tall black-clad frame nearly filled the doorway.
Annabelle gazed up at him. He’d gone stock-still, his blue eyes burning like sapphires in a desert. He was staring at her in a way he never had before. There was an expression on his face akin to hunger, to anger, to desperation.
She blinked and looked down, only then realizing that she was completely undressed.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she didn’t move. She did not make a break for the bed or for her clothes. She stood there, outlined by the skyline of New York, and let him look.
With quiet deliberation, Jack closed the door behind him and then locked it, never once taking his eyes off of her. Annabelle forced herself to breathe. It wasn’t easy. She watched him move slowly toward her. He was a towering figure of speed and strength and secrets, but he approached her like one would a caged lion.
She didn’t run. She was incapable of movement.
As he closed the distance between them, she recognized a fleeting reservation… He’s married… But the thought flitted before her mind’s eye, flickered into specks of dust, and then was blown away, along with the rest of her ability to reason.
Just before he cupped the back of her neck with his hand and bent to claim her lips in a kiss, she had just enough time to be thankful that she was on birth control.
And that was the last logical notion she had all night.
Jack stared down at the woman sleeping beside him. His hand rested on the curve of her waist. Her back was nestled against his chest. He listened to her breathe and his eyes traced the long, silken locks of her hair that fell in honeyed red and gold waves across the pillow.
He cursed himself inside. This was wrong in so many ways, he couldn’t count them. But, most importantly, it would change things between them. There was no going back now.
He’d protected her for so long. From him, from his life, from everything it stood for. And now he may as well stand her in front of a firing squad and hold his ears.
He brushed a lock from her cheek and admired the curve of her chin. He followed that curve down her throat to her rising and falling chest.