Bryant
AS SOON AS the words leave her mouth, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut. Does she really think I’d do that? I’m not that kind of guy and I thought she knew that. I’ve always been completely upfront with her.
“I can’t believe you’d think I’d sleep with that woman,” I bite out.
She won’t look at me, but she’s shaking her head from side to side like she’s in denial.
“I didn’t say I thought that,” she blurts, before pausing. “But you have to admit that seeing her walking away from your room this morning, looking like she’d been ridden hard and put up wet, with her shoes in her hand, seemed a little sketchy.”
“So you assumed I’m the type of guy who would do that? With a fucked-up shoulder no less,” I bellow.
Even I cringe at my tone and the loudness of my voice.
“I don’t know what to think,” she replies, her voice unsure.
“For your information, she must’ve knocked on my door right before you saw her because I only spoke to her for a minute. She asked if she could come in to talk and I told her no. Then she asked when I was going back to Colorado and I told her I didn’t know and that she needed to leave, so she did. End of story.”
She’s about to respond when the interior door to her room opens slightly and Mandy sticks her head through it.
“Sorry to interrupt your little love fest in here,” she starts, looking really uncomfortable. “But Isaac is here and said he needs to speak to you both immediately.”
I look at Layne and watch as a myriad of emotion flits across her face.
“Who the hell is Isaac?” I growl.
“Shit,” Layne whispers before turning to me. “I need to explain something to you before we go in and talk to him.”
I hold my hand up, stopping her from going further.
“Why don’t we let Isaac explain?” I storm past her into her room to find a very large man in a suit standing in her room.
“What do you want?” I growl.
Mandy quickly grabs Gracie’s hand and walks with her to the front door. “We’re going to go for a walk and get some fresh air,” Mandy blurts before disappearing out the door.
Isaac regards me, eyebrow raised, before turning his attention to Layne, who must’ve walked in behind me.
“Have you told him yet?”
She shakes her head, her face a mask of irritation. “I was going to tell him today.”
“Somebody better tell me what the hell is going on.”
She looks frozen in place. Isaac must notice her alarm because he doesn’t wait for her to explain.
“A man came to Ms. Scott’s room a few nights ago, claiming to be your agent and requesting to come into her room to discuss your relationship with her. When she told him she wouldn’t talk to him until she’d spoken to you first, and went to shut the door, he tried to force his way into her room. She was able to slam the door before he could push his way in. Security looked into the matter and found out a housekeeper had taken a bribe to get her room number. The man already knew she was staying here and that she was your guest.”
I swing my attention back to Layne, anger like I’ve never felt before running through my veins.
“How could you not tell me about this?”
She doesn’t even miss a beat before answering. “Because you needed to be focused. You didn’t need any ‘distractions,’” she barks out, her anger clear.
And there we have it.
She’d kept secret about a man almost breaking into her room, with her and Gracie here, because she didn’t want to distract me.
Because that’s what I’d told her, right? Initially. That I didn’t need any distractions.
I’m not sure if it’s possible for me to feel like a bigger piece of shit.
I take a step in her direction and watch as a plethora of emotions cross her face. I watch as a lone tear runs down her cheek. Lifting my hand, I rub my thumb over the tear to wipe it away, her eyes never leaving mine.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I never meant to make you feel like you couldn’t tell me something like this.” Leaning forward, I press a soft kiss to her lips before turning back to Isaac.
“So what’s so important you needed to talk to us right now?”
“We have new information. I’ve spent a few days reviewing security footage from the hallways on this floor.”
The first night Layne was here, when I mauled her by the ice machine, runs through my head. I bet that was hot to watch. He must know what I’m thinking about because he smirks before continuing.
“A man who appears to be the same guy that tried to force his way into Ms. Scott’s room and a woman are seen several times around both of your doors in the past few days.”
He stops long enough to look at me strangely, like he’s waiting for my reaction.
“She’s seen going into your room, with a keycard, twice in the past few days.”
What the actual fuck?
How would a woman have a key to my room?
“How the hell did she get a key to my room?” I bellow.
“Well, my first instinct was you’d given it to her,” he replies, and my anger rises.
“I didn’t give anyone a key to my room.”
Isaac nods, and when I look at Layne, her attention is focused on Isaac.
“Continue please,” I bite out.
“The video shows she’s only in the room for a short time and leaves quickly. One of the times, the man is standing outside the room waiting for her.”
Layne gasps, before turning to me. “The night we had dinner here. There was a bunch of long blonde hair in your bathroom sink. I chalked it up to housekeeping.”
“She has blonde hair,” Isaac replies.
“Wait. The other night, I was doing push-ups and found a black bra half under my bed. I assumed it was from a past guest and housekeeping missed it so I threw it out,” I blurt out. “But why would she come in here and leave shit like that?”
“We have no idea. We’re still working on identifying these two people. One of the front desk people said the woman looks familiar and they think she is a guest here, but they couldn’t place her.” Isaac turns his attention to Layne. “Ms. Scott, we’d like for you to come down and view the video to see if you can identify the man as the same one that came to your room.”
She heads for the door.
“I’m coming too,” I grunt. When we step out into the hallway, I put my hand on the small of Layne’s back, instantly causing her to stiffen. When she looks back at me, I give her a small smile to reassure her, which causes her to relax into my hand.
We have things to talk about, obviously, but she’s not going to push me away. We’ll figure this out.
Isaac brings us to a room marked “Security” on the first floor. Once we’re seated, he turns his computer monitor toward us with a freeze frame of the side of a man’s face, and I instantly recognize him. I’d seen him in the elevator at least twice since I arrived last week.
“I’ve seen this guy in the hotel a couple times,” I tell Isaac. “He’s never said a word to me or even looked at me that I can remember.”
“That’s him.” I swing my attention to Layne, whose eyes are locked on the screen.
Isaac forwards the video and stops it when he gets to a fairly good picture of the woman.
“Sarina,” I bark, at the same time Layne growls out “Worthington.”
Layne’s eyes swing to mine, narrowing slightly. “How the hell do you know her?”
And we’re back to the accusation in her eyes.
“She’s my stalker next-door neighbor.”
“Sarina Worthington lives next door to you?” Layne asks, a perplexed look on her face.
“Yeah, she moved in last year and has basically been stalking me ever since. How do you know her?”
“She is Garrett’s partner’s ex-wife, and the bane of my existence.”
“Small world,” Isaac utters. “Well, now that I have a name for her, I can find her.” He types something into the computer before speaking again.
“Seems Mrs. Worthington checked in on Tuesday morning and is scheduled to check out this morning. Note says she had a gentleman visitor, no name listed.”
“Let’s go chat with her before she has a chance to check out,” I demand, jumping up and trying to look at the computer screen to see what her room number is.
“Sorry, Mr. Nash, but I’ll have to go myself. I can’t let you two involve yourself in the investigation. I will let you know what I find out though.”
“What are we going to do if she’s already left?” Layne utters.
“Well, Mr. Nash can choose to file a police report for her going into his room without permission, but unless she stole something, it’ll be hard to get the charges to stick. Him, on the other hand, if we find out who he is, we can file a report for him trying to force himself into your room after you told him to leave.”
“She’s stalking me. That’s a charge,” I snap.
“Stalking is hard to prove, although if this has been an ongoing problem with her, you should probably file the police report if for no other reason than to keep a history of the things she’s doing.”
“Please go see if she’s still here, Isaac. I need this to be over,” Layne pleads. Isaac nods and shows us to the door.
“I will keep you posted if I speak to her.”
I give Isaac my cell phone number with strict instructions to contact me the moment he has any further information, which he agrees to.
Layne stands, and I lace my fingers through hers as we exit the office. I can tell by her posture she’s unsure of how to handle all of this information.
“Please don’t ever keep something this important from me again, Layne. I know you said you didn’t want to distract me, and I understand why you’d feel that way, but this is huge. That man could’ve hurt you, or Gracie.”
She continues to the elevators in silence.
She’s quiet as we ride the elevator to our floor, but she doesn’t try to remove her hand from mine.
Once in her room, she excuses herself to the bathroom, and I take a seat on the couch, waiting for her to return.
After more than ten minutes, I make my way to the bathroom and knock gently.
“Layne,” I plead. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be out in a second,” she replies quietly, a catch in her voice.
Making my way back into the living room, the main door opens and in prances a very happy Gracie, followed by an equally happy Mandy and Conor.
“Look who I found,” Mandy clucks.
“Hey, man,” Conor comes over to me, concern on his face. “I’ve been texting you all morning and haven’t gotten any responses. How’s the shoulder?”
“I’m okay. Sore as H-E-double hockey sticks, but I’ll live,” I reply.
“You know I can spell, right?” Gracie sasses, eye roll to go with it, making us all laugh.
When Layne comes back into the room, her eyes are a tad red. I hold my arm out to my side so she knows I want her to come to me, which she does, tucking herself into my side.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should’ve.” Her eyes glisten with unshed tears, and I press my lips to her forehead.
“No more of that,” I tell her quietly. “We’ll figure this all out and then go home.”
Home.
I still need to explain to her how the job at the local high school came about. I had planned to tell her last night because I knew it would come out in the article this morning.
“Let’s go to Central Park and find something to do. We need to get out of here and have some fun before we go home. If the airport ever opens, that is.” Leave it to Conor to pull us out of our funk.
“That’s a great idea,” Mandy exclaims. “I’ve been cooped up in here or at the baseball stadium the whole time we’ve been here. Let’s go!”
Gracie started bouncing around the minute the word park left Conor’s lips.
Everyone but Layne and I scatter, getting things together to head to the park.
“Can we talk about the job later, when I get Gracie to bed?” she asks me as we make our way toward the door.
“I’ll explain everything later,” I tell her.
FOR THE NEXT six hours, our party of five roams the grounds of the park. We see the zoo, the Balto statue, and the carousel. I’ve never spent a long period of time with a child Gracie’s age, but I can say now, I understand why parents are so tired all the time. She’s so inquisitive and energetic, and although I loved every minute of reliving my childhood with her in that park, I’m exhausted and my shoulder is on fire.
I received a text from Isaac about an hour ago saying to call him when I had a chance. I couldn’t break up the fun everyone was having, so I texted him back and told him I’d call him when we got back to the hotel.
Gracie is asleep within minutes of Stanley picking us up. Her head is resting on my good shoulder, and Layne’s hand is on my thigh on the other side. When I look her way, she’s trying to keep her eyes open but failing miserably. Eventually, she scoots away from me and lays her head down in my lap, asleep within minutes.
Conor clears his throat behind me and leans over so he can whisper in my ear.
“Looks like these two might have tamed Slam, huh?”
And all I can do is smile, because they sure as hell have tamed me.
I ASK CONOR TO order pizza from the same place I’d ordered from for dinner the other night and retreat back to my room to call Isaac.
“Security.”
“Hey, Isaac. It’s Bryant Nash,” I reply. “What have you got?”
“Well, Ms. Worthington is quite the little chatterbox,” he replies. “She admitted to everything. Apparently, the mystery man, who happens to be her brother, and she had this elaborate scheme. She followed you here to watch you play in the World Series and to hopefully get you into her bed. Her brother, who works at the stadium, got her tickets to the games. But then she saw you and Layne having dinner the first night she was here and went to her brother for help, again. She asked him to get his girlfriend, the housekeeper, to tell him what Layne’s room number was so he could scare her. Neither of them expected Layne to break his hand in the process.” He stops long enough to snicker a little before continuing. “When the scare didn’t work, she figured she could break you guys up by making it seem like you were cheating on Layne. Hence, the hair and bra left in your room and then the strategically timed visit to your room to make Layne think she was leaving your room.”
That psychotic bitch. She is going to pay for this.
“Isaac, did you record this conversation with her?”
“I sure did. Protocol.”
“I’m going to need a copy of that please.”
“Yes, sir. Also, please let Layne know Sarina’s brother, Jason, was arrested and the district attorney’s office has been notified for filing of formal charges.”
“Thank you so much for all your help, Isaac.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad it had a good outcome,” he gushes. “Please take my suggestion and file a report on what she did, maybe include a copy of the recording for the cops as well. I have a feeling you’re going to need a paper trail of this woman’s level of crazy.”
“Duly noted.”
When I walk back into Layne’s room, the girls are all stretched out on the couch and Conor is lying on the floor at Mandy’s feet. I have a feeling whatever is going on between those two will either be perfect or a hurricane.
I sit down on the arm of the couch beside Layne, and her hand reaches up for mine. When I look down at her, I cut my eyes toward my room.
I stand and she follows.
Shutting the door behind us, I pull her to me with my good arm and kiss her gently on the lips.
“I spoke to Isaac.” Her eyes widen and she takes a step back from me, grabbing my hand and leading me to the couch.
“Tell me.”
And I do. I explain it all to her. Everything from the fact that Sarina has been a nonstop pain in my ass since she moved in next door to me, to her throwing herself at Conor the night we saw her at dinner.
At the end of my story, she shakes her head and chuckles.
“I mean, I knew she was a little crazy. I apparently had no concept of the level of crazy though.”
“Total nutjob.”
She scoots over and then straddles my lap so she’s looking into my eyes.
“I really didn’t want to believe what I was seeing when it looked like she was leaving your room. All kinds of theories ran through my head, and honestly, I almost packed Gracie up and left. But something in my heart told me there had to be another explanation,” she explains.
“I’m glad you didn’t run,” I tell her, reaching up and pressing my lips to hers. Her hands find my hair and pull back on my head a tad, deepening the kiss before pulling back and pressing her forehead to mine.
“Me too,” she whispers.
She looks me in the eyes before speaking again. “I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“We’re going to figure out how to make this work, baby. You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”
She kisses me again, and if I was physically able to, I’d throw her over my shoulder and take her to my bed. But between the shoulder and Gracie being in the other room, this isn’t the time.
“Before we get carried away, why don’t you tell me about your coaching job?” she chuckles, grinding herself down on my lap one last time before climbing off, a smirk on her face.
This woman is going to be the death of me.