“What is?”
It had come back to him. Over breakfast.
He stared at her for the longest time, lingering on her face and her neck and on her lean body…and then going back to her smart eyes.
He wasn’t going to give her that information. He couldn’t.
In the silence that followed, he felt an overriding need to be alone with her again, and not in public. In his room. In that hotel bed with the sheets that smelled like lemon. He wanted a little of her before he left, as if she were some kind of medicine that might keep him alive just awhile longer.
Because he was going to die soon, he realized.
It wasn’t paranoia. It was…as inevitable as his past was written in stone.
“I’m running out of time,” he said softly. “And I want to be with you before I leave.”
“Where are you going?”
“Away,” he answered after a moment.
25
Mels stopped breathing as the conviction that Matthias was a missing person hit her hard, without regard to the fact that he had a driver’s license and, supposedly, a house: Standing in front of her, looking her in the eye, it was as if he weren’t even in the room.
Here for a split second, gone forever.
“Why are you leaving?” When he just shook his head, she asked, “Is that why you won’t tell me your name?”
“No, it’s because it doesn’t matter. It’s just syllables. I haven’t been that person for so many years, it simply isn’t relevant.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” As he shrugged, she had to push. “And you don’t need to go anywhere.”
For one thing, she didn’t believe people could see into the future, and that meant if he took off, it was of his own free will—and that decision could be unmade at any time. By him.
Except…the problem with that argument was that she felt it, too, the sense that they didn’t have an ever-after waiting for them. They’d met because of an accident, their lives colliding, and just as that impact hadn’t lasted long, neither would they.
The injury was what was going to be forever.
She had this awful feeling she was never going to get over meeting this man.
“How much longer?” she demanded.
“I don’t know.”
Getting off the table, she went over and wrapped her arms around him, laying her cheek against the beating heart behind his ribs. As he held her back, she wondered why he was the one she felt such a connection with. Those others, the conventional ones, hadn’t gotten through to her.
This man, though…
Matthias eased back and touched her face. “Can I kiss you here?”
“You mean on my cheek or in this conference room?”
“Well, you do work here, and—”
She pressed her lips to his, silencing him. Who gave a shit where they were. There were plenty of interoffice relationships, and people who had brought husbands and wives and partners into the building.
Besides, if her boss could sexually harass her, she should be able to kiss the man she actually wanted under this roof.
Closing her eyes, she tilted her head and brushed his mouth again, letting her lips cling to his. And as he kissed her back, she wished she could capture the moment and make it physical somehow, turn it into something that she could hold in her hands, or put somewhere safe like she would a book or a vase.
But life wasn’t like that. You didn’t get to hold on to the moments that defined you or touch the things that touched you—not in the palm of your hand or with the tips of your fingers, at least. Destiny’s machinations were as elusive as a sculptor’s tool, swooping in, changing your contours, and then moving on to the next piece of clay.
With a steady shift, Matthias’s palm slid up to the nape of her neck, taking control. And as his tongue licked between her lips, she opened for him, wishing that this was somewhere private as heat magnified inside of her, the walls of her body sending it endlessly ricocheting around, faster, hotter, faster, hotter—
Mels frowned as she realized her hand was touching something hard at the small of his back.
Not a brace.
There was nothing medical about it.
Ducking under the flap of his windbreaker, she found…the grip of a gun.
She pulled the weapon out of his waistband as she stepped back.
It was a forty, and she quickly checked the chamber. Empty. Same with the clip.
“You’re not the only one with a permit,” he said remotely.
She gave the autoloader back to him. “Guess not. Can I ask you where you got it?”
“I bought it.”
“And forgot the ammunition?”
“It wasn’t a package deal.”
“You know what? The victim who died at your hotel just last night was shot at by this caliber of gun.”
“And you think I did it because I’m out of ammo.”
Mels shrugged. “You told me not to get involved with you because it could kill me. You show up with a gun after someone is shot at the Marriott. Call me Einstein.”
“I didn’t kill that man.”
“How do you know it was a male?”
“It’s all over the news.”
Mels crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor, thinking nothing good was going to come out of where this conversation was going.
“I think I’d better take off.”
“Yeah,” she said.
Talk about whiplash. From kissing to this in less than five seconds.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured at the door.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I don’t like leaving you like this.”
Well, that made two of them.
As the door clicked shut behind him, she wondered if she would ever see Matthias again—and gave herself a steady lecture about keeping her head tight and not letting her libido get her into dangerous situations.
Not something her father would have approved of. Not something smart women did.
Damn it….
After fifteen minutes of kicking her own butt, she went up to the newsroom, got herself a mug of strong-and-black, and returned to her desk.
“Tell me you haven’t wrecked my car, too.”
She jumped and glanced over at Tony. “Wha— Oh, no. Here are the keys.”
“Guess you just look like you’ve been in another accident.”
Go. Fig.
Easing back in her chair, she stared at her computer screen.
“You okay?” Tony asked. “You need a Twinkie?”
Mels laughed. “I think I’ll try Maxwell House first, but thanks.”