Julie James - Something about You

Jack could only imagine how much pain that must’ve caused her. “Fuck, Cameron . . . I’m sorry.” He did the math in his head and quickly put things together. “Four years ago. That’s when you joined the U.S. attorney’s office.”

“I wish I could tell you that the first thing I did as a prosecutor was put away the scumbag who killed my dad. Not that I ever would’ve been allowed to try that case.”

“Did they catch the guy?”

She nodded. “He pled guilty to manslaughter in state court. It was quick, uneventful. Very . . . unsatisfying.”

“But now you put other scumbags away for a living.”

“That part is more satisfying.”

They drove in silence for a moment. “You amaze me, Cameron.”

That got a slight smile out of her. “High praise, coming from someone who knows how to kill people with paper clips and everything.”

Jack looked over in surprise. “You know about the paper clips?” He stroked his chin. “Hmm. Now that was good. Even for me.”

Cameron stared at him, stupefied.

He laughed. “I’m just kidding.” Mostly. Staples maybe, but never paper clips. “Speaking of your job—and mine—there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, something that came up in the meeting in Davis’s office. You mentioned that Silas knows about your connection to the Robards case.”

“Davis seemed interested in that, too.”

“I keep thinking about how Silas told you to back off the Martino case three years ago. It was one thing when I thought you, the prosecutor who had reviewed all the investigation files, made the decision that there wasn’t enough evidence to try the case. But now that I know Silas pressured you into not filing charges, the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t trust him.”

Cameron thought about this. Jack could see she was running through the possibilities in her head.

“We need to be very careful here,” she said. “Silas is the U.S. attorney. We can’t start making accusations against him merely because of bad feelings. You know better than anyone how vindictive he can be.”

“It’s just something I want you to think about. You need to be careful around Silas. And the fact that I’ll be going to work with you on Monday is perfect—it’ll give me a chance to keep an eye on the son of a bitch. If he so much as looks at you the wrong way, I might have to try out that paper clip idea of yours.”

Cameron turned her head in his direction. “That was very ominous of you.”

“Now that I know he’s the one who screwed me over three years ago, my feelings toward him, to use your words, are a lot less pleasant.”

“I hope you can control yourself around him, for both our sakes.”

Jack took his eyes off the road and looked her over. “In all my years with the army and the FBI, there’s only been one person I’ve ever had any problems controlling myself around.”

She smiled at that, but said nothing. She reclined in the seat, crossing one naughty-booted leg over the other, in his direction. Jack fought hard against the images of her straddling him that assaulted his mind.

“You do realize you’re driving on the shoulder, don’t you?”

“Thanks for pointing that out, Cameron.”

PER JACK’S ORDERS, they entered the Grand Traverse Resort through a back entrance and were immediately escorted to the manager’s office. Cameron had never stayed at the resort before but quickly saw why Amy had been so impressed by it: with luxurious décor, over six hundred rooms, gorgeous beach and fairway views, and a full-service spa, the property was indeed grand in every sense of the word. Even Jack, who’d said he would move her to a different hotel if he wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with the security aspects of the resort, seemed to find it acceptable.

“It’ll do,” he said in response to her silent question as they walked through the white marble and cherrywood hallway.

Jack had spoken to the manager on the phone and had explained the situation in general terms, revealing no details. In the office, he requested a map of the hotel grounds, which he kept, and emphasized one basic point: no one outside the three of them was to know the location of Cameron’s room. He asked for a private conference room where he could meet with the hotel’s head of security, one that he and the two agents coming in from Detroit would also use as a working space throughout the weekend.

Then he asked the manager whether the wedding guests had been assigned a particular block of rooms.

“Yes, the bride reserved a block in the hotel itself,” the manager said. “The wedding guests will all be staying here.”

“Perfect. Delete Cameron’s reservation, and book us a new room under the name David Warner. Put us in the Tower,” Jack said, referring to the seventeen-story building located adjacent to the hotel.

“David Warner?” Cameron asked after the manager left to get their room keys.

“An old alias of mine,” Jack said.

“Ooh . . . an alias. Who does that make me?”

“For this weekend, I suppose it makes you Mrs. David Warner.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure I’m the type to take my husband’s name. I’m on the fence about it.”

“For the next two days, you can be the type.”

“Boy, Mr. David Warner sure seems a little bossy.”

The manager poked his head into the office. “Sorry—I forgot to mention: the Tower accommodations are all standard rooms, not suites. I’m guessing you would prefer two queen beds instead of one king?”

Cameron and Jack looked at each other. Neither spoke.

The manager shifted in the doorway. “I could always switch you back to the hotel, if you require larger accommodations.”

Jack shook his head. “No. I want to be kept apart from the rest of the wedding guests. And the high-rise is a safer location. No balconies, no windows accessible from the outside, only one way into the room.”

“We’ll take two queen beds,” Cameron told the manager, thinking that was the safest thing to say.

He nodded. “Excellent.” He took off again.

Twenty minutes later, as they began to get settled in, Cameron realized that the one-versus-two-beds decision really didn’t matter. Bottom line: she and Jack were sharing a hotel room. And here she’d thought living together in a five thousand square foot house had seemed intimate.

She watched from the doorway as Jack checked out the closet and bathroom. When finished, he headed over. “So? Which bed will it be?”

“Excuse me?”

He laughed at her expression. “Which one do you want? I’ll put your suitcase on it so you can unpack.”

“Oh. I’ll take the bed farther from the door.”

“Good answer.”

She watched as Jack lifted her suitcase onto the bed, then threw his duffel bag onto the one closer to the door. She suddenly felt . . . jittery. Up until now, every time she and Jack had gotten physical, it had been under crazy, impulsive circumstances. But staring at those two beds, she now found herself consciously thinking about all those things a single woman in her thirties tended to think about when sharing a hotel room with a man she was really attracted to, and who appeared to be really attracted to her, who she hadn’t yet slept with.

Despite all her sass and bravado, she was falling for Jack. Just yesterday—God, was it really only yesterday?—she’d told Collin that all she and Jack had between them was a physical connection. True, she’d been lying to herself. And a lot had happened since then. But she’d never found herself wanting to be wrong about something as much as she did right then.

She trusted Jack with her life. The next question, she supposed, was whether she could trust him with her heart.

She watched as Jack threw some rolled-up socks into one of the drawers in his nightstand. He’d taken off his blazer, so his gun harness was exposed and he was looking extra Special Agent Danger-ish right then. But that single act—putting socks in a drawer—made him momentarily seem like any other guy.

“You okay?” he asked, seeing her still standing by the door.

She smiled. “Yeah, sure.” She headed over and stood between the two beds, surveying the scene. “Makes me think of the Walls of Jericho.”

“From . . . the Bible story?”

Cameron laughed. “No, It Happened One Night.”

“Still not following you there. What happened one night?”

“You know, the movie, It Happened One Night.” She saw him shake his head. “Really? You should check it out—it’s a classic. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are on the run and they stop to spend the night at a motel. They’re not married, but they have to pretend they are, so for propriety’s sake Clark Gable strings a clothesline down the middle of the room and hangs a blanket over it. He calls it the ‘Walls of Jericho.’ ”

Jack stretched out on the bed, tucking his hands behind his head. Of course, being a man, he was already done unpacking and she had barely begun. “So in the movie, after he builds the Walls of Jericho, what happens next?” he asked.

“Things get pret-ty steamy from there. Clark Gable asks Claudette Colbert if she’s interested in learning how a man undresses. And then he takes his clothes off in front of her.”

“Sounds like a chick-flick. I bet Wilkins has seen it ten times.”

“And good for him. I think most men could learn a thing or two from so-called ‘chick-flicks.’ ”

“Like what?”

“Like how women think. What turns them on.”

“If I want to know what a woman’s thinking, I’ll just ask her.” The corners of Jack’s mouth lifted in a sly grin. “And if I want to know what turns her on, well, I’ll just ask her that, too.”