Authors: Valerie Douglas
He smirked. “I guarantee she’ll have a good time.”
“I doubt it,” Ariel said, evenly enough, then added in a whisper, “Thanks, Miriam.”
She couldn’t afford to make enemies here.
“Welcome,” Miriam whispered back. “Keep an eye on old Steve, he thinks he’s da bomb.”
With a grin, Ariel answered, “Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Miriam snickered.
The training session that afternoon went well, too. It would be the first night that week she actually got back to the hotel room at a decent hour. If she was going out the next night a good night’s sleep would be necessary.
The only problem was, she had the oddest sensation of being watched. Not when she was in the office but when she was traveling to and from the hotel. It wasn’t as if she actually saw anyone, rather it was the sense that someone watched her with unfriendly eyes. Nothing she could put her finger on, no one she could point to but it was unnerving.
As it was, though, it would be a relief to move on to the Tampa office at the end of the week.
She’d considered going home for the weekend but there was nothing for her there, she’d only rattle around her empty apartment. As often as she was on the road, she hadn’t had the chance to make many friends. Her parents lived on the East Coast but she rarely visited them, her mother kept asking questions she didn’t want to answer. Rather than go home to nothing she’d decided she might as well stay in Florida. It would save the cost of the airplane ticket home and she could use some of the travel expense money saved to stay in a better hotel in Tampa than she had here.
The next morning’s session went reasonably well but Miriam took one look at what she was wearing when she walked into the office and shook her head.
“Don’t you have anything fun to wear?”
The trim suit Ariel wore was the closest thing she had to party clothes.
Ariel looked at her apologetically. “Sorry, Miriam, this is it. I didn’t know I was going out so I only brought business clothes.”
Her eyes lighting up, Miriam looked at her roguishly. “Got money?”
With amusement, Ariel nodded as she eyed Miriam warily. “Yes, I have money. A little.”
That was all Miriam needed.
“Ladies,” Miriam crowed to some of the others as they walked down the steps at lunchtime. Heads turned. “We’re skipping lunch and going shopping. Ariel needs something to wear for tonight.”
Now Ariel knew another reason why so many of the employees liked Miriam.
There was a least one whoop and assorted grins.
“Make it something sexy,” Steve yelled, as the guys shook their heads and split off. “I’ve got first dance.”
Miriam shouted back, “Shut up, Steve.”
By the time they returned from lunch, Ariel had a casual dress that wouldn’t be sexy enough by Steve’s standards but was deemed acceptable by the girls and a new pair of high-heeled strappy sandals.
It had actually been a lot of fun since she hadn’t been shopping for ages. For a little while, though, she’d understood how a Barbie doll must feel as they insisted she try on a few different dresses.
It had been a long time since she’d actually thought about what she looked like in clothes. Most of the time she bought her business suits off the rack, choosing them more for comfort than style. There was no one she wanted to impress but she’d liked to look good.
The dress she bought was made of real silk but it had come from the sale rack. It hugged her body but not too tightly. It looked like a sunset in patterns of rose and violet, scoop-necked with little fluttery sleeves. The skirt was definitely shorter than her suits, much shorter than she was used to. She’d liked the dress so much she’d found another one in shades of blue. The heels of the sandals were higher than she usually wore, raising her above her five foot three inch height. She’d been a little hesitant about the sandals.
“But Ariel,” Miriam said with a conspiratorial grin, “they make your legs look great and you have great legs. Go on, live a little.”
Rolling her eyes, she’d bought the sandals, reluctantly admitting to herself that Miriam was right. They did make her legs look great.
Surprisingly, she found herself looking forward to the evening. It gave her afternoon training session on her last full day a lift it didn’t usually have. She’d be back in the morning just in case there were problems, but only for half a day, though, and then she’d be moving on to Tampa.
Miriam took her home with her to her tiny apartment to change, which was very kind of her.
That was Miriam, though, a big, hearty, merry girl with a heart to match.
“A lot of folks from the office go to this place, it’s sort of become Marathon’s unofficial watering hole,” Miriam explained as she opened the door to the club.
It was a cute little place with a Cuban/Latin flare and a lot of neon.
She gestured Ariel in ahead of her.
Around one side of the bar, everyone started clapping. Steve, predictably, wolf-whistled as Aidan from the morning session stepped out, bowed and raised his glass to her.
“Ah, Ariel O’Donnell, our own fair Irish rose, we welcome you to our wake. Our training sessions are at last complete and though we bid you farewell as well,” he said, in a fair imitation of an Irish accent, “we’re all bloody well glad they’re done. Have a drink.”
Laughing, Ariel and Miriam went to join them at the bar.
There was some kind of fuss at the front of the restaurant and everyone at the table where Matt sat craned their heads to see what the commotion was about. At the name, he did, too. There couldn’t be two Ariel O’Donnells.
With all the people standing around it was hard to see but then they parted and there she was.
It was her, laughing, clearly a little embarrassed by the applause that greeted her. Her wavy ebony hair was clipped back neatly, her ivory skin glowed beneath the light and her blue eyes seemed luminous in the neon lighting. It seemed she was well-liked. He wondered what the occasion was? He had to admit, he liked the way she laughed and the sound of it, loose, free and bubbling.
His heart did an odd little flip.
What the hell was she doing here
? He had a flash of memory of that last glimpse he’d had of her sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing nothing but the curtain of her hair and a wave of heat shot through him.
She hadn’t seen him yet and he wasn’t sure whether he did or didn’t want her to. The memory of making love to her was still very fresh and had hovered in the back of his mind ever since. Between the courage she’d shown in taking on those men and her curious mix of strength and fragility, she’d made a strong impression. One he found difficult to shake. Add to it that he owed her. She’d probably saved his life and certainly saved him from a worse beating. What had happened that morning hadn’t even touched that debt in his mind.
In fact, it had probably added to it, although he wasn’t certain how.
“What’s going on?” he asked the others at the table.
The chance to learn a little more about her was simply too good to pass up.
Almost everyone in the bar was an employee of Marathon. These, though, were in sales, while those at the bar were office staff. In the corporate hierarchy, they were two entirely different social classes.
All three of those seated at the table with him subsided into disinterest.
“Some trainer the company hired for the new software,” Carly said dismissively. “It’s her last day.”
It seemed that was all he was going to get. He didn’t dare ask more questions or draw too much attention to his interest in Ariel, not if he wanted to get anything out of Carly.
Carly Madison was a sales representative for Marathon as were the other two with them.
He’d followed some of the Marathon employees to the bar and then hung out for a while, eyeing the little group. When tall, cool, blonde Carly had looked at him with interest, he hadn’t been able to turn away the opportunity. He needed information and a way into Marathon and in her he might get both. If worst came to worst, he’d ‘borrow’ her corporate ID, then make sure it was found before she needed to use it again.
The woman beside him was definitely more his type. Like Jeanine, a little remote. The resemblance didn’t bother him, his taste in women was pretty eclectic, he simply didn’t seem to have good luck with them. Especially not petite, black-haired, troubled Irish roses.
The other three at the table returned to their previous conversation, which was the real reason Matt was here. He forced himself to concentrate.
What he heard, though, sitting with them made him uneasy. Some of their business practices didn’t sound kosher, that was certain.
If he couldn’t find a way in, he needed to find out how Marathon operated. What was the link with Genesis? Did anyone know about that? More, why had they killed Bill? What was it Bill had learned or found that made him so dangerous they had to kill him?
Keep your eye on the goal Matt
, he reminded himself,
remember Bill and why you’re here
.
Even so, his eyes kept drifting to the bar, though, and the group there – to the slender figure in the dress that clung lightly to her curves and echoed the brilliant colors cast by the sunset glowing outside the windows.
They all seemed to be having a good time. A much better time, it seemed, than he was. Sales people tended to get a little intense and not always in good ways.
He wasn’t here to have a good time, though, he was here to find out why Bill had died.
Fajitas, tacos and pitchers of margaritas made their rounds up and down the bar as the bartender finally reached Ariel. She gestured him closer and spoke softly.
“Can you give me a virgin margarita?” she asked.
She didn’t like to advertise that she didn’t drink, it made some people uncomfortable. Still others saw it as a challenge. She tried, if she could, to make it look as if she were drinking what everyone else was and there were pitchers of margaritas up and down this side of the bar.
The bartender looked at her and shrugged. “You got it.”
She grabbed one of the fajitas from the tray as it came around.
Everyone talked and laughed and if she didn’t quite fit in, they tried to include her. They were a merry bunch that was certain.
She and Miriam tried to talk above the music. Some of the others joined in the conversation. After a while, she forgot she didn’t know any of these people very well. Miriam played blocker for Steve, he kept trying to take possession even as Ariel avoided being taken. She plucked his hand from around her waist more than once and turned him down for dancing requests twice. Despite him, it was fun and she found herself laughing more than she’d expected.
As much as Matt tried not to his eyes kept straying to the people at the bar and Ariel in particular, he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes away. The dress she wore clung nicely to her sweetly rounded curves and the skirt swirled close around her shapely legs. The color of it brought out the touch of rose in her cheeks and lips, the lavender her lovely bright blue eyes. She was part of the group and yet she wasn’t.
It was a little startling to feel an odd twinge when a man came up behind her and put an arm around her. Good-looking guy. Dark hair, hazel eyes, almost too confident in his looks, smarmy. He didn’t seem Ariel’s type. Matt thought she was too smart for a guy like that. Of course, Matt had seen more than a few smart women fall for the wrong man.
He’d misjudged her, he thought, until she plucked the man’s hand off her, distastefully, as if it were a dead rat and then elbowed him none-too-gently in the gut.
Matt smothered a grin.
The house band played some very nice Latin dance music. A few couples were out on the dance floor, but it was rapidly apparent to Ariel that most of the people from Marathon didn’t know any of the dances although some of them tried.
She smiled, her hips swinging to the music. She might be from up north, but she did know the Latin rhythms and loved them. On the other side of the bar some of the locals nursed their drinks. She wondered what they thought of this invasion of their territory, their local bar? One of the older men looked at her in assessment, watching her movements and then swept his hand toward the dance floor in obvious invitation.