Authors: Meg Silver
While Thomas and Wade walked away, Josh said, “Honey, I’m so sorry. I need to speak with Jennifer. Would you mind keeping these two company?”
He nodded toward Mercury and Marla who, Amanda would later swear, had expected to take custody of her if Josh or Thomas couldn’t be in attendance. Indeed, Marla let out a low chuckle once Josh had gone.
“Jesus,” she said. “I’m surprised they let you breathe on your own.”
“Be nice,” Mercury cautioned. “Amanda isn’t the one you’re mad at.”
“Yeah, but I can’t kick Wade in the junk,” Marla grumbled. “Thomas saves the resort eight million and change, and that’s the thanks he gets?”
Mercury raised his eyebrows at his enforcer. “You? Defending Thomas? I must be drunk or something. And it wasn’t what Thomas did that set Wade off. It was how he did it. He’s been building a case against West in secret for months. Without orders. If you sprang something like that on me, I’d be concerned too, wondering how many other people you were preparing to decimate. And whether I was one of them.”
Amanda absorbed every word like a sponge. Hadn’t Josh wanted to know what had caught Thomas’s interest about three months before she’d appeared on the scene? She would bet anything West was it, except she sincerely doubted Thomas had done anything without orders. Recruited by the Bureau or not, Thomas would always be a soldier.
Marla rested a hand on a hip and shook her head, still looking perturbed. “Still sucks.”
“Ah, here they come,” Mercury said, gesturing toward the doors.
Both Amanda and Marla turned to watch a crowd of new arrivals. More familiar faces. Clients she had seen around the resort but never talked to, mostly the kind who frequented the
Isle of Wight
.
“Prescott members, here for the ball,” Mercury explained to Amanda. “A bit above your pay-grade yet, but not for much longer, I’m sure. Time for me to stroke some egos.”
Marla gave her a look, but barely waited until Mercury was out of earshot before changing channels. “You are freakin’ lucky Josh and Thomas have your back. Do you even have any clue what’s been going on this week? Did they tell you Steph tried to have you fired?”
Her “
What
?” came out a bit more shrill than she intended. Marla shushed her and pulled them into a shadowed corner.
When Marla began to speak, Amanda was not fooled by the
gravitas
. Tinges of delight leaked into Marla’s eyes, warning there was a certain amount of vindictive triumph involved. Amanda would have to make sure she used her judgment against whatever she was about to hear.
The story didn’t sound good for Steph. In an attempt to make the Accord take her more seriously, Steph had staged a sting operation against Andrew West, her notoriously corrupt Accord lieutenant. Her plan was to trick him into doing something the Accord couldn’t overlook: sneaking unscreened clients onto the schedule. To play things relatively safe, Steph had brought Amanda on board, skipping half the usual hiring and training protocols because she needed someone fast who wouldn’t know any better.
“She wanted someone disposable,” Marla added. “She said she thought you’d never stick around once you got over the sting of your ass-wad fiancé leaving you. And she thought foisting you off on Thomas would keep him too annoyed and distracted to figure out what was going on. Except you did stay, and because of you, Josh and Thomas all of a sudden started giving a shit what went on around here again, which was very bad for Steph. And then it all went south when Gail Warnous went nuts, and you found out about Thomas, and so what does Steph do? Files paperwork to have you fired. Everyone flipped their shit. It’s been war ever since.”
Amanda kept silent. Even though she did appreciate hearing the truth for once, it seemed as if Marla was working her way up to something. And Amanda didn’t have to wait long to find out what that was.
“You know what I don’t get?” Marla asked. “Thomas keeps insisting he was the one who actually carried out Steph’s fake bookings with you, but I know he’s lying. Who was it, really?”
And so it begins. Thomas had asked her to lie about this, no matter what. Rehearsed excuses came to her rescue. “I don’t understand. Thomas did carry them out. We turned them into training exercises.”
Behind Marla’s old-fashioned look there came a flare of anger. “No, no. You really don’t understand. Either you tell me who he’s protecting, or I make life very uncomfortable for you.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what makes you think Thomas was lying. He was my anonymous client.”
Now Marla’s eyes narrowed, and Amanda could tell she had not scored points. They drifted in opposite directions while Amanda fumed over ‘disposable,’ then worried why someone would order Thomas to gather dirt in secret. Who? Whose orders was Thomas following?
She spotted Dr. Carpenter, and remembered she’d meant to make an appointment to discuss those therapies. When she reached the doctor, the woman’s demeanor gave her a start. The poor thing looked relieved to be freed from whatever was going on with the rest of the group she stood with, consisting of Robert Warnous, Steph, two clients and Beverly.
Amanda never got a chance to speak to the doctor. Steph must have assumed she’d come looking for a confrontation.
Steph said, “I know they’re all talking about what I did. They totally don’t understand none of this was personal. I
like
you. In fact I wish we had someone like you in management.”
Fantastic. Steph wanted to make a scene. This had to stop before she let Thomas down. “Steph, I—”
“Dammit, it’s unfair, the way they marginalize me. You were a bank manager. You must know what it’s like to knock heads against the old boy system.”
Amanda had no choice, now. She took hold of Steph’s arm and, flashing an apologetic smile toward the rest of the group, drew Steph away as quickly as she could. “For heaven’s sake, lower your voice.”
When they were well apart from the others, she stopped to let Steph expel whatever she had left.
“The Accord is ridiculous,” Steph complained. “They think I’m an idiot because I’m a woman, like the compromise over Andrew West was too complex for a mere woman to understand. They kept saying West was a necessary evil because of all the people who are too afraid of him to mess with this place.”
Amanda didn’t buy for a moment that the Accord’s low opinion of Steph had anything to do with gender. Josh had come closer to the truth: Steph was arrogant, and made decisions with emotions instead of logic.
Steph sighed and looked distant for a moment. Mildly confused. Then she began to rub her forehead. Moment to moment, she turned steadily more pale and drained, as if the life were being sucked out of her right before Amanda’s eyes.
When Steph spoke again, she sounded weak and out of focus. “You’ve gotten caught up in a lot of stuff, especially what happened that night in The Hall with Gail and Robert. I apologize. I want you to know that I
am
sorry. I was so scared.”
Okay, Amanda thought. Now Steph was starting to creep her out. Were they certain Robert hadn’t gotten Steph into more than a corrosive relationship? Drugs, maybe?
Now entirely rattled, she accepted Steph’s apology and hoped to slip away. She needed time to process this. Alone. In private.
She should be so lucky. As soon as she turned around, she found Robert Warnous about to join them. It was all Amanda could do not to confront the man. Yell at him about how his and Gail’s behavior had hurt their son. Yell about how this engagement was another huge mistake.
Thomas must have been watching. He appeared at her side the next instant to take Robert on himself. “We were talking, and you know what would be great? You should announce the engagement at dinner. And afterward, you should sing to Steph.”
The fledgling smile on Robert Warnous’s face blew away like dust, leaving ill-concealed panic in its wake. Steph simply frowned from one man to other.
Amanda watched Thomas. He had his brusque moments, but this was something else. He appeared calm as could be, perfectly content to bash Warnous over the head with struggle to perform again.
While the group teetered on the threshold of a terribly awkward moment, Eric barreled in to shove them all right over the edge. He came up to Amanda, pulling her a bit aside, speaking hushed and harsh. “Is it true? Did Ridley take another run at Derek before you did the Viewing Room gig?”
“Uh. I… Well…”
Now Eric faced off with Steph. “You need to do something about that woman. I don’t know what her problem is, but she’s been riding Derek steady since Nicole disappeared. And if you think this is a repeat of Ridley’s usual bullshit, she even told Derek he was the first one she’d fire, soon as she took over this place.”
Everyone except Amanda, who had been there to witness both confrontations firsthand, blurted some version of, “She told him
what
?”
Eric repeated the scene from the auditions last week. Warnous looked positively murderous and Steph seemed to wilt even further. “This is a problem.”
“A problem,” Thomas repeated. “Steph, you mind explaining to me why Ridley thinks she’ll be running this place someday soon?”
Amanda wondered the exact same thing. At least until she realized Thomas was already on his way over to Ridley. Thank goodness her body recognized the potential for trouble quicker than her mind did; she was already following him before she realized she was in motion.
Thomas reached Ridley first. Said something quietly to Jerod, then planted his palms on the back of Ridley’s chair and leaned down to whisper into her ear.
For the first second or two, the redhead looked thrilled to have her usual object of desire so up close and personal. But all too soon, Thomas had to rear back. Ridley came after him, murder raging from her eyes.
Again Amanda moved without thinking, rushing to get herself between them. Luckily Jerod followed right after Ridley and grabbed hold, or Amanda might have gotten her eyes clawed out.
Thomas caught Amanda around the waist and pulled her to his side, marching them through the hallway and foyer, straight out to Eric’s SUV. He opened the passenger door and handed her into the seat.
Leaning inside the cab with one hand on the doorframe and one on her knee, he stared at her, eyes once again crackling with residual anger. Not at her, though. Those eyes strayed to her mouth. Lingered there.
She stopped herself from imagining what would happen if she leaned in to take that mouth, and how she would feel if he leaned away before she could. Or worse. How she would feel if he didn’t.
Don’t do it. What was the matter with her? “What did you say to Ridley?”
His eyes remained adhered to her mouth. “Just a friendly warning. And I’m gonna give you one, too. Stay away from Steph. Don’t go anywhere near her or Robert, ever again.”
“Not planning on it, believe me. And I hate to ask, but does Steph have to pass drug screenings, too? Has anyone checked them?”
“Religiously. And here’s something else you need to know.”
“Oh, God. What?”
“That you look beautiful tonight. Also that you’ve done an outstanding job following orders. And I want you to know it matters, the way you jump in to protect me without even thinking. But you need to stop doing that. One of these days, you will get hurt.”
If she could clear her head enough to think through the sparks now shooting between nerve endings, she’d realize he was right about her instincts. It scared her, in hindsight, the way she’d jumped between him and Ridley. The same thing had happened that night in The Hall, when she’d knocked the gun out of Gail Warnous’s hand. Meanwhile, Thomas was ex-military. FBI. What did instinct think she could do that Thomas couldn’t?
“Now,” he said, “Eric’ll be out in a minute to take you home, and I need you to stand firm. Stay alert. With all this crap going on and everyone worked up and distracted, the potential exists for some bad things to happen. Don’t make me and Josh worry whether it’s happening to you. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And remember. Do the job. Keep everything and everyone cool. We gotta keep this place running like clockwork always, not just because the Three Sisters rush is on. And again, if anyone should ask about your mystery client, it was—”
“It was you. I got it. You don’t have to keep telling me these things. I know what you want me to do.”
He stared at her a moment, another comment simmering behind his eyes. Whatever it was, he didn’t say it. Instead, he tilted his head to capture her mouth. It was a light kiss but with Thomas at the helm and his hand sliding from her knee up between her legs, the effect was anything but light. She wanted to slip her hands behind his neck. Part her knees. Keep him there, and keep his hand progressing, drive him on and on until she finally felt him inside her.
She couldn’t help it. She cupped his jaw and opened her mouth and her knees to him, if for no other reason than to see what he would do this time with another overt invitation.
Melt her with it, of course. The kiss turned forceful and insistent, and his hand went straight for the goal. No panties to get in his way. He nudged her legs apart and sank his index and middle finger into her pussy so deep she had to gasp against his mouth. Lifting up a bit, she eased her hips forward, showing she was game for whatever he wanted.