Page 19 of Protecting You
“Yeah, okay.” She snatched her cell phone and tapped the screen. “I’ll just text him, in case they’re sleeping or…busy.” Her cheeks turned pink at the implication.
That quick flash of embarrassment, the way she avoided looking up, only peeking at him through her eyelashes. He’d never thought of her as shy, but something in that expression…
Man. She was gorgeous. Too distracting.
“Michael will get back to me when he can.” She sent the text and set her phone on the coffee table, then stepped into the kitchen. She returned with two bottles of water. “You need one?”
“Please.”
He twisted the cap off.
“A question.” She sipped from her own bottle. “Why the whole fake-fiancé thing?”
“I wanted to throw him off, make him think he missed something important.”
She took that in. “But we have to pretend we’re engaged.”
“It’s a good excuse for us to stay together until this is over.”
By the way her eyebrows lowered, she didn’t like that idea at all.
He’d try not to be offended.
That look…
That was the reason he’d never asked her out in college. No matter how much she appealed to him—and between her beauty and her brains and her quick wit, she’d always appealed to him—he’d never had a single reason to believe she returned his feelings.
He’d been a coward back then, too afraid of rejection to risk it.
Today, he’d take the chance. Alyssa put on a tough front, but how much of that was a defense mechanism?
If things were different, he’d ask her out. He’d take the risk.
But now that he had Peri, it was too late.
He’d keep Alyssa safe and then let her go. No matter how much the idea twisted his gut.
CHAPTERFIVE
Alyssa used to love coming to the Rooming House.
When she was a girl, she and her sisters would pretend they were in a castle filled with secret passageways and hidden treasures. They’d wander the hallways haphazardly and try to get lost—often successfully. Whoever designed this hotel must’ve been going for maximum confusion.
Maybe that was why Dad liked it so much. Intruders might get in, but how would they ever find who they were looking for?
Callan had brought her suitcase into the master bedroom, and she’d been too flustered to protest, but she preferred the other room. It was the one she and her sisters used to share when they were little. They’d hop from one bed to the other, seeing which of them could leap farthest or jump highest. Alyssa usually won the contests.
It helped to be the oldest.
That was back when she’d still been close to her sisters, when they were her very best friends.
But she’d gone off to college and drifted away. She wanted to fix that, but she had no idea how.
Not only that, but she’d lost touch with her one good college friend, though she’d always believed there was time to reconnect with Megan. The time for friends and fun would come later, after she proved herself. After she achieved all her goals.
She'd been shocked when she learned about Megan’s death—months after it happened. Too late to do much more than send a card and flowers to her parents.
Alyssa was thankful for the yoga pants Callan had reminded her to grab when she’d been packing. In the bathroom, she slipped into them and a sweatshirt, then put her hair in a ponytail as she returned to the living room.
