“And then?”
“He tried to choke me.”
Liam nodded, his eyes blazing fury as he turned and began to walk toward the door. “I’ll find him.”
“Stop,” I said. “Liam.”
He turned around, his hand on the open door.
“He had a tattoo on his neck. It said Starlight.”
7
EMERY
“Order something,” Liam said an hour later. He’d insisted on leaving the hotel, deeming it unsafe, and had taken me back to the jet. He opened a drawer in the center console that was located in the middle of four oversized chairs and pulled out a stack of menus that labeled VEGAS on the big black binder clip that held them together.
“You’re going to get food delivered to a jet?”
“No, I’m going to send someone out to pick food up for us.” He glanced out the window and began removing his leather jacket, the muscles in his biceps flexing with the movement. I shivered watching him. Even in a moment like this, when I was overwhelmed and scared, I still couldn’t help but to appreciate and notice the perfection of Liam’s body.
He glanced out the window now, tilting his head because he was too tall for it to be in his normal sight line.
From the way he was acting, and the security detail that was now stationed outside of the jet -- four beefy security guards, all of them with the same crew cut, the same black cargo pants, the same guns on their hips -- I had a feeling that Robbie had been more than just some guy who’d randomly found me in the casino. Of course, I’d already known that from his tattoo. But I hadn’t realized just how bad it was.
“Are you going to send one of the black pants brigade?” I asked, using my secret name for them. Liam had made me stay outside the plane with one of them while he and another man had entered the jet and searched it before he would let me inside.
“No.” Liam didn’t elaborate. He turned back to me, his eyes softening. “What do you want to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat, Emery.” He picked up the menus and spread them out into a fan shape. “There’s Chinese, burgers, whatever you want. But you will eat.”
He was back to being bossy, but now I welcomed it. “I’ll just have whatever you think is best.”
He picked up his cell phone and barked into it, telling some faceless, nameless assistant to order us sandwiches from a nearby bistro. When he hung up, he turned to me.
“You’re cold.” He walked to the other side of the room and hit the heat on the plane, turning it up a couple of notches.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He came over and sat next to me, his eyes scanning my body. “You’re shivering.” He ran his hand over my arm, which was covered in goose bumps.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I took a cold shower at the hotel, and I just… I never warmed up.”
He looked at me, and I could see the concern reflected in his eyes. He thought this had to do with my aversion to the cold, to the flashbacks I had of the hospital and how it felt to be laying on that cold gurney, how as a result of that I needed my bedroom to be hot at night, the heat cranked so high Liam thought it was unhealthy.
“I’m seriously just cold,” I said. “I never warmed up and I – what are you doing?” He picked me up from the couch and threw me over his shoulder, and now he was walking purposely toward the bathroom.
He set me down and immediately began drawing me a bath in a claw foot tub with gold-plated faucets, a bathtub so beautiful it had no business existing, much less being in a jet.
“You have a bathtub in your jet?”
“Yes, Emery. I have a bathtub in my jet. Not that I ever use the damn thing.” He sounded ornery, as if the bathtub was more of a hindrance than a luxury. His back was to me as he pulled out a container of vanilla bubble bath and poured some into the water. I watched as it swished and swirled, the bubbles frothing against the smooth sides of the deep tub.
“What does it feel like?” I asked, mesmerized by the running water. “To be able to buy anything you want?”
“You’d be surprised at how much I want that I can’t buy.” He held his hand under the tap to test the temperature of the water, then straightened up and turned his attention back to me. “Arms up,” he commanded.
I put my arms up and he pulled off my t-shirt, then peeled my jeans off slowly. I was wearing no panties, just a bra, and he unhooked that, pulling the straps down slowly, loosening the cups from my breasts gently until the bra was off and I was standing before him, naked.
He reached into a drawer under the sink and pulled out a black hair tie, then gathered my hair up into and slid it into a messy ponytail. I let him, enjoying the feel of his hands running through my hair and trying not to think about why he would have hair ties in the bathroom of his jet, if perhaps they’d belonged to London Banks or the mysterious Vienna, or if perhaps he made it a practice to keep hair ties on hand for whatever random woman he happened to be traveling with. I wasn’t sure which option was worse.