Page 15 of Sunburned

I covered my shock with a smile as he ran a hand through his hair, looking me up and down without comment. “Tyson,” I said. “Good to see you.”

When he didn’t reply, Laurent filled the silence. “Dinner will be ready at eight.”

Tyson opened the door wider and retreated into the depths of his suite without a word, leaving me to throw a distressed glance at Laurent. “Don’t take it personally,” he said quietly.

I could smell sage burning somewhere as I crossed the threshold and closed the door behind me, allowing my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Only one side of the vestibule was open, so I went that way, coming around the corner into another full kitchen open to a dining room.

It wasn’t just the heavy blackout drapes covering the windows that made it darker down here. The surfaces of the kitchen were gunmetalgray, the cabinets above sleek and black. A modern brass chandelier burned low above a black walnut dining table, where Tyson was seated at the head of the table, a glass of something that looked like sludge before him.

The temperature was somewhere in the vicinity of iceberg, and goosebumps prickled my arms as I pulled out a chair and sat, placing my backpack in the empty seat between us. He looked at it as though it might contain venomous snakes. “Leave that outside,” he said quietly.

“It has my computer and my notebooks—”

“You don’t need it. Leave it outside.”

I frowned, assessing him. It wasn’t just his physical appearance; his whole aura was different. Darker. Still just as magnetic, but with a heaviness that hadn’t been there before.

I rose and hefted the backpack. Once I’d dropped it outside the door, I returned to the table, but he stopped me before I could sit. “Put your arms out,” he said, rising.

“What?”

He sighed as though exhausted. “I need to make sure you’re not wired.”

“Wired?” I laughed. “Would you have called me here if there was any chance I’d be wearing a wire?”

He held his ground, and I extended my arms, trying not to cringe while he felt around my torso. He paused with his hands on my back, inhaling me the way a wolf does a rabbit, and I shuddered to think I used to crave those cold hands on my body. “You’ll need to wash those harmful chemicals off your skin,” he said gruffly, letting me go.

“What?”

“It’s bad for your health and the odor gives me a headache. Laurent should have told you.”

Gathering that he was referring to my perfume, I nodded, dropping into my seat. No wonder he smelled different now, his formerly ubiquitous cologne replaced with whatever herbs and supplements were leaking through his skin.

“Are you unwell?” I asked gently. That would explain a lot.

He snorted, those dark eyes flashing. “I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.”

I nodded, crossing my arms. So that’s how this was going to go. “Why am I here?”

He slid a long white envelope across the table to me. I picked it up, noting it was addressed in neat block lettering to him here at Le Rêve. There was no return address, but it was postmarked with my home zip code, which had been his parents’ as well until they sold their property after Hurricane Irma ripped the roof off their house and destroyed the orange grove. “Open it,” he instructed.

I lifted the flap and extracted a clipping of a newspaper article with the headlineLatest Foot Identified as Missing Miami-Dade County Resident Ian Kelley.

“I’ve read this,” I said.

His eyes bored holes in me. “Why did you send it to me?”

“What?” I asked, thrown. “I didn’t send this to you.”

“Then who did?”

“I have no idea.” I placed the envelope on the table between us, shaking my head. “Wait. Back up. Is this why you called me down here?”

“What do you want from me?”

I blinked at him, trying to gauge where he was coming from. “What are you talking about?”

“Money? A job?”

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