Page 30 of In the Nick of Time
Side by side, they headed for the connecting door back to the main room. Ginny swept past them and opened it for them.
“Have a lovely evening, gentlemen. Hopefully, we’ll see you again.”
They walked back to the hotel. For some reason, Nick kept expecting something to happen, maybe muscled men in tailored dark suits stepping out from around a corner and waving guns at them, trying to force them into an anonymous van. But nothing like that occurred, so he was forced to tell Doug about the guy in the bathroom at least seven times.
“You’re sure nothing happened?” Doug asked again.
“Nothing happened, I swear. He grabbed my arm for a second, gave me a weird look, and that was that.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t know what to say. I didn’t like it either, but nothing happened.”
“If you see him again, tell me right away.”
They passed by several glitzy hotels and casinos before eventually arriving back at their hotel. Vaguely, Nick wondered if theirs was the only facility on the Strip with no neon lights, almost like the place was trying to be anonymous. Maybe it was the Men in Black Hotel.
He laughed and Doug glanced at him, but Nick decided not to share his thoughts. He sort of wanted Doug to like him.
EIGHT
DOUG
What happens in Vegas…
Doug stareddown at the hotel room’s carpet. Much like the hotel itself, it was extraordinarily ugly.
Not for the first time he wanted to know why the International Concrete Association had chosen this particular week to have their annual convention and then booked just about every room in the city. Maybe it was for the mob and they were all learning how to fit concrete shoes.
The carpeted floor of the hotel room was not inviting. His hip still twinged from the night before.
“Just sleep on the bed, for fuck’s sake,” Nick said, his voice groggy. “I don’t want to have to take you to the hospital because you threw your back out. I promise to keep my hands off.”
That was the issue, wasn’t it? Doug didn’t actually want to keep his hands off Agent Sedgewick or for Nick to keep his hands off Doug. A taste of him was all it had taken for Doug’s resolve to evaporate.
And now he’d tasted him. Twice.
“Oh my god, would you please just stop looming over the bed and decide? Floor or mattress?” With a huff, Nick turned onto his side away from Doug and tucked his hands under his cheek. The action shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was.
Knowing he was making another bad decision, Doug sighed and slipped under the covers.
“Oh,” he groaned quietly as he let his body relax into the bed. The mattress was infinitely more comfortable than the carpet and Nick’s warmth had already seeped across the too-cool sheets.
Nick Sedgewick was a conundrum. Deep in his heart, Doug knew that there was no way Nick was the airhead he portrayed, even if it was fucking hilarious. If he truly was such a brainless idiot, he was a danger to himself and all SPAM agents he came into contact with, and they never would have brought him on board.
Turning onto his back, Doug tucked his hands under his head. He suspected Nick’s behavior was a mix of different defense mechanisms he’d learned over his life. Nick was absolutely neurospicy, or whatever the term was these days, so sometimes his mouth got ahead of his brain.
And he was sexy, dammit.
Doug chuckled and turned onto his side. His last thought before falling asleep was that if Nick thought pestering him with facts about old people would keep him from retiring, he was wrong.
Sometime while they slept,Nick had turned toward Doug and wrapped his body around him like a vine. Doug didn’t mind except that he had to use the bathroom and even though they’donly been asleep for six hours, he was fully rested. Superhero and all.
Nick’s sleepy voice reached his ears. “Did you know that the leading cause of hospitalization in people over sixty-five is falls?”
Doug snorted and pushed Nick off him, then rolled out of bed to a standing position.
“You told me that already, and I am forty-two, nowhere near sixty-five.”
