Page 21 of Breaking the Rules
His grin made her heart flutter just a little in her chest. “Angel, how quickly you forget how well I know you. This may be an ocean instead of a pool this time, but I still see you setting a trap.”
“I’m not in any condition to be shoving your deserving ass into the water,” she countered.
“That’s the cost of doing business with me,” he said, his fingers twining with hers.
She gave a quick tug, trying to free her hand, but when he merely tightened his grip, she gave up for the moment. They walked on another hundred yards while she weighed her choices.
“I’ll share information for information,” she conceded.
They came to a low seawall built of thick black rock. The surf lapped gently at the foot. Xavier stepped down into the water and gently lifted her down to him. The body-to-body contact was enough to have her synapses frying for one glorious second as she felt his body lean and hard against her. She took an instinctive step back and stumbled. He caught her and guided her down to sit on the lip of the wall.
They sat side-by-side, shoulders touching, and stared out into the blue. Against the shore, the ocean was a translucent turquoise. Sea grass danced beneath the surface. Closer to the reef, the waters darkened to cobalt.
“Give me a starting place,” Waverly said.
“I have you and Dante Wrede on a flight manifest from LAX to Reno, Nevada, nine days ago. I have you and Kate in a flight log from Reno to Belize City in the early hours the following morning. I also have a few vague media mentions of a home invasion happening at the Lake Tahoe home of your friend Petra Stepanov.”
Waverly weighed her options. The truth was always easier to sell than a lie. The trick was determining how much of it to reveal.
“Petra invited Dante and I up to her father’s home in Tahoe for the weekend. We flew into Reno and rented a car and drove the rest of the way.”
“An Aston Martin,” Xavier filled in. “Which was returned in the dead of night to the rental agency two days later. It was parked away from the security cameras so their feed didn’t catch the driver.”
The studio cleanup team probably, she thought.
“We got to the house around four or five. Staff showed us to our room, and Petra met us there. We had dinner, the three of us, and watched the sunset on the lake. Afterwards, I suggested a walk.”
“In the dark?”
Of course he’d catch that. Waverly shrugged. “There was a moon, and the view was so beautiful, I thought it would be fun.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Great, she was already losing him. “Dante wanted to make some calls, and I didn’t want to rush him by hovering, so I told him to take his time and meet us on the beach if he was able to.”
“Was it just you and Petra?”
Waverly gave a half-hearted laugh. “No, Petra brought her dog, Pixie, and two bodyguards.”
“Nothing like a nice quiet walk in the woods with an entourage.”
“The path and stairs that led to the beach were lit, so we had no trouble getting down there. But that’s when we heard gunfire. It sounded like it was coming from the house.”
“Where Dante was?”
Waverly nodded. She swallowed hard before continuing. “The guards couldn’t get any security in the house to answer on the radio, so they hustled us off down the beach. Someone started shooting at us, and I guess that’s when I got hit,” she added a tremble to her voice for effect.
He slid his arm around her shoulder and pulled her a little closer.
“I got separated from them. It was dark. I didn’t know where to go. Then the shooting stopped for good, so I went back to the house.”
His grip on her tightened reflexively.
“I can feel your disapproval,” she joked.
“Angel, you could have been killed.”
She shook her head. “By the time I got back up to the house, everyone was gone.”
