Crossfire Christmas by Julie Miller

Author:Julie Miller [Miller, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ROMANCE - - SUSPENSE
ISBN: 9780373697977
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The Seaside Motel wasn’t much of a tropical oasis in the wintry urban sprawl of Kansas City, Missouri. The “sea” was a cracked concrete pool filled with drifts of snow and two plastic palm trees chained to a peeling wrought-iron fence. The “motel” included two single-story buildings arranged in a U shape with the office around the empty pool. Twelve chipped and dented steel doors faced their own parking spaces.

The old man at the front desk who checked them in had a flask behind the counter, a reality show on his portable TV and not so much as a curiously raised eyebrow for Nash when he registered as Mr. and Mrs. John Smith and paid an extra twenty dollars in cash.

He had to give the owner credit for trying to upgrade the place by lining the porchlike overhang with colored Christmas lights. Some blinked, some didn’t. And every so often along the way, a bulb was burned out, broken or missing. Each door was draped with tattered fake greenery studded with red plastic berries. Teresa fingered one of the sprigs of plastic holly as Nash unlocked the door to 6A.

“Festive, huh?” he teased before pushing open the door and turning on the lights.

The musty smell of disuse greeted them inside. Teresa dropped her backpack on one bouncy mattress and his go bag on the other while he locked the door and pocketed the key. Then she pulled back the velour bedspread and sniffed one of the pillows. “At least the sheets are clean. They’ve been bleached.”

Great, so no bedbugs. Still, it wasn’t the kind of place he’d ever want to take a woman like Teresa. In this kind of weather, he pictured them in a cozy lodge with big throw pillows and a thick wool blanket on the floor in front of a stone hearth. Sipping cold beers, warming themselves by the fire, getting better acquainted. Him exploring those curves. Her putting those soft, firm hands on him. The two of them getting very well acquainted.

Nash swallowed hard, scratching his parched throat, quickly burying wherever that fantasy had been headed. Teresa had shed her coat and was already running water in the sink and checking out the bathroom when he apologized. “Sorry it’s not the Ritz.”

“It’s not like we have much choice,” she answered through the door. “Your friend Jake said those men went through my apartment.”

He’d already gotten the first of what he hoped to be several informative reports from Jake Lonergan. Unfortunately, learning her place had been broken into and searched wasn’t exactly the positive news he’d been hoping for. “Yeah. Sorry about that, too. I don’t think we left anything behind that could tell them where we are, but they know we’re together, they know I’m alive, and they won’t stop hunting for us.”

“Thank you for letting me call AJ to tell him I’m all right. I’m sure he’d still prefer to see me in person to tell him that, but—”

“That’s not going to happen.

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