Hating Beauty (The Vegas Titans Series Book 6) by Loren Celia

Author:Loren, Celia [Loren, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hearts Collective Publishing
Published: 2015-06-02T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Knox Cole

By the time Tatiana reappears in the lobby, I’m sweating and I think I may have developed an ulcer. The clock has ticked away thirty, forty-five minutes, and I’ve paced every inch of the floor. A security guard has explained to me five times that I can’t go into the women’s locker room, and I’ve come painfully close to punching him in the jaw. I’ve run through every possible scenario of what will happen to me without Tatiana and the laptop. They all end the same way and it’s not pretty.

And then there she is, fresh as a daisy, standing before me with an innocent smile as if she hasn’t just caused my cortisol to spike through the roof.

“That was not twenty fucking minutes,” I bark, hiding my relief in anger. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Tatiana looks remade, fresh and clean, her skin bright, her hair blown out. She’s wearing makeup, sunglasses, and a baseball cap, and smells like fucking springtime. It makes me want to take her straight to bed, where I could smell every inch of her skin and drink her up until I’m full. It’s also not lost on me that she’s somehow produced a new outfit—a tight casual black dress that shows off everything I like looking at, complete with a pair of colorful, practical trainers on her feet. An army-green duffle bag is slung around one shoulder and brushes tantalizingly against her left hip with every step. It draws my attention to those hips, the way she moves, and that makes me even angrier.

“So what,” she grunts. “I’m the first woman to take a long shower?”

She laughs and loops a slender finger through the belt-loop of the jeans I’m wearing. Then her hand slides over the black t-shirt I’ve commandeered. The skin burns under my clothes where she’s touched me.

“Where did these come from? They actually fit! You look human again.”

I take a deep breath, willing myself to calm down and focus.

“Jimmying open lockers is not exactly a tricky skill to master. I’ve had that down since junior high.”

“I see I have the right partner in crime.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere. You have the laptop?”

She frowns. “What is this obsession with the laptop? I have what we need for the next step. Come, let’s get going.”

I grab her arm as she tries to walk past me. “Wait. What do you mean, next step? If there’s no laptop, we’ve got no leverage.”

“We don’t need the laptop.”

“What do you mean, we don’t need the –”

I stop myself, my jaw locking in anger. Roughly, I snatch the duffel bag, not caring that Tatiana is still attached to it, and yank the zipper open. She stumbles after it with a gasp, closing the distance between our bodies as I rifle through the bag. I feel her weight against me as I search. Inside the duffle are papers, papers, papers. Nothing but papers! A folder. A passport. A small ornate box. A teddy bear.

A teddy bear?

“Shit,” I hiss.

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