Page 20 of Beck and Call

I kicked off one heel, then toed off the other. Not very elegant, but it got the job done. The carpet seemed to mold around my poor abused feet, and I groaned in relief.

"I'm only going to keep getting you those shoes if that's the sound you make when they're off," he teased. The tension lifted a little, and I relaxed a bit more.

"Don't you dare. Those things are medieval torture devices."

A knock sounded at the door. "That was fast," he commented, and headed for the door.

"I'll get it." I scurried to the door, not wanting to share him with anyone. Shirtless Beckett was mine, and mine alone.

One of the bellhops wheeled in a cart with more shopping bags than I expected. Beckett snuck up behind me, and I jumped when his arms wrapped around my waist.

"Good, the rest of your things arrived," he observed.

"The rest? There was already too much here before," I sputtered.

He shrugged and pulled me closer to his chest. It was then I realized he thought the bellboy was checking me out. "Go check out what the shopper picked out for you and make sure it'll work."

I would have laughed, if I'd thought he was in a joking mood, but he was obviously trying to get me away from the appraising eye of the bellhop. As I turned away I noticed he extended a few brightly colored Euros to the young man.

"You really didn't need to buy me more clothes," I protested as he reentered the main part of the room.

"I needed something in particular for what I have planned tonight."

As I examined the pile of clothing in front of me a light pink nightie caught my attention. "Something like this?" I asked and held up the scrap of silk material with my finger.

A smirk spread across his handsome face. "That's for later." He dug into the clothes and handed me a pair of black cigarette pants and a soft gray sweater. "This will work for what we're doing tonight."

He slapped my ass as he walked away. "Get changed. We're leaving soon."

I looked down at the pencil skirt and blouse I’d worn for the business meetings scheduled all day. We needed to leave soon. I pulled up the calendar app on my phone and discovered all the meetings were cancelled and in its place was writtenSans Souci.

“We’re going to the palace?” I asked and did a little hop.

He came over and kissed me on the head. “I made some calls this morning. Not everything needs to be a meeting, or so my best friend and business partner likes to tell me all the time. Would you spend the day with me?”

My smile threatened to split my face, and my cheeks were already feeling the strain from such a foreign expression on me. “I’d really love to. Did you knowsans soucimeans ‘without worries’?”

His smile was radiant, showing those two shallow dimples he seemed to rarely display. “Then it’s perfect. I think we could both stand to forget our worries more often.”

* * *

We spent the day wandering the manicured gardens of the palace, the city seemed even more bustling than it had when we arrived.Sans Soucireally was a place to forget your worries. It was a quiet day with not many tourists visiting a dormant garden. Even without all of the flowers in bloom, it exploded with color. The cheerful yellow palace stood imposing in the middle of the grounds, as if daring winter to come.

Eventually the sun began to set, and the air cooled without the light from the sun. We made our way back to the train to get from Potsdam back to Berlin.

Berlin at night was like a living being. The city that had seemed too modern and industrial to me when we arrived transformed at night. Gone was the cold concrete structures and sterile modern art. With the sun below the horizon, the colors of the city came alive. People from every part of the planet roamed the streets, their voices mingling to create a chorus of language I'd never heard before.

When the train from Potsdam stopped, he grabbed my hand and hurried me off and down the street. "I want to show you something, but we need to catch the subway first."

This was the first time we'd traveled through the city in anything other than a chauffeured car. It was exciting to enter the crowd of people and shove our way onto the train car. There were no seats available, instead we stood facing each other holding on to the bar along the ceiling.

I took the opportunity to check him out. This was the most casually I'd seen him dress, but it still wasn't jeans and t-shirt. It suited him, because Beckett Anderson was not made to be ordinary. I loved seeing him in blue, and this particular shade made his sky blue eyes shine brighter than I'd yet seen them.

The train lurched to a stop, jostling everyone inside, and knocking me face first into Beckett's chest. He wrapped his arm around my waist, holding me steady while we waited for the doors to open. As soon as they slid open, people were in a rush to board and exit the train before the doors slid closed again. Beckett kept me close and helped steer me safely onto the platform.

We climbed the stairs back up to the street and were greeted to more of the lively evening traffic I'd seen near the hotel. "Is it always like this?" I asked him.

"So busy?"

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