Page 25 of Resist Me Not
Walker: it’s all I can think about!
Fuck! What the hell do I do now?
It’s still all I think about into the night and next day. Again and again, I keep debating just cancelling our date, but what do I even really know? It’s all too weird and circumstantial and maddening. It might be nothing. It might mean he’s CIA. Or a hitman. Or that I’m a paranoid lunatic who needs his inhaler three times after that debacle at Saks.
Four now, as I take a puff while standing outside Trey’s hotel room more than an hour early for our date. I still can’t decide if I’m going to call it off when he answers the door or blab the whole mess to him so he can laugh at what a freak I am.
Or kill me.
Fuck.
I still dressed up. It only seemed polite. Tie, button-down, but no jacket or even a sweater this time, since the weather has been getting hotter. I’m also not a complete asshole. I texted him I was heading over early as soon as I left my apartment, but once I’m at his door and actually knocking, I still have no idea what I’m going to say.
“Walker,” Trey answers with his usual effortlessness and resonant voice. “I didn’t expect you—”
“So super early, I know,” I cut him off, unable to stop the apparent word vomit about to spew. “I am so sorry I gave you,like, no lead time with that text, but I just… um…” I literally cannot finish my sentence because I am utterly flabbergasted by what I see behind Trey.
He looks amazing, naturally, in a full Bond tux, which makes me feel hugely underdressed. In my defense, he did not tell me we were doing black tie! But the incredible thing is the room. He’s decked out his hotel room like the restaurant from our first date, complete with fairy lights around the window and draping from the ceiling above a small two-person table, with a bottle of wine chilling.
And it’s all really nice place settings and linens and even candles—just like in the area where he was browsing the aisles at Saks.
I am a fucking moron.
“You just…?” Trey prompts with a devastatingly handsome smile, leaning on the door but making sure it is open enough for me to see the view, all this romantic effort he went to just for me.
“I just… was too excited and couldn’t wait to see you.”
Chapter nine
TREY
There is something else, some other reason for Walker’s early arrival, but whatever it was that had him so on edge when I opened the door, the surprise I have waiting for him eases away his tension.
“Come in.” I gesture him over the threshold. “I have the evening catered so we don’t even need to leave the room.”
“That’s presumptuous.” Walker chuckles as he enters.
“I thought it was a promise.”
He laughs again with the usual flush to his cheeks. They already were a little flush, like he’d been out of breath the entire way here.
My camera isn’t set up in front of the window anymore. Walker glances there like he’s relieved. Curtis’s absence must have been noticed by now. Perhaps that is why he arrived jumpy. He is smart to be wary of me, to wonder about my involvement, but I’m glad my charm and our connection seem to have banished his doubts enough to keep him here.
Although, punctuality would have been better, considering I barely had enough time to clean up, change, and hide Mr. Wayfair’s body in the closet.
“I called room service to move up our dinner.” I pull out Walker’s chair for him at the quaint café dining set. Mother has been wanting something similar for her porch, so it will go to good use after this, but Walker’s reaction to my decorating is worth the expense all on its own. Already being at Saks while stalking Wayfair inspired me. “I’m afraid it might still take a few minutes to arrive.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disrupt your plans so much.”
“Don’t worry about it. It just means we get to toast with an early glass of wine.”
Walker sits and I uncork the wine to pour us both a glass of chilled Chardonnay. I’ll need to move hotels after this. I hadn’t wanted to kill Wayfair here, but his routine, his constant company, whether from subordinates, his mistress, or his wife, made killing him at home or work impossible, and anywhere nondescript or secluded might have raised too much suspicion when I invited him.
Sending an anonymous message with some of the photos I’d taken the other day, however, with an address for us to meet at which he could research was not a seedy hotel, made him assume a wealthy associate was trying to blackmail him. He came alone on foot to avoid any driver or rideshare trail, helping ensure I could erase him and any evidence of me being involved with his disappearance in one fell swoop.
Disposing of the body will have to wait. I hate to have to kick Walker out later, but stalling until morning if he tries to stay the night would be even riskier than having a dinner date ten feet from a recent murder scene. If things progress as planned tonight and Walker wants to stay, I will unfortunately have to play the “I have an early morning tomorrow” card and promise to make it up to him.
“What should we toast to?” Walker asks, once I have sat to join him and we raise our glasses.
