Page 15 of After The Storm

She just hoped when they walked in that they wouldn’t be met by New Orleans finest and be forced to run for their lives through the Quarter. She also hoped that all the Mardi Gras partiers had left town already and they even had a room to give them. But she didn’t mention that to Roman since he already looked stressed out.

They exchanged a quick glance, and Kate took a deep breath as Roman guided her through the front doors. One look at the white marble floors and enormous glass chandelier above their heads as they stepped into the lobby told her this place was no Bayou Motel. Her eyes darted left and right looking for any sign of the police, but she saw no one other than the single man at the check-in desk and a bell man standing in a lounge area watching a TV.

“I think we’re good,” Roman said quietly. “All we need to do is check in and we’ll be fine.”

She let him go attend to getting them a room as she took in the opulent surroundings of the Allton Hotel. No wonder Jonas had raved about it. The furniture in the waiting area alone convinced her she loved this place. Plush burgundy couches and chairs arranged around a large circular mahogany coffee table made her want to sit down and relax, but the less time they spent in the lobby out in the open the better.

As she avoided the bell man’s gaze, she turned to look at Roman and saw blood on the side of his tan shirt. Had he been hurt helping her get out of that horrible motel room?

Then on a TV in the waiting area, she heard the beginning of a news report about her boss’s murder. She spun around to see her picture from her driver’s license right there on the screen as the reporter said, “New Orleans police are looking for Kate Sheridan, the victim’s legal assistant. Anyone who’s seen her is asked to call 9-1-1.”

Horrified, she prayed to God the bellman hadn’t been paying attention and hurried over to where Roman stood speaking to the desk clerk. Burying her face in his shoulder, she asked, “Done yet, honey?”

He looked down at her, confused by her sudden coziness with him, and arched one eyebrow. “Almost, honey.”

The front desk clerk, a handsome young man with slicked back hair and bright blue eyes, smiled and handed him the room key and his ID. “Thank you for staying with us, Mr. Madson. You’re in room 243. Just take the lobby elevator to the second floor and turn left as you get out. Our restaurant, Bon Temps, is open late tonight, and if you want a drink, Roxanne’s is available starting in a few hours. They’re both located just down there here on the first floor. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call down to us here at the front desk.”

Kate eagerly tugged on Roman’s arm, desperate to get away before the desk clerk paid any attention to her. “Come on, honey. I’m tired after our trip.”

Instead of just smiling and walking away, Roman said, “Women. They can be so demanding, but what can you do, right?”

His brand new friend behind the desk chuckled knowingly. “Have a wonderful stay, you two.”

Hysterical. Just what she needed at that moment—male bonding over how demanding women were. What she wanted to do was slug him in the arm and remind him how she’d found that place, not him, but she didn’t do anything but grimace as they walked toward the elevators.

Another hotel guest waited there already, so Kate once again buried her face in Roman’s shoulder and hoped they wouldn’t be riding up to the same floor. She didn’t mind hiding, and his shirt smelled pretty damn incredible from either the sexiest laundry detergent or cologne that made her want to close her eyes and take a deep breath in. But it was hard to be angry with him while she had her face pressed to his body.

Thankfully, the woman seemed lost in her own world and didn’t say a word to them as they rode up to the second floor. They got out, leaving her alone in the elevator, and began walking to their room at the far end of the hall.

Alone in the very elegantly designed hallway that resembled the downstairs lobby but had deep burgundy and gold carpeting on the floor, Roman said to her, “I’m not sure what you were going for with all that, but it didn’t make you any less conspicuous. Just so you know.”

Not that he helped one bit with that whole making her less conspicuous. Furious at him, she walked through the door as he opened it and found herself standing in a gorgeous hotel room decorated in what she assumed were the hotel’s colors of deep gold and burgundy. If only she could enjoy all this opulence.

All at once, the vision of her face right there next to the news anchor’s head rushed back into her mind. She began to pace again as she had at the Bayou Motel, flailing her arms.

“My face is all over the news. The cops put my face on the news, for God’s sake! That’s why I kept trying to hide my face.”

“Don’t worry. Assuming that woman didn’t wonder why you were acting like a bitch in heat, I think you’re fine,” he said as he sat down in a chair near the window.

The way he referred to her made her fall speechless for a moment before she snapped, “I’m sure she did wonder since you were such a cold fish! She probably felt bad for me stuck in the gorgeous hotel with such a cold fish of a man.”

He looked up at her blankly but didn’t react to her attack, so she stormed toward the bathroom. “I’m taking a bath to wash off the layer of skeeze from that motel room. Unless someone shows up to kill me, don’t come in.”

Slamming the door behind her, she stormed over to the tub and turned both the hot and cold water fully on. Kate looked around at the toiletries the hotel supplied and found a tiny bottle of bubble bath, so she poured the entire thing into the water before laying the white bath mat down on the floor.

She needed this bath. Of all the things she needed in life at that moment, if this bath was the only one she could have, she’d be happy. All she wanted to do was recline in the water up to her neck and hope the bubbles took away the stress of the past day. She didn’t want to think about Jonas, Samuel Darnell, or how their killer might very well be out there looking for her right at that moment, wanting to kill her for what they thought she knew.

Which she didn’t.

No, she wanted to let her mind go blank and not think of a thing. Not even the sexy man who had appeared in her life an hour ago and now sat just outside the door in the hotel room they shared.

Definitely not him. But at least she now knew his last name. Madson. Roman Madson. It had a strong, masculine sound to it. It matched him well.

But she didn’t want to think about that right now. All she wanted to do was get lost in that bubble bath behind her.

Kate stripped out of her clothes and tossed them on the vanity before sticking her toe into the bathwater. Perfect. Not too hot and not too cold. As the bubbles multiplied and grew higher, she stepped in and sat down in the tub.

Sliding down into the bubbly water until every part of her but her head was submerged, she reveled in the feel of her muscles slowly pushing the tension and stress out of her body. With every moment, the hot water and bubbles cleaned her of the grime from that awful Bayou Motel. She’d have to tell Eve she was right about that place.

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