Chapter Twenty-One
Tiffany handed the car keys to the motel owner, who clutched them to his chest, eyes gleaming with scary fervor. He’d probably spend the afternoon babysitting the Miura in person. “It would be my honor.”
The car sat like the empress she was amongst some dusty boxes, a garden hose, and a row of trash cans.
Thomas and Dakota had disappeared into their room earlier. They were all going to meet up later and try to find Luke. The evening got even hotter, and she wanted nothing more than a shower and a change. Her feet ached from hours in heels, and she was seriously considering buying more flats. She strolled down the corridor to her room. And stopped.
The door to her room hung ajar. Hadn’t she locked it? Sure she had. She toed the motel room door with the edge of her shoe.
It swung open with a creak.
She leaped back. Her blood pounded in her neck, reminding her this was a massively stupid idea. This was what happened to girls in movies. They always went into the scary room or house. And everyone knew how that ended. Not her. She trotted over to the next room and rapped on the door. Nothing.
The shadowy inside of her room gaped at her through the crack in the door. Tiffany banged even harder. Maybe she should find the motel owner?
Footsteps came from the other side of the door and it was yanked open.
“Hey, sorry.” Thomas stood in the doorway wearing a scattering of water droplets and a bath towel. “I was in the shower and Dakota is listening to music.”
Tiffany swallowed. She spent most of her working day around men in various states of undress. There was no need to stare like a tourist. “My door is open.”
“What?” Thomas glared at Dakota. “Didn’t you hear the door?” Wasted effort, as Dakota kept his focus on his phone.
“The door to my room is open.”
Thomas turned back to her with a frown. “Your door is open?”
“Yes, and it was locked when I left.” God, she wished he would go and put on one of his geeky tees before she gave in to the urge and leaned forward to lick water droplets off him.
He stepped into the open corridor. The back view was as distracting as the front. Lots of muscle and ripply things happening all the way down to his trim waist and tight ass. “Shouldn’t you get dressed first?”
He approached the open door. Tucking his towel more firmly around his waist, he stepped into the room. Yeah, right. Men could do that. It wasn’t them that got whacked in all those movies. Why was that exactly? She stood at the door and peeked into the interior.
“Fuck,” Thomas said from within. “Get the owner.”
“What is it?” Tiffany took a careful step into the room and froze. This couldn’t be her room. There was some mistake. She never flung her clothes around like this. Oh, God, her new D&G dress looked like someone had stamped it into the ground. With a cry, she leaped for it.
Thomas stepped in front of her.
Tiffany found herself mashed up against his chest. For once, she didn’t give a crap how hot he was. Her Manolos, one heel broken off, lay wedged under the bureau. Someone needed to pay for doing that, with their life.
Thomas held her arms, keeping her from moving.
She struggled against the hold. She’d been violated. Someone had put their hands on her stuff. Even her makeup. A strangled scream stuck in her throat. That was her compact, broken and crumbling all over her ivory La Perla set. “Let go of me.”
“Tiffany, sweetheart,” he said.
She wasn’t anyone’s sweetheart. “Oh, God, did you see what they’ve done to my Kate Spade?”
“No, babe, I didn’t, but you can’t come in here. Go and get the owner and tell him to call the police.”
“Why?”
“Because it looks like someone broke in and trashed your hotel room.”
“I meant, why would anyone do this.”
He steadily backed her toward the door and she didn’t like that. She dragged her stare over the destruction. Even the mattress had been shoved aside from the bed. It was like a giant hand had come into her room and smashed. It was worse than if they’d stolen everything. This felt a whole lot more personal.
“Tiffany.” Thomas shook her slightly. “Stay with me. I’m going to wait here and make sure nothing gets disturbed. You need to go and get the owner and tell him to call the police.”
“Jesus.” Dakota stood in the doorway. “What the fuck happened here?”
“That’s what we both want to know,” Thomas said. “Tiffany’s in shock. Can you go and get the owner? Tell him to call the cops.”
Dakota sprinted off toward the reception area.
“Babe,” Thomas said. “I need to put some pants on before the cops get here. Can you promise not to touch anything?”
“Why would you destroy a pair of Manolos? Do you know how much they cost? And they’re this season’s.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened. “Right.” He tugged on her arm. “I think that answers my question. Come with me.”
And then she saw her book lying in a bright pink tatter, facedown. Oh, God, no. She wrenched out of Thomas’s grasp and flew across the room. They’d ripped open the lock. Tiffany picked it up. Pages fluttered onto the floor at her feet. Her vision swam. She reached out blindly for physical support and found warm skin.
“What is it?” Thomas’s voice came from right beside her.
“My book.” The spine was cracked, and it fell open like a bird with its wings broken. Truncated edges of ripped-out pages stared at her accusingly. The one thing that was totally hers, and they’d broken it. Tears leaked down her face to drop onto the damaged pages. She tried to wipe them away, but the tears smudged the ink, so she stopped.
“Sweetheart?” Thomas’s big hand reached for the book.
She yanked it back and cradled it against her chest. “No.”
“Was it important?”
“It’s everything.” Tiffany gave a ragged little laugh. “It’s my book, my thoughts, my everything.”
“I don’t understand.” His face shadowed with concern as he stooped a little to look at her. “Is it some kind of diary?”
“They broke it.” It came out on a soft sob.
“Let me look, maybe I can fix it.” He bent and gathered up all the scattered pages at her feet. Slowly, almost reverently, he smoothed them between his palms. He went still, his head tilted as he read them.
Tiffany wanted to snatch them back, but it was too late.
“Babe?” He glanced up at her, his eyes full of questions. “What is this?”
“It’s my thoughts.” She grabbed the pages from him and tried to tuck them back into her book.
“But these are equations.” He gave her the remaining pages. “Most of this is mathematical equations and statistics and stuff like that.”
He didn’t understand. She could see it on his face. “It’s mine.”
“Oh, my God.” The motel manager, a compact man with a large beard, stood in the entrance and stared.
“The cops are on their way.” Dakota toed her Kate Spade out of his way. “Fuck.”
“Can you stay and wait for them?” Gently, Thomas encircled her arm with his hand and tugged. “Come on, sweetheart. Bring your book with you.”
She let him pull her out of the room and into his room next door. She stood as he hauled on a pair of jeans. She wished she could appreciate the fact he went commando. He tugged a tee over his head and grabbed a pair of sneakers.
Her knees hit the bed. Obediently, she bent them under his gentle backward pressure. She tucked her book safely in her arms. The velvet on the cover was torn and the ragged edges fluttered against her fingertips. Too late. They’d broken it.
Thomas sat down opposite her. “I’ve seen you with that before. Tell me about the book.”
“I write stuff in it,” she said in a numb, small voice. “Stuff I want to know about and stuff I need to work out.”
“Like equations?”
She nodded. Small sobs caught in her throat and she let out a shuddery breath. Her book was her secret, her piece of sanity in her life. “It’s mine.”
“Can I ask why you write them in there?”
“Because of school, I don’t know stuff that I should know,” she said. “I told you before. I didn’t pass high school, and there is so much I don’t know.”
“You write the stuff you don’t know in your book?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his fingers. “And then you ask somebody? Or do you work it out for yourself?”
It seemed important to him. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t have any excuses handy. The truth was so much easier. “I don’t ask because this is stuff everybody knows. I look it up or I work it out.”
He went silent for a long time. More tears welled over her bottom lid and he wiped them away again. “That’s incredible.”
“No, it’s not.” She shook her head. Unclasping her arms slightly, she let the book fall away from her chest. Everybody knew stuff that she didn’t. Her life had been that way since preschool. Ryan and his friends read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and all those books on her iPad. Other kids learned this at school. Princess Pearly Perfect smiled and looked pretty instead.
Thomas took the book from her. His head bent as he sifted through the pages. He stopped on the one with pi and studied it. “Jesus, sweetheart.” He moved more pages to see them. “Look at this mind on you.” He examined a graph she’d drawn. “And you worked all this out with no help?”
She nodded and tapped the edge of a page. “That’s Newton.”
“Yeah, I know.” He nodded.
Of course he knew. She sat back again. Her hands shook and she threaded her fingers together and put them in her lap.
His big fingers soothed the truncated edges where they’d ripped out the pages. “You have this incredible brain and you hide it away in a Legally Blonde diary?”
“I got the idea from the movie,” she said. “You know, Elle carries that book. Nobody ever asked me what was in it. They wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“Here’s the good news.” He glanced up at her. “Knowledge doesn’t stay in a book. It sticks in your head and then you get to keep it.”
“But it was mine.” Saying the words opened the wound again and more tears welled up. She had a whole crate of her books at home. Some were pink, others silver, some purple—whatever. She wanted the stuff in them, her fix of everything’s okay.
“And the knowledge still is.” He cupped her cheek in his palm. “The bad news is that I have just realized you’re a fucking genius. Look at this shit, sweetheart. People spend years in college and don’t get this. And you . . .” He shook his head. “You look it up and work it out yourself.”
“Is she okay?” Dakota’s voice made her jump.
“She will be.” Thomas tucked her book into a drawer beside the bed. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “All this and she’s a geek, too? I must have died and gone to heaven.”