Page 30 of After The Storm

He stood up and rolled his eyes. “You have no idea.”

Kate opened up her purse on the dresser and dangled keys in front of her. “But there won’t be any need for any breaking and entering tonight.”

“We’re not going to go through the front door. We’ll have to find another way so we won’t be seen,” he said, dismissing her suggestion.

Moving through the keys on her keychain, she held up the one to the back door of the building. “Well, I have that covered too. The back door work for you?”

He arched one dark eyebrow and smiled. “Okay. Maybe I underestimated you, Kate.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. There’s a long line of people in my life who’ve done the same thing. I might not have all the answers, but sometimes I come up with one.”

Roman opened the hotel room door and looked out into the hall before turning back to look at her. Extending his arm, he said, “Then I’ll let you lead the way, but you need to make me one promise.”

She stopped in the doorway and looked up at him. “And what’s that?”

“If we get into any trouble, you follow my lead.”

“Deal.”

That she could agree to. In fact, as they began to walk down the hallway together toward the stairwell, she thought that she could agree to a lot of things with Roman when he acted like this. The memory of his muscular body naked in front of her in the bathroom and then him under her on the bed made her wonder if she wasn’t thinking with the right part of her body when it came to him, though.

But for the moment, she liked having him next to her doing what no one else had ever done.

Protecting her.

Chapter Ten

After making theirway down the hotel stairwell and through the attached parking garage, they covered the ten blocks in just under twenty minutes and reached her office building on Loyola Avenue. Along the way, she filled him in on a few things she felt he needed to know, particularly that many a night she had worked late and never once did she run into any security, even when she didn’t clock out until one or two in the morning.

Roman knew they didn’t have much time before people began showing up for work. He followed Kate through the back service door of the fourteen story building and directed her toward the stairs when she began walking toward the elevators, earning him a look of utter disbelief.

“Are you kidding? My office is on the ninth floor,” she said in exasperation that they’d have to walk the entire way.

“We can’t risk the night security seeing someone using the elevators,” he whispered in her ear as he gently pushed her up the first few white concrete steps in the stairwell painted to match.

“Why? I work here. It wouldn’t be anything strange for me to show up at any time during the day or night,” she complained in a tone that verged on whining.

“Just trust me on this. Walking is the way to go.”

He waited for her to fight him on this point as she’d fought him on virtually everything else in the past couple days, but to his surprise, she just sighed loudly and trudged up the steps without saying another word.

Until they reached the third floor.

Huffing and puffing like she hadn’t climbed three flights of stairs before in her life, she turned toward him and shook her head. “I need a second. I swear to God I don’t think I’m going to make it the whole nine floors.”

“Do I have to carry you?” Roman joked, hoping she didn’t take him seriously since his side still ached.

Screwing her face into a grimace, she began walking up the stairs again. “No. You do not have to carry me, thank you. I just needed a second to catch my breath.”

He wanted to tease her and say she didn’t look as out of shape as she seemed at that moment, but he didn’t want to ruin the good thing they had going on since they’d reached a détente of sorts back at the hotel. Walking behind her, he had to admit she had great legs and a nice ass, even if she couldn’t climb stairs very well.

As they reached the landing on the fifth floor, a noise that sounded like someone jiggling the handle on the door started her, and she reached back to grab his hand. “Someone’s coming!”

He stopped and waited to see if it would open. All the time, Kate’s hand tightly squeezed his. After a few seconds, nothing happened, so he tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned to look at him, her eyes filled with a look of terror. “What do we do?” she whispered in a panicked voice.

For a long moment, he watched for the door to open. If it did, he’d get in front of Kate and protect her from whoever appeared. When no one did, he breathed a sigh of relief.