Page 30 of Moonlighter

Eric makes a small noise of concern then puts an arm around me, pulling me closer, until my unhappy head meets his shoulder.

The pregnancy hormones are wreaking havoc on my fortitude, because nothing has ever felt better to me than Eric’s solid bulk under my cheek. I’ve never been the sort of woman who needs a man to tell her that everything is all right. But my burdens are extra heavy today.

“Tell me why you’re so freaked,” he whispers. “Gunnar will get to the bottom of it.”

“He’s stripping the bed right now, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” he admits.

“A bug in thebedroom. This is such a disaster. And it’s all my fault. Of all the men I could have…” I swallow hard and sit up straight again. “What if Jared won’t sign the papers just to spite me? What if he won’t give me custody?” My anxieties bound around like the white-tailed deer on Martha’s Vineyard.

“Slow down there. Breaking and entering won’t sound good to a judge,” he points out. “The crazier he acts, the worse it will be for him.”

I actually shiver. That’s how terrified I am of Jared. Before now, I’d wondered if I’d just built him up in my mind—if he wasn’t really as big a creep as I’d made him out to be.

And then someone put a bug in my hotel room.

Eric’s strong arm tightens around me. “Deep breaths. I mean that literally. Do you do yoga?”

“Sometimes.” I take a very long inhale. When I can’t possibly bring in any more air, I let it out slowly through my mouth.

“There you go. Bedrooms are where they put bugs, anyway.”

“Who does?” I gasp.

“Breathe,” he chides. “Anyone who bugs a home hits the kitchen and bedroom first, because that’s where most serious conversations happen. Those are the places where people forget to be on their guard. My brother and father yap about this shit all the time. I could write a manual on how to invade people’s privacy.”

I laugh. “Fun times at the Bayer Family dinner table.”

“You know it. My dad taught me to hot-wire a car when I was sixteen.”

“Just for fun?” I ask, perking up a little. The distraction of hearing about Eric’s family is even better than deep breathing.

“We were out fishing at a quiet lake in the middle of New Jersey. And I dropped the keys out of the boat. Plunk. Right into the lake. So we had to hot-wire our own car just to get home.”

“Oh, man.” I laugh. “Was your father pissed off?”

“That’s putting it mildly. He made me pay for the replacement key. Fifty bucks. I had to mow three extra lawns just to cover the cost.”

“Both our dads are hard-asses,” I realize. And I’m breathing easier now. I shouldn’t stay right here, plastered to Eric as tightly as a bumper sticker, letting him console me. His role as my fake boyfriend doesn’t really extend to this.

But I like it, okay? Sue me.

And now my adrenaline rush is turning into an adrenaline crash. I’m suddenly so tired. I put my head back down on his shoulder and close my eyes. Just for a minute.

That was the idea, anyway. But the next thing I know, I hear Gunnar’s voice. My eyes fly open, and both Pieter and Gunnar are standing there in front of us.

I sit up straight just in time to hear Gunnar say that they didn’t find anything else in the suite. “He only had enough time to drop the one device. And he didn’t come out on the terrace, or we would have seen it in the video.”

“True,” I say, blinking to clear my vision.

“We’re leaving you a metal rod to secure this sliding door—” Gunnar gestures at the terrace door. “—And an alarm to hang on your hotel room door when you turn in for the night. It’s a simple device. Lock up and then hang it on the door handle before you turn it on. If it’s jostled, it screams.”

“Got it,” Eric says.

“We’ll put a tail on Tatum. You won’t notice our guy, but he’ll follow Tatum any time the man is outside his hotel room.”

“But how will you know when he leaves his room?” I try to picture a security agent standing around on Jared’s hotel floor, trying to look inconspicuous.