Page 12 of A Matter of Time
“Where’s Bradyn?”
“What are you doing here?”
Eventually, one of us would have to answer a question rather than just asking them, and Cam gave in first. “I came to make sure you were okay.”
That might be an answer, but it didn’t explain anything. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? How did you know where to find me? Are you following me?”
The woman behind the desk looked between the two of us uneasily. “Seems you sure attract the weird ones, ma’am. Do you want me to call the police?”
Cam’s eyes widened and for a moment, I almost felt tempted to agree just to freak him out, but in the end, I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. “No, thank you. This one’s harmless, for the most part.”
I handed over my card so she could finish my room reservation before turning my attention back to Cam.
“Do you have a reasonable explanation for why you’re here, three hours from home, at a hotel I didn’t know I would be coming to until about twenty minutes ago?”
“I have an explanation,” he offered weakly. “Is it reasonable? I ain’t so sure about that.”
I couldn’t say what came over me, if I could blame it on the long day or the relief I saw in his eyes when he walked in, but something made me respond in a way neither of us expected. As I took my room key from the hotel receptionist, I pointed over to the hotel bar.
“Come on. Buy me a drink, and you can tell me all about it.”
~Cam~
Too stunned to argue, I followed Tonia into the rather upscale restaurant just off the hotel lobby. Red walls and a black ceiling with gold hanging lights wouldn’t usually be my style, but I barely noticed them as we took a seat on the high stools next to the polished mahogany bar.
The place looked pretty quiet for a Friday night. Presumably, most people were still out enjoying the city or had already retired to their rooms. Besides us, only a handful of couples and a couple of people on their own sat scattered around the room, having a drink while they watched the game or scrolled through their phone. The scent of food from the tables on the other side of the room nearly made my stomach growl. The candy bars I’d scarfed down in the car couldn’t really be counted as dinner.
When I pulled off the highway and into town, I realized that I had absolutely no plan for when I arrived at the hotel. Would the receptionist even tell me which room Bradyn was in? And if she did, what did I intend to do? Go and knock on the door? What on earth would I say?
I really hadn’t thought things through before driving all the way down there, but as I navigated my way to the hotel I’d seen on Bradyn’s credit card account, I decided that I’d go to the lobby and give Tonia a call from the hotel’s phone. I had her work number on the calendar invites she’d sent me, but if I used my own phone, she might ignore it. By calling from an unknown number, I had a better chance she would answer, and then, if she needed help, I’d be right there. If she didn’t, then she’d never have to know I had come all that way for nothing.
That plan quickly went out the window when I arrived and walked up to the desk to find her booking her own room and Bradyn nowhere in sight. Obviously, I’d missed something, and I was too slow on the uptake to simply hide myself and call her as I’d planned. Instead, I blurted out her name, and now I had no way to hide that Ihadfollowed her down there, which sounded pretty damn stalker-like when I thought about it.
I braced myself for her to go off at me when she asked if I had a reasonable explanation for my presence there, and on that occasion, I probably deserved it. But to my surprise, she didn’t get upset. She actually offered to have a drink with me, and after the stress of the previous few hours, I could definitely use one. I wouldn’t be heading back to Houston that night anyway. It had to be ten o’clock already, at least. I would have to get my own room at the hotel and make my way home the next morning.
The hotel would be doing a good business off of Barnly Oil that night.
“So, about this explanation you owe me, reasonable or otherwise?” Tonia prompted once we’d placed our drink orders. She’d ordered a beer, I noticed, the same as she used to. We ended up getting the same thing. “Let me have it.”
I could have tried to come up with some excuse, but fatigue got the better of me. It had been a long day and an even longer week, so I simply told the truth instead. “I thought Bradyn might make a move on you tonight, and I thought you might need some backup.”
Her eyebrows raised but I couldn’t tell if the gesture meant she disapproved or found my statement funny. “When have I ever needed backup?”
“Never, far as I know,” I admitted. “But I heard he was going to try to get you to stay here with him and it just didn’t sit right with me, I guess. Not when you’re just trying to do your job. I know youcanhandle it, Tonia, I just didn’t think you should have to.”
“And you couldn’t just phone me?” Amusement seemed to be winning out as she fished her phone out of her pocket and held it up to me, her eyebrows still higher than usual.
“I didn’t think you’d answer if you saw my name,” I told her honestly. “We ain’t exactly been on the best of terms lately.”
“Lately, as in the last six years or so?” Our drinks were set down in front of us and we both took a long sip, eager to take the edge off as we settled into the conversation.
“Pretty much, yeah. I didn’t know if you’d think I was trying to mess with you, or… well, honestly, I didn’t know what you might think. I just wanted to see for myself that you were alright, and if that’s stupid, then I guess I’m stupid.”
Might as well call myself names before she got a chance to. I knew it wouldn’t be far from the tip of her tongue.
“It is kinda stupid,” she agreed, with just a hint of a smile before her lips curled around the rim of the beer bottle again and she swallowed another mouthful. “You always did like being everyone’s saviour.”
She said something along those lines the night of Dex’s wedding when she said I’d played the white knight as usual, but unlike that night, her words at the bar held no sting. She just stated them as a fact, not an accusation, and in the end, I couldn’t argue with that characterization. I did like helping people out, and if she considered that some kind of crime, then I supposed I must be guilty.
