Jamie Sobrato - Once Upon A Seduction

“No, actually, I’m Nico. Is Skye here?”

“Sorry, I’m Fiona, Skye’s roommate. I was joking about the Satan thing. She’s in her bedroom second-guessing her wardrobe choices for the trip.”

Nico studied her expression to see if it matched her sarcastic tone, but he couldn’t tell. He moved past her into the apartment and found himself in the middle of a room with lavender walls, dark purple furniture, and red pillows strewn every which way. Some crazylooking paintings with stuff glued to them hung in various spots around the room, and the overall effect was girly overload. Nico had the strange sensation that he was going to emerge from the apartment smelling like a woman—as had happened to him in the past when he’d accidentally tossed a shirt into a bowl of a girl-friend’s potpourri during a moment of passion.

“Come on back,” Fiona said, leading him toward a hallway, and then to Skye’s bedroom.

“Your ride’s here,” she said to Skye, her voice laced with sarcasm again. She stood staring from him to Skye and back again, clearly not shy about eavesdropping.

Skye turned to face him, looking as amazing as ever. She wore her hair pulled back in a thick ponytail that hung down the middle of her back, and she had on a pair of white capri pants and a little pink tank top that would make it hard for him to keep his gaze from wandering south.

“Hi,” she said, then turned back to her travel bag, giving Nico the pleasure of letting his gaze roam wherever it wanted for now. “I’ll be ready in just a sec.”

“No hurry. I just heard on the radio there’s an accident in the Cajon Pass. Sounds like we might be stuck on this side of the mountains for a while.”

Not hitting any major traffic in L.A. was about as likely as the smog vanishing from the sky. It just didn’t happen. The Cajon Pass was the passage from the L.A. basin up the mountains into the high desert, where seedy towns offered little more than fast food and bad motels for travelers on their way to Vegas. Searching those towns for Martin sounded anything but appealing, but if they had to do it, he could think of worse people to do it with than Skye.

“Maybe we shouldn’t leave until later then,” Skye said, staring forlornly at a laptop computer that sat in a carrying case on her bed.

“I think we ought to just take our chances. The accident could be cleared up by the time we make it to the pass.”

Skye was looking at him now as if she didn’t really see him.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. I mean, yeah, there is. I’m just kind of freaked out about this whole trip. And I should be staying home writing, not chasing after my ex.”

“So bring your computer with you and write during downtime.”

Nico knew there was a danger of her second-guessing the whole trip and deciding not to go. He’d worried that she might change her mind, but really, what did she have to lose by going? If she was in cahoots with Martin, she could go along presumably to keep tabs on Nico. While on the other hand, if Martin had scammed her, too, and she didn’t try to find him, she could definitely kiss her life savings goodbye.

“Okay, I’ll bring the computer. It might come in handy if we end up in any hotels that have Internet access.”

“I don’t have much trunk space, but it should fit behind one of the seats if nothing else,” Nico said as he grabbed her two bags from the bed and hefted them onto his shoulders.

He realized belatedly that her bringing her computer along would offer him access to her private life—and, he hoped, evidence of her true relationship with Martin. He just needed to get some time alone with the laptop, and he could check out her e-mail, her Internet use, her saved documents. Maybe something would tell him what he needed to know—to trust Skye, or not to trust her.

They walked to the front door, and from the couch Fiona called, “You two kids be careful now, you hear?”

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