Texas Lightning. Gerry Bartlett
time is it?” Anna sat up, feeling like she’d been flattened by a semi. Crazy, when everything that had happened to her yesterday had drained her emotionally, not physically.
“After ten. You needed the sleep so King said to leave you to it.” Conchita handed her the new phone. “I’m fixing waffles. I hope you like them.”
“Sounds delicious.” Anna glanced at the texts. “Oh, it’s Sunday!”
“All day. I’ll bring you coffee.”
“Thanks.” Anna hit the last message and realized her friend was frantic. She hit speed dial.
“Anna, where are you? I came by for our usual brunch date and your bike is here but you didn’t answer the door. So I got worried and used the key you gave me. Your apartment is a disaster! Were you robbed?” Scarlett Hall sounded breathless. “Do I need to call the police?”
“I’m okay. But, yes, I was robbed.”
“Where the hell are you?” Scarlett sounded mad now. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“I just got a phone. It was stolen too. I’d like to explain it all but you have to calm down. Don’t call the police, it’s been handled.” Anna reached out for the mug of coffee Conchita handed her. “Thanks.”
“Why are you thanking me? Explain. Handled? How? I can’t calm down. I’m sitting in what used to be your place and it’s been destroyed. Your beloved computer is gone and so is your precious dog. Is YoYo okay?” Scarlett’s voice broke.
“Hold it. For God’s sake, don’t cry. YoYo’s fine. Though those creeps who broke in left him loose in the parking lot. He could have been run over.” Anna realized her coffee mug was shaking and she set it on the nightstand. What might have happened to her dog still made her heart stutter. As if she’d called him, YoYo jumped on the bed and sat in her lap. She rubbed his ears and kissed the top of his head. He’d obviously had a bath in some kind of herbal shampoo. Conchita’s idea, no doubt. Or had it been Doug’s? Tears filled her eyes at their kindness.
“My God! Where are you? I’ll come get you. You can stay with me.” Scarlett was in fix-it mode now. “We can ride into work together tomorrow.”
“I’m staying with one of Ron’s friends. The boss bought me a new computer setup and I’m working from here. The guy is an investor in Zenon and it’s a beautiful place with good security on one of the lakes. Obviously this theft was espionage. Someone wants to steal my program.” Anna picked up her coffee and leaned back against the padded headboard.
“Ron? You mean Mr. Z? You’re calling him Ron now? How did that come about? Who is this friend?” Scarlett kept firing questions. “Anna! Answer me. I want to see you. Hear every little detail. Give me an address. I’m on my way.” Scarlett sounded very determined.
Anna didn’t know what to say. Was she allowed to give out King’s address? Could Scarlett be followed here? She looked up and King stood in the doorway.
“I don’t know, Scarlett. I don’t think I can tell you where I am. I’m here to work on my special program. I won’t be coming into the office, it’s not safe.” She saw King nod.
“What the fuck, Anna? Are you being held prisoner? I don’t like this one little bit. If I don’t get to see you with my own eyes, I’m calling your brother, you know the one. First you’re robbed and now you’ve disappeared? I’m sorry, pal, but you’re not allowed to vanish. I’m not going to just let that go, you hear me?”
“Scarlett, calm down. You can’t make waves like that. Talk to Mr. Zenonsky tomorrow at the office. He can explain everything.”
“I’m not waiting until tomorrow. Not when I’m sitting in your place where there’s drawers emptied and underwear strewn from the bathroom to the living room. Plus you won’t tell me where the hell you are!”
“Okay, okay. I’ll give you Mr. Z’s phone number. You can call him right now. Would that make you feel better?”
“I’m not sure. I really want to see you, pal. We were supposed to have this Texas adventure together. And now you’re missing?” Scarlett’s voice had gone up several octaves and she sounded like she was hyperventilating. “We’ve only been here a couple of months and I don’t know Mr. Z from Adam. I swear I’m calling Chance and getting the FBI on this if I don’t get some answers pronto.”
“I get it. I love you too, Scarlett. Let me see what I can arrange. For God’s sake, leave Chance and the FBI out of it.” Anna looked down and saw King holding out his phone, Ron’s phone number displayed for her. “Here’s Mr. Zenonsky’s cell number. He’ll answer, I’m sure of it.” She rattled it off. “Call him. Listen to what he has to say. He’s been terrific about the break-in. He’s paying for all my stuff to be replaced and has already brought me a new computer system, a fabulous setup.”
“I don’t want to hear it. I know you. Buy you a tower with a bunch of RAM or whatever and you’d follow a man anywhere.” Scarlett was near tears again. “Damn it, Annie, this reeks. You’d better be okay.”
“Call me again after you talk to Ron. I swear I’ll keep my phone by my side. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Anna ended the call.
“Sounds like you have a good friend there.” King stepped back from the bed. He took YoYo with him. “Breakfast is almost ready.”
“Good, I’m starved. Yes, Scarlett is an old and dear friend. She came with me from Boston and is an office manager at Zenon. Our old boss made a special deal when he sold the company. Zenon had to take a certain number of employees with the purchase. Scarlett’s not into computers like I am but she’s an organizational whiz.”
“Then I’d probably like her. We have a lot in common.” King grinned. “You and Ron made me feel pretty damned dumb last night.”
“Sorry about that.” Anna waved him away. “Leave so I can get ready for that breakfast.”
He did and took her dog with him, closing the bedroom door behind him. Not into computers. Why did that suddenly seem like a good thing? Her former boyfriends had shared her love of all things that go click in the night—which had made for lots of screen time and little between-the-sheets time. And that time spent horizontally hadn’t exactly been full of fireworks. Was she crazy for imagining that King would know his way around a woman’s body with a heck of lot more finesse than a guy who got most of his experience from videos on the web?
Anna shivered, imagining King’s big tanned hands roaming over her and finding spots that could make her scream. She’d never thought of herself as particularly passionate, not about anything but the latest software. But suddenly she was very aware of what she’d been missing, stuck in her cave, working too much and rarely playing.
Her pal Scarlett certainly never denied herself pleasure. She’d had at least two boyfriends in the months since they’d hit Austin. Both relationships had been flaming hot but had burned out quickly. Of course, that was Scarlett’s pattern. She tended to leap then look, figuring out later that there was chemistry but little else to hold her to a man. Anna was the opposite. She was slow to commit, needing that connection to be solid before she’d give a guy a real chance. So what was she doing daydreaming about hitting the sack with the stranger down the hall?
Her limited wardrobe wasn’t exactly going to help her cause if she did decide to break her cautious pattern and hit that hottie. She put on her new bra and a loose orange University of Texas sweatshirt. Her jeans were too far gone and she ended up tugging on some knit workout pants King’s obviously tall sister had stashed in a drawer in her bedroom, rolling them up at the waist. Conchita had encouraged her rummage through those drawers, though Anna had hated doing that. Everything she’d found had been expensive and looked new.
The full-length mirror in the attached bathroom convinced her that she wasn’t going to have King