Clinging to that thought, I grabbed a cab and headed for my hotel and a much-overdue hot bath.
[Chapter Sixteen]
"Come here," he said.
Whoosh. There he was. He strode through the door, tan safari shirt, smelling like a man who’d just driven hundreds of miles through Central America in an open Jeep. I wanted to undress him with my teeth and lick off the sweat. Brown eyes, skin tan as leather, he threw his arms around me and I felt the weight of the world slip away. He was here. I was wearing a robe, fresh from the tub, but it was gone in a second. Steve, I gotta say, knew a thing or two about the bedroom.
As we wound ourselves together for the next two hours, I had a refresher course in how much Id missed him, soul and body. His taste, his skin, his touch. Finally, we were both so exhausted we just lay there bathed in sweat, spooned together on the sagging bed. I hadn't felt so good in years. It was like another world.
"God I've missed you," I said again, holding him closer. The air-conditioning was beginning to lose ground against the late sun, but I didn't care. After my solo nightmare of the last two days, I was remembering what it was like to be a couple again.
The Camino Real, by the way, turned out to be an American-style hideaway with budget shag carpeting and flaking blue walls. In a way, though, the downtrodden decor actually made it more romantic, like we'd sneaked off to a garish hot-sheet motel for a twilight rendezvous.
I finally dragged myself up and got us a bottle of water. Then, leaning against the rickety headboard, I recounted an abbreviated version of what had happened yesterday after we'd first talked—the theft of my film, and then Lou being assaulted and Sarah taken, apparently willingly, to be brought (I strongly suspected) back here. What I held out on were the details about a certain Colonel Jose Alvino Ramos, my belief that he was behind the crimes and in league with Alex Goddard and stalking me. I was afraid our room was bugged.
"Morgy, we'll get through this," he said, reaching over to stroke my hair. "If somebody brought her back down here, we'll find her. And I apologize for being such a shit on the phone, about the baby. I'd just had a local lab lose three rolls of high-speed Kodachrome and I was seriously frosted at the world. We can keep trying if you want to."