The Love Trap by Nicole French

3

Present

Iburst from the water of the hotel’s pool, echoes of the dreams I’d had the night before still dancing behind my vision. I rarely dreamed of my past. Usually mine were more of the Salvador Dali persuasion—surreal unicorns erupting from the sky before they morphed into my mother yelling at me. Lots of ticking clocks, reminding me of how very brief this life was. You know, the normal stuff.

But lately, it was like my subconscious was reminding me of something, and in these scant free moments, I brooded on those memories from so long ago.

Eric and I had had several other chances together over the years. Every time we’d completely fucked them up. Now I wondered if he’d been trying to tell me something, even back then.

When we first met, Eric had been fighting his own battles. At that point, he would have been just over a year or so out from Penny’s death. That boy, as cocky as he’d seemed, had really been full of bravado. Just like me.

Was he still Triton then too, or had he already walked away from the society? Had it been strange to him when I’d brought up the reference at all?

I took another lap in the pool. The water was the same bright blue shade that my hair had been when I’d started school. Vaguely, I wondered if I should do it again. It had been almost a year since the rainbow job.

Skylar recommended swimming to help with my energy while I was pregnant. Stress wasn’t good for the baby, she said, and swimming was about as safe an exercise as you could get. Exercise and I generally got along like oil and water, but I had to say, she was right. Although my friend, with her aquatic habits and red hair, more closely resembled the mermaid of my dreams. Somehow being in the water brought me back to those first moments. Maybe that’s why I was enjoying it. Over the last few weeks, when the realities of Eric in the slammer and my mother abducted to God-knows-where were too much for me, a dip did my mental state some good.

Or maybe I was just putting off the inevitable.

“Ms. Lefferts?”

Tony, my head security guard, approached the edge of the pool from where he and another guard had been sitting dutifully by the door, keeping out anyone else who wanted to swim while I took a few morning laps. The team of four had been alternating shifts while we were in Korea, standing like sentries outside of my hotel room while I slept, shadowing me everywhere else I ventured. It was a little much, but considering who else was at large here, they made me feel safe. And I knew Eric would never forgive me if I was careless enough to make myself vulnerable.

I swam to the side and looked up at him, pulling awkwardly on my swim cap. “What’s up, Tony?”

He averted his eyes—the big man was oddly conservative, probably out of deference to Eric. He generally avoided looking at me directly whenever he could and absolutely refused to use my first name. When I announced I was going swimming this morning, the dread on his face—apparently at having to watch me in a bathing suit—was practically a Halloween mask.

“I just thought you would like to know that your appointment with Detective Cho is in approximately two hours. We need to leave in about forty-five minutes, ma’am, to reach the station on time.”

I let myself sink back into the water, touch my feet to the bottom, then reemerge before answering. “Okay.”

I accepted Tony’s offer to help me out of the pool, trying not to wince when he stepped away quickly. I understood why he did it. It’s not like it would be the slightest bit appropriate for the big man to touch me more than was strictly necessary. No hugs, no stroke of the back—nothing like that was even remotely acceptable.

But it’s not like I wanted it from him anyway. The truth was, there was another touch I ached for. One I had come to depend on to keep me sane.

I closed my eyes as I wrapped a big towel around my dripping body, imagining that moment at New Year’s when Eric had pulled me to him. I’d been a mess, crying and shaking, as the news that I was pregnant burst from my lips. He had held me to his chest, half laughing, half crying, his joy radiating through us both like heat from the sun.

Now, even under the fluff of the towel, the cold air made my skin break into goose bumps, dying for that warm touch. Dying for him.

Well, there was only one way I would be able to get it back. And that meant forging on alone.

“Okay,” I said again to Tony, who was waiting by the pool’s entrance. “Let’s go.”