Free Deep Desire: The Deep Series, Book 1 by Z.A. Maxfield Page B

removed the tags and folded the clothes he’d purchased that afternoon. “Sure, that sounds really nice.”
    “You’ll be careful,” she said without looking up.
    “I promise.” He meant it. She was his only family, and for her, he’d be careful. “I promise you I’ll take every precaution. I left some things with the dry cleaners here. Maybe you could pick them up?”
    “Sure.” She smiled and continued folding and packing until everything was in his suitcase, ready to go. “My car’s down in the parking garage.”
    He hefted his case and took a last look around. “Good to go then.”
    “Where will you be staying in San Francisco?” she asked.
    “The Kabuki.”
    She frowned. “Do I know that one?”
    “It used to be the Miyako, near the Japan Center. Next to the plaza with the tower?”
    “Oh…yeah.” The elevator arrived, and they entered it. “Nice place.”
    “I have my phone, or e-mail me if you need me, okay? I have my laptop.”
    “I thought you said your case was stolen on the airplane from Frankfurt.”
    Mention of that plane trip made a ruddy flush stain his cheeks. “It’s weird, you know? I didn’t put my laptop or the manuscript in my briefcase. I put them in the suitcase and checked them through. I guess I had a feeling…”
    “You’re fey, oddball,” she said, getting off the elevator with him and heading across the parking garage. She pressed her remote and her car chirped cheerfully.
    “That’s Mr. Oddball to you.” He followed her to her car. After a few steps he stopped, then turned, as he’d done in Frankfurt, an entire three hundred sixty degrees.
    “What is it?” asked Deana, her hand poised on the handle of the car.
    “Sometimes I get the strangest feeling I’m being watched.”
    “Look, maybe you shouldn’t go,” Deana said, looking at him over the roof of her BMW.
    “I’m sure I’m just paranoid. I was robbed twice, after all. It’ll take me a while to settle down.”
    “I hope that’s all it is.”
    “What else could it be? They’ve got what they wanted,” he pointed out. He opened the trunk and put in his case and garment bag.
    Deana finally opened the driver’s-side door and got in. “I guess so. The Kabuki, right?”
    “Right. It’ll be fine, Deana Beana,” he said, getting in on the passenger side. “You’ll see.”
    As she pulled out onto Flower Street, Adin had to force himself not to swivel his head in order to look around. His blood was whispering to him, a low hum he’d almost begun to regard as foreplay. It threw his body into a chaos of longing. He had no doubt Donte was in that garage, watching him from the shadows. He felt it. His blood told him Donte was near. He wondered if the feeling would dissipate with time and distance.
    Adin’s heart constricted at the thought.
    He would probably never see Donte again, unless he got Notturno back. Even that would be no good, because they’d be on opposing sides, each struggling to take it and hold it for their own. The faint thrill of connection was disappearing, and it saddened him. For a while at least, he had known, in as deep a place as the molecular structure of his body, a connection to a person not in his immediate family.
    For the briefest of moments he hadn’t felt alone.

Chapter Six
    Adin emerged from the plane, part of a crowd of tired people being funneled into the long hallway leading to the terminal. It was around ten forty in the evening, and he followed the tide down to the baggage claim area where the hotel driver was scheduled to pick him up.
    As he descended the escalator, he looked for his driver. He nodded and smiled when the man holding a sign that read Tredeger scurried over to introduce himself. Adin wasn’t a tall man, but the driver, who identified himself as Boaz, came only to his chin. He chatted amiably and seemed to have energy to burn. When Adin’s suitcase and garment bag came down the chute and he pointed them out, Boaz shot between a number of