Seduction of Steel: The Complete Series Read online

  “I'm sorry, Jess, but I have to go or I'll miss my flight. I'll call you in a week or so. I promise.”

  With that, he was gone.

  Chapter 4

  Jessica spent the rest of the day in a romantically induced haze, basking in the glow of the two amazing nights she'd just spent with Ryan. She did a bit of editing on her latest book, caught up on some reading, and turned in early. She woke up the next morning and went out to the kitchen to get some coffee. She was catching up on the news on her laptop when Amber stumbled out of bed, looking a bit more disheveled than usual.

  “Morning, Amber. You look kind of worn out.”

  “Oh, Jason and I were up late last night, watching a movie over at his place. Some zombie thing. Not really worth staying up for.”

  “You're probably right. I never liked those scary movies. Coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  Jessica got up to pour a cup of coffee for her roommate.

  “So, Jess. I haven't seen much of you for the past two days. Have you been all hot and heavy with Ryan?”

  Jessica smiled. “Yes, I've been with Ryan for the past couple of days. He had a room at the Ritz-Carlton. It was really nice.”

  “The Ritz-Carlton? Really? Tell me more...”

  “Well, we met at the restaurant and had a great meal and then went up to his room...oh, you can imagine what happened after that.”

  “I can imagine, but why should I? Why don't you just give me all of the juicy details?”

  Without going into too much detail, Jessica described the previous two days with Ryan - the dining, the sex, the amazing hotel, and the sightseeing. It was pretty obvious to Amber that Jessica was completely smitten with Ryan as she was just beaming throughout the entire conversation.

  “...so anyway, that's kind of how it went. And now he's gone to Las Vegas for a week. At least that's what he said.”

  “You don't believe him?”

  “I don't have any reason not to believe him. I don't know, really. He's got such a strange occupation. How many spies do you know?”

  “Well, none. But it does sound like his job isn't nearly as exciting or adventurous as it sounds. It's certainly not as adventurous as what you've written about in your stories.”

  “You know how the stories are. You've got to keep them exciting, or else no one will read them. Besides, at the time I started writing about the fictional spy, I didn't know too much about Ryan's real work. I was mostly guessing.”

  “It sounds like you might have made him out to be a little more adventurous than he is in real life.”

  “Maybe, but that's OK. Like I said, the more exciting the story, the more books people buy.”

  “True. So...are you two getting serious?” Amber took a sip of her coffee.

  “Well...I'd like to think so. It's hard to say, really. We haven't spent all that much time together yet. I mean, the sex is great, but sex isn't a relationship.”

  “No, but it's a good start,” Amber said with a laugh. “If the sex is terrible, the relationship is probably going downhill from there. You could do worse than starting with great sex.”

  Jessica smiled again. “I guess if good sex is a good start, then we're on the way. That's not the problem. The problem is that I'm here and Ryan isn't. It's worse than that, really.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, it's not just that Ryan isn't here. Ryan isn't really anywhere. He doesn't have a place to live. He has a bank account and a P.O. Box in Pittsburgh. No house. No apartment. Nothing.”

  “Where does he keep his stuff?” Amber asked.

  “I don't think he has any stuff to speak of.”

  Amber responded with a confused look on her face. As a woman in her mid-20s, she couldn't even fathom the idea of someone not having either “stuff” or a place to put it.

  She looked around the kitchen, taking notice of all of the decorative knickknacks that she and Jessica owned. She shook her head. “Everyone has stuff, don't they?”

  “I don't know, and I'm not sure it matters. I don't really care about what he does or doesn't own. What I care about is whether I'm going to continue to see him or not. It's one thing to not live in the same city or state, but in this case, one of us doesn't seem to live anywhere at all.”

  “He must have some downtime every now and again. Surely he could spend that time here just as easily as anywhere else.”

  “True, but so far, he's mostly been elsewhere. Then again, I haven't known him that long.”

  “I guess having him constantly on the move is a bit of a problem. You're probably not going to be happy with just the occasional visit, are you?”

  Jessica thought for a minute about spending the last two nights at the Ritz-Carlton. It was a really nice place to spend some time.

  There are benefits to him not having an apartment, she thought.

  “The visits are nice; no question about that. But I'm getting to that point where I think I'm ready to at least think about settling down. Having a relationship with someone who is only here every now and again for unknown lengths of time isn't going to work for me.”

  “I probably couldn't go for that, either, Jess. If you're always available whenever it's convenient for him, he'll probably just take you for granted.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “I don't know. I guess you need to figure out what's good about the relationship and what isn't, and see if the pros outweigh the cons. What are the good parts?”

  “Besides the sex? Obviously, I like his company. He's so good looking. I just can't get enough of looking into his eyes. He's attentive. He's gentle. He really does seem to care about me. He's funny.”

  “And the bad parts?”

  “Well, I never know when I'm going to see him. I never even know when I'm going to hear from him. He's pretty secretive about his work. I don't know what he's doing, or when he's doing it, or where he's going to be next week.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I have to admit that knowing him has made it easier for me to write. I've been able to create this interesting new character, Bryan, for my books. The better I get to know Ryan, the more I'll be able to write about his fictional alter-ego.”

  “It sounds to me like you've got some incentive to keep spending time with Ryan, then, even if you don't know when you'll get to see him. I mean, it's important that you be able to write, and if he's made it possible for you to create a new character, then you should probably let the relationship go where it's going to go.”

  “You might have a point. I don't want to get hurt, and I do really care about Ryan. But I guess you're right. Even if the relationship doesn't last, it has given me something to write about, and I've probably got three or four books of material already.”

  “Maybe you do. But you're only going to get that material if and when Ryan actually shows up. And even then you'll have to get him to talk about what he's been up to. You can't write books about someone you never see or about stories he won't tell.” Amber got up to pour another cup of coffee.

  “That is a problem, isn't it? Even when I see him, he's rarely interested in talking about his work. I mean, it's fine that he wants to spend time with me and he is very attentive when we're together. But if I'm going to write about him, I need to know more about the sort of work he's doing.”

  “Then why don't you travel with him and find out for yourself? You can hang out in nice hotels and take notes while he works. How bad could that be?”

  “I'm not sure how well that would work, Amber. Most spies don't exactly take an entourage with them when they travel. They're usually loners who work alone. Don't you ever read or watch movies?”

  Amber laughed. “Yeah, I'm familiar with the typical spy - the 'quiet loner' type. But who said he has to know you're there? I said 'hang out in nice hotels.' I didn't say, 'hang out in nice hotels with him'.”

  “You mean, spy on him? Spy on the spy?” Jessica laughed. “That sounds like a plot from a bad B-movie
.”

  “Why not? You can follow him around from place to place. You just take notes, write new books and spice up the story if Ryan's work isn't interesting enough to write about. That chicken recipe thing doesn't exactly sound like the subject of a best seller.”

  Jessica chuckled at the idea of a book about the chicken recipe. “I hear what you're saying, but I'm not sure that following Ryan is a good idea. It might give me some insight into what a spy does, but I'm not sure how he would react if he found out. He might be pretty mad.”

  “Maybe. Is that what you're really worried about? Or are you worried that he's not really a spy and you'll find out he's actually up to something else? What if he's really married or something?”

  “I really don't know. If he says he's a spy, then I believe him. While I'd like to see him at work, I don't want him mad at me. I certainly don't want to endanger him in any way.”

  “You said yourself that his work isn't dangerous, right?”

  “Well, that's what he says. Based on what he's told me so far, I don't think his work is dangerous.”

  “Then what's the problem? If you want to know what he does, then you should go see what he does. What have you got to lose, Jess?”

  Amber did have a point. Jessica didn't really know all that much about Ryan, except that he said he was a spy and that he said that his work wasn't dangerous wouldn't even strike the average person as being particularly interesting. She did need to know more about spies if she planned to keep writing about them. She also wanted to know more about Ryan, simply because he's Ryan.

  As far as Jessica was concerned, the more Ryan, the better.

  “Thanks for the suggestion, Amber. I'll have to think about it.”

  She would have to think about it. How would Ryan react if he caught her observing spying on him? Would her presence put him in some kind, any kind, of danger? What if he really wasn't a spy, but was just hiding some other way of making a living? What if he really was secretly married, or had some other deep, dark secrets he wasn't telling her about?

  He might really be a drug dealer or a murderer, for all she knew.

  The more Jessica thought about it, the more she realized that she needed to know more about both Ryan and his unusual occupation. If she was going to either have a long term relationship with him or write about spies, she was going to have to know a lot more about Ryan Stevens.

  She certainly wasn't going to learn more about Ryan if he was in Las Vegas and she was sitting at home in Denver. Finding out more about Ryan meant spending more time in his vicinity.

  Chapter 5

  Jessica spent the rest of the day trying to decide if she wanted to go to Las Vegas to observe Ryan at work. She had no idea how he'd react if he caught her, and she didn't have any sort of plausible excuse for being there if he did. He'd likely be angry with her, and he'd have every reason to be.

  On the other hand, Jessica wanted to know more about Ryan and she wanted to know more about his work. She was a writer, after all, and writers need sources of both information and inspiration. What better way to find out how an industrial spy operates than to observe one first hand? That's the truth; perhaps he'd simply believe her and agree.

  As she prepared a pizza for dinner, she pondered all of the problems she'd have trying to pull this off. She'd have to get to Las Vegas. She'd need a place to stay. She'd need a car. After that, she didn't know how she was going to find Ryan. She didn't know what he was there to do, nor did she know where he was going to be at any given time or even who it was he was trying to find there.

  All she knew was that he planned to stay at the Bellagio. If she were going to go to Las Vegas to find Ryan and observe him working as a spy, Jessica was simply going to have to hope for a bit of luck. It's not as though the Bellagio's front desk was going to give her Ryan's room number. For all she knew, he wasn't even registered under his real name. Oddly enough, it had never even occurred to her to ask him about that.

  Jessica grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and sat down at her laptop to do a bit of research. It turned out that following Ryan to the Consumer Electronics Show wasn't going to be all that easy, after all. The trade show wasn't open to the public; admission was only available to those who worked in the electronics industry. Worse than that was the $1000 cost of admission. Making matters worse was the fact that hotel rooms were nearly nonexistent. Large conferences and conventions brought huge numbers of people to Las Vegas, and rooms often disappeared months ahead of time.

  She certainly wasn't going to be able to book a room at the Bellagio. They'd been sold out for months for this convention, which was taking place just a few blocks away.

  Getting industry credentials for admission to the convention was a bit of a problem, too.

  Fortunately, Jessica used to date a guy named Jay who worked for a major computer chip manufacturer in the Denver area. While they weren't overly close, they were still cordial with one another on the rare occasions when they encountered one another. He also owed her a favor, as he'd once set him up with a friend of hers on a date.

  She decided to give him a call.

  “Jay? Hi. This is Jessica Steel. “

  “Jessica! Good to hear from you. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. How are you?”

  “Doing great. To what do I owe the pleasure of the call? You calling to ask me out?” he said with a laugh.

  “Not today, Jay. Sorry. I'm doing research for a book I'm working on and I need credentials to get into the electronics show in Vegas this week. Can you help me?”

  “You're not looking to get into any trouble down there, are you?”

  “No. I'm just doing some research for my book. I'll ask some questions and take some notes. That's all. I won't do anything that will reflect badly on you or your company. Besides, you still owe me.”

  “For setting me up on that date with Kelli? That didn't even work out.”

  “That's not my fault. You're the one who said you owed me a favor for setting up the date.”

  “OK. You've got me there. If you stop by tomorrow morning, I'll have some business cards and a badge for you that should be good enough to get you into the show. But no more favors, OK?”

  “Thanks, Jay. You're an angel.”

  Jessica hung up the phone. One step down. Now she just needed to register for the convention, buy a plane ticket, rent a car, and try to find a hotel room in a busy town on short notice during one of the busiest weeks of the year.

  Making all of those arrangements turned out to be both time consuming and expensive. Las Vegas has tens of thousands of hotel rooms, but when a convention comes to down, they disappear in a flash. The best Jessica was able to do was the Sundown Inn, a small motel about twenty miles out of town. Even at that, the price was more than $150 per night. With the last minute plane ticket, the rental car and the thousand dollar admission to the convention, this little adventure of “spying on the spy” was costing her a fortune.

  I sure hope that whatever I get out of this is worth a few thousand dollars. I've got to sell a lot of books to pay for this. And I hope I don't mess things up with Ryan...

  Jessica charged everything to her credit card and hoped she'd be able to recoup her expenses through book sales later. She spent the remainder of the evening packing her bags. She wasn't really sure how to pack, either, since she really had no idea what awaited her. She did her best to pack a mixture of casual and business wear and threw a bathing suit and her little black dress and pumps in her bag just in case. A little black dress often comes in handy.

  Then Jessica tried to grab some sleep. It was already near midnight, and her flight was at 8 AM. She tossed and turned a bit before she finally fell asleep.

  Chapter 6

  Jessica caught her flight to Las Vegas early the next morning, got her rental car and drove to the motel she had rented some twenty miles outside of Las Vegas. As Jessica checked into the Sundown Inn, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. Here she was, a tho
usand miles from home, hoping that she could somehow find Ryan and observe him while he worked as a spy.

  She needed to do all of this without him finding out about it. She needed to find enough information to make her tremendous effort and expense worthwhile.

  I really should have thought this out a bit more. How am I going to find him? What if I don't? What if I do find him, but don't get anything useful out of this?

  She knew that the convention wasn't going to start for two days, and that Ryan was here early just to do some advance scouting of some sort. For what, exactly, she had no idea.

  Unfortunately, that meant that he could be anywhere. The only thing that Jessica knew for sure was that Ryan was staying at the Bellagio. That's a big hotel, and hoping to randomly find him there without him randomly seeing her first was a tall order. Would he even be there? He might be staying there, but spending all of his time elsewhere. She had no idea.