Page 74 of Without a Clue

I was going to say yes all along.

“Fine,” I say at last. “I interview you, clear you from suspicion, and then we’ll swap secrets.”

“Deal.” He’s grinning as he leans back, and I feel the void, the cold air where his arm used to be.

He points at my back pocket.

“Plus, to be fair, if I’m going to be sleeping on the floor of your bedroom, I probably ought to be cleared of murder. It’s just the right thing to do.”

Two people directly ahead throw glances back at us. The lady with the Nash-head T-shirt sizes me up with a frown.

I elbow him, although my elbow against his layer of flannel does little.

“Fine,” I say pulling the phone from my pocket. I type down his name. “We’ll get this over with. Where were you—”

The ladies directly ahead of us squeeze in closer.

“The night . . .”

I pause. I’m about to trip on them, honestly.

I stand on tiptoe to reach him.

“Hugh,” I whisper in his ear, at such a hush a mouse wouldn’t hear it, “was—”

“Hold tight,” Nash says.

“Why?”

But before I know it, he reaches around my waist, swings me into his arms like a maiden in distress, and turns down another hall.

And then tears down it.

“Nash!” I scream in shock.

I’m supposed to say Put me down and We are in the middle of a book cruise here and This is NOT professional and of course I am in mourning! but the words just aren’t coming.

Instead my arms are wrapped around his neck and I look back, seeing the group pour into the end of the hall and stare at us as Nash carries me farther and farther away. He carefully keeps my feet from whacking the wallpaper and gilded paintings as we pass.

A woman steps out of her room. “Excuse us, ma’am,” he calls, turning us sideways to squeeze past but not slowing.

“They’re trying to video this!” I say, my nose peeking over his collar.

“Sorry, everyone! Late for a meeting!” he calls over his shoulder.

I laugh outright—my first real burst of laughter in what feels like forever—and then duck my head into the neck of his shirt to hide my face. “This is going to end up everywhere on social media. Conspiracy theories will abound. Headlines running: ‘Did We Really Go to the Moon?’ and ‘Nash Eyre Steals a Faceless Woman off a Ship.’”

“You think?”

“Yes. I think.”

He doesn’t put me down, though, which I halfway feared, halfway really needed.

Instead he takes a couple more steps and then suddenly swings me around to face them head-on. “I’m taking this here lady with me!” he drawls in a most countrified, ne’er-do-well voice. “A Miss Penelope Mae Dupont, and I claim her. She’s-a-mine!”

He waits as people take several pictures, then swings me around, and we carry on down the hall.

“There,” Nash says. “No more faceless women here.”