Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

TATE

T here’s a silence between us, tension burgeoning by the second. I’m focused on chopping fucking vegetables because I’ve no idea what to say to her. Just when I think it’s reaching snapping point, she throws down the wooden spoon she’s just picked up.

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ She throws her head back and she looks up at the ceiling. ‘That shouldn’t have happened.’

I can’t agree. It was heaven right here on earth. There’s a gleam of tears in her eyes, which is the worst thing, because I know Lily doesn’t cry.

‘Hey,’ I touch her shoulder. ‘We’re two consenting adults. No one needs to know.’

She whirls round and glares at me. ‘No one needs to know?’ she echoes at the top of her voice. ‘We know!’ She gulps, I can see her throat working. ‘This isn’t supposed to happen. This isn’t me. I’m a professional. I have a reputation for getting things right the first time.’ All fired up, her eyes are flashing with angry tears. I want to scoop her up, and as much as I want to be inside her right now, because she’s so fucking gorgeous, I also want to comfort her. And that feeling scares the crap out of me.

‘It’s cool,’ I try to be calm, logical. ‘Think of it as an itch we never got to scratch.’

She stares at me for a moment and then gives a half-laugh. ‘I think you got your analogies a little mixed. We still haven’t scratched that itch.’ As soon as the words are out of her mouth, her eyes widen, and she looks at me.

‘Maybe it’s time we did,’ I say, because fuck it, why the hell not. ‘Get it out of our systems once and for all.’

‘We can’t,’ she says, but her voice is quiet, as if she’s not completely invested in the words.

I know we shouldn’t but…

‘We can. Why not, Lily?’

‘Because you’re my client.’

‘And that’s the only reason?’

‘There are lots of other reasons, Tate,’ she says with a reproving stare.

‘Name them.’

‘We don’t like each other.’

‘I like you just fine. I think I just demonstrated quite adequately how much I like you.’

‘Tate,’ she warns, her cheeks flamingo pink.

I touch her skin as if it sizzles my finger. ‘And I think you liked it a lot, too.’

The shade of colour on her face deepens and my desire for her ratchets up another notch. I want her beneath me, skin to skin, body to body. Those soft breasts of hers up against my chest. Her hips cradling me.

‘You want it too,’ I say, unable to believe that she isn’t as hot for me as I am for her. ‘Tell me you don’t want me.’ I pin her with a fierce, challenging stare.

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Excuses. Give me a good reason, apart from the client bullshit, why we shouldn’t sleep together. You want to. I want to.’

‘And then what?’ she asks, lifting her chin.

‘Then, when this is all over and done, we walk away. Just like before.’ Except this time. I won’t let my heart get involved. I’ll get this itch scratched once and for all and then we can both move on. ‘Admit it, Lily. There’s unfinished business between us. Don’t you wonder what it would be like.’ I lower my voice. ‘Taking all of me, hard, inside you.’

Her mouth opens and I see her chest rise as she breathes in, but I can see the deliberations in every expression that subtly flicker on her face.

‘We—’

A loud explosive bang reverberates through the apartment.

‘What the?—?’

Lily’s sexually hazed trance is shattered in an instant. Talk about killing the mood. She’s already on the move, grabbing her gun, which seems have appeared from nowhere. From the hall I can hear the strident screech of the fire alarm.

‘Stay there, Tate,’ she throws at me over her shoulder as she races towards trouble.

Smoke is billowing from beneath the front door, and I can hear an unfamiliar crackling noise and then I see it, the lick of flames fanning beneath the wooden sill.

‘Fire extinguisher?’ she shouts above the sound of the unremitting alarm pounding our ears.

‘Don’t have one,’ I yell back.

‘Towels?’ she barks.

‘Closet upstairs.’ I’m already on my way up the wooden open-tread staircase to the next floor. Lily’s right behind me.

‘Call nine-one-one,’ she says, grabbing the towels the minute I retrieve them and heading for the bathroom.

She runs in and hurls the towels into the shower, turning it on full velocity.

I call the emergency services. ‘Fire department,’ I snap into the phone. While I’m giving them the details, Lily has scooped out an armful of wet towels from the shower and is running back downstairs, leaving a dripping trail of water behind her. I follow, feeling a little useless, because she clearly knows what she’s doing as she rolls the towels into loose sausages and wedges them against the gap under the door.

The crack and pop of flames on the other side of the door is now clearly audible, and the varnish on the inside is beginning to bubble up and blister, like some hideous disease spreading and multiplying at a furious rate. The heat radiating through is intense and sweat breaks out on my forehead, my clothes sticking to me.

‘Shouldn’t we open the door and try and fight the fire?’ I say, as smoke starts to seep through the door’s hinge and jamb, grey-blue creeping through the crack and then burgeoning and blossoming into the air.

‘No!’ she yells above the increasing noise. ‘It’ll give the fire oxygen. Feed it, and we could get a huge backdraft right in our faces– and possibly set light to the whole apartment. The door will give us at least sixty minutes’ burn time. Close all the doors on this floor.’

She’s right. The only escape route is out through the door into the corridor to the concrete stairwell. The emergency protocol is to stay put and trust in the fire-safety features of the building.

How does she think so fast? I’m all fingers and thumbs trying to catch up. Lily Heath is one BFD in an emergency. Happy to have been given something to do, I close the door to my study nook, the downstairs bathroom and the formal dining room. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to close, and the main living space is, despite Lily’s best efforts, starting to fill with smoke.

She coughs a little and puts a wet hand towel to her face, handing me one.

‘We need to find a safer place,’ she says. ‘Smoke is the biggest killer.’

Easier said than done. This is a very open-plan apartment.

‘We can go up to the master bedroom, then we’ve got a bathroom with running water.’

‘Got any more towels?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What are we waiting for?’ We run for the stairs and I feel the slight catch at my lungs. The insidious creep of the smoke is worse than I realised. I can hear her breath whistling as she runs past me into my bedroom, straight for the shower room. Before I’ve cleared the door frame, she’s back with another soaking towel in her arms. She steps in front of me, slams the door and rolls the towel into gap below it.

‘Now what?’ I ask, my heart pounding like the pistons on a freight train.

‘We wait,’ she says, cool as the proverbial cucumber, although there’s soot on her nose and her eyes are red and streaming.

My heart is hammering, but now I’ve got time to find my mad. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I ask, pacing up and down the length of my bedroom before swinging towards the balcony.

‘Don’t open the door,’ says Lily, her voice firm but gentle.

I take my hand off the handle. It’s second nature for me to go and stand out on the big balcony when I’m in need of some thinking time. I miss the heat and space of Austin, but I like the cold, crisp air of New York in winter.

‘Who’s doing this? I don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone not want me to play in the game?’

‘That’s what I keep asking myself,’ says Lily. ‘But then, with some folk there’s just no logic.’ Despite her words, her brow remains furrowed as if she’s still thinking things through.

‘What do you think happened?’ I ask. It makes me wonder what Lily Heath has been doing for the last eight years.

‘A firebomb, detonated at your door, I’m guessing,’ she says. ‘The fire department will know.’

She’s already on her phone.

‘Hey, Ray, it’s Mrs D-to-be. Just letting you know that we’re safe and holed up in the bedroom on the upper floor.’

Mrs D-to-be? Great. Now she’s best friends with my doorman.

She’s nodding. ‘We’re fine. It’s out in the lobby.’

I can hear Ray’s agitated voice and Lily soothing him.

‘Ray, it’s okay. Did you get a good look at the delivery person? It’s not your fault, I cleared it. Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’ She hangs up and pushes a hand through her hair.

‘What happened?’

She frowns. ‘It’s my fault.’ I can see she’s beating herself up about this.

‘I don’t recall seeing you setting fire to the door.’

‘I didn’t take enough precautions. I was… not thorough enough. It won’t happen again.’

‘You gonna explain how it’s your fault?’

‘I told Ray that there was another delivery coming. I arranged with the wine shop to deliver some wine and beer. They said they could do it in twenty minutes or so, depending on how busy they got. Someone either hijacked their delivery or took advantage of the fact a delivery was due.’ She rubs at her forehead. ‘Someone must have been following me and I didn’t see it. Or they were hanging around outside. Either way,’ she sighs and looks at me, ‘I took my eye off the ball. Let myself get distracted.’ Her lips tighten, her expression both sad and resolved. ‘From now on, it’s purely professional between us.’

Her words give me a ten-thousand-volt jolt as I remember the sexual charge between us just before the fire.

I shrug. ‘If you say so.’ Difficult to think about sex right now when someone is trying to kill me. Shit. Someone is trying to kill me . It hits me like a truck. The threat is real. Someone out there wants me dead or doesn’t want me to play the biggest game of my career so far.

‘We’re going to have to move you to a safe house.’ Lily catches her lip between her teeth and I can almost see her brain working at a mile a minute working out next steps and strategy.

I sink onto the bed, my head in my hands. ‘I can’t believe this.’