by Kahlen Aymes
“Yes, but you are two weeks early,” Helen pointed out.
Alex couldn’t argue, which only increased his agitation. He loosened the knot in his black and grey silk tie. “I have more pressing issues that demand my attention back in the States.” He huffed, unsure why he was giving explanations to an employee. She’d made it obvious on numerous occasions that she’d be responsive if he had the slightest inclination, but his commitment to monogamy had always kept a more intimate relationship at bay. He could hardly remember a time in his adult life that he wasn’t involved with someone. His eyes drifted over her with obvious disinterest. She was beautiful, with a feisty personality to match her red hair, but there was little more to separate her from any of the women he used to be attracted to.
He snorted, pissed that he’d thought about it in the past tense. Even if he weren’t going crazy over Angel, he’d always kept business and more pleasurable endeavors apart and he sensed Helen would be more demanding than a brief sexcapade was worth. No, even if he weren’t her boss, she meant nothing more than a passing stroke to his ego.
Helen stared at him, her expression a mixture of incredulity and mocking. “How can you be so blasé, Alex? The money on the table is—”
“I’m not sure why you feel the need to lecture me,” Alex interrupted coldly. “I penned the goddamned offer, for Christ’s sake! Get them on the phone and tell them to take it or leave it. No more revisions. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
Helen’s shoulders stiffened as she sat up straighter in her chair, her eyes widening in surprise. “But, Alex, we can express them to Chicago for your sig—”
“Just do it!” he commanded. “If it isn’t closed by 10 a.m., it’s off the table.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it again as Alex walked out of the room without waiting for a response. Experience told her that he was not in the mood to listen to anything she had to say.
Alex was already pulling his phone out of his inside breast pocket as the expensive wooden door closed with a bang behind him. He called for his car to take him back to the hotel. It was 10 p.m. on Thursday night, and he was determined to get back to Chicago before Angel went on air the following night. The time difference meant he had to be on a plane in less than fifteen hours. Helen and this deal could go straight to hell as far as he was concerned.
The building was deserted except for the security station, and he wearily said goodnight as he passed and exited through the glass door being held open for him. A black limousine waited by the curb across the concrete plaza to take him back to his equally luxurious hotel suite; the thirty yards Alex had to cross to reach it seemed endless. Exhaustion waged a war with his mind, and he hoped he’d finally find the blissful relief of sleep, knowing that soon, he wouldn’t be halfway around the world from where he wanted to be.
The aroma of new leather wafted around him as he leaned back in the plush seats of the car. He didn’t speak to the driver as the car started to move, dialing Bancroft’s number instead.
“Hello, sir.”
“Anything new?”
“Nothing. Dr. Hemming didn’t go into her office at all today.”
Alex’s chest tightened slightly. “Did something happen to her?” Panic edged his voice.
“There hasn’t been any activity out of the perpetrator, and we’ve got cameras on all of the entrances, as you know. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. No new people that we’ve seen.”
“Is she ill?”
“We don’t think so.”
“Find out and call me back,” he said shortly and abruptly ended the call. He had four missed calls and not one of them from the one person he wanted to hear from. He debated whether to return any of them before finally throwing the phone down on the seat beside him. His hand rubbed over the day’s growth of stubble on his chin. “I am so fucked.”
*****
Angel lay stretched out on the couch, her hand resting on her stomach. The muscles were sore from the night spent heaving her guts out, and the only sleep she’d managed was leaning up against the wall in the bathroom, sitting within close proximity of the toilet. Her head hurt in the way that makes nausea worse, and the clamminess of her skin spoke of a fever. She didn’t do sick well. It was just a different type of weakness.
“Ugh,” she moaned as her stomach turned again. “How many times can I puke?” She reached down for the large metal bowl strategically positioned on the floor next to the couch and lurched into it violently. The contents of her stomach were emptied some five hours earlier and she was left with dry heaves, which seemed even worse. She’d tried some ginger ale but even that wasn’t staying down.
She rolled onto her side, set the bowl back down, and pulled her blanket closer around her body as a new set of chills made her teeth chatter. Becca wanted to bring over some soup or Pepto Bismol, but Angel had adamantly refused the offer. It seemed selfish to risk Becca or Jillian getting the horrid virus, so the knock at the door came as a surprise.
She wearily got up, her blanket still wrapped firmly around her, the fuzzy socks on her feet making her steps silent. “Bec, I told you not to come,” she muttered as each step she took pounded in her skull.
“Dr. Hemming, it’s Cole Avery. Are you all right? Can I please speak with you?”
“I’m sicker than a dog, Cole. It’s not something you want to catch, so another time?”
“Just for a minute.”
Angel hesitated, leaning her forehead on the door, the coolness a stark contrast to her burning skin. “It’s your funeral,” she said as she undid the deadbolt.
“Dr. Hemming, you shouldn’t open your door without verifying who it is,” Cole warned as he entered toting a brown shopping bag.
Angel rolled her eyes. “I recognized your voice. Did Alex send you to check up on me? And you can call me Angel.” She gestured him in with a wave of her hand, forgetting the bowl by the couch. “Oh, God.” She put a hand to her head as he noticed it.
“You really are sick.”
“Really? I thought I was on vacation.”
Cole’s mouth lifted in a sly smile, and Angel couldn’t help but see the resemblance to Alex. She picked up the bowl to take it down the hall and into the bathroom.
“You never answered me. Did Alex send you?” she called.
“We’ve all wondered why you didn’t go into your office today, so yes.”
Angel walked back in and crawled back onto the sofa, curling in on herself. “Well, you can tell him that you’ve personally seen me and I look like hell.”
“No, because he doesn’t know we’ve spoken.” He grimaced as he noticed her shivering. “Can I get you anything?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, thanks. I think it’s a twenty-four hour bug. But it’s miserable.”
Cole sat down in a chair across from her and pulled something from the bag. “The surveillance equipment is three flights down, and as a precaution, I’d like to set this up.”
“You have an apartment in this building?” she asked incredulously. “Are you fucking kidding me?” She was starting to get pissed. It was too much, even if it was for her own good. Alex was an arrogant bastard!
“Um, yeah. Actually, we’ve got the whole building wired in the common areas. It’s illegal to set up cameras in here…”
“The whole building? Did he bribe the landlord or what?”
“Alex will be pissed that I’m telling you, but, uh, he is the landlord.” He shifted uncomfortably under Angel’s surprised glare. “Sort of. Sorry.”
“He’s gone too far with this. If I wasn’t so freaking sick, I’d be yelling my head off.”
“Angel, he’s Alex. He doesn’t follow the same rules as normal people. I’m not saying it’s right, but he means well.”
She sighed but didn’t answer.
“In order to protect you, I came up with this. It’s a baby monitor modified to handle the extra distance. I can’t watch you, but I can listen. If you’ll agree.”
�
��It’s a little late to be asking my permission, don’t you think?”
“It’s for—”
Her hand shot up to stop him, even from her prone position. “Don’t say it’s for my own good. Will you run to Alex with reports and audio tapes?”
Cole flashed a smile and shook his head. “No tapes. I only tell Alex things regarding your safety. But these—” he held up a handful of gadgets, “—will make sure we have the opportunity to get to you if needed. I also need a key. If you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure. Next you’ll want to know what kind of tampons I use.” Angel’s stomach protested again, and she grimaced as she went to the drawer in the kitchen where she kept a spare key. “How do you think your brother will react when he hears you have a key and he doesn’t?”
Cole placed a monitor on one of the end tables and plugged it in. “I don’t really care. He asked me to do a job, and I’m doing it. Alex can bite me.”
Angel paused as a small laugh broke from her chest. “I think… I really like you, Cole. Alex can bite me,” she mused. “I love it.”
*****
“This is Angeline. It’s just about midnight, so what’s your confession?”
“Which one do you want?” The unexpected familiarity of the voice made Angel stiffen in her chair and her heart sink. Angel glanced quickly up at the window toward Christina, but the other girl had ducked around the corner and out of her eye line.
It was three weeks since that beautiful, horrible night. Two since the stilted phone conversation when he said he’d let their relationship go. Angel thought, surely, if he were going to call and confront her, he would have done so before this. She’d been nervous about it, never expecting Alex to slink away into nothingness, and spent the past Friday evening sitting on the edge of her seat waiting for a moment just like this.
Her stomach did somersaults, and her heart beat wildly in her chest.
“Whichever you’d like my opinion on,” she said cautiously.
Christina was looking through the window, totally aware of who was on the phone. What the fuck was she thinking putting Alex’s call through? Angel shot her a hateful glance.
“Huh, you’ll regret saying that,” he said caustically. His tone was hard and cold, miles away from the hot, husky voice she’d heard the last time they’d made love or fucked or whatever the hell it was. At this point, she wasn’t sure. Her emotions were all over the place when it came to Alex. She was scared for him, but worse, scared of him, and she was smart enough to recognize it. Running away was uncharacteristic; she didn’t run from Mark Swanson as much as she ran from Alex Avery.
Silence boomed like a bass drum.
Angel was sure she could hear him breathing—in and out, in and out. Her chest hurt in sympathetic unison, and she glanced down at her shaking hands, clasping them together to try to still them. She could almost hear the wheels cranking inside his brain, searching for the words that would ruin her resolve.
“Aren’t you going to ask me my name, Angeline?” He was mocking her in the silken voice. So smooth, but harder than she’d ever heard it, and it hurt like hell.
“Names don’t seem important tonight. Uhhmmm…” she cleared her throat. “What did you want to discuss?”
“I thought discussion wasn’t something to be valued, relationships… dispensable.”
“You sound angry and unlike yourself.”
“Careful. Your listeners might think we know each other; unless you’re a mind reader, Angeline. Are you?” His voice was a soft seduction, his words measured for ultimate impact. He knew how it affected her, and he was using it like a weapon.
“Not at all. Who has affected you this way?” Angel’s own voice took on a harder tone as she dared him to expose her own relationship on air. She knew he was angry, but she was growing more impatient as the seconds ticked by. Although he deserved more, and part of her ached for him, she couldn’t tell him that she was too afraid of heartbreak to be with him. Especially when he’d professed that love wasn’t even real.
“I don’t even know what the hell to call her. My lover or my obsession… Whatever she is or was… She disappeared from my life without much of an explanation. Something was going on and she wouldn’t tell me the truth, so I was left wondering what the hell happened. She kept me in the dark and then got angry when I took it upon myself to find out what was going on.”
“Maybe she had a good reason to leave you.” Angel closed her eyes, her heart thudding sickeningly in her chest as she struggled to keep her voice even. Her hands were shaking, so she once again clasped them together on the desk in front of her.
He laughed out loud. “That’s funny. I mean, freaking hilarious,” he said bitterly.
“Is that such an impossibility?”
“What do you mean?” he questioned but then he continued. He knew. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. She thinks I’ve always been the one to walk away in relationships. I guess it was true. But this was different, and she didn’t even give me a chance. Not really.”
“Maybe she was afraid she’d become another notch on your bedpost.”
“Maybe she should have talked to me,” he spat bitterly. “We agreed to be honest. I meant it, but apparently, she didn’t.”
“What was your relationship based on? Possession of the unattainable? What was the attraction, really?”
He huffed loudly into the phone. “It was… everything about her. She was definitely high maintenance. But she was beautiful. Soooo, so beautiful.”
“Maybe she wanted to be more to you than beautiful. Sometimes being a pretty possession isn’t enough.”
“How could she be a possession when we were both possessed? Every time I tried to get closer to her, I felt her pull further away. She seemed so strong. I never expected her to turn tail and run away.”
“Did you ask her? If she was afraid, I mean.”
“Not like I should have. That was my mistake. How do you think she was afraid of me?”
Tears pricked at the back of Angel’s eyes and her throat tightened. She tried to breathe and then to speak. “Uh… most women are afraid of beautiful men with the world at their fingertips, who think they can have anything just by reaching out and taking it, usually with no regard for the havoc they cause.”
“Who said I was beautiful?” he goaded, and Angel had the grace to flush.
“Maybe she is stronger than most; strong enough to think and protect her heart; to put more worth on herself. Maybe she needed to be more than a conquest.”
He could hear the tightness in her voice, and his heart ached, but he laughed bitterly. “She made me the conquest! In ways I never expected or knew how to deal with—I’ve been hungrier than I’ve ever been.”
Angel laughed, but it was forced. So forced. “You poor thing. Did you have a hard-on and nowhere to put it? I’m sure there are hundreds of orifices at your disposal.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Angel? I’ve had enough of this ridiculous game! You know how fu—”
Angel quickly hit the hold button and ran a hand through her hair. “Um… we need to take a quick break. I’ll be right back.”
She was trembling as she stood, leaning over the desk, bracing herself on her arms, and wondering how in the hell she was going to get through the next two hours. She wanted to leave and lock herself away somewhere. Not in her apartment because now his presence lingered. How could I be so fucking stupid? She sank into her chair and buried her face in her hands.
Shaking, she pushed the button to connect the call off-air. “Alex… just let it go. You agreed the last time we talked. It’s done.”
She ended the call without letting him answer. What a coward, but she couldn’t listen to that voice without giving into the weakness he created.
It wasn’t Alex that she hated. In fact, the opposite was true, but love made her weak. Want made her weak, and she knew what it meant to be hungry. It was the weakness she despised. She was unable to stop herself from feeling and falling…
terrified of losing herself and all of the things that made her, her. She couldn’t let it get to a place where she was absolutely unable to save herself. But maybe it was already too late.
*****
Alex stared down in disbelief at the now dark screen of his cell phone, her words echoing around him. Damn it to hell! It was bad enough that he hadn’t been able to talk to her when he was worried sick, but to have her hang up on him?
“Alex, just let it go. You agreed the last time we talked. It’s done.” Angel’s voice had been contrite and she’d hung up before he could answer. Alex was boiling.
He had said it, but it wasn’t even fucking started as far as he was concerned! There was an ache in her voice and it called to an answering pang deep inside himself that he didn’t even know existed before her. He’d never been this ready to take hold of someone in his whole goddamn life! Angel could fuck letting go!
“Ahhhhhhhh!” he yelled into the darkness of his apartment.
He stopped, torn between smashing the phone against the wall and rushing across town to confront her. The hand that wasn’t holding his phone clenched, opened, and then clenched tight again. He walked back and forth in front of the windows in his great room, the lights of the Chicago night blinked for as far as the eye could see and the black inkiness of Lake Michigan along the East Side was the only interruption. It was raining hard, the droplets running down the windows in sheets. He wasn’t sure if it was rage or the water that made the lights blur before his eyes. Alex’s skin felt uncomfortably hot—burning—and his throat ached.
How does one woman turn your world completely upside down and leave you completely fucking reeling? He was still off-balance as much as he’d been the day after they’d made love. It took that beautiful, surreal night when they both surrendered to each other to show him the truth of what he wanted. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced, it left him stunned and elated, completely unprepared for how it ripped at his guts and filled his heart. For the first time, he felt vulnerable and completely helpless to change it. She owned him, but surprisingly, his eyes were finally wide open to possibilities he’d never believed existed.