“I’ll be in the coffee shop. Come and get me when you’re done.”
Leo was still pondering the conversation long after Riley had left the warehouse. It had been strange—Riley’s reaction when Leo had mentioned the canceled wedding. He hadn’t even asked how he’d found out. If anything, Riley’s response had been calm, to the point where Leo now wondered if he’d made too big a thing of it.
It could be a perfectly plausible sequence of events. Couldn’t it? It could all have happened as Riley had told him. And then it came to him that he hadn’t even discovered the reason for the wedding not to go ahead. It was definitely something he planned on asking Riley tonight.
Leo swung his chair around to face his computer screen and looked through his email inbox which had quickly filled up again. He was just about to reply to an urgent email when he thought he heard a sound. He turned his head sharply and looked out of the door towards the warehouse but it was nothing. He turned back to his emails, determined to deal with all of them before he left for the day.
He heard the sound first, a sharp crack, before he felt the pain in the next second. It felt as though his skull had been split into two.
And then darkness.
32
“Fuoco! Fuoco!”
Giuseppe dropped the broom he’d been using and flung the door to his coffee shop wide open. Riley looked up from his magazine and watched the coffee shop owner dart outside.
It was later than usual and most of the owners of the other units had locked up and gone home. Even in the coffee shop it was only Riley and Giuseppe, a skinny scrape of a man with spindly arms. Riley had been here for most of the afternoon. With no Wi-Fi available, he obviously hadn’t come here to work.
He’d come to be seen.
When the chorus of voices outside grew louder, Riley got up, calmly walked to the door and looked out at the wide pedestrian street between the two rows of shop units that faced one another.
It didn’t look like smoke, more like a gossamer veil against the salmon-pink sky. But the smell was there, had erupted in the last few minutes—the smell of wood burning; an acrid, bitter smell that sank into his throat and lodged itself into his cells. Voices united in uproar outside and he rushed out to stand alongside Giuseppe and the others who had gathered outside. The smoke seemed to be coming from Andrea’s warehouse.
He’d become a regular at the coffee shop and people had seen him with Andrea a few times. Now he recognized most of them and saw some people on their cell phones, talking in frustrated voices. Riley didn’t understand their words but he could see that their fear was real.
“What’s going on?” he asked Giuseppe, since he couldn’t understand anything in Italian. Just as he asked the answer billowed out in curling wisps of smoke. It was black and like a suffocating blanket it spread like tar across the air. People coughed and gagged as the caustic air filled their throats and buried deep into their lungs.
Riley ran to the windows of the warehouse and peered inside. Flames crept and leapt along the deadly floor of the barely recognizable warehouse.
“Where is Andrea?” Somebody asked him.
“Andrea is in Milan. Not here. Not there,” he pointed at the warehouse in an effort to explain.
“We speak English,” another man said, his accent clearly Italian.
Another younger guy came running up to him. Riley thought he remembered him from the pet supplies store. He screamed, “Leo’s car is still here!”
Faces turned towards the front of Andrea’s warehouse. Riley knew he had to act. Knew, as his insides knotted in a thousand different ways, that he couldn’t stand here and let the man die. Knew that he could still redeem himself if he acted fast enough.
He pulled off his jacked, wrapped it around his fist then pushed the door open. Smoke poured out, leaving him to gag and cough as he stood shocked and frozen while thick smoke unfurled into the air. He heard the roar of loud screams behind him and covered his mouth.
With the crowd baying behind him and deadly fire and smoke in front of him, Riley knew he had to act now. He had to go in and get Leo out. It couldn’t end this way.
Had he really expected to leave him like this and walk away?
Shielding his face with his arm, he moved forward as fire licked the sides of the warehouse and moved down towards the front entrance. Away from the office, he thought, with a peculiar sense of relief.
The air was heavy and he couldn’t see a thing but he knew Leo was in there, dying. Covering his face, he tried to move forward while everything around him burned. Sweat trailed down his back and fell thickly along his face; his skin started to cook as he fought to move through the smoke and make his way to the office where he knew Leo lay.
He hadn’t expected to put his own life in danger.
If he rescued this man, he was at a risk of being found out. And if he didn’t...the man would die. Thoughts taunted him as the flames threatened and bit at him.
He could stop this. He could make it all better by saving Leo. As he neared the office he saw the puddle of blood along the floor where Leo lay on his side on the floor, unmoving. Coughing and spluttering, Riley bent down and grabbed Leo’s arm. His throat felt like it was on fire, and he was finding it harder to breathe by the second. The smell of leather burning reminded him of a bonfire night decades ago. He was starting to feel faint, and with determined effort, he placed Leo’s arm around his own shoulder before heaving the man’s dead weight up and against his own body, trying desperately to get him to a standing position. There was a gash on the top of his head, and blood trickled down along the back of his neck.
In his haste he’d forgotten. Not that it would help much, not when they all found out, but for now it might deflect the suspicion away from him. Riley turned and with the flat of his hand he gave the hanging shelf a mighty push. It moved a little at first but clung to the wall for dear life until Riley gave it a second hefty push and it fell to the ground, still remarkably intact.
Grabbing Leo firmly by his arm and resting the man’s weight against him, Riley pulled the man along as he fought his way out. Leo was out cold and it would be up to him to haul him out as fast as he could. The fire was spreading fast and the cardboard boxes, especially the large concentration of them at the bottom near the entrance, had started to go up in flames. The speed with which it had spread had alarmed him. Even for the small amount of accelerant he’d used. He had to move now before they both died. The smell of burning leather crept into his nostrils once more as he hauled Leo alongside him. The man was limp, as lifeless as a rag doll. Was he even alive?
Riley shuffled forward into the murky black smoke with one foot in front of the other, eyeing the flames around him as they licked dangerously close to his body. He knew the door was directly up ahead even though he couldn’t see it. Oppressive heat seared his skin; it was though he’d walked into an incinerator. Sweat poured down his back, clung to his arms, slid down his cheeks and melted into the nape of his neck.
He had barely made it out of the door and into the night air, when he collapsed onto the floor. Eager hands reached out to support him.
The last thing he heard was the wail of sirens before blackness overpowered him.
33
Andrea looked at him as he lay asleep in the hospital bed. She’d been warned not to wake him. As if she would do such a thing.
The place was eerily quiet as was to be expected at such an early hour. Two o’clock in the morning was out of the visiting hours but she’d begged and cajoled her way in and the nurse had finally relented and had allowed her in.
“No more than five minutes.” She’d warned.
She’d walked in and covered her mouth with her hand to see Leo lying in bed with an oxygen mask to his mouth. She could see the start of the shaved area towards the top and back of his head and when moved closer she saw a row of ugly stitches.
What had happened?
At least he looked peaceful, she surmised and her gaze fell to his dim
ple once more.
She’d barely had one night in Milan and she was back again. Now she understood why Leo hadn’t picked up the phone when she had rung him later that same night.
Nor Riley.
But nothing had prepared her for the reality of the situation.
She reached out and laid her hand inches away from his.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, Ma’am.” The grim looking nurse entered the room. “The matron will be doing her rounds later and I’ll get in trouble if you’re still here.”
“I’m sorry,” Andrea placed her hand over Leo’s and her eyes widened when she saw his eyelids move. She leaned towards him. “Leo,” she whispered. A lump formed in her throat at the thought that she had nearly lost him. Her eyes filled with tears but she wasn’t sure why she felt this pain so deeply.
Gratitude, she assumed, for him being alive. Her heart skipped as he opened his eyes and she leaned but he closed his eyes again, barely acknowledging her.
“What’s wrong?” She asked the nurse, scared.
“He needs rest and you need to leave.”
“Can’t you tell me more about his condition?”
“You’ll have to speak to the doctor tomorrow. It’s hard to tell with a head injury.”
“How did he get it?”
“You’ll have to speak to the doctor.”
“But he’ll be fine, won’t he?” She asked, walking towards the door slowly. The idea of leaving him alone didn’t sit with her too well.
“Speak to the consultant tomorrow.” The nurse spoke in a voice that was decidedly unfriendly. Andrea took the hint.
“Thank you for letting me see him.”
She walked out of the hospital, thinking about Leo and feeling grateful that he was alive. He would get through this. He would be fine. She’d see to it that he had plenty of rest; he could take as long as he needed to recuperate.
And Riley. He’d gone in and saved him. He told her there was nothing he could to do save the warehouse. The place was up in flames. Only now, as she sat in her car in the dark and gloomy hospital carpark did she stop to consider the full implication of what had happened and what it meant.
How bad was the damage? Surely not everything had burned down? Maybe something could be salvaged?
She punched the steering wheel. Ava’s shipment hadn’t gone yet. She’d been holding off on it and had wanted to ensure she had a full load before she arranged shipment. Ava’s orders were coming in daily and she knew she’d have a full shipment soon. But she’d become caught up with things; with the wedding she never attended and the trip to Milan and she kept pushing the shipment to the end. It was one of the things she was going to do on her return from Milan.
Not only was her own business in trouble but if Ava’s goods were caught up in the fire then this would have a serious impact on Ava’s business too.
Insurance would cover the damage but it would take time. On top of that, how could she tell her friend when she was on her honeymoon? Andrea’s head fell to her chest in despair.
She couldn’t make sense of the fire and had thought about it the whole time she’d driven back, after Riley had called her. How could a fire start in her warehouse when she had nothing flammable in it?
Nothing.
Unless there had been a fault with one of the electrical sockets.
The car’s lifeless engine roared to life as she struggled to fight back the exhaustion that sapped her.
And then she remembered: Riley would be at home. She’d been so worried about Leo that she hadn’t even given much thought to how Riley might be.
34
“I didn’t want to wake you,” she said, when Riley sat up in bed the moment she walked in. Her flimsy attempt at tip-toeing into the bedroom failing miserably.
“You drove back at this time of night?” He rubbed his eyes. She sat beside him and ran her fingers down his face. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”
“Smoke inhalation, that was all. Don’t I get a hug at least?”
She threw her arms around him. He kissed the top of her head then looked at her when they broke apart. He looked tired, she thought, noticing his blood-shot eyes and dark circles. He looked worse than she’d ever seen him.
“I was so worried,” she murmured. “Thank god you’re alright, and that Leo’s alright.”
“He’s in a bad way.”
“He looked it. He opened his eyes once and then he closed them again.”
“You went to the hospital?”
“I had to. I left as soon as you called.”
“You’ve come from the hospital at this time of night?”
She nodded.
“Baby,” he grabbed a fistful of her hair and caressed her face with his other hand. “You didn’t have to race back so late. I wasn’t sure whether I should have called you. I wish I hadn’t now.”
“Of course you should have. I had to come down straightaway. How could I sleep after that?”
“Your warehouse…” he said.
“How bad is it?” She tried to sound hopeful.
He looked away. “Almost all burned down.”
“All of it?”
He nodded.
“Everything? All the display items and our stock? Ava’s shipment?”
“All gone,” he said, and wrapped her up in his arms.
She felt as if cold ice had been poured into her body. Everything gone? “But I don’t understand. How did this happen?”
“Beats me.”
“You saved Leo’s life.” She had to remember the positive.
He wiped his hands over his face and when he was done rubbing his eyes, she saw that they looked even worse. Now they were red and veiny.
“Someone said he was still inside. So I pushed my way in.”
“It must have been so dangerous. You risked your life for him.”
“He would have done the same.”
“You were a perfect hero, Riley.”
“I’m not a hero,” he said quietly. “Far from it.”
She touched his lips with her fingers. “Tell me what happened.”
“I went inside and grabbed him as best as I could but all around me, all those cardboard boxes, your rows of display items…it all caught fire quickly. I couldn’t do a thing to stop it.”
“You got Leo out. That was the most important thing of all.” No matter how dire her situation sounded, she had to focus on that.
“I’m having a hard time figuring out how our warehouse caught fire. We had no fire hazards, no naked flame. Nothing that would cause a fire to spread that fast.”
“But it did spread fast. You’ll see. I’ll show you.”
“All of Ava’s latest shipment was…was… ready to go out,” she stammered. She clasped her head in her hands. “Why didn’t I deal with it before I went?”
“You can’t blame yourself,” he stroked her hand. “I’m so glad you weren’t in there.”
“I don’t understand what happened to Leo.” Something wasn’t adding up. If there was a fire, he would have smelled it and seen it sooner. He would have sounded the alarm immediately. Why hadn’t he? “What happened to his head? I saw the stitches and the nurse wouldn’t tell me a thing.”
“The shelf was on the floor behind him. I noticed it as I was trying to lift him up off the floor. I’m guessing it fell on him and knocked him out.”
That goddamn stupid shelf. She should have taken it down a long time ago. She’d been getting slack with things lately.
“Remember, the smoke and flames were thick. It’s possible that he might have lost consciousness.”
“But how did it start? The falling shelf has nothing to do with the fire.” She stared at Riley as if he had the answer and then watched the color drain from his face. “Do you…” he stopped.
She stared at him, puzzled. “Do I what?”
He shook his head again. “No, he wouldn’t.”
“He wouldn’t what?”
“Do yo
u think Leo might have had something to do with it?”
She looked at him as though he’d grown wings.
“Leo?” She shook her head and refused to consider the crazy idea. She almost laughed out loud. “Leo? No. Never. I’m shocked that you’d say such a thing.” She got up and moved away from him.
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. I’m still in shock and obviously I’m not thinking straight.”
“You should go to bed,” she told Riley. “I’ll be along in a little while.”
But she didn’t feel like going to sleep. There were too many thoughts and ideas crashing around in her head.
Leo start the fire deliberately? No way in hell.
35
“Hey.” She felt the feel of his arms around her shoulders, and the kiss of his lips on her hair but still nothing could take away the image in front of her.
Her warehouse was blackened and burned out and she couldn’t go inside at all since the entrance had been taped off but the door was open slightly.
Outside it looked fairly normal but the bright lime, purple and yellow colors of her signage were discolored to a dirty gray. The damage was far worse than she had imagined.
There was nothing left. But as she peered through the open door, she could just about make out the table in the office. Riley had told her that the fire hadn’t spread there, which was why he’d been able to get Leo out.
“Don’t.” Riley told her and he blanketed her with his arms around her back. But no matter how hard he had tried to smother her with attention this morning, nothing could take away the stark reality of the situation. Her business had gone up in smoke and her business partner lay in hospital. She pulled free and nodded as the other store owners walked past. Some gave her sympathetic looks while others gently touched her arm or offered a word of comfort.
“I really want to see it.” She said, taking a step towards the door.
“I don’t think it’s safe. Trust me, Andrea. It will only upset you even more. And you shouldn’t, they don’t want you in there.”
Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology Page 91