by Eve Devon
Knew him so well that when she saw his gaze flick up to the camera in the corner of the elevator, she said, “Hey. Anytime you want out of here, remove the pass, and the doors open.”
He grimaced, fighting the need to open the doors and finish the conversation elsewhere. Anywhere. But in the same way Honeysuckle had proven she didn’t run away, he wasn’t going to either.
“You ever heard of DesTechCon?” he asked, and when Honeysuckle shook her head, he continued, “It’s an annual conference where design and technology graduates can scout out business prospects. Top companies send staff to cherry-pick. I hadn’t graduated yet, but I got a place, and I took my designs, and I took Alexa because, well, I’m not great in selling situations. And I trusted her completely.”
“Oh my God,” Honeysuckle groaned with realization. “The bitch stole your designs and passed them off as her own?”
“Technically, she didn’t.” He swallowed. “Our other friend did,” he said quietly. “He broke into my room while I was—” His voice gave out on him. Maybe he couldn’t do this after all.
“While you were…?” Honeysuckle prompted.
“While I was—” he raised his eyes to Honeysuckle, watching for the flinch he knew was going to come, “in an elevator with Alexa. Having sex.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath. “And the reason I know that’s exactly where I was is because Alexa showed me the footage from the elevator camera that she had purposely got her hands on.”
“It was a setup start to finish? That is disgusting.”
Adam drew a deep breath. “Let me tell you that no scrawny, geeky seventeen-year-old wants anyone in the world to see him losing his virginity in an elevator to a woman patently out of his league.”
“Adam…”
He shook his head to stop her. Closed his own eyes and banged his head lightly back against the elevator wall. “I let them take my designs.”
“I completely understand why you did.”
“I let them set up as a company and trade off my designs, while I went straight to Steel Hawk and hid, terrified she’d put the footage out there anyway and my family would see what the cost of sending me to college early had been. But all the time I hid, no one asked any questions as to why I’d suddenly changed my mind about getting other experience. They just welcomed me into the company with open arms.”
“They’d have been foolish not to. Your talent is immense. And Alexa’s company? It’s still trading?”
“They managed to keep going a couple of years, but once they couldn’t produce the same quality designs, they folded. I’ve kept tabs on them over the years, but there is no way they have the capability to be doing what’s going on here. The tape has never resurfaced, and they could have come after me when the inspiration ran out, but they never did. I think by then they worried Steel Hawk was too big to mess with.”
“So this is why you don’t like elevators,” she said thoughtfully.
“This is why.”
“And this is why you don’t trust anyone.”
He willed her to look at him. “I think I told you once that you’re not ‘anyone’.”
Her voice was softly perceptive when she said, “No wonder you freaked out when you saw the footage from the throne room.”
“That might have been more because I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the night we’d shared and about how, for me, it hadn’t only been about sex.”
“Do you think I look at you any differently now you’ve told me about Alexa?”
“No. Because that’s not who you are.”
She smiled, and he let the sight warm him. “You know we’ve been in here for over ten minutes now,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “No signs of obvious panic… Maybe you’re cured?”
“Maybe you should step closer and check me over. Just to make certain.”
“Genius idea.” After removing her coat, she hung it over the camera. “Perhaps we ought to make you some fresh elevator memories.”
* * * * *
Honeysuckle giggled as they opened the elevator doors on the floor of their suite and stepped out. “I cannot believe we just did that,” she said, smiling and blushing.
“Maybe we should do it again to—”
He never got to finish his sentence.
Out of nowhere, a sonic boom blasted from somewhere close by and the sound vibrated through their chests, knocking them both backward as the ground shook beneath them.
At the far end of the corridor, glass, bricks, and mortar exploded in all directions before raining down. Adam dragged Honeysuckle under him in case there was another explosion.
For long moments, he lay shielding her, finding it hard to register anything except for a high-pitched sound in his ears.
When another sound made it past the ringing and he realized it was Honeysuckle moaning, he levered himself away so he could run his hands over her. She didn’t make another sound, and his heart started pounding erratically as panic set in.
“Are you okay?” With shaking hands, he pushed the hair back from her face. “Honeysuckle? Can you hear me, baby? I need you to open your eyes for me.” Had debris caught her somehow and injured her? Pulling the top half of her body upright, he cradled her in his arms, rocking back and forth as the last bit of steel around his heart melted and turned into hot, angry fire.
He was not going to lose her.
He wasn’t.
He hadn’t even had the chance to tell her he loved her.
“Honey, honey, wake up,” he commanded.
“Adam,” she whispered.
“Thank God.”
She moaned, and slowly her eyes opened. “What happened?”
“Some kind of explosion, I think.”
“Can you help me up?” she asked, holding herself more upright and breathing in deeply before coughing on the thick dust that lay all around them.
“You should sit here until I get help.”
“I’m fine, just winded. Thank God we weren’t any closer. If we’d been in our room—” Honeysuckle turned huge bright eyes to him. “The explosion came from our room?”
Suddenly, the ground was shaking again, and in the distance, there was another boom followed by the sound of debris cascading down.
Adam looked out the window. “Jesus. It’s the castle keep. I have to go. Check who was still in there.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“The hell you are. You’re getting out of here now. I want you to leave the castle.”
In the distance, the air was filling up with the sound of approaching sirens. Help was on its way, but he didn’t want to wait. “I can’t lose you. I can’t. Okay?”
Honeysuckle smiled and laid her hand against his cheek. She looked out the window and back at him, and he could tell by the determined set to her jaw if he dragged her out of the castle himself, she’d just follow him right back in.
“If they’re still in there,” she said. “If they’re still alive, you’ll need help getting them out. Let me help you, okay?”
“I want it noted that this was not my idea,” he said, sealing her lips with a quick kiss before capturing her hand in his. “Do you think you can run?”
“I can if I make a quick alteration,” she said, and sticking the point of each stiletto into the air grill that ran the length of the floor, she bent each shoe backward until the heel snapped off. Slipping them back on her feet to protect against the debris, she smiled, then placed her hand in his, and together they took off for the castle keep.
The closer they got to the royal lodgings, the harder it was to see. Thick black smoke rose up in plumes from the side of the building where a hole had been blown.
All around them in the cobbled courtyard, dazed castle staff were being helped by members of the public who must hav
e been in the other side of the building at the exhibition. Soon fire engines, police and ambulances would arrive to help.
At the door to the castle keep, Adam stopped and turned to Honeysuckle.
“If there’s another explosion, all these people are in danger.”
“I know,” she said, looking behind her at the courtyard. “I’ll get everyone moving and make sure the emergency services don’t drive up into the courtyard. If they do and the gate comes down, we’ll all be trapped.”
“I’ll move fast and be out before you know it.”
He watched as she took a deep breath and smiled brightly. “You come out of this building alive, you hear me.”
“No-brainer. Good job you gave me all those protein shakes.”
“Like you needed them. Besides, you never drank a one,” she said with a sniff. “Who do you think it was who replaced your ficus plant every time?”
He grinned down at her, trailed a finger across her cheekbone.
“I’ll be waiting for you.” She pulled him close, squeezed him hard, and nearly knocked him off his feet when she whispered, “I love you,” before letting him go and turning to head off the emergency services.
“I love you too,” he said, and hoped his words hadn’t been lost on the wind.
Epilogue
“Adam.”
He smiled, and it was the sort of smile that suggested to Honeysuckle that he was dreaming about her. The doctors had told her to watch out for sleeping because of his concussion, though.
“Adam,” she called again into his ear, taking care not to press against grazes, cuts, and bruises.
He grinned and opened his eyes. “What? I’m completely awake.”
“You were snoring,” she teased.
“Really? You want to go there with the snoring?”
Honeysuckle swiped at him playfully. “Are you comfortable? Can I get you more pillows?”
“I’m fine. Between you and me, I prefer these staff quarters to the suite we were in. Those chairs were really uncomfortable.”
“Those chairs were antiques. I’m going to miss that four-poster bed, though.” She sighed and looked around their smaller room. Adam was sitting on the sofa, with a pillow propped behind his shoulders.
The entire castle had been swept by the bomb-disposal unit and declared safe.
The cleanup operation was already underway, and she and Adam had been given this room to rest in.
Thank God, in the end there had only been the two explosions.
Waiting for Adam to come out of the castle keep had been the longest, most agonizing wait of her life.
“You think my shoulder will have healed by the time the king wants to give me that sash thing?”
“That sash thing,” Honeysuckle admonished, sitting beside him, “comes with the highest honor of bravery Zarrenburg can bestow.”
“Well, I did save the queen’s life.”
“And the king’s.” She sobered. “Anton will be proud.”
“God, I hope he makes it,” Adam said, blowing out a breath and grabbing Honeysuckle’s hand.
“Me too,” Honeysuckle said, squeezing his hand. “The doctors say his chances are very good. He’ll be standing beside you, getting that sash, I know it.” She paused and then said quietly, “I can’t imagine how it must have been when you found them in the stairwell.”
Adam stared down at their joined hands. “I’m just lucky Anton had managed to move them all as far down as the first floor in between the explosion in our room and the one where they were. If he’d put them all in the elevator to move them, they’d have been trapped by fire. By the time I found them, it was just a case of removing all the rubble they were being crushed under.”
“Just?” Honeysuckle shuddered. “If you hadn’t gone in when you did…not knowing if another bomb was going to go off—”
“Hey.” Adam took his hand out from under hers and reached up to tuck her hair back behind her ear. “I made you a promise I was coming out of that building and I was very focused on keeping that promise.” His smile vanished. “Anton must have thrown himself over the king and queen at the moment of impact. My moving him to get to them probably made his injuries worse.”
Honeysuckle smoothed out his frown with her forefinger. “If it had been the other way around, he wouldn’t have risked moving you out first and leaving them in there. You made the same decision he would have.”
“I guess. But, Jesus, Honeysuckle—bombs? The cleanup is going to take months. The exhibition will have to be canceled and the Pasha Star returned to the vault. I can’t advise the king differently. As it is, I’ve given them the replacement case to house it in within the vault. But this isn’t really about the diamond. This is more than a grudge. This is about someone setting out to destroy Zarrenburg.”
Honeysuckle moved restlessly, unconsciously mimicking her uncomfortable thoughts. “What I don’t get is if someone wanted to do that, why wouldn’t they do a better job?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, why not plant enough explosives to finish the job completely?” Or was that a crazy notion? She watched as Adam thought through the possibility before nodding slowly in agreement.
“It’s because they want to incur suffering—and watch while it happens. There’s a relentlessness about all this.”
That made scary sense to Honeysuckle. “And by leaving us still standing,” she mused aloud, “they can watch us suffer too. That’s why the bombs were placed in our room and the royal lodgings. Somehow, Steel Hawk is still connected to all this, aren’t we?”
Adam nodded again. “And someone is either here or at Steel Hawk. Watching. Waiting.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this. One way or another. What?” she said, smiling softly at his raised eyebrow. “You still think I’m going somewhere? Without you? Not happening. I know you won’t rest until this puzzle is solved. The Zarrenburgs trust us to help do that. Which is why,” Honeysuckle added, reaching over to grab an envelope off the coffee table, “I want to give you this.”
“For me?”
“Yeah.” Her hands shook as she handed him the envelope, and she knew he’d noticed, because she could feel him tense beside her.
Adam stared down at the envelope in his hand. “I can’t open this.”
“Can’t or won’t.”
“Can’t.”
Taking it from him, she broke the seal and took out the piece of paper she’d placed inside. “This is my resignation letter. After the cleanup operation is over and we’ve found out who did this, I can’t stay at Steel Hawk.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“You need to be doing something with your jewelry,” he said softly.
“I really do. I’m not afraid of myself anymore, or of being judged and found wanting. I’ve proved I can stick at something and not run away when I get scared. It’s time I applied that to my jewelry.”
“I accept your resignation. Because I love you. And when you love someone, when you are in love with someone, you want to see them happy and doing what makes them happy.”
“Wait— You…love me?”
“Damn, I wasn’t sure you had heard me earlier. You didn’t, did you?”
She shook her head. Remembering how she had been happy she had told him before he’d gone inside. It had helped as she’s prayed and waited and waited and prayed for him to come back out again.
“So let me say it again, properly.”
Turning to her, he took her hands in his, and when he smiled at her, she felt she could do anything with him at her side.
“I love you, Honeysuckle Hawk. I love the way you decided to face your mistake and, with courage, make a change. I love the way you knew I had trust issues and never gave up on me. I love the way your face lights up when you talk about jewelry. And
I love the way your face lights up when you look at me.”
“The real reason I originally handed in my resignation was you,” she confessed. “I was falling harder and harder and I couldn’t see a way out and—”
“What with my nickname being Heart of Steel.”
Honeysuckle blushed. “You really did overhear everything with Sophie, huh?”
“You were right, though.”
“But now I know why. You were so young to have that done to you. To be lied to like that—for the purposes of stealing your work. Of course that’s going to leave a mark.”
“I’m glad it was you who pierced my armor plating. And, maybe we’ll keep the other nickname for the bedroom,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“So. We stay and help the Zarrenburgs. We research the Burghs, and we try to locate this Monique Vass.”
“Agreed. And when we get back to Steel Hawk, I rework Descry and you start designing jewelry again.”
“And we come home to each other every night.”
“And sometimes you pop into the lab for quick— Hey!” Adam laughed as she whipped the cushion out from behind her and bounced it off his head. “Injured hero, here.” Confiscating her weapon, he settled farther back against the pillows. “Was your family okay about you staying?”
“Yes. Once they heard my voice, they were relieved enough to be happy about anything. And, you know, when I mentioned I was going back into jewelry design, for once there was no frustration in their voices at all. I think they’ve been waiting a long time for me to realize why I wasn’t happy in jobs. They even suggested I design for Steel Hawk, like Rose did.”
“That is not a bad idea. You could—” He broke off as his cell phone started ringing.
Honeysuckle reached for it. “It’s Max,” she said, passing him the phone. “I’ll make us a drink while you talk to him.”
* * * * *
When she came back into the room, Adam was staring down at his cell phone.
“Max has tracked Edward.”
“Oh my God, where is he?”