Ignite: Book 2 (The Heat Series 1)

by MJ Masucci

  As the plane flew towards New York, she played scenarios in her head about what would happen when she saw Xander. She vacillated between whether she would slap him or kiss him. She wanted to kiss him, but the words that he wrote cut her deep. Those wounds weren’t going to heal so easily. She even wondered how he would have the balls to show his face full well knowing she would be at the party. That was his business, but she decided she wasn’t going to forgive him.

  At home that night, she texted David to let him know she had gotten back to New York unscathed. She was not looking forward to work and Jacob drilling her again. She hadn’t done a lick of studying while she was away for the wedding. He was going to be all over her about that fact. She was too tired to do any studying now, and she dreaded that Tim was coming over to see her. She had periodically texted him during her time in Georgia. He told her he missed her very much. She didn’t return the sentiment because she wasn’t sure if she did or not.

  She called the front desk to let them know that they should allow him up when he came. She waited and when he arrived he had a bouquet of roses, red roses. She thanked him for them, kissed his cheek and went to put them in a vase.

  Tim sat down at the breakfast bar wondering what had happened in Georgia. She had only kissed him on the cheek when he entered her apartment. Before she left, she was kissing him on the lips. He suspected that she had something going with her new stepbrother, David. The texts between them had seemed to get more intimate since she got home. He had seen one joking about being in bed together. Had she slept with him?

  He questioned her about what she did and where she stayed. Ava knew immediately that Tim was fishing for information. She told him that she stayed in her old room at her father’s house while Sam and Robert stayed in the pool house. He seemed suspicious of her relationship with David. It was like he knew things that happened that she hadn’t told him about.

  After an hour she asked him to leave, telling him that she was exhausted from her travels, not being able to get a direct flight and had a layover in North Carolina for two hours. It had made a trip that would normally take two hours turn into over five. She had to be ready for Jacob in the morning. He reached over to kiss her, and she again offered her cheek. He left her apartment feeling slighted and determined to find out what was going on with her. He’d try to learn more by Friday when he was taking her to dinner again.

  Chapter 24

  “You’re a bastard. I bet your father didn’t do this to you when you were studying for the exam,” Ava said to Jacob.

  He smiled at her then threw another two part question her way.

  “When you take the test, you’ll thank me. Have you registered for it yet? You know you have to do it this month.”

  “I’m finished, and they have everything they need. I’m just waiting for my location assignment. I hope it’s not upstate.”

  “More than likely you will either be here in Manhattan or White Plains.”

  He continued to drill her until the phone on his desk rang. She checked her watch and saw that it was after 3:00 PM. She needed to get home because she wanted to change before Tim came over… again. He was taking her to dinner and a movie.

  The weather had turned markedly colder, and she had dug out her thick wool coat that morning. The temperature for tonight was going to be in the high thirties with a strong wind. She hoped that they weren’t going to walk anywhere.

  Tim was late, and she kept looking at her watch. When he finally showed up, he seemed scared. She tried to ask what had happened to him, but he waved her off saying he was fine. Through dinner, he kept looking over his shoulder and seemed very nervous.

  He barely touched his food, and he told her that he wasn’t feeling well so they would have to forget the movie. He practically jumped out of his skin when the waiter came by with the check. He threw several bills onto the table and abruptly got up. They took separate cabs home, and he didn’t even kiss her goodbye. Tim could be strange at times, and it scared her.

  Earlier — after school but before meeting Ava — Tim had changed into his dark clothes choosing a black wool cap to put on his head. He couldn’t let the incident that freaked him out this afternoon mess with his business. He had been waiting for his distributor, the guy that was selling to all the local colleges. He wasn’t paying attention and was fooling with his phone. He was sitting on the back stairs near the gym with a small duffel bag filled with bags of weed. This was the most convenient place for him to hand it off to his contact. Security was almost non-existent at the school in the late afternoon on a Friday.

  The next thing he knew he was being pushed against the concrete wall with a gun shoved against his forehead. At least he thought it was a real gun. The men had their faces covered with ski hats, but their voices sounded familiar. He gave them the duffel bag and any cash he had in his wallet. In total, it ended up being three thousand dollars in street value of weed and eight hundred in cash from his wallet. The men told him that he better get off their turf or else. They ran up the stairs, and he heard them laughing. He was sure that at least one of them was a student.

  He quickly ran out of the building. Lucky for him he had forgotten his money clip or they would have scored about two thousand bucks more. He was so shaken that he ran several blocks before realizing he was running home in the wrong direction. At home, he downed a small glass of whiskey before he went to get Ava. He should have canceled, but he was trying to cultivate their relationship. As it is, he acted like a frightened rabbit at dinner and canceled their movie. At this rate, she was never going to be his.

  Ava got home and texted David. Her phone was so slow lately that it was driving her crazy, and it took forever for texts to go out or to pull things up on her email. She had rebooted it several times hoping it would speed up. She was no technology whiz, but Dani’s boyfriend was. He could fix just about anything related to electronics or computers. She called Dani, who told her to come over the next day. Roger would be there helping her move some of her paintings to a gallery in the Village.

  The next day with her phone still acting buggy, she went over to see Dani. She handed the phone to Roger and watched as he removed the battery and SD card. Then he did a few other things. She helped Dani wrap some of the paintings in bubble wrap and get them ready for transport.

  Roger joined them in Dani’s studio.

  “Did you know that you have tracking software on your phone?”

  Ava felt her heart skip a beat. “What is tracking software?”

  “Someone can track your exact location as long as your phone is on. That’s not all I found on your phone.”

  “What else?” Ava started to feel anxiety exploding.

  “I found software that allows someone to see every text, email and phone call you make. They obviously can’t hear your phone conversations, but they can see whatever you write in your texts and emails and to whom as well as the numbers you are calling.”

  “Is that what is causing my phone to be slow?”

  “It seems like you got an automatic update for one of the applications and it might have a glitch, so it’s slowing down your phone.”

  He showed her the applications and told her that it took some doing for him to locate them since they were hidden. She asked him if he could delete them and he set to work to remove them from her phone. Who could have done this?

  “For the third time, can you hand me the tape?” Dani said.

  Ava was deep in thought as she handed the tape to Dani. She had a very uneasy feeling. It could have been any number of people who could have put the software on her phone. It might have been Luca, Tim or even David. She suspected David since he was the one that seemed to want her the most. But he didn’t seem like the type. He was sincere, sweet and had been nothing but supportive. Unless it was all an act, and he had access to her phone the week before.

  He could have easily put the software on while she was in the shower or even asleep. The night they had sex she had left her phone o
n the living room table and didn’t find it until the next morning, but he had woken up after she did. He could have just as easily gotten up during the night to install the software.

  “Roger, can you tell when the software was installed?”

  “Maybe if this was an Android, but you have an iPhone. I can give you a general timeframe based on the build or version of the apps that were installed because those occur tied to certain dates, but I already deleted them. And why don’t you have a password on here? I’m surprised the law office allows you to sync to the work email without one, given all the confidential projects and information. Put one on there now. Here’s the screen to pick a six-digit pin to do that,” he said as he returned her phone.

  He handed the phone back to her deeming it totally clean, watching her enter the passcode to make sure she did it. She thanked him and was in a trance as she took the subway back to the city. She was puzzled as to who would want to do this.

  Tim was still jittery the day after his encounter in the stairwell of the school. He had gone to the alley near Ember to sell, but after an hour his nerves were shot. He went home and had a couple of glasses of whiskey before he fell into an uneasy sleep. He woke up late and missed his appointment with his supplier. The guy was not someone you wanted to disappoint. He called him to say he had an emergency, and he would meet him later that day. His supplier was not too exuberant about the oversight.

  He sat on the corner of his bed and checked his phone. The software he had put on Ava’s phone was not working. The GPS tracker was malfunctioning. He couldn’t locate her, not even at her apartment. She used her phone on a daily basis since she had no landline. He didn’t get one text, email or dialed phone call from her since early this morning when she called her cousin Dani.

  Maybe her phone was dropped and damaged. He called her and got her voicemail, then hung up. Nothing registered on the software. His phone number should have come up since the software recorded incoming and outgoing calls. As much as he didn’t want to, he was going to have to go and see her.

  He texted her to see if she wanted to go out to dinner. She replied that she was busy tonight, but maybe they could go to lunch tomorrow. He checked his watch and had to leave to meet his supplier. His stash was low since it was the weekend. He usually got replenishment each Saturday morning. Since it was getting cold, they would have to discuss a new meeting place. He didn’t want to seem conspicuous now that the park goers had decreased with the cold weather.

  After he had finished with his supplier, he got to work putting together his product for sale the next week. He was going to have to worry about Ava tomorrow.

  Chapter 25

  As the weeks of November pushed through, Xander became unsure if he should go to New York for Thanksgiving. He wanted to see his family and friends, but he knew that he would also encounter Ava. Almost three months later and he still felt the devastation that her email had caused him. He knew that she was right. He didn’t deserve her love but to see her again would cause him more pain.

  Xander sat in his office looking out the window that overlooked the city of Los Angeles. He hated doing this type of legal work. Yes, the salary was great and so were the benefits, but it was boring, nothing like the work he did in Manhattan. He didn’t know what Lidia saw in the West Coast. The weather was wonderful, but he could do without the wildfires and who knew when you would have an earthquake.

  Kaycee had taught him to surf, and he was enjoying that immensely. He was athletic and had great balance. She was terrific at it and even won several surfing contests when she was younger. She was a child of privilege, much the way he had been. She spent vacations in Europe and skiing in Switzerland. She was well traveled and talked to him about taking a vacation cruise to Alaska. He had always wanted to go to Alaska, but he wasn’t sure of anything these days — including Kaycee.

  Kaycee was excited to go with him to meet his parents and see the city during the holidays. This was one time of year she had not been there. He didn’t want to disappoint her, and she would question why he changed his mind. She was like a shark in chummed waters and would interrogate him until she got the truth. Since he hadn’t revealed much about his relationship with Ava, she would be shocked by his deception. His best choice would be to suck up his pride, put a smile on his face and go.

  When Lidia found out he was going to the engagement party, she questioned his motives. He had told her that it had nothing to do with Ava. He had been friends with Robert Keene for his entire life and how would it look if he said no? She called him on his bullshit. She liked Kaycee as an attorney, but as a girlfriend for her brother, she was all wrong. Xander often acquiesced to her requests rather than argue. He wasn’t the same brother she knew when they were little. His break up with Ava had taken something from him — his will to fight.

  He frequently talked about New York and wondered what the seasons were like there now. He loved autumn, and there was none of that weather in Los Angeles. He loved to ski and play football in the crisp air. He loved to walk around the city when the snow fell. Christmas was going to be hard on him this year since he enjoyed going ice skating at Rockefeller Center and viewing the decorated windows on Fifth Avenue.

  Lidia wanted to call Rachel to ask if she would give Ava’s number to her but her brother was a big boy. If he were going to reconcile with Ava Keene he would need to do it on his own. He could be so stubborn sometimes. But even though he was dating Kaycee she could see he still carried pain. One afternoon, she finished the laundry and was loading his boxers in his dresser drawer. The drawer was a bit of a mess, and she removed everything to straighten it out. She found the little velvet box and opened it to reveal the engagement ring. This ring was not something he bought for Kaycee; it was for Ava. She also found the ring on the chain he had worn before Ava broke up with him.

  She found the notebooks he was keeping on the top shelf of his closet. She hadn’t meant to snoop, but she was looking for some new sheets she had stored on that shelf. She reached up, and her hand grasped the notebooks. She took them down and was torn by what she read. The oldest dates were from when he still lived in Saratoga. They must have come in the boxes Janelle had shipped him. The newest dates were in another notebook, and they were sad. He wrote an entry every day to Ava. It made her angry because she wanted to shake the both of them. They belonged together.

  She placed them back where she found them. Xander would be upset with her if she knew that she snooped in his room. She could only hope that his visit to New York would quiet the demons that he carried with him. It was possible they could make them worse.

  The civil case against the trucking company was moving along well. They had already made an offer that Kaycee rejected because it was too low. Brett and Lidia had lost a lot when they were injured, and Kaycee planned on getting them the best settlement she could. Lidia hoped that if she and Xander broke up that it wouldn’t cause a conflict of interest.

  The days started to pass by quickly before the Thanksgiving holiday. On either coast, Xander and Ava both felt the weight of their unavoidable meeting. Ava had no choice in the matter because she was Sam’s maid of honor. How would it look if she didn’t attend the engagement party? As each night got closer to the holiday, she wanted to take a drink to remove the edge off her anxiety, but she was worried she would go overboard.

  On the Tuesday before the party, she went out to buy herself a dress. She normally would have asked for Rachel’s advice, but this time, she had a very specific dress in mind. It would have all the revealing elements that Xander loved. The color was something that was important, and she dealt with the cold weather as she went in and out of the shops on Fifth Avenue. She located the perfect dress and color at Saks. He more than likely wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off of her and that was the result she wanted.

  She wanted him to regret the email that he had sent to her. Only Sam and David knew the true nature of their break up, and they would never reveal those details to anyone. She
still had her doubts about David and if he had been the one to put the tracking software on her phone. It was just something else that she had anxiety about, confronting him. He was coming with her father and stepmother to New York for Thanksgiving. He wanted to stay with her, but she told him it was better he stayed with her aunt and uncle. She was vulnerable and didn’t want a repeat of the sex that they had a few weeks ago.

  They still texted each other daily, but she was cool to him because she was angry. She knew she was getting ahead of herself and should wait for his explanation. They were flying into JFK on Wednesday afternoon, and David was going to come over to see her that evening. She could have gone to her aunt and uncle’s house, but she was afraid that she would have a screaming match with him in front of everyone. She convinced herself that it was him.

  Wednesday dragged for her. She had awakened at 4:00 AM and had not been able to go back to sleep. Instead, she got dressed and went to the gym. Robert was not there since he was moving around to each location daily. She had jogged to the gym, and by the time she got there, her nose was running from the cold. She did over an hour of cardio on the treadmill doing interval training. On the run home, the sun was just starting to peek in the morning sky.

  She got to the office early before most of the legal staff and some of the attorneys. Ava had nothing to do until Jacob arrived and she sat at her desk organizing it. She noted that at least one aspect of her life was neat. She was hoping that by the end of the weekend everything would be worked out in all aspects and she could move on.

  Sam had confirmed the day before that Xander was bringing Kaycee and in her haste to find a date, she asked Tim. She knew it was a mistake right after she asked. He was much too eager to escort her and began prattling on about meeting her father. She knew she only wanted to be friends with him, but he never got the message. There were too many strange things about him that baffled her. He was very secretive about some things and lately, he had been anxious to come up to her apartment, asking her over and over for reasons to stop by.