Love Me Later

by Libby Rice

  He snatched her to his chest and turned around, sliding down the wall until he sat on the floor with her seated in the cradle between his raised knees and chest. “Astounding,” he panted quietly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You all right?”

  “Better than that.” Would he remember that take me shopping worked as code for fuck me really hard? “I needed that.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Ethan?” She considered how to tell him of her mind’s very strange trip. He’ll figure it out soon enough. She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Give me your credit card.”

  His lips quirked at the edges, but he silently rocked to the side to access the rear pocket of the jeans he still wore. The move pressed his semi-hard cock against her womb, and she breathed through the overwhelming urge to rise up and slide down. Extracting a silver money clip, he pressed an American Express Centurion into her palm.

  She blinked at the black card with titanium engraving. “I should have known.”

  “Now you do.”

  Like him, she still wore her clothes. Aside from a few patches of fisted wrinkles, her dress had fared well. The skirt remained wadded around her waist, but she assumed she could salvage her look with an iron. Only her thong hadn’t survived.

  Almost like an afterthought, Ethan’s fingers smoothed down the front of her bodice. Circling her breasts in a wide arc, he toyed with the fabric, but he didn’t reach around to the zipper that ran along her spine.

  “Why now?” he asked.

  “It’s a long story.”

  A one-eighty sweep of their surroundings brought his gaze back to her. “I’ve got time.”

  On a deep breath, she started, “I learned a lot today. About you, yes, but more about me. Like you said, Gerard’s hatred wasn’t news. And believe it or not, my dad’s letter to Gerard was”—she shrugged—“a relief.”

  “I’m following, but very far behind.”

  “He never loved me. Christ, he never even liked me. I came to terms with that as a child. After what happened with you and Gerard, my gut said his money was wicked. You’ve mocked me for refusing his help, at times questioned whether I’m a liar. But I haven’t taken a dime from Tripp Leore in years because though I barely knew him, I sensed he and his mint were equally corrupt.”

  Seeing him hang on every word, she went on, her voice thick with emotion. “Today proved me right. Turning away from my only relative didn’t make me crazy. Or eccentric. It made me smart. I had his number, which means I’m probably right about you.”

  His lips curved to showcase strong, white teeth in the widest smile. “I like how you think.”

  “Everything in me wants you. Wants to trust you. So, yeah, I’m going to put some wear on you—on your body and on this piece of plastic.” She held up the black card. “Because you,” she emphasized, “for all your posturing, are not a bad boy. You’re the safest game in town.”

  “Don’t tell anyone,” he said, taking her revelation in stride. “Can you put some more wear on my body before you start in on the plastic?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or, better yet, while you work the plastic?” He nipped her lower lip. “You can describe what you’re buying. In detail.”

  “What would you like?”

  “Stilettos with slender straps that restrain the ankles.” His hands stroked over her feet, stripping off the heels she still wore and then skimming from her toes to her knees. “Maybe with those ties that trail up the calves. And thongs. Lots and lots of thongs.”

  “You asked for it.” And then she laughed with him—at him—on a day that could have been the worst of her life.

  “A warning,” she offered in challenge, “I’m a rather high-maintenance girlfriend.”

  Chapter 28

  The afternoon had nearly passed when Scarlet retreated to her desk to review a client’s non-disclosure agreement. She’d promised comments before the end of the day and figured she had time to squeeze in a peek while Ethan talked optics and Korea with Brian.

  Life with three shadows had taken some adjustment. At work, Scarlet’s police escort monitored the bank of elevators from the ground floor. Ethan milled around her office or worked out of an empty conference room next door. Brian was on standby via speakerphone. With the press of his extension, her voice flooded his office. No need to pick up the receiver.

  Each night, Ethan escorted her home and stayed, while another officer stationed himself in the hall outside her apartment.

  Work and home. The end. True to his word, her stress-related shopping trips involved Ethan’s Centurion card and a computer mouse. True to hers, she now owned several pairs of four-inch heels that would never see the light of day and more underwear than a lingerie model could wade through in a year of photo shoots.

  Anna’s pictures had arrived days ago. Limbo wasn’t a forever option, but any mention of added risk had Ethan frothing at the mouth.

  “We’re already using you to draw him out,” he’d clipped the night before. “That’s why we’re still in the city. He’ll make a move, and mucho-macho in the hall and I will be ready for the strike. Any more than that, and we’ll have to arm wrestle for it.”

  The lull in excitement had left her brave enough to feel little more than exasperation over Ethan’s hesitance to put her in danger. “I’m climbing the walls. We can’t do this forever.”

  He’d dropped to a knee and rolled back his shirt sleeve, then propped an elbow on her coffee table, palm extended in her direction. Anchoring his bicep with his other hand, he’d looked up, ready for action. “If I win,” he’d said with a wink, “you can climb me.”

  He’d won. The climbing had been fun, but she wouldn’t go in for his distractions indefinitely.

  Distracted by the memory, Scarlet took a seat in front of her computer, closing her eyes while she waited for the first inked page of the agreement to ease from the printer near the window. She daydreamed of the trip they’d take once Gerard had been “beaten to ground,” as Ethan put it. The four-S vacation—sun and sand, the original requirements, plus sex and shopping, which she’d subsequently added to the list.

  Mid-thought, she simmered with vague awareness. Her office wasn’t quite right. All the clippings and sticky notes were missing from the bulletin board behind her monitor. Only one item remained posted, and it wasn’t hers. An eight-by-ten inch piece of glossy paper dangled from the middle of the board. She could only see the word “Kodak” plastered across the stark white of the sheet because the picture faced inward.

  More Anna. She knew it.

  Blindly, she reached for the printer. Her fingers slid over a surprise. The paper was thick and smooth, like touching a photo.

  Confused, she pulled the sheet free and took a look.

  Anna Chamber stared back at her, alive and smiling, the words of a random contract superimposed over her face and body. Each new sheet showed a different pose, but in all, Anna appeared happy and healthy.

  Her office door whispered shut and plodding steps sounded behind her. Before she could react, the edge of a knife pressed hot and sharp against the side of her throat. She knew who held it long before she heard the oily malice in his voice.

  “One word, and I’ll end this right now, Empress.”

  Chapter 29

  Part of her—the rational side—understood what was happing. Another part floated above, watching the situation unfold like she and Gerard were actors in a low-budget horror flick. It took a while to reconcile the two and consider her options.

  Gerard’s free hand grabbed the armrest of her chair from behind, and he whipped her around so her bent knees met his shins. The knife didn’t move along with her, and with each inch, the blade scraped over the skin of her neck, barely sampling blood.

  Massacre wasn’t a word she tossed around, but hope fled when she saw him. A well-cut suit gloved a massive wall of muscle, right down to the platinum cufflinks at his wrists and the buffed leather loafers on his feet. Had he worn a shoddy wig, a j
anitor’s gray, or even arrived looking like a handsome woman, he might not have slipped by. But people weren’t programmed to question an attractive, successful man heading to her office in the middle of a Manhattan afternoon.

  The trappings of wealth had effectively camouflaged the beast within.

  All the dapper contrasted the wrath that pulsed in her direction, sharper because he hadn’t played the thug. She didn’t know which was worse, his hatred or his intellect. A stupid killer would have been easier. But this man had schmoozed a parole board, identified and infiltrated her residence, evaded arrest for nearly two weeks, and managed to slip past her defenses to corner her with a knife. Again.

  “Confused?” He waited, but she didn’t respond. To nod would risk further damage to her neck. “I walked. You’d be amazed at how few of the floors in these buildings have locked or coded doors to the internal stairwells. Don’t worry, though, I mentally waved to your buddy by the elevators.”

  Gerard spoke calmly, like he donned a three-thousand-dollar suit and held a knife to a woman’s throat every day. The weapon slid around to the base of her chin and pressed up. No telltale sting. He hadn’t cut her this time, only used the weapon to tilt her head back.

  When her gaze climbed to collide with his, he tugged at the pictures clutched in her hand. “She should be here now, looking like that.”

  Her mouth went desert dry. “I know,” she said in a smothered voice. “I wish she could be.”

  She recalled Ethan’s theory about Gerard having a message. Until he got it off his chest, he might not do anything irrevocable. Once he did…

  Keep him talking. More talking meant more time. “I’m estranged from my father, you know.”

  The pressure increased, forcing her head to her shoulders, until she could only see him through slit lids.

  “I know what he did,” she continued. “I hate him, too.”

  Amusement gleamed behind hard eyes that pinned her to the knife as effectively as the pressure against her skin. He liked her fear.

  “Think about it,” she went on, dying to reason with him. “You sent him Anna’s pictures. An overt threat.” She paused, sucking a shallow breath as though through a straw. “And he told you to go to hell.”

  Silently, she implored him to realize he couldn’t use her to reach Tripp Leore. In this case, killing the daughter wouldn’t amount to much in the way of revenge against the father.

  “Mind games,” he taunted through clenched teeth.

  Leave it to her to have a stalker who’d over-thought his wayward plan.

  The knife lifted, only to settle point-down against her abdomen. “Don’t bother.”

  She jerked as the dagger bit through clothes and skin. A familiar agony swamped her senses, and wooziness flooded her. No, not again. The room began a slow spin.

  Gerard blurred in her sights, nothing but a barrage of gray matter sent to make her hurt. The dots floating in her vision prevented her from seeing him clearly, but she could hear. Even so, the threats were buzzing now, and she couldn’t digest the gist of his taunts over her firing pain receptors.

  Words hit in slow motion, as though they traveled through water to her ears. He would kill her, he said. Right here. But first, there was something she needed to see.

  Holding her in place with a twist of pain in her gut, he reached behind her, coming back with the Kodak paper she’d seen tacked to her board. Like before, she saw white. Now that plain backing served as a canvas for hundreds of dancing black orbs.

  Eventually, he’d turn the paper. She’d see Anna, lying limp in her own blood. The knowledge should have shocked her anew, but it didn’t. Her mind had drifted out of reach.

  In the moment he took to view the image only he could see, she pictured Ethan, close by and on guard. Like the wisp of a dream, she saw their long road. The way he’d initially tormented her, then learned her and waited patiently for her to learn him. He’d forgiven her. Watched over her. He’d even done things that were terribly misguided, but only because he’d truly believed they were right.

  She loved him for his miracles and his mistakes, and he’d never know.

  Ethan wouldn’t forgive himself. He’d view Gerard’s success as his eternal failure.

  The thought hit like a bucket of water to the face. To succumb would ensure the person who’d done everything to help her would be the one to pay. Gerard’s vendetta had cost Ethan too much already. Maybe she couldn’t beat this brute at his own game. But she might prevail in a different one.

  The picture dangled in front of her face, then turned slowly.

  Her heart scrambled and she stared, stared until her brain accepted she’d been wrong. Gerard had followed her logic. He did believe her death wouldn’t faze her father.

  So he’d killed him first.

  The picture didn’t show Anna Chamber in a Chelsea homeless shelter. Her father lay in the same position but against a much nicer floor, his limbs splayed out against gray slate. Like Anna, blood pooled beneath him and his vacant stare conveyed anything but peace.

  “This morning,” Gerard provided with cold precision, his eyes roving her face for a reaction she couldn’t give. Certainly she’d never wanted her dad to meet an untimely demise, but he’d been a stranger, a faraway figure who’d done little but cause harm. Other than regret for what could have been, his death simply didn’t pack an emotional punch.

  Further proof of viciousness in the man who’d killed him did.

  Gerard’s mouth morphed into a cruel sneer. “You were right. Pops didn’t give a shit. And now, you’re nothing but extra.” He let the photo go, and she watched it silently flutter to the floor beside them.

  The knife pulled away. She knew what came next. The evidence lay at her feet. With a keening cry, she kicked out, using his legs as leverage to propel her chair toward the phone. A clumsy punch of five buttons, that’s all she needed. Through the years, she’d called Brian enough to commit the path of numbers to muscle memory.

  Narrowing her focus, she managed to hit the “speaker” button, then three-six-two-two, the twenty-second office on the thirty-sixth floor.

  Ethan was with Brian. He would hear.

  ******

  Brian’s speakerphone screeched and Ethan quieted, figuring the man’s assistant had a quick question.

  He heard a high, muffled cry. Then, “You fucking bitch. That will—”

  The chair beneath him jammed the wall with the force of his body propelling forward. He sprinted out the door and down the hall, heart racing too fast for an organ that had stopped the moment he’d heard her call out. Seconds later, he burst into Scarlet’s office, only to see Gerard push her to the carpet, blood at her throat. The vision was a primitive shock—Scarlet bent on scrambling away and Gerard on inflicting harm.

  Gerard Chamber hadn’t changed. Still muscled and mean. The suit did nothing for him. Lipstick on a pig.

  He turned to Ethan with a crazed light in his eyes. “Just like old times.”

  Watching in horror, his longtime nemesis fell on Scarlet’s little body with a knife. All rational thought imploded with the first thrust, and he knew desperation for the first time. Keening low, Scarlet lay still beneath Gerard without a hint of struggle, white against the blood that smeared the floor.

  A profane roar erupted from Ethan’s throat, and he hurtled himself at the other man. Dropping his shoulder, he hit Gerard squarely in the chest. The man reeled into the desk, smashing Scarlet’s monitor. The knife flew to the side. Thank God, not lodged inside her.

  Wrapping a forearm around Gerard’s throat, Ethan shoved him to his knees and dragged him away from Scarlet’s prone form. Gerard cursed and gagged, struggling wildly against Ethan’s hold. The continued force was all the excuse Ethan needed.

  “Yeah,” he gritted in a voice that didn’t sound like his own, “just like old times.”

  When, off the books, I always fucking won.

  He twisted past a sickening pop, then let Gerard crumble to his feet.


  A crowd had gathered outside her office, and the cop on elevator duty rushed into the room. None of it mattered. He knelt next to Scarlet and lifted her limp form into his lap, flinching at all the red. “No, please God,” he whispered, hardly able to speak past the huge knob in his throat.

  “Ambulance.” The plea was a hoarse bark at the horrified audience in the hall. “Please, help her.”

  Diving in, he felt for a pulse. She had one, thready but detectable. After a lifetime of rigid control, seeing this one small woman hurt left him utterly helpless, fragile in a way he didn’t think he could stand. Dropping his head back, he clutched her to his chest, rocking and waiting.

  “I love you, Scarlet. Love you,” he rasped. “Do you fucking hear me? Wake up so I can tell you how much for the rest of our lives.” Each word came harder as he struggled around choked tears. “You were perfect, using the intercom like that when I know you were afraid.”

  He looked down at her, desperate for a response. Too pale. Still as death.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Give me what I want one more time, and I swear I’ll never ask you for another thing. Look at me, Goddamn it! Let me tell you I love you.”

  She couldn’t hear him. Blood seeped through her clothes from wounds on her chest and abdomen. There couldn’t be many. Gerard hadn’t had time.

  And her neck. More blood oozed down her slim throat from slices he thought—needed to believe—were shallow. When had those happened? How long had she been in here, alone with an animal?

  He’d failed her, demanded her complete trust, and then thrown her to the wolf. Now he’d yelled at her when she was down.

  Gentling his tone, he crooned near her ear. “If you don’t hang on, you’ll break my heart. So cling to something. Cling to those self-defense classes you’re going to take, to how hard I’m going to let you hit me for not protecting you like I promised, to all the chocolate I’m going to feed you.”