And now my heart was beating too quickly again. I should have asked for decaf.
"Adam," he said, reaching forward and offering me a hand to shake. "Adam Savill." I just stared at the hand and then crossed my arms over my chest. His eyes followed the movement and rested on my boobs.
Another rub of the stubble on his jaw as he quickly darted his gaze elsewhere.
"I'll keep you company," the guy, Adam, said.
"I'm waiting for someone," I offered, in an attempt to get him to back off.
"And I'll keep you company until he arrives," Adam counted, looking at my face again, having spent the last several seconds looking anywhere but.
He'd moved on from rubbing his square jaw to scratching the back of his head, and followed that up with a wide mouthed yawn.
"Night shifts," he growled, making me lean further back in my chair. My eyes must have been the size of saucers, my heart was definitely beating out of my chest. Why wouldn't he leave? "Hate 'em."
"What?" I said, unintelligently.
"Hate night shifts. Ever done 'em?"
"Yes. Kind of," I found myself saying. Why was I talking to this man? He was a stranger, and a rude one at that. Hadn't even asked if he could join me, just assumed.
I opened my mouth to advise him of this and my coffee arrived, carried by Gen from the front counter.
"Hey, Adam," she said, as she placed the black cup in front of me with a smile. "Want another Long Black?"
"Yeah thanks, Genny. Should be countin' sheep, but the bastard's got me babysitting."
Gen smiled and flicked her eyes to me.
"Well, could be worse," she offered and then swung around and sauntered towards the coffee machine.
"True," Adam murmured, staring at me.
"Who are you?" I asked with a bemused shake of my head.
"Told ya already, Dancer."
Blood ran from my face. I could literally feel it draining. Dancer. My alias on-line.
I wanted to ask. It was on the tip of my tongue. Do you know Eric? But what if this stranger was on Jaxon's payroll. What if giving Eric's name could lead to his death.
God-dammit. First my father and now Ric. I was so worried both of them could get harmed by my murderous boyfriend, that I wasn't doing a thing about getting myself sorted out. That now familiar feeling of entrapment crashed in on me, making the walls in the café seem to warp and bend and push closer on all sides, until I was panting for breath and Adam was saying something and all I could hear was a pounding inside my head.
"Slow down."
His lips moving finally made sense.
"In and out through your nose."
He hadn't moved closer, wasn't touching me, hadn't invaded my personal space. Just intent deep blue bottomless eyes holding mine, keeping me tethered to the earth.
"There," he murmured, leaning over and pushing my coffee cup closer. "Know it'll make your heartbeat rocket, but I think you can use a boost. Gone too pale, dude. Need a pick-me-up."
I made a noise in the back of my throat but swiped up the coffee and took a good swallow. The action alone calming me.
"Tell me," I said, on a sucked in breath of much needed air. "Who the fuck are you?"
He blinked. Leaned further back in his chair while sitting more upright, and then blinked again.
"Adam," he repeated, as though I was mentally impaired. "I..."
But he didn't get to finish, a shadow fell over us and suddenly Ric was there.
I'm not sure whether it was the recent panic attack, or the vague answers Adam was giving that made me suspect he was hiding something and it wasn't good. Or the unconscionable fact that my fucking boyfriend was not at all who I thought he was and I feared for my life and my father's safety. But the moment those vivid green eyes landed on mine I was up out of my chair and hurling myself into Eric's arms.
He stumbled slightly, took a step back with me hanging off his shoulders, and then finally brought his arms up and around my waist, bringing me closer to his body with a tight grip.
"What did you do, you bastard?" he growled over my shoulder. "She looks frightened half to death."
"Not me, dude," Adam drawled. "Kid's got a shit-load of crap piling up on her and simply wigged out. All's good though. Her knight in shining armour has arrived and I can get to fuckin' bed."
They glared at each other for a moment, my relief at the knowledge that Eric knew Adam not managing to override my ever increasing terror at what my life had become. I continued to cling to Ric, allowing a measure of peace to invade my body at the solid feel of his frame against mine.
Eric was big like Jaxon. Maybe slightly smaller across the shoulders, but his arms actually felt larger. As though they could hold me forever and would never let me fall.
I cleared my throat and tried to move out of his now suddenly uncomfortable embrace.
"Stay still," he murmured, eyes still boring into Adam. "Nick wants you back at HQ," he said to the other man, as though he wasn't holding an almost stranger flush up against his chest.
"Aw, fuck it. I'm knackered," Adam complained.
"All hands on deck right now and he says you can catch some z's there."
"He got something?"
I felt Ric's body shift as his head tipped so he could look down at me.
"We're hoping," he said, finally realising he was holding me too intimately and loosening his arms.
"Dude. You are an arsehole," Adam said chuckling, and with that strange comment spun on his heel, took the coffee Gen held out as he passed, and whistled tunelessly as he banged out the front doors.
"Prick," Ric muttered, leading me to my seat and not letting go of my hand until I'd shakily sat down. "Did he give you a hard time?"
I shook my head and numbly lifted the coffee cup up to take a drink. My watch caught my eye, so I checked the time. Just after ten. I didn't have long before Jaxon sent the cavalry after me.
"Where were you?" I asked at last, moving my cup around on the table's surface in front of me.
"At work."
I blinked.
"Then how did you know I was here? Oh, Adam."
"No. I watched you walk in. Been looking for you all day. Couldn't believe my eyes when I finally saw you. Got here as fast as I could."
I sat back and stared at him. He looked too good. That sexy black leather jacket again, all black underneath. A pair of sunglasses casually slung over the collar of his t-shirt. Ray-bans.
I shook my head to clear the fog his presence seemed to always create, and asked, "What?"
Yeah, I was getting more inarticulate as the day progressed. Not good.
"Sweetheart," he said with a blindingly hot grin. "ASI monitors Gen's shop. Cameras, alarms, the works. Safest place in town outside of our HQ. Wouldn't have sent you here if it wasn't."
I glanced around the premises, trying to pick up cameras, but knowing they were undoubtedly of the spy-like variety. Is that why he wrote that code with me? For his work?
"You really are a private investigator," I said, stunned.
He pulled his head back, obviously surprised.
"What did you think I was, Amber? A cop?"
That hadn't even crossed my mind. I wondered if it should have.
"I thought..." I stopped, licked my lips. "I don't know what I thought," I said, defeated.
"Ah, Dancer," he murmured softly. "You look exhausted. How're you holding up?"
My shoulders drooped and embarrassingly tears sprang to my eyes.
"Oh, sweetheart," he whispered. "Let me help you."
I blinked the offending moisture away, determined not to show a weakness. I'd never been a victim, I wouldn't start now.
"You said you wanted my help, too," I reminded him, watching as a smile teased the corners of those lush red lips. His eyes darting appreciatively all over my face. I think he may have been impressed with my backbone right then.
"Yeah, I did, didn't I?"
I nodded.
"So, maybe we can help
each other," I suggested.
"Don't wanna owe me a favour?" he guessed.
I shrugged. Really, I just wanted all our cards on the table, I was sick of doing this blind. The confusion, the angst, the turmoil. It was all adding up.
I took a deep breath, held those mesmerising eyes and leapt off the edge of the abyss, saying, "You tell me your secret, and I'll tell you mine."
"You got a secret, Amber?" he asked.
"Have you?"
"Mine's not much of a secret, I'm more interested in yours."
"You would be, but I just don't know why yet." He flashed white teeth in a big smile. "You first," I encouraged.
The room all but forgotten, my full attention on the magnetic man before my eyes. Since the moment I'd first seen him on my laptop screen I hadn't been able to get the image of him out of my head. Picture perfect recall. And my mind was lapping up more fodder for the files.
He stared at me, no, into me. His breaths as rapid as mine. His focus completely on me. Nothing else existed. Just two people falling into each other. Two almost strangers crossing a line in the sand. I didn't know what it meant. I just knew it was monumental.
"I want..." he started, and I leaned forward.
He leaned forward too, our eyes still target locked on each other.
What did he want?
Me?
"Fuck," he breathed. "You..." Shake of his head. Scrub of his stubbled jaw.
"What do you want, Ric?" I asked, noticing the huskiness of my voice.
He swallowed. I saw his Adam's apple bob.
"Fuck me, sweetheart. You are danger with a capital D."
I raised an eyebrow and pulled back, the moment shattered.
"What do you want?" I repeated, and there was no huskiness there now. All demand.
A suspended moment, then he suddenly leaned forward again, practically over the entire table and into my lap, sucking me into all that green.
"I want to get you away from that bastard," he announced on a growl. "Out of his life. Out of his bed." Pause. "And into mine."
I stared at him. He stared back in challenge to me.
And a blonde, I hadn't seen before, in a Sweet Seduction uniform beside us, said, "Dude, that is so fucking hot."
Completely and utterly breaking the spell.
But not erasing what Ric had said. Just this once, I think, my picture perfect recall would extend to the spoken word.
Chapter 9
Sweetheart, In Some Things I Am Very, Very Bad Indeed
Silence filled the space between us. Somehow it sounded loud. Or that could have been the thunderous beat of my heart pounding inside my head. I licked my lips as I watched Eric scowl after the blonde and then rub the back of his neck, as though frustrated.
I didn't know what to say. I even opened my mouth a couple of times to fill the too awkward quiet, but only air passed my lips.
Out of his life. Out of his bed. And into mine.
A thrill of excitement washed through me, filling me up like bubbling champagne. My stomach, for the first time in hours, fluttered in a pleasing manner, not a nauseous one. The shaking in my hands was pure excitement, mixed with the good kind of fear.
I'd never before realised that fear could come in so many different nuances. But it does. And that thought reminded me that now was not a good time to fall for another man.
I wondered if Ric and I had tried to get to know each other better when we first met on-line whether things would be different. I'd known RiC3.1415 for almost three years now. Longer than I'd known Jaxon. Would I have even gotten involved with Jaxon if Ric and I had met face to face first?
I shook my head. It was too late now. I was entangled in a deathly web of lies and deceit and danger. Eric was so far out of my reach. Hell, I'd be lucky to survive Jaxon. Thinking of a future, or what might have been, could have been, was a useless waste of time.
Which made me look at my watch again.
"When does he expect you?" Ric asked, making me jump a little in my seat.
"How do you know...?"
"You keep checking the time and when you do your bottom lip gets chewed on frantically."
Huh.
"I have to be at the club by eleven."
"OK," he said. "We better get a move on then."
I just stared at him. Unsure exactly how a private investigator could help me. Then wondering how I would pay him if he did. Wondering if the help he needed would cover the cost of getting me out of this mess.
"Why are you interested in Jaxon?" I asked. Perhaps a question I should have considered before, but it only just sprang to mind now.
"Ever heard of Declan King?"
Everyone in New Zealand had heard of Declan King. He blew half of the Auckland Court House building to smithereens. His ties to criminal activities throughout the North Island of New Zealand were splashed all over the news for weeks. People had died.
And his name was on the encrypted file I'd hacked in C&C.
I knew exactly who Declan King was.
"Yes," I whispered back.
Eric nodded, as though he expected as much.
"We worked to bring him down," he announced.
"We?"
"ASI." Oh. "Now we're cleaning up his mess."
"Working with the cops," I surmised, remembering the names of those police officers also in that file.
"We do things they are unable to," Ric explained, making me shift in my seat uneasily. "We bridge the gap between them and the underworld."
"Underworld?" I asked, my voice barely there now, but he still heard. Or read my lips.
"Criminal underworld."
"Jaxon's world," I added. Ric nodded.
"How much do you know?" he asked, and my eyes automatically darted around the café looking for anyone I recognised.
It wasn't until my chair creaked that I realised I'd started rocking, as though my body couldn't contain the fear inside without moving. Ric watched, his eyes steady, but a shadow appearing behind them. A brief flash of compassion or worry or, maybe, fear. Fear for me. Fear because I feared.
What would telling him do?
My hand rubbed my queasy stomach. I felt perspiration bead on my upper lip.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but all I could see behind the lids was that file. The pictures. Jaxon and blood. I rubbed my face, looked around the bustling café again, and sucked in a shaky breath of air.
Dad. I couldn't run, and I was beginning to think if I did run Jaxon would spare no cost to hunt me down. So that left staying.
My hand covered my mouth as I swallowed back bile. The coffee I'd drunk burning an acidic path up my throat. Tears blossomed in my eyes from the harsh pain it caused. I blinked rapidly to wash them away.
I was so shit scared.
"I promise," Eric said, voice low and even, "that I can help."
My eyes found his, green anchoring me, pulling me back to the ground, stopping me from spinning out of control. He held my gaze, saw right through the panic and angst I was feeling. Looked right into me and didn't baulk at what he could see. He knew things about my lifestyle, possibly about me. He knew who I'd lived with for the past twenty months. Who I worked for. What I'd done on stage. He knew.
I'd never felt so vulnerable before in my entire life. I'd never felt so naked. Stripped. Completely peeled back and still he didn't look away, or look shocked, or disturbed, or disgusted. He just held my gaze with that peaceful, steady, beautiful green.
Green the colour of a freshly mown meadow. New lush grass. Clean and pure.
"I never knew," I started, my eyes locked on his, my head shaking, my body still rocking, but not as much. Just a rhythm that helped to soothe. "I never truly suspected. But I found something," I admitted. "I was trying to be smart." I laughed abruptly. Not humorously. "I was showing off."
"Go on," Ric encouraged when my eyes fell to the table's surface and my words dried up.
"I hacked a file on C&C's secured network." The words tumbled out one after
the other so quickly I was surprised Eric understood them. But he must have, because his eyes widened and he leaned forward, cocking his head in a motion to get me to keep going.
My mouth opened, my breath came out in little pants, but to say aloud what I'd seen, to voice what my mind kept replaying in vivid detail... I couldn't do it. My body started rocking again more forcefully.
"Amber," Ric said, reaching over and taking hold of one of my hands. "You can do this, sweetheart. You're stronger than you think."
"He knows," I whispered and Eric stilled. "He knew the instant the tripwire was triggered. I thought I'd covered my tracks. I thought I could pretend I hadn't seen it. But he knows."
A chill invaded my body as those words hung like threatening icicles in the air. Brittle, harsh, razor tipped.
"My father," I added, my fingers trembling in Ric's firm grasp. "I know he'll hurt him."
"He hasn't yet, he may not," Eric attempted.
I shook my head. "Every time he mentions my father, I know it's a threat."
Eric was silent for a while, then rubbed a hand over his face - not releasing his grip on mine with his other - and let a long breath of air out.
"What you saw, Amber, it was incriminating, wasn't it?" he finally asked.
I nodded.
"Did you copy it?"
Was he mad? I could only shake my head, horrified at the thought.
"Listen," he said, moving closer.
We were practically side by side now, his chair had shifted around the table at some stage, making his thigh now rest against mine. I could feel his warmth. I could see highlights in his stubble, that weren't reflected in his jet black hair. I could count the striations of darker green in his eyes.
I actually leaned in, bridging what small gap remained. Thankfully I stopped myself, before it became too obvious, and sucked in a breath of air as I pulled back.
His hand tightened on mine.
"Listen," he repeated. "Harding has only come to light in the past nine months and what we have is circumstantial. We need more. We know he's deeply rooted in the same world as King. We know he's moving to take over King's interests. We just can't get any proof."
Sweet Seduction Stripped (Sweet Seduction, Book 7) Page 7