Trust An Even Hand

by Chloe Cox

  “Don’t you dare touch him,” Charlene snapped, and Gavin put his hands up, eyes wide. “He did nothing wrong. He helped me.”

  If only she could have helped him.

  “Take me home?” she asked.

  Diego whistled as walked into Luke’s apartment. Granted, the double-height ceilings and huge windows were meant to get that kind of reaction, but Luke could not give two shits about that at the moment. He only had one thing on his mind.

  “What did you find?” he asked.

  Diego frowned, shook his head. Then he tossed a file folder onto the stainless steel kitchen island.

  “It’s not good,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of bullshit in my time, Luke, but this guy takes the cake.”

  “What do you mean?” Luke demanded. “Give me the top line.”

  Diego shook his head. “Drinking, fights. I’ve seen guys like this before. He just seems like someone who’s about to blow.”

  “Background?” Luke asked, his fists hardening beneath the table.

  Diego tapped on the folder. “It’s all in here, but you were right about one thing. That other club, Sinsations, they’ve run into some problems with the city. Odds are they’re looking for a new location. Doesn’t have any connection to the address you gave me, the one belonging to…”

  Diego made as if to check the file, but Luke already knew who he was talking about.

  “Charlene Bastien,” he said.

  “Right, his ex-wife. It’s a loose connection, maybe just opportunistic, if this Jimmy Walters guy is with this other club now. They need a new location, he thinks he’s got a claim on the house—makes sense to a certain kind of mind.”

  Luke said, “What kind of mind is that?”

  Diego looked him in the eye.

  “Twisted,” he said. “He’s been busted for fraud a few times. There’s a warrant on him in Florida. But that’s not all.”

  “What?”

  “He talks a lot about this Charlene. Off the record.”

  Luke got up from where he sat at the kitchen island. He didn’t even look at the file folder. He didn’t need to know the details.

  He thought the hardest thing he’d ever have to do was stay silent when Charlene told him she was falling for him, but he’d done it, because he’d always do what was best for her.

  But that paled in comparison to sitting here in this sterile fucking kitchen while someone threatened her.

  “What are you going to do?” Diego asked.

  Then Luke’s phone buzzed with a very specific kind of notification, and answered his question for him.

  Luke grabbed his keys and left the private investigator alone in his apartment. He didn’t have time to explain. There was a security alert at Charlene’s house, and it meant a goddamn firestorm in his heart.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Gavin, please,” Charlene said. She was tired. Being broken hearted was exhausting.

  “At least let me post some trainees or something at the end of your drive,” he said. “That’s not unreasonable and you know it.”

  Charlene did know it, but it was also not the kind of life she wanted to lead. Luke had shown her that—better to feel, better to trust, better not to be afraid. And it was her house. She’d worked for it. She’d earned it.

  She wanted to go home.

  So Gavin was driving her back, at his insistence. And apparently wanted to provide her with free security for the rest of her life.

  “I’m not going to let anyone make me feel like a prisoner in my own home,” she said finally. “That includes people who love me, Gavin.”

  He looked at her as an oncoming car bathed them in light, then vanished. He was her oldest friend, the closest thing she had to family. And Charlene knew he blamed himself for being away during the Jimmy years.

  “I wish I’d known,” he said quietly. “I wish I’d driven that scumbag out of town years ago.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped me from making bad choices,” she said. “Just be happy I’m making good ones now.”

  “I’d be a lot happier if that included security,” he grumbled.

  “Yeah, well, ask me in a little while,” Charlene said. “I’m probably not going to pass up having attractive men posted to my house forever.”

  Gavin gave her another sideways look.

  “You sure you don’t want one Dom in particular?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “But…”

  “Can you just tell me if I need to kick his ass? I will kick it in any way you need, but you gotta provide some direction, Charlie.”

  She laughed, despite herself.

  “I’m pretty sure you can’t kick his ass into loving me back,” she said.

  And then those sad words just hung in the air, filling up the car with sadness.

  Only Gavin wasn’t looking at her with pity. It was something else.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Gavin.”

  “You’re getting nothing out of me,” he said. “Figure out what your phone is doing instead.”

  Frustrated, Charlene looked down at the well between them, where her phone was dancing from all the vibrations. She almost never got any kind of reception on this stretch of road, and she’d been so intent on figuring out what Gavin knew about Luke that she hadn’t even registered the noise.

  Which was a problem. Because she knew that notification.

  “What is it?” Gavin demanded.

  Charlene grabbed her phone, already tasting metal in her mouth.

  “It’s the security alert for my house,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”

  Luke broke the goddamn sound barrier getting to Charlene’s house.

  The way Gavin hadn’t volunteered any information when Luke had talked about Charlene being back at her house told him that she was probably back at her house. Probably alone.

  And then the alarm had gone off.

  It was a blur after that. Charlene hadn’t answered her phone. Luke had gotten in his truck, squeezed the steering wheel so hard his knuckles popped, and peeled out until he was alone on the dark highway, nothing between him and Charlene and whatever threatened her but damnable distance.

  But he was calm. Intent, determined, a man with a singular mind. But calm.

  Until he saw the glow on the horizon.

  For the first time in his life, Luke Logan felt panic. Felt the surge of adrenaline paired with knowledge of powerlessness. Felt there was the possibility of his world coming to a crashing halt, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Those were flames. A fire. Where her house should be.

  And all he could think about was Charlene, alone.

  He was yelling as he floored it and made the call to 911, cursing as he spun into the drive to her property, slowing down just enough to make sure he didn’t hit anyone or anything, the orange light flickering at the edge of his consciousness as he processed everything he saw at lightning speed while the seconds dragged on, while everything was too slow, too slow, too goddamned slow.

  There was another truck to avoid. Jimmy’s truck. He swerved.

  Hit brakes, open door in same motion, jump out. Swing gaze back towards the house.

  The burning, burning house.

  And then Luke was off and running, never fast enough, his mind racing ahead of even his powerful body. Flames pouring out of the living room windows, smoke billowing out onto the porch, the light and shadows dancing around the only place that had ever felt like home to him.

  With a roar, he ripped the door open and ran inside.

  He yelled for her until his mouth and lungs filled with smoke and his Dom got control of his primitive instincts, and then he tore through the house, room by room, looking for the only thing that mattered.

  Charlene.

  He ran up the stairs three at a time, checked every bedroom, hands on all the beds, holding his breath the whole time. Then down again, the kitchen, that was her real home, the godd
amn kitchen, and she wasn’t there. His heart sank, and dread filled the place where it used to be as he turned toward the living room, with the flames growing higher.

  And then he plunged onward, into the fire, through the goddamned fire, because fuck the fire. He needed Charlene.

  And she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere. He wanted to scream again, but some part of him was still thinking, enough to go back into the kitchen and grab her damn skillet, her grandmother’s skillet, she’d said.

  And then out the door, onto the porch, breathing air that was only half-smoke, and the realization that her car wasn’t there.

  But there was a body, lying on the porch.

  His heart ending, Luke ran over, crazed, half blind with smoke. Turned it over—a man.

  Jimmy.

  Jimmy, with a bottle of bourbon next to him, a pack of cigarettes.

  Even in the chaos, Luke knew a few things. He knew the fact that Jimmy hadn’t burned first meant that he’d started it somewhere else then come out here to drink himself into a stupor. Knew he didn’t trust Jimmy to have checked to see if anyone was in the house first. Knew that even after saving this piece of shit’s life, there was a decent chance Luke was going to have to kill him.

  Then he hauled the unconscious man up over his shoulder and carried him far out onto the lawn, just as the first responders were pulling up, and he was still thinking only one thing: Charlene.

  “Any idea what it could be?” Gavin asked. He meant the security alert. They were only a few minutes away from her house now, so they’d find out soon enough.

  But Luke would have gotten that alert, too. And he wasn’t picking up his phone, and he hadn’t called her, while Charlene had this feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Maybe it’s just a false alarm,” she said. She didn’t sound convinced, not even to herself.

  She’d remembered that Luke still had a bunch of work to do at the house for the wedding build, all that outdoor stuff he’d been planning. All his tools were still there. So for a second, just a split second, she’d thought maybe he’d just set of the system by accident, and she’d been relieved.

  But he would have called her if that were the case.

  And he would have called her if he’d gotten the alert. She had no doubt about that. He’d want to know she was ok.

  There was no scenario in which Luke not picking up his phone was a good thing.

  “Can you drive any faster?” she said quietly.

  But Gavin wasn’t listening. Instead he was staring intently ahead, his eyes squinting.

  Charlene looked ahead, and saw what he saw.

  Flashing lights.

  And a dull orange glow.

  Right where her house should be.

  “Gavin…” she said.

  Gavin grimaced, and she felt the car lurch as he hit the gas. Even as they moved faster, things seemed to slow down. All she could think about was how Luke might have been working there, at her house, trying to make dreams come true for everyone else. There might have been an accident. And even now that they were out of the dead zone, when she called him it went straight to voicemail.

  A quiet dread began to gnaw at her, and she knew the only thing that would cure it was to see Luke’s face.

  She grabbed hold of the door handle as Gavin turned into her property, her jaw set, her eyes searching for one thing only. She saw things that didn’t matter, not now: fire trucks, an ambulance, police cars, vehicles all over her property.

  Then she saw the one thing that mattered: Luke’s truck, parked at an angle, door hanging open, and her heart exploded.

  Charlene didn’t wait for the car to stop. She opened the door and jumped out at a run, leaving the door swinging and Gavin yelling behind her. She didn’t hear the sirens, didn’t hear the firefighter shouting at her as she dodged him like a tiny little bullet, her phone in hand as she called Luke again. Didn’t even register her house except to see it was burning low, flame and water coming together in a great billowing, smoky plumes of steam.

  Didn’t see anything at all, even the one person she wanted to see most of all.

  Charlene felt the tears on her cheeks as she whirled around and around, looking, looking, while the panic gripped her. She dialed again, like it would work, like she could just summon him. Like if she said enough prayers in this moment, like if she promised she didn’t care about the house, about anything, anything at all…

  She didn’t dare look towards the ambulance.

  Until she heard a phone ring.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Luke held on to Charlene’s skillet with one hand and the oxygen mask with the other, and he only held on to the oxygen mask because that tiny EMT kept threatening to have him forcibly taken to a hospital. It wouldn’t work; nothing on Earth would move him from this spot until he saw her, safe and sound. But it would ruin the EMT’s night. And it might ruin the arm of anyone who put a hand on him until he’d seen Charlene.

  So he sat on the open bay of an ambulance, his eyes sharp, firefighters scurrying around him while they put out the goddamn fire in Charlene’s house, and he waited.

  He just needed to see that she was safe.

  He needed it more than he needed this damn oxygen.

  Fuck this.

  Luke rose, the ambulance rising off its shocks underneath him. He dropped the mask, kept the skillet, and looked around.

  Flashing lights. Firefighters. Water, smoke, the dying glow of the fire.

  His phone, ringing.

  He was so focused it took him a second to put the two together, but he didn’t have to pick up to know who it was. He cast about, his eyes looking only for one thing, until he saw.

  Her.

  She was there. In an old sweatshirt and her favorite jeans and her hair mussed from running her hair through it, the way she did when she was stressed, with the flashing lights bouncing off her in blue-and-red waves.

  She was safe.

  She’d been crying. But she was safe.

  He didn’t even have to call out her name. Somehow she knew. She turned, and looked, and saw him.

  Their eyes met.

  And for just a moment, time stopped all over again. All the terrible fucking things that had happened in his past, all the terrible things that had happened that night, all the terrible goddamn things that he knew he needed to keep from happening in the future: they all fell away.

  She was safe.

  Like a force of nature, Luke charged toward her while Charlene ran at him, and they wrapped their arms around each other with a fierceness that he’d never felt before.

  She was safe.

  Luke lifted her off the ground, his arms around her, the skillet on the damn ground, his face buried in her hair. He inhaled her scent, felt her warmth. And when he realized he might not be able to ever let go, he forced himself to put her down.

  Charlene felt it. She dropped her arms, took a step back. Looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

  Dammit.

  “So…hi,” she said.

  Luke couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. And that got him a smile on Charlene Bastien’s face, and that was all the healing he needed in the world. He could have climbed a damn mountain.

  Unfortunately the tiny EMT who’d hounded him since she’d arrived did not agree.

  “What did I tell you about your oxygen?” she said.

  Charlene’s expression changed on a dime—all business. “Oxygen?” she demanded. “Tell me what he needs and I’ll make sure he gets it.”

  The look she gave Luke wouldn’t brook disagreement. And that, from a sub, made him kind of growly. And then he remembered he couldn’t get growly with her anymore, and he balled his fists.

  The EMT shrunk back a little.

  “Mr. Logan should be getting oxygen due to his exposure to the smoke,” she said. She looked down. “And, um, you dropped your skillet.”

  The EMT had asked him about that skillet, but Luke hadn’t felt like elaborating. He’
d just held on to it. Now Charlene was the one who looked confused.

  “You got my skillet?” she said.

  Luke was just now realizing how ridiculous that was. He’d been looking for her and the stupid skillet was the closest thing he found, so he was damn well going to carry it out of the fire. It had made a lot of sense at the time.

  “You like your skillet,” he said.

  “Are you ok?” she asked, her voice soft.

  “I’m fine,” he grumbled. He didn’t want to do this to her. Didn’t want to make her get involved again, when he knew he’d have to push her away. “This is ridiculous.”

  The EMT ignored him.

  “Minor burns, some smoke inhalation,” she said to Charlene. “Some rest and a little TLC and he’ll be fine.”

  Luke was dumbfounded. Women never ignored him. They definitely didn’t talk over him.

  But somehow the look on Charlene’s face as she got his medical status like a concerned nurse made him want to spank her, fuck her, and hold her, in that order. None of which he could do.

  Fuck.

  And if that was the worst of his problems, he could have handled it.

  But then, over Charlene’s shoulder, he saw someone approach.

  Jimmy.

  Charlene’s heart was full and her mind was swirling with about a million things, and the one stupid thing that kept coming back was: her grandmother’s skillet?

  Maybe she was just drunk with relief. She definitely felt drunk. The very second she saw Luke, huge and covered in ash and dirt and burns on his arms, his hands, his giant, gentle, strong hands, she’d felt it burst like a dam. The tears came once she finally saw him safe. And after the tears was all the love she’d been trying to hold back, because it had felt too dangerous, too risky to feel it.

  She’d felt his body against hers again and for a split second all was right with the world again.

  And then he’d pulled away, as he had to do. And she’d looked down at that damn skillet. And she’d realized that Luke was a man who, when he realized the house he was in was actually on fire, had still made sure to save the one thing he knew she loved before he got the hell out of dodge.