by Amber Bardan
The fact was, Avner and I had something we needed to finish. Then life could go on. Back to normal. We could actually be friends once we worked the tension out of our systems. Circle be damned. The circle was only a problem when there were other girls in it. The only other girl in our circle was Angelina, and I wasn’t going to accidentally cut her grass with Avner.
Food first though, because my stomach was about to consume itself.
Avner reemerged, and I’m almost certain all he’d done was wash the blood off himself, and put a plaster on his hand, so how the hell did he look so damn perfect?
I took in the sight of him, suited and gorgeous, and planned the rest of the day. “What’s the time?”
“10:00 a.m.” He slid on his jacket and escorted me to the door.
Perfect.
I’d save time having breakfast and lunch at once. We’d be done by 12:00 p.m. Then we’d come back to the hotel, and I’d allow at least two and a half hours for the fucking, maybe three, because I’m sure we’d need every minute. And that gave me three hours to instant tan and perform the full spectrum of personal grooming required to be ready to go out and earn the money required for my Melbourne apartment. I shuddered a little. I’d hoped to never have to do this again. But beggars and choosers, and all of that. Had to be done. I’d regain my pride tomorrow and put tonight’s tacky decision behind me. But I didn’t need to worry myself about that right now.
I linked my arm through Avner’s. There’d be plenty better things happening today.
* * *
“Sorry, the lunch menu doesn’t start until twelve.”
I tried not to frown at Alison, who was most likely not responsible for the ridiculous menu changeover schedule. I needed meat. Not eggs, not bacon, not a fancy breakfast “burger” which was just a BLT in a bun. I’d take a real burger. Like the one on the lunch menu. The Aussie Burger. I’d have those eggs, and that bacon on my Aussie burger with two beef patties, but they could hold the beetroot.
“Could they maybe make it for me anyway?” I tried a smile. “Please?”
“Sorry, the kitchen isn’t ready for lunch yet.”
My smile dropped from its forced position, and I flipped over the menu to the breakfast side.
Avner opened his jacket, reached inside and pried a bundle of notes out of a thick wad of cash. “She’d like to order from the lunch menu.”
He set the money on the table.
Alison hesitated, then tucked her notepad back inside her apron. She took the cash, and walked briskly to the kitchen.
I stared at him. A year ago, seeing someone forking over that much cash at once would have exploded my mind. Sharing a meal with someone presumptuous enough to bribe a restaurant would’ve sent me fleeing. But in the past year I’d met Haithem.
And apparently, being a big, presumptuous, somewhat arrogant multibillionaire doesn’t make you all bad. Just misguided.
“You didn’t need to do that.” I bit the inside of my cheek.
“I wanted to.” He gazed at me over the table, not even glancing at the menu. He hadn’t looked since we’d arrived.
He’d been too busy looking at me.
“Do you always do what you want?” The sound of my voice was almost startling. Soft, cautious and hardly my own.
“Never.” His lips pressed together, but his eyes deadpanned. The thunk that answer caused in my heart made me wonder what kind of thing he usually wanted.
The waitress returned with a jug of water. “The chef would like you to know that you may order whatever you like, on or off the menu.”
He eyed me from across the table, his mouth twitching sideways—smug.
“Thanks,” I said, and gave Alison my order. Satisfaction climbed further into his expression. He was too damned pleased with himself.
“I’ll have the eggs and—”
“No, nope,” I held up my hand. I would not be roughing it alone. And he wasn’t the only one here who could be presumptuous.
“Alison, he’s being shy because—” I put a hand around my mouth but didn’t actually lower my voice “—this is our first date.”
“Oh.” Her gaze darted between him and me, then back to me, and her nose wrinkled. I frowned. Seriously? I glanced at Avner with his crisp shirt, unwrinkled and unmarred as though he’d just showered and put it on. Even though he’d slept in a chair and been wrestled to the ground. Not right. The urge to lean forward, attack his hair and muss him up, was almost overwhelming.
I went one better. “What he wants is the ribs.”
One of his brows tweaked, but he just kept watching me, letting me order for him.
“With extra BBQ sauce.”
“Salad?”
“Noooo.” I drew out the word and glanced at the menu. “He wants the loaded potato skins, with sour cream.”
“Certainly,” she said, and left.
I bit my lip, keeping the giggle in. I couldn’t look at him or it’d all come out. I fished the compact and lipstick out of my handbag, which, remarkably, Avner had also salvaged last night. I opened the compact, catching a glimpse of Avner watching me, his eyes questioning but sparkling.
I looked in the mirror, and my heart dropped into my lap.
“Oh, my god.” I glanced at Avner over the compact. “You didn’t tell me I was such a mess.”
I peered in the mirror and ran a finger under the bottom of my eye, wiping the smeared mascara that made me look like I’d taken a punch or two to the socket.
“I was supposed to critique your appearance?”
I frowned at my reflection and attempted to try to push my eyelashes back up the right way. “When I go out looking like I’ve entered the ranks of the walking dead, you are.”
His chuckle reached me across the table. “That’s not how I’d put it.”
“How would you put it?” I snapped the compact closed and raised my brows.
“Disheveled.” His voice changed, getting rough, in a way itself disheveled. “I’d call you irresistibly disheveled.”
Warmth flared in my cheeks. I put everything back into my bag and fiddled around with the contents. Without looking at him. Without fanning my face. Tried to quell the crazy juvenile flushing that only began since him.
Alison returned and set a plate with the largest mountain of burger I’d ever seen in front of me. Good thing I was hungry. She placed another plate—no, platter—in front of Avner. My eyes widened, and again I stifled a laugh. A serving platter full of sticky ribs sat in front of him, steaming and dripping with dark sauce. She finished with a bowl of loaded potato skins. Avner leaned back in his chair, his wrists resting either side of his meal. His cheeks puffed out with an exaggerated breath.
I smiled. “Don’t worry, Avy, baby, if you don’t have it in you, I’ll eat it.”
His expression shifted and his brow set. I grinned wide. He stared at me, took off his jacket, shoved his sleeves past his elbows, and proceeded to eat those damn sticky ribs.
I watched, my own plate forgotten as he sucked off the flesh, and set the bare bones neatly back in his plate, one at a time.
“I thought you were hungry?” His eyes narrowed, glistening with challenge. He stuck another rib in his mouth, and sucked.
Yet, he remained clean.
How’d he manage that? Not a smear of BBQ sauce on his shirt or on his chin. He set down the bone with a smirk and grabbed another.
I returned my attention to my meal. The burger was too big to hold. I glanced back up to Avner, then shoved my palm on top of the bun and squished until sauces and cheese and other greases I didn’t want to identify spewed out the sides. Then I picked up the compressed burger, wrapped my mouth around it and matched him bite for bite.
* * *
I leaned back, laughing for the hundredth time. My
belly stretched, bloated. Thankfully I wasn’t wearing jeans. If Avner’s stomach suffered the way mine did, he didn’t show it. Who’d have thought he would be such a good sport?
Who’d have thought he’d be this fun to hang out with?
“Want dessert?” He had the nerve to ask this without blinking.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So would you mind doing me one last favor and taking me back to the hotel?”
His nostrils flared. I leaned deeper into my arms, holding his gaze. There’d be no mistaking what I was ready for.
He didn’t mistake me.
His jaw gave a hungry pulse. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah?” I said, lowering my eyelids. If he meant dirty-talk, I was all freaking ears.
“About what happened to you last night.”
I snapped back. “I’d rather not.”
“We need to figure out who’s after you.” His brow scrunched. “We need to come up with a list of suspects—”
“Whoa.” I held up my hand. “Honey, I think your imagination just ran away with you.”
He frowned harder, deeper, an uncompromising scowl. “How so?”
“I’m not you or Haithem. Not a billionaire, or anyone important. No one wants to kidnap me,” I said, and tried to put it delicately because something told me he’d like my reality less than his wrong assumption. “There’s only one reason my drink was spiked.”
Did he think this was my first creeper rodeo?
“Why do you think I stick to bottled water?” I took a breath. Except last night I’d drunk coffee. My heart went heavy—tired, like a weight in my chest.
I’d ordered coffee from a place I’d trusted and not left it unattended. Don’t know how this happened, but what I did know was that creeps tended to be inventive.
Last time something like this happened, I’d been eighteen and with a group of friends who’d rushed me to hospital and not let anything happen to me. This time I’d been lucky to have the right friend dialed.
His expression darkened and I learned that Avner had several different kinds of scowls. This one was pure rebellion. “There will be those desperate to exploit your research—”
“The least likely explanation,” I burst out, then closed my mouth for a moment and schooled my tone. “I know exactly who did this.”
Avner leaned forward and clamped his hands over mine. “Who? Who did this?”
I held his gaze steady. “Last night it was the guy with the balls to actually spike my drink.” I swallowed. “The time before he was the guy who tried to ply me with alcohol even when I insisted I don’t drink. Or the one who thought because I had fun with his mate he was entitled to his turn too.” I watched every heart-wrenching flicker of fury on Avner’s face, but did not stop. “He’s the man lurking in the public restroom, and the boyfriend who slams your face into a wall because he doesn’t like the way you mouthed off.”
The father who drinks too much.
The urge to blink became unbearable, so I did, then looked down, because now I couldn’t take whatever he was feeling as well as what I was.
“Maybe it says something good about you that you’re searching for logical reasoning because you just can’t fathom that this is the world a woman lives in.”
I slid my hands out from his, leaned back and waited for his denial—No it’s not. That’s just a few guys. You’re overreacting. Stop being dramatic.
Men aren’t out to get you.
You gave the wrong impression.
Calm the hell down, feminist bitch.
It never came.
I glanced up. His Adam’s apple, prominent before, seemed to have grown. His cheeks hollowed out. No sign of his laugh lines, his features gaunt and sunken in a way that mirrored the emptiness eating away inside me. For a moment I went back over what I’d said. Had I said more than I thought? Something directed at him?
I hadn’t.
Still, he said nothing. Still, I had no idea what he was thinking. Still, I couldn’t help feeling that maybe he had understood all along.
That he’d understood so well he’d tried to deny it.
That the truth was as caustic to him as it was to me.
That maybe the truest part of what I’d just told him was that this all said something good about him.
I cleared my throat, and settled my unapologetic gaze on him. “So, why don’t you take me back to the hotel now, because I’d really like to forget that last night ever happened and sleep with someone not trying to make me.”
He clutched his heart as though struck.
My breath caught with a surge of emotion. Did he care that much?
Then he glanced down at the hand flattened over his chest, pulled his phone out of the pocket and examined the screen. “I need to go.”
“What?” I shook my head.
“I have a j.” He pushed the phone back into place. “It’s urgent.”
Hairs prickled along the top of my wrists and down my arms. I went cold. Again? He had to rush in response to his phone again?
Right freaking now?
After everything that just happened and everything he’d said about wanting to help me?
Everything I’d said?
He stood up and put on his jacket.
Pain rippled through my lungs. How many times had I done this on a date? Faked a message on Silent to get away.
That’s all my talking had done—scared him away. I’d been wrong in what I’d hoped I’d seen.
He placed a handful of notes on the table in front of me.
My attention snapped from the money to him. “What’s that for?”
“I can’t take you home.” He did up his button. “But take a cab straight to your apartment, and I’ll talk to you later.”
He left before I could throw his money at him. I stared out the door. My guts may as well have rested on the table—my stomach felt disemboweled.
Rejection hurt.
I wasn’t rejected often. It’d never stung like this. Maybe because he’d helped me. This neediness came down to gratitude. That’s all it was.
I didn’t know him well enough to like him the way it felt like I did.
I couldn’t like him enough to be so injured by his dismissal. I didn’t have the luxury of liking someone that much. The memory of his lust-filled gaze filled my mind—the way he’d looked at me. Like something he wanted to gobble up. I rubbed my arms. Maybe he wanted me in that one way. Men always wanted me that way. But lust doesn’t discriminate between people you care about and those you don’t. It doesn’t discern if you don’t like someone emotionally—attraction is fickle like that.
It’s a sweet tooth when you’re dieting. And that was what I was to Avner, a temptation he didn’t want. Something he preferred to deny himself.
I took a gulp of the water.
Fact was he’d run out on me in Italy and nothing had happened between us since. He’d taken me to the gala at Haithem’s request.
He didn’t chase me, despite the warning. He hadn’t called me. He didn’t want me.
And I wouldn’t want him.
Not for another useless second.
Avner
I arrived at the factory. Her words rang in my ears. “You just can’t fathom that this is the world a woman lives in.” My blood hummed faster, electric with adrenaline. Because I had a front-row seat in the ugly underbelly of that world—and she was the one who’d never fathom the part I played in it.
I tapped the code into the panel by the door and let myself into the unfurnished office.
The look she’d worn—honest and jaded, burned like a fresh brand in my mind.
The musky stench of dust and dirt filled the room. Sunlight glowed orange around th
e boarded-up windows.
I’d come to Sydney for business and for her. The last thing I’d expected was that she’d be in danger.
Emilio entered through the door across the room.
My blood churned. I’d been focused on her personal life—who she’d dated, for how long, what kinds of things she liked to do, what she didn’t like, if she’d ever been arrested—I’d missed the dangers lurking in her professional one.
I stalked across the office to where Emilio opened a laptop on top of a built-in bench.
“Everything is ready,” he said in Italian. Emilio didn’t enjoy speaking English and I wasn’t fluent in Spanish, but Italian was natural to us both. He brought footage up on the screen. I watched, my chest clutching tighter with each flicker of movement.
I hit Pause, went back a few frames, then hit Play.
I’d been reluctant to take on anyone new outside of Marcus and our small team. Not for this part of my business activities. But they were still in the UK searching for leads, and Emilio had proven his skill and discretion.
His willingness to bend laws.
And break them.
Now I’d find out exactly how much he could stomach. We went into the warehouse.
A young man struggled in the chair he’d been handcuffed to. I yanked a pair of black gloves out of my rear pocket and put on one, then crouched, sliding on the other.
His eyes widened, tracking my movements.
He was afraid. I didn’t need to be this familiar with fear to see that. The whites glared around his irises, sweat coated his face and his body shook.
He had reason, good reason, to be afraid.
Because Emma was mine to protect.
His words were lost under the muffle of tape.
“There’s just one thing you need to understand.” I flexed my fingers in the tight grip of leather. “You are here now.”
He stopped wiggling. Stopped attempting to speak.
“Forget what anyone has threatened. Forget what they might do.” I grabbed the edge of the tape. “Your life depends on what I might do.”
I tore back the tape.
He winced, breath coming fast.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”