by J. K. Coi
Her mouth dropped open. “You think that I…” She shook her head quickly. “Nolan, that quote was bullshit. Yes, I should have been better at my job and prevented the photograph, but I never spoke to a reporter. They made that up completely, I promise.”
“How much did they pay you?”
She took a step back. “You think that I would take money for…”
He swore and ran a hand through his hair. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
She sneered. “I might be a horrible bodyguard, and a poor nobody from the wrong side of the tracks who ate dinners out of a vending machine as a kid, but that doesn’t automatically mean I’d sell you out.”
She reached for the door.
“April, I didn’t mean—”
He reached for her arm. She jerked it back.
A sound on the stairwell broke through their argument. It was like a gurgle of pain, and a choked scream of fury all at the same time. April looked up with a gasp, and as soon as she saw who stood in the stairwell watching them, a few steps down, she knew she’d made a horrible mistake.
It was the woman from the elevator in Nolan’s office, the woman from the restaurant. She’d slipped into the stairwell, and April had a good feeling that it wasn’t the first time. Whatever Edward Fielding had wanted from Nolan last night, he wasn’t the one who’d broken in and trashed his apartment, and he wasn’t the one who’d slashed Nolan’s tires.
The look on her face was twisted with such naked rage as she raised her arm…and pointed a gun straight at them.
Oh shit. “Miss,” she said slowly, like talking to a jumper on the ledge. “Miss, you don’t want to do anything—”
“April, be careful,” Nolan said in warning, taking her hand tightly.
The woman’s face crumpled when he said her name. April’s. Almost as if she’d thought he would see her and be overcome with…what? Love? Regret? April winced and immediately put herself in front of Nolan.
“April?” she sneered. She shook the gun at them, making April more nervous. “I’ve loved you all this time, and you say another woman’s name to my face?”
“Veronica?” Nolan’s gaze shifted from the gun to the woman. He took a careful step forward. “It was one night, a long time ago. I never meant to hurt you. I’m very sorry if you thought—”
“One night wasn’t enough,” she said with a hitch in her voice. “If you’d only given me a chance, you would have seen. We could have had—”
“You’re absolutely right,” Nolan quickly agreed. “If you put the gun down, we can start over. We can have dinner or something, and—”
The woman’s arm wavered and April tensed. “How can I believe you?” she screamed, shaking the gun at April. “When I come up here and see you with her!”
It happened so fast. April knew the gun was going to go off. She lunged forward to protect Nolan, but he shoved her aside.
The bang reverberated in the stairwell. Nolan shouted and was thrown back against the wall. As he slid down, he left a streak of red on the concrete. “Steve!” she cried out.
Veronica was already swinging the gun her way, but April tackled her. The gun flew out of Veronica’s hand as the two of them rolled down the stairs together.
April grunted as the step jammed her in the ribs and again when she bashed her temple on the wall, and when she and Veronica stopped rolling, the woman jumped on her and backhanded her across the mouth.
April was winded. She tasted blood on her lip but ignored it. She was used to taking a hit.
She swung a punch—no wimpy slaps—and Veronica’s head cracked back, and April pushed her off her.
The woman screamed and jumped to her feet. “Back off!” Nolan stood over them with the gun trained on Veronica, his other hand pressed to the bleeding wound in his side.
She quickly raised both hands in surrender but turned a sneer toward April. “If you think he’s going to stay with you just because you had his attention for one night, you’re deluding yourself,” she spat, blood dripping from her nose. “He’s just a shallow rich boy, and he’ll move on soon enough. He always does.”
April ignored her and raced back up the steps for her purse. Nolan kept the gun trained on Veronica as she dug out her cell phone and dialed 911.
Steve lay in a damn hospital bed. Apparently, he’d spent three hours on the operating table after the emergency room doc had declared that the bullet had chipped a rib on the way through his body, and they had to go in to check things out. They’d rolled up a gurney and made him get on it right then and there. The last thing he remembered seeing before finally giving in to the need to pass out was April’s drawn, severe expression. She hadn’t said a word to him since the ambulance had arrived at the apartment, and he’d wanted to tell her not to worry about anything, but all he’d gotten out was her name…and didn’t remember anything else.
She hadn’t returned since he regained consciousness here in the recovery room, and he was already going stir crazy lying around all by himself.
“That’s it,” he muttered, shoving aside the nurse’s call button and the tube across his arm, and struggling to sit up. His body protested the movement vociferously, sending pain shooting in all directions from the relative nucleus of the bandaged hole in his side. But he wasn’t giving up. He needed to find April.
The door opened just as he swung his legs over the mattress with a deep grunt. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be up yet,” Harrison said from the entrance.
“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?”
His friend came forward and took Nolan’s arm…then guided him back down into the bed. “That’s not helping,” Steve muttered.
“Says you.”
Harrison undid the button of his jacket and sat down in the chair beside the bed. He settled in like he had all the time in the world. “Why are you here?” Steve was getting grumpier by the minute.
“Your bodyguard called me while you were in surgery.”
His heart leaped. Where was she? “I’m fine,” Steve said. “I just want to get out of here.”
Harrison chuckled. “I have it on good authority that you’re going to be stuck in this room for at least one full night.”
“Where’s April?”
Harrison’s brow lifted knowingly, as if he’d been waiting to see how long he’d hold out before asking. “She’s been standing guard outside your room since you came out of surgery.”
Why didn’t she come in? Despite the arc of agony through his abdomen, Steve shifted to get out of bed again, but Harrison stood and stopped him. “I’ll bring her in, but Jesus, don’t pop a stitch and start bleeding. I have no desire to suffer that woman’s wrath.”
Steve frowned. “What do you mean?”
He chuckled. “She’s been very protective of you. The cops have tried to get in here to ask you a bunch of questions, but after she was done setting them straight, they left looking like first-year rookies who’d been reamed out by their commanding officer—without her even raising her voice or lifting a finger.”
Harrison went to the door and lowered his voice. “You know, we could probably use someone like her to run our security team. Nobody would dare steal corporate secrets with her around.”
Steve shook his head. “She’s destined for much bigger things,” he said, grinning with pride. He didn’t know if they were destined to go there together—he just knew he wanted to see her. Now. “Get her in here, would you? And then go away for a really long time.”
Harrison looked amused and left the room, but the door didn’t open again immediately. Was she really going to stay out there, avoiding him?
“Ms. Porter!” he shouted and then groaned. That hurt. But it got a reaction. The door swung open, and April stalked in. She was still wearing her dress from last night. It was wrinkled and dirty, and the bun in her hair was letting locks of her hair free to frame her face. She had a wicked black eye and another bruise tracing her jawline. But the dark s
mudge on her arm was blood. Dried blood. His blood.
Her gaze swept the room as if to confirm everything was still safe, carefully avoiding him directly until the very last possible moment. But when she locked on, there was fire in her eyes. Even with the pain meds and who knew what else flowing through his bloodstream, he was suddenly hard beneath the thin hospital gown.
“Do you require assistance, Mr. Nolan?” she asked coolly, crossing her arms. “I can fetch the doctor if you’re unable to use the call button.”
So it was going to be like that, was it?
“The only thing I need is you,” he said bluntly, but her only reaction was a tightening around her mouth. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “If that’s all you wanted, I’ll get your doctor to look you over, so that I can tell the police officers who’ve been waiting that they can come in to ask you some questions.”
He swore. “Damn it, April. Get over here. We need to talk.”
She tensed even more, like a pillar of stone that was hard and strong but would explode into a billion pieces if someone came along and pushed it over.
He shrugged. “All right, if you aren’t going to come over here, then I’ll have to get up and go to you.” He started to swing his legs over the bed again, not even having to pretend the gasp of discomfort that blew from his mouth.
She rushed over. “Oh! Get back in bed, you jerk. You’re the most disobedient, stubborn, practically certifiable—”
He let his head fall back into the pillow with a groan. It was a good thing that had worked because standing on his own might actually have been a problem. “I knew you’d give in. You’d never let anyone hurt me, not even myself.”
She snorted and put her hands on her hips. “Only because I haven’t been paid yet.”
He didn’t believe her. Not after last night. Not after this morning. She couldn’t kiss him like she did and not feel about him the way he felt about her. He remembered the hurt in her eyes when he’d turned cold and accused her of selling him out to the rags. He remembered the devastation on her face when that bullet had ripped into him.
And he remembered the way he’d felt when she went tumbling head over heels down the steps, wrestling for the gun with Veronica.
Screw expectations. Screw what was good for business. Screw his past. Screw the complications.
The future was what mattered…and he no longer had any doubt that April Porter was his future.
“What did you want to talk about?” she asked, wary.
With that settled, he assessed the situation like he would assess any business plan or mathematical problem. Which sequence was going to ensure the result he was looking for?
“I assume the police have Veronica in custody?” he started slow, easy.
Her lips pursed. “Yes, but we all know what happened the last time I assumed you were safe.”
He knew where she was going with that and stopped her. “You couldn’t have known the woman would be lying in wait in the stairwell of my building.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Her face twisted into an expression of disgust. “If I’d been less interested in getting laid and better at my job, maybe I’d have known about a great many other things, too, like the photograph of us in the elevator, and Edward Fielding at the—”
“Whoa.” He wasn’t going to let her blame herself. “I’m the one who arrogantly insisted that this whole thing was probably a harmless business tactic, that there was no way it was personally motivated. I said there couldn’t possibly be a woman out there I’d hurt so horribly she’d be driven to violence over it. So let’s not compare who was more wrong, because I’m pretty sure that I’m going to win.”
A small smile pulled at her lips. “Okay, you’ve got me there.”
“It’s got to be a record, though, right?” he said. “Who else gets two stalkers at the very same time? Do we know which one of them wrote the notes, broke into my apartment, and slashed my tires?”
“Actually, Edward Fielding has an alibi for the night your apartment was broken into, and he says he didn’t slash your tires, either, even though he is definitely the man I saw outside the clothing store that day.”
“Why was he following me?”
She paused. “Apparently, he wanted to return the money that his father stole from your father ten years ago.”
“He what?”
She nodded. “He told the police that he didn’t know what his father had done—he’d only been sixteen at the time. He said he just remembered being forced to leave his home in the middle of the night and ending up in Colombia. His father did die in that car accident two years later. Edward apparently went away to school after that and only returned very recently to deal with his mother’s estate when she passed away. In the course of this, he discovered a lock box in a bunch of his father’s old things. It had some newspaper clippings and the key to a safety deposit box at the bank in Bogota. When he found the money there and put the facts together, he came to find you. He was outside your apartment that one morning the cameras got him on tape because he was hoping to talk to you, but you didn’t come out. He said he followed you Saturday morning when we went shopping, but lost his nerve because you weren’t alone.”
“How did he know I was going to be at the gala last night?”
“Maybe he heard that your mother was the coordinator and simply decided that it was too difficult to get you alone, so he might have a better chance of talking to her.”
“But why all the skulking around? If he really wanted to give back the money, there was no reason for him to be afraid.”
“It’s not all the money. It’s whatever is left over after ten years. And don’t forget, his father fled the country with the whole family. Fielding seems to have been worried that the police would determine they were all a part of it.” She paused. “He wanted to do the right thing, but he didn’t want to get in trouble. He slipped back into the U.S. without passing through an official border crossing.”
Steve’s side ached. He grimaced and shifted position with a bit of a groan. April immediately stepped forward and readjusted his pillow. He grasped her hand before she could jump away again.
“Why didn’t you go home to change?” he asked. “You haven’t washed. You look tired. Did the doctors check you out? When you fell down those stairs, I…”
She looked startled. Had no one else asked after her?
“I’m fine.” She carefully pulled away from him and straightened. She looked down at herself and smoothed a hand over her hip, as if it was the first time her state of attire had registered. His fist clenched in the blanket. He hated that his blood stained her skin, that her hair had come loose. He wanted to draw her close. Wanted to hold her. Wanted to lay her back in a steaming bath and wash her from head to toe.
“I had a job to do,” she said.
“Bullshit. Someone else could have done it.”
She snorted and put her hands on her hips. “You were worried about me, admit it.”
His head was starting to pound harder than before. His mouth was dry, and the ache in his side was a persistent stitch. “And you called me stubborn,” he muttered when she still refused to give him what he wanted.
April frowned and touched his hand. “Nolan, do you need more pain meds?”
He grabbed on to her with all the energy he had left. “If I take them, do you promise you’ll go get checked out?”
Her lips twitched. “Yes, boss.”
He winced. “As of this moment, you don’t work for me anymore.”
Her gaze widened with hurt.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get paid for the job, but your duties are completed.” He gritted his teeth against the increasing discomfort spreading through his body. “Which means you call me Steve, and you agree to go on a date with me when I get out of here.”
She automatically stepped back and shook her head. “Nolan, I can’t. It’s more complicated than the employer/employee thing, and you know it.”
“All I know is that we’re good together. We’re good in bed. We’re good out of bed. We could be fucking awesome, but you live behind these walls that are so damn exhausting to scale.”
“Maybe those walls are there for a reason,” she whispered.
“I get it, believe me I do,” he said, remembering how his father’s blood splattered across the bedroom wall had looked exactly like the Rorschach blots the psychiatrists had made him look at for years afterward. “But one day, the walls will be so high and thick, that what you thought you’d created for your own protection will have become a prison.”
“What are you, a shrink now?” she snapped defensively.
“I’m just a guy who’s realized for the first time in his life that he wants something more,” he admitted.
“There’s no such thing, Nolan. Not between people like us. It’s too hard.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he said, firm. He was making her a promise, if only she’d see it.
But she was already retreating. He could see it in her eyes even before her feet started to carry her back. She dropped the button for the self-administering meds drip on the mattress by his arm and was moving away from him faster than he could say morphine shot.
She paused before walking to the door. “I’ll call Nora and make sure someone stands guard outside your room overnight,” she murmured.
“Who hurt you? Who made you so afraid to take a chance?” He didn’t know how he knew someone had, but she affirmed his suspicion when she flinched.
She clutched the doorframe, ready to propel herself through it.
“I never would have taken you for a coward, April Porter.” The pain in his side exploded as his posture tightened with resolve. He’d made his case to her as best he could, but if she couldn’t see it, if she couldn’t let him in and trust in him—in them—he wouldn’t beg.
He gave her a crisp nod as the ice settled in his chest. “Thank you for your professional assistance.”
He ignored the hurt that broke across her face at his abrupt and harsh dismissal. It wasn’t enough. She wasn’t prepared to give him more, and he couldn’t settle for anything less. He went ahead and pressed the damn button. At least if the drugs knocked him out, he wouldn’t have to lie there all night feeling sorry for himself.