Hot Zone

by Patricia Rosemoor

  Then they lay together, he still in her, kissing and sighing in content.

  LUKE DEVRIES disgusted her. Having slipped in through the back door, she stood mere yards from their tangled bodies and spewed mental venom.

  How could she ever have imagined she loved him?

  Look at him, the prick, sprawled all over Helen Rhodes, the bitch in perpetual heat. So self-involved…so certain of their mortality…

  But she could fix that.

  Even as she thought how, she knew she’d sunk to a new low, one that would put an end to everything.

  Not her fault…they’d driven her to this. She had to end the pain they’d put her in, and she could think of only one way to do so.

  Finding the supply closet, she removed the tools of their destruction.

  HELEN AWOKE and took her time staring at Luke. He was equally handsome whether awake or asleep, she thought. But then she loved him—loved him!—and so she might be just the tiniest bit prejudiced.

  Even as she thought the taboo words, her chest squeezed tight and her stomach knotted. Love really was the scariest thing she’d ever faced.

  Wanting to look her best for him when he awoke, she slipped from the couch, grabbed her purse and headed for the ladies’ locker room. Wondering what that smell was—someone nearby using a fireplace in summer?—she glanced around but saw nothing amiss, so went inside.

  They were both still fully dressed. She’d never made love fully clothed before. She’d never done a lot of things she’d done with Luke.

  Smiling at the thought of more surprises to come, she freshened up and poked around at her hair. No matter what she did, she still looked like a woman who’d just made love…hot, sweaty, passionate love.

  Helen smiled and dug in her purse for her lipstick.

  Her fingers hit paper—the printouts of the articles on Hot Zone openings and the one about Luke being fired. Removing them from her purse, she then unfolded them and gave them another once-over.

  Helen found herself staring at the photos, her gaze going from one page to the next to the next.

  “Which one of you is guilty?” she asked the stills of Alexis and Flash. And then she spotted something she hadn’t noticed before. Another familiar-looking woman. She glanced over to the article about Luke’s firing and thought she saw the same woman in the background. “It can’t be…”

  But it was!

  She gripped the papers tighter, meaning to show her discovery to Luke, but the moment she opened the locker room doors, she dropped everything in horror.

  Smoke rolled in over her, while flames danced over couches and a coffee station.

  Hot Zone was on fire!

  16

  LUKE JERKED AWAKE coughing. Water was streaming down on him from the ceiling, but the wet air was thick and cloying with something else.

  Smoke!

  Fire!

  He flew to his feet and then collided with the edge of the couch when smoke seared his lungs. He coughed long and hard. The sprinkler system had gone on, but the choking atmosphere had intensified.

  The source of flames and smoke came from his left. A couch and a couple of upholstered chairs were on fire. And beyond them, the coffee station…

  Suddenly it hit him. Where the hell was Helen?

  Between coughs he called out, “Helen!”

  “Luke, here.”

  He turned to the sound of her voice and through a spreading cloud of dark smoke spotted her standing in the locker room doorway, her purse and papers strewn around her feet. Appearing terrified and frozen to the spot, she obviously didn’t know which way to go.

  He had to get her out of there and fast.

  If anything happened to her…

  The thought made Luke sick inside and forced him to move. Still coughing, he grabbed a couple of small pillows from the couch, both soaked with sprinkler water, and used one to shield his face. When he got to Helen, he handed her the other and she did the same.

  Taking her hand, he led her around the fire, which hadn’t yet spread, and pulled her toward the back door. Both coughing from the smoke despite the protection, they stumbled into the alley.

  Helen fell against the building’s brick exterior and gasped, “Cell phone. Call 9-1-1.”

  Taking in fresh air and trying to get his cough under control, Luke was staring into the burning interior. “An alarm has already gone off at the station. The fire department should be on its way.”

  But he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t watch his business go up in smoke before his eyes without trying to stop it. The fire was still small, still contained. He had to do something before it spread.

  Thinking quickly, he said, “I have to go back inside.”

  “Luke, no!” Helen grasped his wrist as if she would never let him go.

  “I’ll be all right.” He took her in his arms to reassure her. She was shaking, and so was he. “There’s a hose in the janitor’s closet. I’m going to try to put out the fire.”

  Helen clung to him, crying, “No, please.”

  But after kissing her quickly, Luke said, “Stay put!” pulled away and ran back into the burning building to fight the fire himself.

  ANXIOUSLY WAITING for the fire trucks to arrive, praying that Luke would come out safely, Helen felt a moment’s shock when someone came up behind her and shoved her hard against the building.

  Gasping, she whirled around to find Kate Malone glaring at her.

  “You bitch!” her assistant spat.

  Helen might have been surprised, but before leaving the locker room, she’d had that long, clear look at the clippings in her purse. The clippings had revealed a familiar pale, thin woman in the background of the photos accompanying both the article about the Hot Zone opening and Luke’s termination from Cooper Coffee Company. Articles she’d dropped when she’d seen the fire.

  The fire that Kate must have started.

  “It’s been you all along,” Helen said.

  “Right under your own nose.”

  “Why, Kate?”

  “Because I fell in love with Luke DeVries the moment I met him.”

  As had she, Helen thought. Though she didn’t think this was the right moment to say so.

  “Luke doesn’t even know you, Kate.”

  “Because of you! You’ve blinded him or he would be mine. I’m the secret of Luke’s successes. He wouldn’t be anywhere without me.”

  The woman was delusional. And clever. Helen remembered Kate responding to her ad for a job just as work had started on the Hot Zone renovation. Kate must have planned to put her out of business from the first…as she must have done to other competitors over the past three years.

  Anger getting the best of her, Helen said, “Luke never knew you existed, did he, Kate? Not even at Cooper Coffee Company. Is that where you first became obsessed with him?”

  With fire engines sounding in the distance, Kate said, “Yeah, I worked at the coffee brokerage, but he never so much as noticed me, not even when I applied for the job as his assistant. He passed me over for someone flashier. But I was determined to prove myself. I helped him at Cooper, too, but he was fired anyway.”

  “You mean he was fired because of you.”

  Kate’s jaw tightened. “Whatever. And when he started his own business, I figured that I could earn his trust and love by helping him build a success.”

  “The woman behind the man,” Helen murmured.

  “He never even thanked me for all my hard work,” Kate said, her voice petulant as if she really thought he should. “But knowing my day would come, I made it a point to stay in the background. Now is that day. Finally, he’s going to see me for who I am.”

  The fire engines were out front now. Helen could hear the engines…the sound of voices…the shattering of glass. Her heart went out to Luke. His business was being destroyed before it got off the ground.

  Luke. Where was he? Suddenly she realized how long he’d been in there.

  “Now is the day you go to jail!”
Helen told Kate before yelling, “Luke, please come out!”

  A man was heading over from the building next door and Kate suddenly seemed to realize she might be caught. “I’m not going anywhere I don’t want to be!”

  Kate tried to duck away, but Helen caught onto her arm and held fast.

  “Help me!” she called to the man, who was wearing a security guard’s uniform. “She started the fire!” And when Kate clawed her and ripped free of her grip, Helen ran, too. “Don’t let her get away!”

  The man sprinted and caught the fleeing woman, and as hard as Kate fought him, she couldn’t wrench herself free.

  Helen turned back to the doorway. Curls of escaping smoke taunted her. Still no Luke.

  Sick inside, she stood there for a moment, but knew she couldn’t simply wait to find out what happened to him. There was no one back here in the alley but Kate and her captor.

  And her.

  Frantic to make sure Luke got out of the burning building alive, Helen picked up the pillow and set it back over her face, then slipped back inside, ignoring the calls of warning from the man outside with Kate. The smoke seared her eyes but she followed the trail made by the hose until she found Luke on the floor, overcome by the smoke.

  Dear God, don’t let him be dead!

  Firefighters were entering the building from the street side and a pressurized hose sent a stream straight at the quickly spreading blaze. One of the men spotted her and ran to help her get Luke up off the floor and out into the alley where a small knot of observers gathered and a uniformed officer was cuffing Kate.

  The fireman set Luke down on the alley floor and called for paramedics who were already on the scene.

  “Luke, listen to me!” Helen said frantically as she got to her knees and bent over him. She grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “You have to wake up. Our date isn’t over. As a matter of fact, I decided that we should have more dates. A whole series of dates! I’ll make a list, okay?”

  Luke coughed himself into consciousness and Helen couldn’t help herself. She started to sob in relief.

  Grinning weakly, he gasped, “I’m going to be just fine. And I’m going to hold you to that promise. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

  AFTER A CHECKUP in the emergency room, Luke was released.

  Before leaving the hospital, he and Helen talked to a detective, who took copious notes on the situation and on past situations that might also have been crimes committed by the woman who now called herself Kate Malone.

  “I think her name was Sally something,” Luke told the detective. “She isn’t the kind of woman who sticks in a man’s memory.”

  The reason he’d never recognized her…and her reason for doing all those terrible things in the name of love.

  Helen told the detective about the articles and photographs she’d found and promised she would get back online and make copies for him. The detective thanked her and promised to follow up with them in the morning.

  Then Helen brought Luke home to take care of him.

  He was still coughing, but otherwise seemed to be all right, so Helen was a little surprised when Luke asked her to help him upstairs and into the bathroom so he could shower off the grime from the fire. Thinking she needed to do the same, Helen hooked an arm around Luke’s waist and guided him up the stairs.

  “I still can’t believe I hired that psycho,” she said, despondent at the thought that she’d been so mistaken. “I always thought I was a pretty good judge of character. I even changed my mind about you once I met you.”

  They were in the bathroom now. Luke wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close.

  “Some people are simply better actors than others,” he said. “And Kate or Sally or whatever her name obviously has some kind of personality disorder. People with psychological problems can be very clever. Now help me get these clothes off, would you?” he asked in a tired voice.

  Doing as he asked, trying to ignore the stirrings she felt with each touch, Helen said, “If only I had figured out she was the one trying to sink me, you wouldn’t be hurt and Hot Zone wouldn’t have to be rebuilt.”

  “There is a bright side to the situation,” he said as his trousers slid down his legs to the floor.

  “Bright side?” she echoed.

  “Having to rebuild will keep me here longer than either of us imagined. We’ll have plenty of time for those dates you promised me.”

  Suddenly Helen realized Luke was working on removing her clothes. Her response to the touch of his hands on her flesh was immediate and intense, but she couldn’t simply give way to her feelings.

  “About that…I was frantic at the time. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “You’re trying to renege on our deal? C’mon, let’s get in the shower.”

  They were both naked now and both streaked with grime. Helen let him pull her to the shower stall, which was barely big enough for them both.

  While he adjusted the water to a comfortable temperature, she said, “I’m not trying to renege, I simply think we should take things one day at a time.”

  He pulled her inside, under the spray of water, and closed the door, saying, “So which day will you marry me?”

  “What?”

  “Marry me,” he repeated, as if she hadn’t heard him the first time.

  Helen gaped at him. “You’re crazy—”

  “True.”

  “—we’ve only known each other for a week.”

  “It feels like a lifetime to me,” Luke said, moving in on her for a quick kiss. “I’ve never had a place I wanted to call home before, but I want one now,” he said, soaping her, his seductive strokes quickening her body, making her hazy-headed and weak-kneed. “You’ve been friends with Nick and Annie forever. I want that with you. Hell, I want more. I want everything. The whole enchilada. A house. Kids. Everything. But mostly I want you. I want you to be the place I come home to.”

  Words Helen had always longed to hear from a man she loved.

  “Then come home now,” she whispered, opening her arms to him and, more importantly, her heart.

  Epilogue

  LAST TO MEET, first to marry, and in a record month’s time, at that. Helen turned to admire herself in the full-length mirror—because there hadn’t been time for custom-made, her mom had insisted on choosing and buying the dress as a wedding gift. Mom should be here now, but earlier, she said she’d forgotten something and had rushed out in a tizzy.

  “Wait until Luke sees you!” Annie said.

  Isabel added, “You’re a regular blond bombshell. He’ll probably fall all over himself.”

  Thankful she’d put her trust in someone with more classic fashion sense than her own, Helen grinned at her reflection. The simple off-white satin clinging to her curves and just barely sweeping the floor behind her was something out of a thirties movie. Long gloves covered her arms over the elbows. To complete the look, she’d tamed her curls, and rather than a veil, had fastened in its strands a white magnolia like the ones in her simple bouquet.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Helen said, nerves getting to her. “One of you pinch me!”

  Annie snorted. “And have Luke asking where you got the bruise? I think not.”

  Helen hugged her best friend and maid of honor, beautiful in a slinky peach satin calf-length number. “You’re next,” she said, knowing Annie and Nate were planning a Christmas wedding. “And it won’t be long before Nick pops the question,” she said to Isabel, who was stunning in her lavender satin bridesmaid dress.

  “I’m in no hurry,” Isabel said. “But someday…”

  Helen knew Isabel had barely gotten her career as a freelance political journalist off to a fine start, but she saw the way the other woman looked at Nick. And she knew Nick was more than ready. Maybe a spring wedding…

  But now it was time for hers.

  “Shall we?”

  They left the dressing room of the church arm-in-arm only to run into her mom, who burst i
nto tears at the sight of Helen.

  “Mom, it’s okay!”

  “I know. It’s more than okay,” Christine Rhodes said, wiping at her eyes with one hand, holding out a jeweler’s box with the other. “You’re simply stunning.”

  Helen took the box. “What is it?”

  “Something old.”

  The dress was new, the tiny thong and fancy garter belt Annie supplied blue, and Isabel had lent her a simple if stunning strand of pearls to wear. Helen opened the dark blue box and gasped when she saw the pearl and diamond bracelet lying across the inner velvet.

  “It’s beautiful. Mom, I’ve never seen this before. Where…” It hit her, then, why her mother wouldn’t have shown it to her. “My father.” Uneasy, she hesitated.

  “We did love each other, Helen. He gave this to me when he asked me to marry him and he wouldn’t take it back. Later, he told me that if you were a girl, I should give it to you on the day you married.”

  Knowing that to refuse would upset her mom, Helen held out her wrist. “You put it on me.”

  In an odd way, her father would be there through the bracelet. She’d invited him and her siblings, but they’d sent their regrets. Luke’s kid sister Peggy, however, was in attendance with her mother and their father with his current wife. Alexis had brought her newly acquired boyfriend—apparently, she’d moved on emotionally now that Luke was spoken for. And Flash had moved on professionally, right out of town.

  “Ready?” her mom asked.

  Helen took a big breath. “As I’ll ever be.”

  They all stepped into the garden where Nick took Isabel’s arm and Nate took Annie’s. The stringed trio began playing. A jittery Helen slipped her hand onto the arm of the woman who would give her away. Her mom patted her hand and Helen relaxed as they moved forward.

  And when Luke saw her and his eyes widened and a smile lit his face, she lit up, too, from the inside out. Her mom gently pushed her toward him, and Helen let go of one life and stepped into a new one.