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‘Ah, yeh...I guess,’ Ava said, flailing like a stranded beetle for a moment before levering herself up onto her elbows, then curling slowly up into a sitting position. Her head spun and nausea threatened again as she swayed.
‘Whoa,’ Blake said, reaching for her, his big hand covering most of her forearm. ‘Easy there.’
Ava shut her eyes for a moment concentrating on the grounding effect of his hand, and the dizziness passed. ‘I’m fine now,’ she said, shaking off his hand, reaching automatically for the back of her head where a decent lump could already be felt. She prodded it gently and winced.
‘Got a bit of an egg happening there?’ Blake enquired. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘I just kind of reacted.
Ava blinked. Blake Walker had been magnificent. ‘I’m pleased you did. I didn’t know what was happening for a moment or two. Was that really gunfire?’
Blake stood, using the bench and his good leg again. ‘Yep,’ he said grimly. A sound all too familiar to him but not one he’d thought he’d ever hear again. Certainly not in trendy Hampstead Village. He held his hand out to her. ‘Here, grab hold.’
Ava didn’t argue, just took the proffered help. When she was standing upright again, another wave of nausea and dizziness assailed her and she grabbed him with one hand and the bench with the other. She was grateful for his presence, absorbing his solidness and his calmness as reaction set in and the trembling intensified. His arm slid around her back and she leaned into him, inhaling the maleness of him—cut timber and a hint of spice.
She felt stupidly safe here.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured against his shoulder as she battled an absurd urge to cry. ‘I don’t usually fall apart so easily.’
Blake shut his eyes as she settled against him. Her chest against his, their hips perfectly aligned. She smelled like wine and the faint trace of coconut based sunscreen. He turned his head slightly until his lips were almost brushing her temple. ‘I’m guessing this hasn’t been a very usual day.’
Her low shaky laugh slid straight into his ear and his hand at the small of her back pressed her trembling body a little closer.
‘You could say that,’ she admitted, her voice husky.
And they stood like that for long moments, Blake instinctively knowing she needed the comfort. Knowing how such a random act of violence could unsettle even battle-hardened men.
The first distant wail of a siren invaded the bubble and he pulled back. ‘The cavalry are here,’ he murmured.
Blake stuck close to Ava’s side, his hand at her elbow. ‘Watch the glass,’ he said as a stray piece crunched under his sturdy boots. Her feet were bare, her toenail polish the same red as her bikini.
He could hear the sirens almost on top of them now, loud and urgent, obviously in the street. He flicked on the tap and removed the cloth. ‘Put it under,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll go get the door.’
* * *
An hour later Ava’s house was like Grand Central Station—people coming and going, crossing paths, stepping around each other. Uniformed and plain-clothed police went about their jobs, gathering evidence. Yellow crime-scene tape had been rolled out along the wrought-iron palings of her front fence and there were enough flashing lights in her street to outdo Piccadilly Circus in December. They reflected in the glass that had sprayed out onto the street like a glitter ball at some gruesome discotheque.
And then there was the gaggle of salivating paparazzi and the regular press who’d been cordoned off further down and none too happy about it either. Shouting questions at whoever happened to walk out of the house, demanding answers, calling for an immediate statement.
Safely inside, Ava felt her head truly thumping now. They’d been over what had happened several times with several different police officers and her patience was just about out. Her agent, Reggie Pitt, was there—a pap had rung him—to protect her interests, but it was Blake she looked to, who she was most grateful to have by her side.
‘Is there anyone you know who’d do this to you or has reason to do this to you?’ Detective Sergeant Ken Biddle asked.
Blake frowned at the question. The police officer looked old as dirt and as if nothing would surprise him—like one or two sergeant majors he’d known. But Blake had felt Ava’s fear, felt the frantic beat of her heart under his and didn’t like the implication.
‘You think there’s any reason to shoot up somebody’s house and scare the bejesus out of them?’ he growled.
The police officer shot him an unimpressed look before returning his attention to Ava. ‘I mean anyone with a grudge? Get any strange letters lately?’
Ava shrugged. ‘No more than usual. All my fan mail goes to Reggie and he hands anything suss on to you guys.’ Reggie nodded in confirmation of the process.
Blake stared at her. ‘You get hate mail?’
Ava nodded. ‘Every now and then. Pissed-off wives, guys who think I’ve slighted them because I didn’t sign their autograph at a rope line, the odd jealous colleague. Just the usual.’
‘But no one in particular recently?’ Ken pressed.
Reggie shook his head. ‘No.’
‘We’ll need to see them all.’
Reggie nodded. ‘You guys have got a whole file of them somewhere.’
Ken made a note. ‘I’ll look into it.’
‘Excuse me,’ a hovering paramedic interrupted. ‘We’d really like to get Ms Kelly to the hospital to X-ray her head and get her hand stitched up.’
The police officer nodded, snapping his notebook shut. ‘Do you have somewhere you can stay for a while? I would advise you not to return here while the investigation is being carried out and the culprits are still at large. Hopefully we can close the case quickly but until then lying low is the best thing that you can do.’
Reggie shook his head. ‘Impossible. She’s up for a new commercial—she has a call back in LA in two days. And she’s booked on half a dozen talk shows in the US next week to promote her new perfume.’
Blake bristled at the agent’s obvious disregard for his client’s safety—wasn’t he supposed to put Ava first? But the police veteran was already on it.
‘Cancel them.’
Reggie, who was a tall, thin streak with grey frizzy hair and round wire glasses sitting on the end of his nose, gawped like a landed fish. ‘You don’t just cancel, Detective Sergeant’ he said, scandalised.
‘Look, Mr Pitt, in my very long experience in the London Metropolitan Police force I can tell you that the best way to avoid trouble is to not go looking for it. Your client enjoys a high public profile, which, unfortunately, makes her very easy to find. Every pap in London knows where she lives, for example.’
‘I’ll get her a private security detail,’ Reggie blustered.
‘That is of course your prerogative,’ the policeman conceded. ‘But my advice would still be to lie low, which, by the way, would also be the advice any security person worth their salt would give you.’
Blake decided he liked Ken Biddle after all. He seemed solid. He obviously knew his stuff and didn’t suffer fools gladly. And he clearly thought Reggie was an A-grade fool.
Reggie shot the police officer an annoyed look before turning to Ava. ‘I’ll get you booked into a hotel, darling. Get some security organised first thing in the morning.’
Blake also decided Reggie was an A-grade fool. ‘I don’t think you’re listening, mate,’ Blake said. ‘I think the detective sergeant knows what he’s on about. It sounds like it might be best for her to go dark for a while.’
‘Ava, darling,’ Reggie appealed to her. ‘I think they’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’
‘Someone freaking shot up her house,’ Blake snapped. ‘Aren’t you supposed to have her best interests at heart?’
‘It’s in Ava’s best interests to keep working,’ Reggie said through gritted teeth.
Ava’s head was about to explode as they discussed her life as if she weren’t there. Her hand throbbed too and she felt incredibly weary all of a sudden. She just wanted to lie down somewhere dark and sleep for a week and forget that somebody had shot up her house. Her beautiful, beautiful house.
‘Do you think I could just go to the hospital and get seen to first?’ she interrupted them.
It was all the encouragement the paramedic needed. ‘Right. Question time is over,’ he said, stepping in front of them all, and Ava could have kissed him as he took over as efficiently as he’d bandaged her hand earlier. ‘We’re taking her to the nearest hospital.’
Reggie shook his head. ‘No. Ms Kelly sees a private physician on Harley Street.’
The paramedic bristled. ‘It’s nine o’clock at night. Ms Kelly needs an X-ray, possibly a CT scan. She needs a hospital.’
‘The nearest hospital is fine,’ Ava assured the paramedic, before Reggie could say any more.
‘Are you okay to walk to the ambulance?’ the paramedic asked her.
Ava nodded. ‘I can walk.’
Blake checked his watch. He could be home and officially on holidays within half an hour. He could almost taste the cold beer he had waiting in his fridge to celebrate the end of having to deal with Little-Ms-Red-Bikini.
Except Ava Kelly looked far from the diva he’d pegged her as right now.
She looked pale and shaken, her freckles more pronounced. The small cut on her cheekbone was a stark reminder of what had happened to her tonight and part of him felt wrong walking away. Leaving her in the clutches of her shark-like agent. He hesitated. She wasn’t his responsibility; he knew that. He’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and she was a big girl—what she chose to do next was none of his business.
But he didn’t feel she was going to get the wisest counsel from good old Reggie.
‘You need me for anything else, Detective Sergeant?’ he asked.
Ken shook his head. ‘I have your details here if I need to contact you.’
Blake nodded. That was that, then. Duty discharged. But before he could say goodbye her hand reached out and clutched at his forearm. ‘Can you come with me?’
Blake looked at her, startled. What the?
Sure, he’d felt wrong about leaving her but he hadn’t expected her to give him a second thought now she was surrounded by people to look out for her. And even though the same part of him—the honourable part—that had urged him to join the army all those years ago somehow felt obligated to see she was okay, the rest of him wanted nothing to do with Ava Kelly and her crazy celebrity life.
They were done and dusted. He was free.
He was on holiday, for crying out loud.
Not to mention he’d had enough of hospitals to last him a lifetime.
But her yellow-green eyes implored him and the doom he’d felt earlier today pounced. He sighed. ‘Sure.’
* * *
Blake strode into the hospital half an hour later. He’d waited for the mass exodus of press chasing the blue lights of the ambulance at breakneck speed before he followed at a more sedate pace. Then he’d parked his car well away from the main entrance on one of the back streets. He wasn’t sure why but when he spotted the bright lights of cameras flashing into the night as he got closer he was pleased he had.
Being photographed nearly every day on his arrival at Ava’s and questioned every freaking day as to their relationship when clearly he was just the guy running the reno had been bad enough. He didn’t need them spotting his car then adding two and two together and coming up with five.
He entered the hospital and enquired at the front desk and a security guard ushered him along the corridors to Ava. He clenched his hands by his side as he followed. Hospitals weren’t exactly his favourite places and the antiseptic smell was bringing back a lot of unpleasant memories.
They stopped at a closed door where two other hospital security personnel stood, feet apart, alert, scanning the activity at both ends of the corridor. They opened the door for him and the first person he saw was Reggie speaking to a fresh-faced guy, clearly younger than his own thirty-three years, wearing a white coat and a harried expression. Reggie was insisting that a plastic surgeon be made available to suture his esteemed client’s hand.
‘That hand,’ he said, pointing at the appendage in question, ‘is worth a lot of money. I am not going to allow some junior doctor to butcher it any further than it already is.’
The doctor put up his hands in surrender. ‘I’ll page the on-call plastics team.’
‘I need a consultant,’ Reggie insisted. ‘Someone who knows what they’re doing.’
Blake caught a glimpse of the doctor’s face as he backed out of the room. He looked as if he truly regretted coming to work today.
Blake knew exactly how he felt.
He was beginning to think Reggie was actually the bigger diva out of the two of them. He was surprised Ava put up with it. In three months he’d seen her fire an interior decorator, a PA and a personal trainer because they’d all tried to manage her. But she just lay docilely on the hospital trolley and let Reggie run the show.
He wasn’t used to seeing her meek and mild.
But he supposed having your house shot at while you were inside it was probably enough to give anyone pause.
At least there was some colour in her cheeks now.
Ava looked up from her hand to discover Blake was in the room. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, levering herself up into a sitting position.
The last half an hour had passed in a blur and she’d been unaccountably anxious lying in the CT scanner. The doctor had assured her it was clear but it wasn’t until right now she felt as if it was going to be okay. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way Blake had pushed her to the ground. It played over and over in her head.
He’d just reacted. In a split second. While she’d been confused about what was happening he was diving for her, pulling her down. She was on the ground before the noise had even registered as gunfire.
‘I thought you’d skipped out on me.’
He returned her smile with a fleeting one of his own. It barely made a dent in the firm line of his mouth. Ava wondered how good he would look with a real smile. Would it go all the way to his dark blue eyes? Would it light up his rather austere features? Would it flatten out the lines on his forehead where he frowned a lot? Puff up the sparseness of his cheekbones? Would it break the harsh set of his very square jaw?
‘I said I’d be here.’
Ava blinked at his defensive tone, his dialogue as sparse as his features. A man of few words.
‘Everything check out okay?’ he asked after a moment or two.
This time he sounded gruff and he glanced at Reggie, who was talking on his mobile, as if he was uncomfortable engaging in small talk in front of an audience. Ava was so used to Reggie being around, she barely noticed him any more.
‘CT scan is fine,’ she said. ‘Just waiting for a plastic surgeon for the hand.’
He nodded and she waited for him to say something else but he looked as if he was done. Then Reggie finished his call and started talking anyway. ‘I’ve booked you into your usual suite,’ he said. ‘We’ll organise for a suitcase to be brought to you tomorrow.’
Ava watched the angle of Blake’s jaw tighten at the announcement. ‘I thought the point of lying low was to not go to any of her usual places?’ Blake enquired.
The hardness in his tone made Ava shiver. And not in a bad way. Blake Walker was a good looking man. Not in the cut, ripped, metrosexual way she was used to. More in a rugged, capable, tool-belt-wearing kind of way. The fact that Blake Walker either didn’t know it or didn’t care about it only added to his allure.
The fact that Mr-Rugged-And-Capable was looking out for her was utterly seductive.
It had been a long time since someone had made her feel as if she mattered more than her brand. Her mother had cut and run when she’d been seventeen, leaving her to fend for herself in a very adult world, and Ava had never felt so alone or vulnerable.
Sure, she’d coped and it had made her strong and resilient—two things you had to be to survive in her world. But tonight, she didn’t have to be any of those things because Blake was here.
‘They have very strict security,’ Reggie bristled. ‘Ava will be perfectly safe there.’
Blake snorted in obvious disbelief. ‘Have you cancelled her commitments yet?’
