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Reggie took his glasses off. ‘I’m playing that by ear.’
‘You know, in the army you learn that you don’t secure an object by flaunting it in front of the enemy. I think you need to take the advice of the police and have her lie low.’
‘If Ava put her career on hold for every whack job that ever wrote her a threatening letter she wouldn’t have had much of a career.’
‘Well, this whack job just signed his name in automatic gunfire all along the front of her house. I think her safety has to take precedence over her career for the moment.’
Ava had to agree. Frankly she’d been scared witless tonight. She took Reggie’s advice on everything—he’d been with her a long time—but in this she needed to listen to the guy who had crash tackled her to the ground to keep her safe.
Who believed her safety was a priority.
Reggie hadn’t been there. He couldn’t understand how frightening it had been.
‘I’ve known Ava a long time, Mr Walker,’ Reggie said. ‘A lot longer than you. And she’s stronger than you’ll ever know. She’ll get through this just fine.’
‘He’s right, Reggie,’ she said as the silence grew.
Just because she was strong, it didn’t mean she was going to go down into the basement while she was home alone to investigate the thing that had gone bump in the middle of the night.
Because that was plain stupid.
And she hadn’t had longevity in a career that wasn’t known for it by being stupid. Strength also lay in knowing your limitations and accepting help.
After a solid sleep she might be able to think a little straighter, be a little braver, but tonight she just needed to feel safe.
‘I’m pretty freaked out,’ Ava continued. ‘I think listening to the advice of the police is the best thing. At least for tonight anyway.’
‘So where are you going to go, Ava?’ Reggie demanded. ‘You can’t go back to your home and everyone else you know in London is as famous as you.’
Ava didn’t even have to think to know the answer to that question. She just reacted—as Blake had done earlier tonight. ‘I can go to Blake’s.’
THREE
Blake gaped at Ava as her yellowy-green gaze settled on his face. ‘What? No.’ He would rather amputate his other leg than have Ava Kelly as a house guest.
‘Just for the night,’ she said.
Blake shook his head. ‘No.’ She sounded so reasonable but he had to wonder if the bang to her head had sent her a little crazy.
He was on holiday, for crying out loud.
Reggie—bless him—looked at his client askance. ‘Absolutely not!’ he blustered. ‘You don’t know this man from a bar of soap.’
Blake watched as Ava pursed her perfect lips and shot her agent an impatient look. ‘I have seen this man—’ she pointed at Blake ‘—almost every day for the last three months. That’s the longest relationship I’ve had with any man other than you, Reggie. This man—’ she jabbed a finger in his direction again ‘—pulled me down to the ground and shielded me with his body while some nutcase fired bullets at my house.’
‘And thanks to him you have a cut face, a gash in your hand that requires stitching and an egg on the back of your head the size of a grapefruit.’
Blake bit off the bitter you’re welcome that rose to his lips. He didn’t expect thanks or praise for yanking her to the ground. His military training had taken over and he’d done what had to be done. What anyone with his background would have done. But he didn’t expect to be accused of trying to maim her either.
Ava reached her hand out to Reggie and he took it. ‘I was frightened, Reggie. Petrified. I couldn’t...breathe I was so scared.’ She’d been like that after her mother left—terrified for days. Then she’d hired Reggie. ‘He makes me feel safe. And it’s just for tonight.’
Reggie looked as if he was considering it and Blake began to wonder if he was invisible. ‘Er, excuse me...’ he interrupted. ‘I don’t know if either of you are interested but I said no.’
‘You were the one who said she should lie low,’ Reggie said, looking at him speculatively, clearly coming around to his client’s way of thinking. ‘You said the point was for her not to go to any of her usual places.’
Blake could not believe what he was hearing. They were both looking at him as if it were a done deal. As if his objections didn’t matter in the face of the fabulous Ms Kelly’s needs.
‘I meant wear a wig, don some dark sunnies, throw on some baggy clothes and book herself into some low-rent hotel somewhere under a different name.’
‘Please,’ Ava said, the plea in her gaze finding its way directly to the part of him that was one hundred per cent soldier. ‘I feel safe with you.’
‘She feels safe with you,’ Reggie reiterated, also looking at Blake, his hands in his pockets.
Blake shut his eyes and shook his head. ‘No.’ He opened his eyes again to find them both looking at him as if he’d just refused shelter to a pregnant woman on a donkey. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I could live in a dive for all you know.’
Ava shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’
Blake snorted. ‘Right. A world-famous supermodel who insisted on four thousand quid apiece tap fittings is happy to slum it?’
She shrugged again, looking down her nose at him this time, her famed haughtiness returning. ‘I can slum it for a night.’
Blake’s gaze was drawn to her mouth and the way it clearly enunciated each word. Her lips, like the words, were just...perfect. Like two little pillows, soft and pink with a perfectly defined bow shape. But somehow even they managed to look haughty—cool and mysterious. As if they’d never been touched. Never been kissed.
Not properly, anyway.
Kissed in a way that would get that mouth all bent out of shape.
If she really wanted to slum it—he could bend her perfect mouth well and truly out of shape.
A flicker of heat fizzed in his blood but he doused it instantly. Women like Ava Kelly didn’t really want to slum it—no matter how much they thought they might. And he wasn’t here for that. He’d entered into a contract with Ava to do the renos on her home. Nothing more.
Certainly not open up his home—his sanctuary—to her. And he’d held up his end of the bargain.
Duty discharged.
‘I’m on holiday,’ he said, his voice firm.
But Ava did not seem deterred. She just looked at him as if she was trying to figure out his price—and he didn’t like it. Not one little bit.
‘One million pounds,’ she said.
Blake blinked, not quite computing what she’d just said. She actually had been figuring out his price? ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’ll give you that million pounds your sister needs.’
‘Ava!’ Reggie spluttered.
Blake gave an incredulous half-laugh, a half-snort. ‘What?’
Ava rolled her eyes. ‘It’s simple. I’ve had a very traumatic evening and I don’t feel safe. I don’t like not feeling safe.’ It reminded her too much of when her mother left and she was supposed to be past that now. ‘But you made me feel safe. And my gut tells me that means something. I’ve survived a long time in a cut-throat industry by going with my gut. So what’s it going to be? You want the money or not?’
‘Ava,’ Reggie warned.
‘Relax,’ Ava told him. ‘It’s for a charity. It’s all tax deductible.’
‘Oh...well, that’s okay, then.’
Blake shook his head as the heat that fizzed earlier flared again, morphing into white-hot fury. ‘No,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘it’s not okay. You think you can just buy people? Just throw some cash around and get what you want?’
She shrugged that haughty little shrug again and he wanted to shake her. ‘Everyone has a price, Blake. There’s nothing wrong with that. This way we both get something we want.’
Blake ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. Joanna called it dirty blond and was forever trying to get him to grow it longer now he was out of the army. But old habits died hard.
Joanna.
Who he’d already failed once.
He’d told Charlie he’d think of a way to help their sister and the charity that meant so much to her—to all of them. And it was being presented to him on a platter.
By the devil himself. In the guise of a leggy supermodel.
A very bratty supermodel.
‘You don’t even know what the charity is,’ Blake snapped, trying to hold onto his anger as his practical side urged him to take what was on offer.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I looked it up after we spoke earlier. A charity that supports our soldiers and their families. Very good for my profile, right, Reggie?’
Reggie nodded. ‘Perfect.’
Blake had been in enough war zones to know when he was fighting a losing battle. He also knew he should do the honourable thing and offer her safe haven for free. But he resented how she’d manipulated him and if she could drop a cool mil without even raising a sweat then, clearly, she was good for it.
Still...it all sounded too good to be true.
‘It’s as simple as that?’ he clarified. ‘One night at my place and you’ll give Joanna a million quid for her charity?’
Could he put up with a pain-in-the-butt prima donna for one night for a million quid?
‘As simple as that.’
Blake regarded her. His practical side was screaming at him to take the cash but the other side of him, the one attuned to doom in all its forms, was wary as hell.
‘You know there are thousands of men out there who would give anything to have me for a sleepover?’
She shot him a coy look from under her fringe and Blake glanced at her mouth. It had kicked up at one side as her voice had gone all light and teasy.
He didn’t want that mouth slumming it at his place.
But one million quid was hard to turn down.
‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘But I leave in the morning for my holiday and you have to be gone.’
‘Absolutely.’ She grinned. ‘I promise you won’t even know I’m there.’
Blake grunted as his doom-o-meter hit a new high. He sincerely doubted that.
* * *
‘This is where you live?’
Ava stared down at Blake’s apparent abode floating in the crowded canal. They’d slipped out of a private exit at the back of the hospital into a waiting taxi after her hand had been sewn up with four neat little sutures and she’d been discharged. Blake had refused to tell even Reggie where he lived and she’d been too overwrought to care but even so this was a surprise. If someone had told her this morning she’d be spending the night on the Regent’s Canal in Little Venice she’d have laughed them out of her house.
‘You wanted to slum it.’
Ava took in the dark mysterious shape. ‘People actually live on these things?’
‘They do.’
Ava realised she couldn’t have picked a better place to hide away—no one she knew would ever think to look for her here. But still...
She was used to five-star luxuries and, while she could forgo four-thousand-pound taps, basic plumbing was an absolute must. ‘Please tell me there’s a flushing toilet and a shower with hot water?’
‘Your fancy suite looking better and better?’
Ava was weary. It was past midnight. She’d been shot at, grilled by the police as if she were somehow at fault, then poked and prodded by every person wearing a white coat or a shiny buckle at the hospital.
She didn’t need his taunts or his judgement.
Yes, she’d bribed him. Yes, she’d told him she could handle it. Yes, she was used to her luxuries. But, come on, she just needed to stand under a hot shower and wash away the fright and the shock of the day.
Why couldn’t he be like any other salivating idiot who was tripping over himself to accommodate her? But, oh, no, her knight in shining armour had to be the only man on the planet who didn’t seem to care that she was, according to one of the top celebrity magazines, one of the most beautiful women of the decade.
And she was just about done with his put-upon attitude. He was getting a million bucks and bragging rights at the pub to the story—embellished as much as he liked because she was beyond caring—of the night Ava Kelly slept over.
She felt as if she was about to crumple in a heap as the massive dose of adrenaline left her feeling strung out. All she wanted was a little safe harbour.
So, he didn’t like her. She couldn’t exactly say he was her favourite person at the moment either, despite his heroics.
Life was like that sometimes.
‘Look, you’re angry, I appreciate that. I railroaded you. But you have the distinct advantage of having being shot at before. I’m sure you’re used to it. I’m sure it’s just another day to you. Me, on the other hand...the only shooting I’m used to is from a camera lens. I promise I’ll be out of your hair in the morning, but do you think in the interim you could just lose the attitude and point me in the direction of the hot shower?’
He didn’t say anything for a moment but she could see the clenching and unclenching of his jaw as a streetlight slanted across his profile. ‘You never get used to being shot at,’ he said.
Ava blinked. His words slipped into the night around them with surprising ease considering the tautness behind them. It was a startling admission from a man who looked as if he could catch bullets with his teeth.
It struck her for the first time that he might have been more deeply affected by the incident than she’d realised. But his jaw was locked and serious. He didn’t look as if he wanted to talk about it.
She did though—she really did. Suddenly she needed to talk about it as if her life depended on it.
