Beneath the Burn (22 page)

Charlee lingered in the doorway of the closet, calling to mind a history lesson in her short high school career. The lecture on the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution hadn’t meant much to her then. She’d been too young and naive to appreciate the abolishment of slavery. Yet, the conversation circulating around her was laden with references to a runaway slave, indentured servitude, and ownership. Nathan and Jay didn’t use those terms, but the connotations were there, forever haunting her waking and sleeping existence.

Hiding her story from Noah had been a detrimental mistake, one she wouldn’t make again. When Jay’s questions dug in, she nodded at Nathan to field them. She tuned out most of it as he unfolded the ugliest details. Craig Grosky, Noah’s death, the maiming of Roy’s henchmen, the stockroom, the surveillance, and Henry Munt, who was Nathan’s client and Roy’s blackmailer.

The whites of Jay’s eyes glowed out his taut crimson face. “How did Roy Oxford find you in St. Louis?”

She looked at Nathan. “We think the man who issued my fake identity documents connected me to Roy, or maybe Roy tracked him down. Either way, he sold Roy my Sarah Teves identity.” She shrugged. “Nathan hasn’t been able to locate him.”

He turned to Nathan, his anger whipping around him. “How did you kill off Sarah Teves after she went missing?”

“I leveraged Noah’s connections on the force. I was at the crime scene and my employees were involved in every step of the investigation, flubbing paperwork along the way. I knew who had Charlee and closing the case on her alias prevented government red tape from slowing down her rescue.”

Jay prowled along the windows, back and forth, his nostrils flaring tension through the room. “Is that why the FBI isn’t involved?”

“The bureau isn’t involved for the same reason they’re not patrolling his arms trafficking activities.” Nathan kicked a foot over his bent knee. “He owns too many inside.”

“There can’t be that many corrupt public officials. How do you know this?”

She stepped in his path. “Roy has been in and out of my life for nine years. I spent every minute with him from age sixteen to eighteen during my first captivity. I ran for four years after that…until the night I met you.” Her voice rasped. “Three years ago.”

The red around his eyes mirrored her grief over the long separation.

She cleared her throat. “Roy was more lax with me before my first escape, careless with his conversations. I don’t know names and doubt they would be authentic anyway, but his connections are deep. He owns a lot of people, Jay.”

“Stop using that word. He doesn’t own you. He never will.”

Her chest tightened under the weight of his assertion, but her voice remained light. “This isn’t your problem.”

He went deadly still. She couldn’t see it or hear it, but she could feel it bump over her skin and raise the hairs on her neck. A storm was coming, and she needed to calm it. “What are you doing today?”

“Whatever you’re doing.” He glared at her.

Crazy obsessive man. His unwavering focus should’ve been choking her oxygen. Instead, it enveloped her in a warm blanket. There was well-meant intention beneath his brand of crazy, the kind she would survive and possibly even savor. “I’ve got a tattoo to do.”

The storm rotated around him and settled on his face, swishing in his eyes and parting his lips. “
My
tattoo.”

She grinned. “It’s three years overdue.”

He fisted her hair and covered her mouth with his. She could feel his excitement in the hard pushes of his tongue. She captured it, responded to it with rolling thrusts in his mouth, and felt her own excitement curling her fingers. What would it be like to grab his ass and pull him closer? She dug her nails into her thighs.

The door snicked with Nathan’s retreat and reminded her that she was wobbling on unsteady ground. She broke the kiss with a lick of his upper lip and smiled up at him. “Wow. I didn’t want that to stop.”

He stroked a thumb over her lips, his own puffy and wet. “Then why did you?”

Because her emotions were running loose and entangling dangerously with those of a world-touring rock star. Because she didn’t know if he still meant to keep her at his side, and she didn’t know how she felt about that. “Because Laz said you were heading back to L.A. tonight, so we should get started on your ink.” Her face began to fall at the thought of him leaving, but she tried to keep it blank.

“Why are these here?” He traced the vertical lines between her eyebrows.

Her heart thumped as she looked at him. His beautiful talented lips turned down at the corners. The canvas of his body called to her artist’s fingers. And within all that tanned skin contained an artist too, a brilliant musician and singer. “I’m feeling a little clingy. It’s embarrassing. I don’t want you to go yet.”

He grinned, popping a dimple through the shadow of his whiskers, and turned toward the door. “Clingy is perfect because you’re coming home with me.”

So he meant what he said. She ran to catch up with him. “I can’t just—”

“I’ll work out the details with Nathan and Tony.” He opened the door and hollered, “Where’s the butler? Charlee needs her clothes.” He looked back at her. “Where are your tattoo supplies?”

“At our apartment in the Village.” Could she just pack up and go with him? She and Nathan moved every few months, and he hated New York. But L.A. was so very close to San Francisco—

“Anything else you need to bring with you?”

How dangerous it was to consider going with him. “I can’t just leave. I’ll have to discuss this with Nathan.”

“He’s coming with us.”

“He has a business here. If he wants to go, he’ll have to close it and I’m not leaving without him.” Her excitement to stay with Jay battled with her fear of being so close to the penthouse.

“Trust me.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were quiet and sober.

“I don’t know.”

The smile vanished. “You will.”

Tony knocked on the open door, holding a stack of folded clothes. “Looks like he got the vomit out.” Not a smile cracked.

“I’m going to ignore that comment. Who’s on duty right now?”

“Colson and Vanderschoot.”

“Send Colson to Charlee’s apartment. Tell him to pack what he can.”

Was he nuts? Even if she agreed to go, she’d do her own packing. Besides, he didn’t have her address. “Jay—”

A finger slanted across her lips and pressed. His hand at the back of her head reinforced the gesture. Then his eyes twinkled. Oh, fine, but shushing her like a child? Seriously?

Tony narrowed her eyes. “Are you extending your stay at the Plaza Hotel?”

“No, she and Nathan are accompanying us to L.A.”

She wanted to smack his hand away. Since touching him was off limits, she darted out her tongue and licked the finger at her lips. When his head swung around, his eyes wide on her, she bit down.

“Ow.” He yanked his hands back, holding his finger, his expression wounded. “I’m beginning to grow wary of that mouth.”

“Now that I have your attention, you big baby, here’s my terms, my…constitution.”

His jaw hardened.

“
I
am going to go pack up my tattoo kit and bring it back here.
We
can discuss next steps over tattoos and crumpets.” She accepted her clothes from Tony. “And I’m using your shower.”

“Can I pass two amendments to the Charlee Constitution?” His face molded into starchy formality despite the teasing in his voice.

“I’ll hear them.”

“First Amendment. I join you to collect your supplies.”

Could they get in and out without a celebrity circus? He did have a top-notch protective team on his payroll. “The fourth clause in the ninth section of the first article states that at no time will paparazzi or screaming women waving camera phones accompany me in on this mission.”

“Done. Second Amendment. Can we have pizza instead of crumpets?”

A snort escaped before she could catch it. “Approved.”

He called after her as she shut herself inside the bathroom. “What the hell is a crumpet anyway?”

“A tasty little muffin.”

Silence. Then his voice muffled through the door. “Does it have red hair and blue eyes?”

Her cheeks puffed with contained laugher. The cheesy bastard didn’t need encouragement.

Something thumped the door. Was that his head?

“I’ve changed my mind.” His voice vibrated the wood between them. “I want a crumpet.”

Her laugh escaped, echoing around her, and for the first time in a long time, she felt free.

30

A survival skill Jay picked up early in his stardom was his efficiency in quick disguises. He adjusted the long blond wig over his short brown hair until the fake bangs brushed the top of his big plastic framed sunglasses. A frayed Alice Cooper ball cap completed the concealment.

The bathroom door opened with an exhale of steam. Charlee padded out, straightening her black top over the waistband of her jeans. “I’m keeping your
Dead Milkmen
tee—” She tripped, staring at him with a slack jaw. “Shit. Garth Algar?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” She inspected his body from hat to Chucks with an amused cant to her eyebrows. Then she circled him, wrapping him in a sweet natural scent that was uniquely Charlee.

When she came back around, she was grinning and chewing a fingernail. “Jay Mayard’s sexy ass is still back there, but the rest of him is incognito.”

Just thinking about her noticing his ass made his dick jerk against his zipper. “This disguise hasn’t failed me yet.”

“Then you haven’t tried to pick up women wearing that wig.”

A laugh erupted from deep inside him. Dear God, it was so easy to want her. The way her cheeks glowed. The challenge in her eyes. The catch in her breath when he returned her stare. All the countless fucking reasons he never stopped craving her after she was gone. He dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers. “I’ve only tried to pick up one woman.”

A wall of silence descended between them. He searched her eyes, unsure how to interpret her mute response. “Has it failed me?”

“Not yet.” The level of resistance in her voice only fortified his resolve to scale her walls. He suspected she wanted to fight it, but maybe she was as drawn to him as he was to her.

A fist rapped on the door. “Charlee?”

“You can come in, Nathan.” She didn’t unlock her eyes from his glasses.

Nope, he was certain she couldn’t ignore the pull.
That’s right, baby. Don’t fight it
.

Nathan strode in and dismissed the disguise with a brief smirk. “Tony and I worked out the drop-off and pick-up points and the best evacuation routes at the apartment. We’re ready when you are.”

The absence of bulges in Nathan’s nondescript pants and button-up shirt meant his weapons were hidden. That kind of unobtrusiveness combined with his constant awareness of Charlee and her surroundings made him an ideal bodyguard. No doubt he’d piss in a store trash bin before he’d leave her unattended.

However, it was the instinctual way he placed himself between her and everything else that made him the only man Jay wanted leading the team he would hire to protect her. “I want to offer you a job.”

Nathan glanced at her and back at him. There was no surprise in that gaze. “I have a job.”

“This one would be the same. Just better paid.”

Nathan’s current income from odd PI assignments couldn’t possibly be enough to fund his crusade in revenge.

The tic in Nathan’s cheek confirmed it.

A toe poked the back of Jay’s knee, her nudge teetering his balance. “I know what you’re up to, Jay Mayard. The
three
of us will discuss this later.”

Small, sexy, with her honeyed lips pouting, she refused to be managed. He tried not to think about the events that made her so defiant, but he respected the hell out of her for standing against him if he slipped in his efforts to
not
control her.

“Mr. Mayard.” Tony poked her head in. “I summoned the car. It’s waiting at the elevator in underground parking.”

A ripple of panic bit along his spine. Time to leave his safe environment. His disguise hid his face, so there wouldn’t be any grabbing and touching.

What if a gusty wind disheveled it and someone saw through? The mobs would rain down upon them and endanger her.