Taking Him (Lies We Tell) (28 page)

“Any particular reason why I should?”

“Because I’m your oldest friend?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “Oh, you mean the friend I haven’t heard from for six months?” The sarcasm in his voice cut like a sword. “The friend who ignored all the messages I left on her phone? The friend who wouldn’t even open her goddamned door?” His voice had risen, the deep, velvety tones of it gone rough with anger. “Is that the friend you’re talking about?”

She swallowed, remembering the sound of Finn hammering on the door. She’d been there, hiding out, putting the ear buds of her iPod in her ears and turning her music up loud. The first couple of times it had been too soon after the assault. She’d been neck-deep in shame and anger, and the thought of talking to anyone—even the man who’d known her since she was five years old—was too much. And afterwards…she just hadn’t been able to face the explanations.

Coward.

Well, yeah. Usually. But not today.

“There were reasons, Finn.”

His mouth, sharply cut and sensual, was set in a grim line. “Were there? And what were they exactly?”

Wait. Sensual? His mouth was sensual? What on earth are you thinking, girl?
Anna pulled her thoughts back, almost shaking her head. Obviously something about the decision she’d made before she got here messed with her head. She lifted her chin. “I don’t want to explain in the hallway.”

A terrible silence fell between them.

The austere, beautiful lines of his face were hard, his brown eyes hostile.

He didn’t move. Just stood there, stern as St. Peter before the Pearly Gates, measuring her as if she were a sinner looking for absolution.

Crap. He was going to make her work for it. A small curl of anger swept through her. Because he had no idea. No idea in the slightest what she’d been through. The hell the last six months had been. But she’d worked her way out. Yeah, she had. Here she was, still standing. Broken but unbowed.

And one thing was for sure. She wasn’t going to beg.

Anna lifted one shoulder, trying for casual. Swallowing the bitter disappointment and the hurt she knew she had no right to feel. “Okay. Have it your way.” And she turned to go.

“What makes you think I’m even interested?”

She stopped.

Of course. She should have remembered. He always came out fighting when he was hurt. But he also always apologized afterwards. Finn never had any problems with admitting he was wrong. But when he thought he was right, he was stubborn as hell.

Turning back, she met his dark eyes. “Please, Finn.” She took a breath. Held his gaze. “I need your help.”
 

She wanted his help? Surely she had to be kidding? Six months ago he would have moved the earth and everyone in it to help her. But now?

Now he wanted to tell her what she could do with her request.

Get a grip, Shaw. Stop acting like a hurt child.

Crap. So he was. But then Anna Jameson had always had the power to hurt him like no one else in the world.

Shifting against the doorframe, Finn stared at her, fighting his anger. “What do you want?”

His first reaction when he’d opened the door had been one of sheer, gut-wrenching relief. Which had then morphed into a volcanic fury he couldn’t remember ever having felt before. Certainly not directed at her. He’d known Anna for twenty years, and though she’d made him madder than hell on more than one occasion, he’d never felt like he wanted to punch a wall or anything.

His third reaction was to notice that she’d cut her hair and he didn’t like it.

Her green eyes, so vivid in her pale face, had a wary look to them. A look he’d never had turned on him. “Like I said, I’m not doing this in the hallway.”

Finn pushed himself away from the door and stood aside, gesturing at her to come in. He’d always been going to. No matter how angry he was with her, he’d never turn her away.

Besides, if he wanted an explanation, he’d have to let her in.
 

A look of naked relief passed over her face. “Thanks,” she murmured and brushed past him.

Kicking the door shut, Finn watched her as she walked into the huge open space of his warehouse apartment. There was no hallway. The front door opened directly into the apartment. Afternoon sun fell through vast windows, the air full of Auckland’s humid February heat.

Anna dropped the backpack she carried onto the old leather couch he’d once picked up from a roadside rubbish collection. Anna had helped. He still remembered trying to fit the damn thing on the roof of her old Volkswagen Beetle. It had been a miracle it had stayed on for the journey back to his house.

“Beer?” he asked shortly, moving over to the galley kitchen situated along one wall of the apartment.

“Yeah, that would be great.”

He opened the fridge, hooked out a couple of bottles, snapped off the tops and walked back over to the couch. She’d already sat down, perching right on the edge of it, her feet firmly on the ground.

Not like Anna. Normally she curled up like a cat, kicking her shoes off and tucking her feet under her.

He frowned. “Here.”

She didn’t meet his gaze as she took the bottle from him. Another puzzle.

Shit. He didn’t have much patience for puzzles.

Normally he would have sat down beside her, but something about her warned him off. A tension to her shoulders. A certain stiffness about the way she was sitting.

Finn backed away, sprawling instead in the old velvet armchair opposite her, an Anna gift from years ago.

“So,” he said, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen. “Do I get an explanation or what?”

Anna said nothing for a moment, lifting the bottle to her lips and taking a sip. Her hair slipped forward, glossy dark brown, the feathered ends of it touching her jawline. Nope, he definitely didn’t like the cut. She’d always had long hair, down to her waist.

“You cut your hair.” The words were out before he could stop them.

Green eyes flicked to his, a surprised look. “What? Oh, yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“I felt like a change.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

Something wasn’t right here. This strange awkwardness between them. She’d always been reserved, preferring to stay back and observe rather than head straight into things. People who didn’t know her took it for snobbery or aloofness, but he knew the truth. Anna thought before she spoke. She was careful. Cautious. She always had been. Ever since she’d been a silent five-year-old peering over the fence to watch him do stupid tricks on his skateboard.

Yet she wasn’t like that with him. He’d never gotten the ice wall. The one she projected to defend herself from the worst of her parents’ arguments.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Or do I have to guess?” He couldn’t stop his anger from bleeding into the question. Anna had always been there for him. She’d never shut him out like this before. Never ever.

One night in Bangkok changes all the rules.

Black Knight, White Queen

© 2013 Jackie Ashenden

Professional chess player Aleksandr Shastin never lets emotions rule his life, or his game. Not even the unexpected death of his mentor shakes his icy control—at least that’s what he thinks. Until he meets a woman in a Bangkok rooftop bar, a woman whose raw sexuality and emotional honesty find every invisible crack…and pries them wide open.

Graphic artist Izzy Cornwall fled to Thailand to escape suffocating grief and guilt after her sister’s suicide. As she locks gazes with Aleks, their instant attraction sets her on fire. And the way he looks at her makes her feel what she hasn’t felt in months: that she actually exists.

In the heat of a Bangkok rainstorm, their chemistry steams up what was supposed to be one night of pain-numbing passion. Neither expected that a single encounter would change all the rules, making Aleks the novice, and Izzy the grandmaster. But if Izzy wants his heart, she’ll have to show him that in order to win, sometimes you have to lose.

Warning: Contains one hot, controlling Russian chess master, a heroine who’s more than capable of taking him on in a game of strip chess, and a checkmate to make Kasparov proud.
 

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Black Knight, White Queen:

The man, an Australian tourist, moved his bishop and looked smug. “Check.”

Aleks wasn’t bothered. He’d set up the trap and the Australian had fallen right into it. Reaching out, he moved his knight. “Checkmate.”

The Australian frowned. “Shit. No way.”

Aleks said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. The evidence was right there on the chessboard.

The guy cursed a bit in the way Australians often did, then reached over the board to shake hands, gracious in defeat.

A few people had gathered around them while they’d been playing, the magnificent view of Bangkok from the hotel’s famous outdoor rooftop bar apparently far less interesting than a chess game. As the Australian vacated his seat, a couple of them looked as though they wanted to play too, but Aleks shook his head and began packing up his board. Playing tourists wasn’t much of a challenge and it did nothing for his game. He’d be playing real opponents in the tournament in a couple of days anyway.

As the crowd drifted away, he gestured to the barman again, and the man poured him another shot of vodka. Good Russian vodka. Viktor’s favourite.

He downed it, but the alcohol did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest at the thought of the old man.

Grief. It’s called grief.

Was it? It had been so long since he’d felt anything he couldn’t be sure. Then again, perhaps it was. Grief was, after all, the usual emotion after someone had died.

Aleks gripped the shot glass then pushed it over the bar for another hit, puzzled with himself.

In order to feel grief one had to care. And Aleks wasn’t sure that he did. After all, Viktor had been just another old man playing chess in Moscow’s Timiryazevsky Park. A man who’d been kind to him on a few occasions when Aleks had been young, but no one that special.

The barman filled up the glass again, and Aleks drank it down, rubbing his chest. But even the third vodka didn’t make a difference to the odd tight feeling. He may as well have been drinking water.

The wind picked up, replacing the scent of exotic flowers, sewage and the hot oil smell of a big city with the heavy, thick scent of rain. Distant thunder rumbled, a warning that perhaps an open-air rooftop bar in the middle of tropical Bangkok was not the best place to be in the rainy season.

Bar staff began to usher people through the tables of the outdoor restaurant situated near the bar, toward the steep, beautifully lit glass staircase that led up from the terrace to the domed elevator entrance.

Aleks pushed away the shot glass and stood.

Lightning crackled across the sky, lighting up the rooftop. This high up, the flash against the clouds was magnificent and prompted a startled gasp from the patrons waiting for the elevators.

Aleks didn’t look. Lightning was lightning. He’d seen it before. Moving toward the staircase, he began threading his way through the now empty tables of the restaurant area.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” a woman said in a husky, awestruck voice. “So beautiful.”

Something in the sound of that voice whispered along his nerve endings like the brush of cat’s tail. It made him stop. Made him look.

She stood near the glass balustrade that bounded the roof, staring up at the clouds as if mesmerised. Lightning flashed again like a magnesium flare, illuminating delicate features and an incredible mass of pale silver-gilt hair held back by a purple scarf. Her eyes were wide and in that flash of light, he saw they were blue. A startling electric blue.

He stared, unable to help himself, slowly taking in the rest of her. She wore typical backpacker gear, blue tie-dyed loose trousers and a tight little black singlet that revealed a slender, womanly figure. Clothes that wouldn’t have passed muster with the hotel’s draconian dress code that was for sure. How did she get up here? She was extraordinary. He’d never seen anything like her.

The first heavy, fat drops of rain began to fall, heralding the start of a tropical downpour.

“You should get undercover,” he said. “You’re going to get wet.”

She turned, those incredible eyes a flash of blue through pale, silvery lashes. “Thanks. But I’m okay.” Her mouth curved and he couldn’t help noticing the shape of it. Full, pouty. Beautiful. “A little rain never hurt anyone.”

There was a warmth to her smile. A warmth he found inexplicably fascinating. “Are you sure? The rain can get heavy here.”

Another lightning flash ripped across the sky. Her eyes glittered like lit sapphires. “Yeah, I know.” Her smile widened, the brilliance of it a burst of sunshine in the midst of the storm around them. “Thanks for the warning, though.”

Heat gathered inside him. A spear of something so intense he almost couldn’t breathe.