The Masseuse (25 page)

The door thudded, the chair beneath it holding steady.

“Anna!” came a voice from the hallway.

Alec. He was close, just outside the door. Other people were there, too. I could hear them shouting.

“Help!” I screamed as Melvin’s long body folded over mine. My dress ripped around the thigh then straight up the bodice as I scrambled to get out from underneath him.

“Hold still,” Melvin was saying. “Hold still! I just want to show you!”

Remembering the self-defense courses my dad had sent me to, I focused on soft spots. First I jammed a thumb in his eye, then I hit him in the ear with my knuckle. When he rolled back, I kneed him in the groin and jolted to my feet.

The door thudded again. Again. The wood splintered as it broke open, and in my attempt to escape I ran straight into Alec’s hard chest.

F
or one split second, I pressed my cheek against his chest, feeling safe and warm and unafraid, and then Alec shoved me behind him into Amy’s outstretched arms. He was on Melvin an instant later, shoving him facedown on the floor.

“Stupid son of a bitch,” he muttered, blocking my view with his broad shoulders. “Stay down,” he ordered.

“Wait,” Melvin was saying. “Wait, wait. This is a misunderstanding.”

“Anna? You all right?” Alec asked. Amy’s bright eyes were round with shock. She rubbed my trembling arms and pulled me away from the door.

“Fine.” My voice cracked over the word.

“Jesus Christ, you can’t have that in here!” Derrick was suddenly in the middle of the hall, arms lifted as though he wasn’t sure if he should defend himself or throw a punch.

For one terrifying moment, I thought Melvin might have had a weapon I hadn’t seen. He’d said he’d wanted to show me something, but I’d sprayed him with pepper spray before he could. Frantically, I wedged between the doorway and Derrick, staring down at the whimpering man on his knees.

It was Alec who was holding the gun.

He aimed a black pistol, the same I’d seen in the briefcase in New York, between Melvin’s shoulder blades. A twitch in his eye was the only evidence of his thinly veiled fury.

“Clear the area,” Derrick was saying. “Amy, get these people back into the salon. I want everybody out!”

“Easy!” I shouted at Alec as he jerked Melvin’s arm at an awkward angle behind his back. “He’s not well. He needs help.”

Alec barely glanced at me. He fitted Melvin’s wrists together with a plastic zip tie.

“Call the police,” he told Derrick.

“Oh, I already did,” Derrick responded sharply. “Right after you tore by reception and started busting in on every private room.”

“He what?” I asked.

“My pocket,” Melvin said. “Please. She needs to see.”

“I got a call tracing Herman’s location to your work,” Alec explained, hauling Melvin into the chair. “When his car was empty, I suspected he’d cornered you in a room.”

“There were clients in those rooms!” Derrick roared. Over the speakers, soothing harp music played.

Alec glared at Derrick. “They’ll live.”

Derrick looked at me for the first time. “You’re right.
Shit
.” He grimaced, then put his hands on my shoulders. “Anna, are you okay?”

My gaze darted away from his, unable to hold still. My senses seemed impossibly focused. The music seemed too loud; it grated on my raw nerves. The scent of massage oils and hot wax from the aesthetician’s parlor clashed with smells of nail polish and hair product. I could see the vein throbbing in Alec’s neck as his gaze lowered down my body, pausing on my waist. I didn’t remember my dress was torn until his eyes narrowed.

He shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it to me. Gratefully, I wrapped it tightly around myself.

“My pocket!” Melvin said again.

Alec had already patted him down, but now reached into the right hip pocket, where Melvin was motioning with his chin. He removed a folded piece of paper, and as he read over the contents, he sighed.

“What is it?” I asked.

He folded it back up, and tossed it to me.

A love poem. For me. There was even a bit about my eyes.

“Shit,” I muttered.

Melvin Herman relaxed in his chair, a small, relieved smile on his face.

“It’s all true,” he said.

*

The police arrived a few minutes later. They took Melvin into custody, but told us he would be taken to a psychiatric hospital for assessment prior to booking. I hoped he was going to get the help he needed.

Derrick closed Rave down for the rest of the day. After I was done giving my statement, I offered to help him cancel clients, but he told me to go home.

I sensed a certain finality in his tone.

“I’m sorry this happened,” I told him.

He groaned and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, smearing the silver-tipped eye shadow he’d been sporting today.

“What happened with Melvin Herman isn’t your fault,” he said, sounding exhausted. “I’m glad everyone is fine. But I can’t ignore the fact that your boyfriend . . .”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said quickly.

“Even better,” said Derrick, flattening one hand on the front desk. “That yet another man who
thinks
he’s your boyfriend, showed up at my business, scared the hell out of half a dozen clients, and then pulled out a gun in the middle of the hallway. Anna, I adore you, you know that, but this is my life. Small businesses don’t rebound well from this kind of thing.”

I hugged Alec’s jacket closer around my body, hating that my belly clenched at the dark masculine scent that drifted up from the collar. Even now it was impossible not to want him.

I looked for him, but he wasn’t in sight. I felt his absence sharply, but he’d left as soon as the police had taken his statement and private-security-license information. What he’d been doing here at all confused me. Was his boss somehow invested in keeping me safe? Was that Alec’s assignment? If so, why?

“I know,” I told Derrick. “I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“You can go home,” he said.

Amy had come up behind me and pulled me away before I could say more. Outside, it had begun to rain. Just a drizzle, but a roar of thunder that shook the building all the way to the foundation promised more.

“I’m driving you to my place,” she said gently. “I’ll come back and finish up here later after we get Paisley.”

“I can walk home,” I said, heading toward the entrance. “I’m fine now. Really.” I held my hands out, showing her that the shakes were gone.

I paused at the door. Across the street, Alec leaned against his Jeep. Just the sight of him made my heart leap in my chest. He was like a striking, sad piece of artwork. His head was tilted forward, and his white shirt was already soaked and see-through, clinging to his sculpted shoulders. The wind picked up, bringing the rain in sheets, but he didn’t move.

“It’s pouring,” said Amy, following my gaze with a frown. “In five minutes it will be a torrential downpour. You’re not walking. Especially not in my Jimmy Choos.”

“Knock-off Jimmy Choos,” I said absently, watching Alec squeeze the water out of his hair the same way he was squeezing my heart, right now.

Her eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t told you.” She tried to block my view of Alec. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“I need to talk to him,” I said.

“You don’t. He finished with the police. He’s got no business staying here.”

“He came for me,” I said simply. “He thought I was in danger, and he came.” I didn’t understand the rest of it, but I believed that much was true.

“His boss probably paid him to,” she said, and then bit her top lip when she saw me flinch.

She was probably right. I had no reason to believe he’d come of his own free will, not after what I’d overheard at Maxim’s house. But I still had to know why he’d done it.

“I’ll be okay,” I told her. “I just need to talk to him.”

After a while, she nodded and handed me a closed umbrella standing in the box by the front door, a courtesy for clients so the weather wouldn’t mess up their styled hair. I took it and pushed through the open door, crossing the street with my purse hanging from my opposite hand.

When he saw me, he pushed off the car, water dripping down his face, his ears, the tips of his hair that always curled a little more when wet.

“It’s raining,” I said, pointing up at the sky. “I don’t know if you noticed.”

He gave me a small smile. “If only I had a jacket.”

I shrugged out of his coat, feeling the cold air bite at the exposed skin along the ripped seams of my dress. It didn’t matter to me if I was standing naked in the middle of the street. Things couldn’t get much worse than they already were.

I thrust the coat in his direction, out from under the shelter of the umbrella, but he didn’t take it. As the water saturated the expensive fabric, it grew heavier, weighing my arm down.

“Take it,” I said. “You waited long enough to get it back.”

“I was waiting for you,” he said. God, he looked tragic. Like a boxer making one last stand in the ring. It pulled at my soul, seeing him such a mess. As much as I wanted to hate him, it hurt to see him like this.

Another blast of rain hit us, threatening to flip the umbrella inside out. I gave up and closed it, and within seconds I was soaked straight to the bone. His shirt pressed flat against his chest, revealing a white undershirt underneath. His pants stuck to the strong, lean muscles of his thighs. My gaze lingered there, unable to tear away. The rain had somehow made him a hundred times sexier.

“Well, you saw me,” I said before I melted in a hot, steamy puddle. “Thank you for coming. I’m sure it was probably part of your job or something . . .”

“Anna.” The broken way he said my name made me want to curl into his arms and punch him in the face all at the same time.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why are you here? Why did Bobby call me an assignment? Why did you say you have to keep an eye on me? Why did you say you loved me, and why the holy fuck did you choose Charlotte?”

I swallowed a deep breath, still fuming. Saying the words out loud had made the actions behind them that much more painful. He stared at me while the rain pelted him, a hundred emotions playing across his face.

“I didn’t choose Charlotte,” he said. “I chose you.”

His phone rang—a new phone apparently, since I’d broken the last one. Even through the rain I could hear it. He pressed a button to send the call to voice mail.

“But you left me for her. I saw the messages on your phone.” Guilt took a bite out of my rage. He’d cared for her, and now she was gone.

“Will you come with me?”

I hesitated.

“An hour,” he said. “Just an hour.”

“Will you talk to me?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

His phone rang again. He silenced it.

I glanced down the street in the direction of my apartment. I knew what waited for me there—half-packed bags and an option to leave town with my tail between my legs. But here, right in front of me, was the possibility for truth. It scared me to death.

He held open the car door, and as I moved past him I could feel the heat from his body through the rain. It seemed to sizzle between us as he took the umbrella so I could slip inside.

When he was in the driver’s seat he reached into the back and grabbed a T-shirt to wipe off his face. It only helped a little. The water still dripped from his hair and off his shirtsleeves. I began to shiver and hugged my chest as he turned on the heat and pointed the vents in my direction.

The windows fogged. It wasn’t exactly the way I’d imagined steaming things up before, but things had changed. When he was finally able to see, he drove away from Rave.

His jaw was flexing, as if he were chewing on the words.

“I’m sorry about Charlotte,” I said to break the silence.

“Yeah, me too.”

Tap, tap, tap.
His thumb kept tapping against the wheel. The sound was torturous, like a never-ending supply of water dripping on the center of my forehead.

“Stop that,” I said. “You’re making me nervous.”

He froze. Readjusted his position in the seat.

“Sorry,” he said without looking over. “It’s hard not . . .” He motioned my direction.

“What?”

“Touching you,” he said finally. “It’s hard not to touch you.”

I swallowed. It was hard to keep my hands off him as well.

“I never hit that woman,” he said bluntly, his scowl etching deeper. “I would never hit a woman.”

Hearing him say so made me feel minutely better.

“But you would sell drugs.”

“That was a long time ago.”

His phone rang again.

“The man can’t make a sandwich without letting you know,” I said, miffed at the constant interruptions. Not that we were really talking anyway, but still.

“It’s not Max,” said Alec, annoyed.

I realized what was happening a moment later. It wasn’t his boss. It was another woman. He didn’t want to answer it in front of me.

“Wow,” I said. “Amy was right. This was a bad idea.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Just take me back to the salon. I can walk home.”

“You said an hour.”

I sank back in the seat, exhausted.

As if making a last-minute decision, he suddenly veered across the lanes and took a right out of the historical district. Through the splashes of water thrown by his windshield wipers, I made out a group of men huddled on the corner under a bus stop awning. Behind them was a stone building with the windows boarded up. As we continued on, the neighborhoods became progressively worse. Graffiti and barred windows. People glaring at us from their front stoops as we drove by. Not exactly the kind of place I wanted to find myself alone after dark.

We came to a decrepit-looking two-story apartment complex. The streets here were empty and looked like they had been for some time. He pulled up to the curb and killed the engine.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Then I promise I’ll explain everything.”

He reached for my hand, but I pulled it away. As much as I wanted to fall into him and forget everything, I couldn’t. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t even know what he was doing here.

With that, he left the car, jogging through the rain up a set of concrete stairs. I didn’t see him enter the apartment, but the window facing the street suddenly brightened to reveal the silhouette of an elderly man, thin, and hunched over.

What are you doing, Alec?
I said to myself.

I don’t know if it was because I was worried for Alec or for the old man, or if I was just tired of all the secrets. But before I thought twice, I was out of the car, running in my torn dress and knock-off heels over the patchy grass toward the stairs. I took them one at a time, shoving my hair back. At the top of the stairs were two doors, the paint peeling off both. Light peeked from beneath the one on the left.

I stood before it, gathering my courage. From inside came a man’s voice, older than Alec’s, and tired.