Torch (Take It Off) (17 page)

15

I went home. I only hit a couple curbs along the way, one of them being in front of the house.

I let myself inside and proceeded to check every room and closet to make sure there were no murderers lurking, and then I went into the bathroom and cleaned up the scrape and drying blood on my leg.

Thank goodness he had a first aid kit beneath the sink because I needed a bandage.

After that I curled up on the couch, inhaling Holt’s scent on the cushions. I flipped through the channels on TV, looking for something that might take my mind off the fact someone out there wanted me dead.

It wasn’t something I could wrap my brain around easily. It seemed one minute I was shelving books, going treasure hunting at flea markets, and wondering what type of candy to eat when I watched a movie, and the next I was constantly chased by a burning flame, looking over my shoulder when I went out in public, and living with a man I just met.

Mom always said the key to life was playing the cards you were dealt. Well, how could I play when I didn’t understand the game?

A commercial for some entertainment “news” show that came on at night broke into my thoughts, causing me to look up.

New details on last month’s death of iconic rocker Tony Diesel have been released. The autopsy report confirms that his sudden and shocking death was caused by an accidental drug overdose. Tony was buried weeks ago in an exclusive Beverly Hills cemetery. The service was not open to the public. Now that the cause of death is confirmed, all attention will be directed…

I picked up the remote and changed the channel, completely uninterested in celebrity gossip.

I didn’t know who Tony Diesel was. I didn’t listen to rock music. I thought it sounded like a bunch of men screaming unintelligible words into a microphone. I preferred pop and country music. But it did seem like he and I had something in common.

Neither one of us was too good for death.

It didn’t matter how much money you had, how famous you were, or how badly you just wanted to be left alone. A drug overdose seemed like a pretty crappy way to die. Of course I really didn’t know of any good ways to die.

I shook my head. I was being weird and morbid. All these thoughts about death and dying. Checking the closets and the showers for lurking killers. This wasn’t reality. This was a nightmare, and I badly wanted to wake up.

And since I was already awake, that didn’t really seem like an option.

So I decided to be in denial.

I was going to sit here and watch an infomercial on hair loss for men and pretend I didn’t have a care in the world.

Okay, I wasn’t going to watch that. It was ridiculous.

I flipped around until I found a marathon of
The Vampire Diaries
.

At least the men on that show weren’t balding.

I immersed myself in love triangles and teen drama for the rest of the day. It was actually pretty entertaining. Even still, when it was time to pick up Holt, I was glad. I’d missed him all day. And it wasn’t because I’d been scared. There had been a lot of times in my life when I was scared or unsure, and I never missed anyone; I only ever counted on myself.

I missed Holt because… well,
because
.

I wasn’t going to think about that either.

As I was walked out to the truck (I parked it on the road so I wouldn’t have to back out of the driveway) a car was driving down the street. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, except for the fact someone had just tried to mow me down.

Instead of moving toward the truck, I stopped in the center of the yard and stared at the car as it crept by. It wasn’t a dark sedan like the car in the Target parking lot. It was a silver BMW.

I swear it slowed down as it passed the yard where I stood. The windows were so darkly tinted that I couldn’t see who sat inside. I waited until the car turned off the street before bolting to the truck and shutting myself inside.

At the end of the street, I stopped, making sure no one was behind me, and put the truck in park to adjust the phone books beneath my butt. One was sliding loose and it was very uncomfortable.

Once that was finished, I put the truck back in drive and glanced down the street before pulling out. The silver BMW was parked a few houses down at the curb.

Strange
, I thought and pulled out. About four houses down in the opposite direction, the BMW pulled out onto the road and followed me.

Call me crazy, but this probably wasn’t good.

My grip on the steering wheel tightened; my knuckles turned white. I told myself to calm down, that it was probably someone just driving to wherever they had to be. But that didn’t stop me from compulsively checking the rearview mirror to see if they were still there every three seconds.

They were.

It was a man, if I wasn’t mistaken. He had very short hair and sunglasses on his face. I couldn’t make out anything more, and I needed to keep my attention on driving. I thought about calling Holt, but then I remembered I didn’t get a new cell phone yet.

I came to a rather large intersection and figured this would be the place he would turn. He would go right toward the more congested area with the shops and restaurants, and I would go left toward the firehouse.

But that isn’t how it happened.

I turned and so did he, getting bolder and moving right up behind me. He trailed so close behind that when I looked in the rearview, I couldn’t see his front bumper. Nerves cramped my stomach and I fidgeted in my seat. Sweat slicked my palms, making the steering wheel slippery as I drove.

Almost there.

The man following along behind me laid on his horn. I jumped and one of the phone books slid off the stack. I sat up as high and straight as I could and scooted to the edge of the seat, pressing down on the gas a little more. The large engine responded immediately and I shot forward.

The BMW shot forward as well.

When I looked in the rearview, I noted he wasn’t only tailgating me and laying on his horn, but now he had his arm out the window, shaking it at me.

His arm was covered in dark fabric.

Panic took over.

The fire station came into view, and I put the pedal to the metal. The truck ripped up the street, the tires peeling against the road and kicking up a little smoke. I didn’t care. I kept going, driving as fast as I could. I almost overshot the parking lot, but I slammed on the brakes, jerked the wheel, and drove up over the curb. I skidded to a stop in the center lane, not in a parking spot and not giving two shits.

I shoved open the door as one of the men came around a giant fire engine, confusion on his face. I jumped to the ground, stumbling a bit, my wrist taking some of the fall, and I cried out.

The BMW pulled into the lot behind me, the car screeching to a halt. The driver’s door opened so the man could climb out.

“Help me!” I cried, pushing up and rushing toward the fireman. “That man is chasing me!”

I dashed forward and he caught me by the shoulders, his gaze sharpening on the other man behind me.

“He tried to run me off the road!”

Other men were spilling out of the garage now, assessing the situation and forming a circle around me.

“Katie,” the man yelled, and I turned, looking around at the guys surrounding me. My pursuer was an older man with broad shoulders and a tan.

“Oh my God, he knows my name,” I told the man still gripping my shoulders. His dark eyes narrowed on my face and his mouth pulled into a grim line.

“He won’t get near you,” he promised.

The man rushed forward and I shrieked.

He was intercepted by several very angry firefighters. He tried to push through them, still intent on getting to me. I heard him speak but didn’t hear his words.

And then one of the men drove his fist into the man’s face and he crumpled to the ground.

My entire body slumped with relief.

The loud bang of a door swinging open and hitting a wall made me jump and look toward the firehouse. Heavy footsteps pounded inside the garage, drawing closer as Holt yelled my name.

When I caught a glimpse of him, my entire body gave a great sigh. The men around me parted, giving him a path directly to me. He stopped just shy of yanking me into his arms, his eyes sweeping over every inch of me before settling on my face.

“I didn’t wreck your truck,” I said, trying to sound anything other than completely terrified.

And then I was in his arms. My face buried against the strength of his chest.

16

“Shouldn’t we have stayed?” I asked him, glancing out the rear window as we drove away from the fire station.

“If we stayed, I would have killed him.”

“Oh. Well, I guess it’s good we left, then.”

“Do you want to explain to me why I want to kill that guy back there?”

I told him exactly what happened, leaving out the part about almost getting run over at Target. I figured it wouldn’t help his murderous tendencies.

Look at me, joking about murder. It really just wasn’t funny.

“He knew my name,” I whispered. I think that was the part that bothered me the most.

Holt held out his arm and I slid across the seat and fit myself into his side. A few minutes later, we arrived back at his house and that made me think of something else.

“He knows where we live.” And that took something away from me that I didn’t even realize I had. Security. The walls of this house made me feel protected, made me feel like I didn’t have to be scared all the time.

“If anybody wants in that house, Katie, they’re gonna have to go through me.”

That didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse. I didn’t want any kind of harm to come to him while he tried to protect me.

Inside, I retreated to the bathroom to wipe my face with a cool rag and calm my tattered nerves. Holt was in the kitchen scrounging through the cupboards and that’s when I realized I hadn’t gone grocery shopping.

“I forgot to get something for dinner,” I said from the edge of the room.

“Want to go out?”

“Sure.” It would be better than sitting around here and waiting for something bad to happen. “I’m just going to shower really fast.” I thought maybe it would help wash away some of the crazy I was involved in today.

Holt nodded and kept scrounging around for a snack. I remembered the power bars I bought and went to get them out of the sack I had dumped on the bed and ignored.

“Here,” I said, handing over the two boxes. I was hoping he didn’t notice how the boxes were mashed and mangled looking.

“What the hell happened to these?”

“I dropped them,” I mumbled and turned to flee into the shower.

“What happened to your knee, Katie?” The edge in his voice stopped me in my tracks.

“My knee?” I asked innocently.

“Freckles,” he growled, the warning clear.

“I had an accident in the parking lot at Target.”

“What kind of accident?”

I decided just to get it over with. “Attempted hit and run.”

“There isn’t a scratch on my truck,” he said, not really understanding what I meant.

“I wasn’t the one doing the hitting. I was the one doing the running.”

“Are you telling me someone tried to
run you over
with their car?”

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Why didn’t you call me!” he demanded.

“Because you were at work.”

“So?”

“So… I’m not going to come running to you every time something happens.”

“I take it you didn’t call the police either?” he said, his voice tight.

“No. I just wanted to come home.”

“Jesus.”

“That’s not very nice language.”

He barked a laugh and shook his head. “You are a walking magnet for trouble.”

“I didn’t ask you to deal with my trouble,” I snapped and then raced into the bathroom and shut myself in.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes and it made me angry. I would
not
cry. I was done crying.

I turned on the shower and then cracked the bathroom door, making sure he wasn’t standing outside, just waiting to yell at me again. He wasn’t, so I gathered all my things out of the bedroom and slipped back inside.

I kept the water at a lukewarm temperature; I found that hot water made me feel anxious these days—probably because of all the heat I endured in the fires. The memory of the last time I was in this shower seemed to be all I could think about.

The way his hands felt sliding over my damp skin. The way his fingers worked the shampoo through my hair and massaged the tension out of my scalp. My body began to ache for him in ways I’d never ached before. It wasn’t a bad ache, though; it was the kind of ache I didn’t want to go away—a deep unfurling desire that curled around beneath my skin.

I took my time washing and shaving. Thankfully, I didn’t need to wash my hair and I just let the bandages on my wrists get wet. They needed changed anyway.

Once I was done, I dried and peeled away the saturated bindings, taking care to dry the wounds thoroughly. Then I opened up the bottle of peaches-and-cream body lotion and applied it to my thirsty skin, minus my wrists.

I managed to wrangle my hair into a smooth side braid that fell over my shoulder, with wispy little waves falling around my face. The only makeup I bothered with was mascara for my light lashes and some peachy-pink lip-gloss. I dressed in my sole pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt that draped across my chest.

All my bandages for my wrists were in the kitchen, and as I left the bathroom, I hoped Holt had lost some of his anger.

He was standing in the living room, but he wasn’t alone. The police were here. They might as well just move in.

“Officers,” I said, stepping into the room. “Is this about the man in the BMW?”

“Yes, ma’am. We were just leaving. Mr. Arkain can fill you in.”

“You don’t want to question me?” Surprise filtered through me.

“No need at this time,” one of them replied as Holt showed them out.

He barely had the door closed when I started asking questions. “What did they say? Did they arrest that man?”

Holt strode across the room and swept me up against his chest. “I’m sorry.”

The words seemed to rumble right out of his chest.

“It’s okay.” My voice was terribly muffled against him, so I wasn’t sure if he even heard.

“It’s not your fault all this is happening. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

I pulled away to get the bandages I needed. “I probably should have called you.”

He took them from me and motioned for me to sit down. At this point he was used to changing these bandages and he did it on autopilot, working quickly and smoothly. “You’re going to be an expert by the time these things are healed enough to be uncovered.”

“It’s not something I want to be an expert at,” he said sadly.

A heavy silence draped around us, kind of like a thick fog in the early morning hours. “You know what I think?”

“That I’m totally awesome?”

I snorted. “Besides that.”

“So you agree?”

I slapped his arm playfully. “No more talk about murder, car chases, or fire tonight.”

“Don’t you want to know what the cops said?”

“Not really.” I was beyond tired of thinking about it all.

“So what do you suggest?”

“Dinner. Normal conversation. Ice cream.”

“What about kissing?” he asked, tugging on the end of my braid.

Anticipation shot through me. “I like kissing.”

“Do you like touching?” he slid his hand up the inside of my jean-clad thigh.

“Do you?” I countered boldly, doing the same to his leg.

“Careful, sweetheart. If you want to make it out of this house, watch what you do with those fingers.”

Suddenly dinner didn’t seem that important. “I changed my mind.”

His fingers stilled where they rested on my leg. “About what?”

“I don’t really need dinner.” My fingers climbed a little higher. “Or conversation.”

He groaned and grabbed me by the waistband of my jeans and pulled me closer so I was caught between his legs.

“All I thought about today was last night,” he murmured, pulling my mouth down against his.

His tongue didn’t waste any time delving into my all-too-willing mouth and stroking against mine. Lazily, our tongues spun in a circle in a seductive little dance that shot little jots of thrill down into the nerves beneath my jeans.

The muscles in my vagina began to flex like they were preparing for something… or possibly inviting something.

“Holt,” I said breathless, a little bit of hesitation finding its way into the cloud of my desire.

“We’re not going to do anything you don’t want to do, Freckles.” His hands slid up to cup my face tenderly and his kiss became achingly gentle. It was his gentleness that made me feel bold.

I climbed into his lap, straddling his waist and pressing my chest to his. It was delicious, the way his body felt beneath mine, the way every part of me became sensitized and every touch rocked me to my core.

I grasped fistfuls of his shirt and pulled it up over his back and then ran my fingers down over his bare skin. He released my face to pull the shirt up over his head and when he leaned back to kiss me again, I shook my head.

“It’s my turn,” I reminded him.

He dropped his hands between us, resting dangerously close to the fly of my jeans, and my body reacted, pushing itself a little closer to his hands.

He began to playfully tug at the button of my jeans as I began my exploration of his incredible physique. I started at his shoulders, splaying my hands out over their incredible mass and then trailing down lower to grip his defined biceps. His skin was smooth and warm to the touch, making me want to climb inside him and find somewhere to rest.

Keeping my grip secure, I leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips. He turned his head so I could kiss him fully, but I pulled back and then began kissing my way to his ear, taking the lobe into my mouth and gently suckling it. When I released it, I traced my tongue upward around the shape of his ear before whispering how much I loved the way he smelled.