All In (The Blackstone Affair, Part 2) (24 page)

In my desperation I think I would’ve made a
bargain with the devil himself if I could just find my girl safe
and sound. I headed back to the wing where Lady Percival was on
display, hoping she might offer me a clue. I remembered Brynne
saying something about access to the back room where she’d helped
out when Lady Percival had been moved from the Rothvale over here
for this show tonight. I looked for a door and there it was not ten
feet down, blending into the wall—the outline of the seal, and then
a small sign marked
private
affixed to it.

Jackpot!

I turned the handle and pushed into a large
work storage room with more doors—one of which was marked
toilet
.

“Brynne?!” I yelled her name and slammed my
hand hard. I tried the knob but it was locked.

“I’m here,” came a weak reply, but praise
the angels, it was her!

“Baby! Thank Christ...” I tried the knob
again. “Let me in. We have to go!”

The door latch clicked and I wasted no time
wrenching open the final barrier between me and my girl. I would
have torn it off and thrown it if I’d had the ability.

She stood there looking pale with her hand
over her mouth, sweat dotting her forehead, in her beautiful
periwinkle dress. The most gorgeous color in the whole bloody world
right now! Maybe forever. I didn’t think I would ever forget how I
felt in this moment. The stark relief at finding her, just about
took me to my knees in thankfulness.

“What’s going on with the fire alarm?” she
asked.

“Are you okay?” I wrapped my arms around her
but she pressed a hand to my chest to keep a distance.

“I just threw up, Ethan. Don’t get too
close.” She kept one hand over her mouth. “I don’t know what’s
wrong with me. Thank the gods I remembered about this bathroom
being so close by. I was in here bent over the toilet and then the
alarms went off—”

“Oh, baby.” I kissed her forehead. “We gotta
go
now
! Not a fire but a bomb threat called in!” I grabbed
her other hand and started pulling. “Can you walk?”

Her face paled even further but she revived
somewhat. “Yes!”

I fired off a call to Neil as I got us the
hell out of that building.

Adrenaline has amazing powers on the human
body. There are many small things to be thankful for, but the
greatest thing of all was safe in my arms.

♥

What a cluster fuck the last hours had been.
I ruminated over what’d gone down as I drove into the night. Change
of plans, I’d decided as soon as we got home. I called Hannah and
let her know we were driving up to Somerset tonight. She seemed
surprised but said she was glad to have us early and that the house
would be open so we could get in whenever we arrived.

Brynne was a bit harder nut to crack. She
didn’t feel well for one thing and then was worried about the bomb
threat and all the paintings. So far, there hadn’t been an
explosion but the whole mess was on every news station and being
categorized as a terrorist risk. I would have my people
investigating the bomb threat as a compulsory measure, but what
concerned me far more were the messages on her mobile tonight.
Whoever sent it was close by. Close enough to see me having a smoke
behind the National Gallery. And if he was close enough for that,
then he was too fucking close to my girl. I could hardly make sense
of the text message either—just lyrics from the song typed out with
Brynne’s name attached to them. Gave me chills, and made my
decision to get her out of the city a very easy one.

I looked over at her sleeping in the front
seat, her head tilted against the pillow she’d brought along. I’d
rushed her out of the city, and knew I’d have some explaining to do
later but thankfully she hadn’t been in a mood to challenge me and
went along with everything. We’d changed out of our formal clothes,
grabbed the bags, and hit the M-4 for our three hour drive to the
coast.

She stirred about two hours into the drive
and then woke up with a direct question. “So are you going to tell
me why you dragged me away tonight when the plan had been to go in
the morning for weeks?”

“I don’t want to tell you because it won’t
be nice for you to know and you’re already feeling bad.” I reached
for her hand. “Can we wait till tomorrow to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Baby…please, you’re exhausted and—”

“Remember our deal, Ethan,” she cut me off,
“I have to know everything or I can’t trust you.”

The tone of her voice was very hard and
scared the shit out of me. Oh, I remembered our deal very well and
I hated what I knew. But I also knew what I’d agreed to with
Brynne. And if keeping the information from her broke us apart,
then it wasn’t worth the cost to me.

“Yeah, I remember our deal.” I reached into
my pocket for her mobile. “A message came through on your mobile
while I was out the back having a smoke. That’s why I didn’t know
where you were. I’d left to go outside and the bomb threat happened
about simultaneous with that text message on your phone.”

She reached a shaky hand and took it from
me. “Ethan? What’s on it?”

“A music video first and then a text message
from someone calling themselves ArmyOps.” I put my hand on her arm.
“You don’t have to listen. You really don’t—”

Her face looked absolutely stricken with
fear but she asked the question anyway. “Is it—is it the video
of…me?”

“No! It’s just the music video of the song
by Nine Inch Nails—look, you don’t have to do this, Brynne!”

“Yes I do! It’s to me, this message! Isn’t
it?”

I nodded.

“And if we weren’t together it would have
still been sent to me, right?”

“I suppose. But we
are
together and I
want to keep you from having to worry about shit like that. It
kills me, Brynne. It fucking kills me to see you like this!”

She started to cry. It was the silent kind
of crying. The way she usually did it and somehow the silence of
her tears seemed to be screaming loud in the car between us.

“That’s one of the reasons why I love you,
Ethan,” she sniffed. “You want to protect me because you really
care.”

“I do, baby. I love you so much. I don’t
want you to have to see that piece of sh—”

She pressed
start
and the song rang
out as she played the video. I watched her and held my breath.

Brynne held it together for the whole thing,
watching it through to the bitter end, in all its mad-scientist
themed fetish crap. I had no indication from her as to how she felt
from seeing it though. At least not outwardly. I couldn’t possibly
know.

I knew how I felt from watching her though.
Utterly helpless.

Then she got to the text message part.

“He was there? Watching you smoke?! Oh
shit!” She clamped her hand over her mouth again and gagged. “Pull
over!”

Fuck! I defied the laws of physics and the
road and somehow got us off to the side. She was out and heaving in
the bushes the instant the tires stopped. I held her hair away and
rubbed her back.
Could this night get any worse?

“What the hell is wrong with me?” she
gasped. “Can you get me a napkin or something?”

I pulled some towels from the glove box and
got a bottle of water so she could rinse her mouth. And kept my
trap shut, positively sure I was having an out-of-body experience.
This just couldn’t be happening right now.

“I feel better,” she panted. “Whatever that
was tonight seems to have passed.” She slowly straightened up and
lifted her head up to the night sky. “Gawd!”

“I’m so sorry, baby. You’re ill and I’m
dragging you on a road trip and everything’s so royally fucked
up—”

“But you’re here with me,” she blurted, “and
you’re going to help me through whatever that shit was on my phone,
aren’t you?” She stared at me, her eyes still wet, her chest still
heaving from being sick in the bushes, and utterly amazing to me
because of her bravery.

“I will, Brynne.” I took the couple steps
that separated us and drew her close. She folded into my arms and
rested her cheek on my chest. “I’m going to be here every step of
the way to keep you safe. I’m all in, remember?”

She nodded. “I’m all in too, Ethan.”

“Good. It’s gonna be okay, baby.” I rubbed
up and down her back and felt her relax a little.

“I do feel better…even if I smell like
puke,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s good you feel better. And you only
smell slightly of puke.” I kissed the top of her head and she
squeezed me in the ribs. “But we need to get off the side of the
road. It’s not much further and I want to put you into a bed so you
can get some rest. Freddy’s a doctor. He can check you out tomorrow
after you’ve had sleep.”

“All right. One hell of a night, huh?”

“You’re a fun date, Miss Bennett.” I put her
into her seat. “But I think I prefer staying in to going out with
you.” I kissed her on the forehead before I shut the door.

She laughed at that and I was glad I could
still get her to smile after the cock-up of an evening we’d just
endured.

“Can you smell the ocean?” I asked after we
got a bit further inland.

“Yes. It reminds me of home. I grew up with
the smell of the sea.” She looked out the window. “Tell me about
Hannah and her family.”

I wondered if reminding her of home was a
sad memory I’d just brought up, but decided not to pry. It was
something maybe for another time.

“Well, Hannah is five years older than me
and bossy as hell, but she loves her little brother. We’re very
close…probably because of losing our mum at such an early age. We
all just hung together very tight once she was gone. Our dad,
Hannah and me.”

“Sounds so nice, Ethan—how much you all care
about each other.”

“I can’t wait for them to meet you. Freddy’s
a good bloke. He’s a doctor, like I said before and runs a practice
in the village at Kilve. Their home is called
Halborough,
an
old estate out of Freddy’s family—the Greymonts. These big houses
on the historic registry are difficult to keep up so they do a
high-end bed-and-breakfast that Hannah runs, along with raising
three fabulous kids.”

“What are their names and ages?”

“Colin will be thirteen in November. Jordan
just turned eleven, and my fairy princess of a niece, little Zara,
was quite the surprise for everyone when she arrived just five
years ago this month.” I couldn’t help the grin at thinking about
Zara. I had a soft spot for little girls. “She is something else
I’m telling you. That little miss runs circles around her
brothers.”

“I can’t wait to meet Zara then. It’s good
to see a woman who can control all the men in her life, and at such
a young age too.”

“Well, you’ll get your chance in the
morning, because we’re here.”

I pulled into the gravel driveway that ran
in a half-circle up to the Georgian house of pale stone. There had
been some mixing of architectural influences over the centuries
during various remodels. The Gothic windows and points were a nice
touch if you wanted historic. It was still a fine looking house
perched as it was above the coast; not bad for a sea-side cottage.
That always cracked me up. According to Freddy,
Halborough
had been the summer cottage retreat for his family two hundred
years ago when they needed to get away from Town. If this was a
cottage, then what did those people back then consider a house?

“God, Ethan, this is amazing.” She looked up
at the façade and seemed suitably impressed. It’s gorgeous and I
can’t wait for a tour.”

“Tomorrow.” I gathered up our bags from the
back and locked the car. “Time to get you into a bed. You need
sleep.”

She followed me up to the side door entrance
which was unlocked just like Hannah promised.

“What I need is a shower,” she murmured
behind me.

“You can do a bath if you want. The rooms
are kitted out superb,” I whispered as I led her up the main
staircase. I knew which suite I wanted for us when I called Hannah
and asked. The blue one at the corner of the west wing with the
full ocean view all the way to the Welsh coast across the bay.

Brynne was impressed when I opened the door
and led her in. I could tell by her expression. I think she was
struck speechless as her eyes went around the room.

“Ethan! This is…simply stunning.” She smiled
wide at me and looked happy. “Thank you for bringing me here.” But
then she looked down and shook her head slightly. “I’m sorry
tonight was such a mess.”

“Come here, baby.” I held my arms out and
waited for her to move forward.

She practically leapt at me and I picked her
up, letting her wrap her legs around me in the way I loved for her
to do. I tried to kiss her on the lips but she turned away and gave
me her neck instead.

“I need to get a shower and brush my teeth
before we do anything,” she mumbled against my ear.

“We’re not doing anything. You’re going to
sleep after you have your shower or your bath or whatever you’re
having.”

“Hey.” She lifted her head and gave me a
look. “Are you denying me your body, Mr. Blackstone?”

I am sure it was the very last thing I
expected her to ask me. “Um…why…err…no, Miss Bennett. I would never
do such a moronic thing as deny you my body when you are so
obviously in need of it.”

“Good thing, because I am feeling much
better now.
Much
better…” She held my face in her two hands
and smiled a beautiful smile.

“Ahhh, I can see that you are.” She flexed
against my cock and pulled us tighter together with her legs
wrapped around me.

“And I can
feel
that you are
completely on board with my plan, Mr. Blackstone.”

Well of course I am when I have your legs
wrapped round my arse and my cock up against a very nice part of
you.