Hell on Heels (14 page)

“What the… What are you…?” I screamed, my legs slamming together.

Then my brain shorted out.

It abandoned me.

There wasn’t even enough comprehension of the situation for my anger to flare up at the sight of the person it seemed to relish in.

I was stunned.

For now, crowding the made-for-singular-capacity
women’s
bathroom stall, with my bare ass still kissing the porcelain and my panties around my ankles, was Maverick good-for-nothing-pissed-me-off-royally-but-was-a-really-good-kisser Hart.

What in the ever-loving fuck?

“We have to go now,” he growled, and I could do nothing but balk at him.

He didn’t even notice.

“The hell we are.” I gaped at him, but no further explanation fell from his full lips.

It was like he was looking through me.

No wit.

No pigheaded slurs.

Nothing.

It was possible if I’d been less concerned about the fact that my underwear was down my legs and that I was still sitting on a toilet, I’d have noticed that maybe he looked worried.

Wordlessly, he slipped his hands under my armpits and hauled me to my feet. It was somewhat of a miracle I didn’t pee myself from the roughness and surprise of that alone.

“Don’t manhandle me,” I screeched like a poorly behaved adolescent.

He shook his head and took his hands off me.

“What are you even doing here?” I shouted.

He ignored me.

“I have to pee.” I made my eyes wide and waited for him to leave, but he didn’t. “Badly,” I added for empathies, but still, nothing.

He averted his eyes to above my head. “No time.”

Was he trying not to look at my cooch?

Not possible.

Maverick Hart didn’t have a respectful bone in his body.

“Get
fucking
dressed, Princess. Now.”

There he was.

I stared at him for a nanosecond, considering just how low I’d be on the woman scale if I punched him in the gut while I was naked from the hips down. Eventually, I bent at the waist and secured my thong and dress to their rightful positions.

“Dressed,” I hissed, and shoved past him.

He grabbed me by my upper arm and slammed my back against the bathroom wall. “Keep your attitude in check,” he barked, and I snarled at him. “I don’t have time for your bullsh—”

His sentence was interrupted by the sound of a two-way radio I hadn’t noticed clipped to his belt. “We have the Goose sequestered, please advise. Over,” a male voice said into the, I now noticed was empty, bathroom.

Grabbing at the device with his free hand, he pressed a button on the side. “Evacuate Goose. Over.”

He said it in the same short and clipped tone the other man had used.

The other male voice came through almost immediately. “Negative. Goose won’t evacuate without the bird. Over.”

“Fuck.” His black eyes bore through me. “Shots were fired on this block,” he explained, and my eyes went wide while my temper thinned into the air around us. “We need to evacuate Beau to a safe location as part of his security, and he won’t leave without you. So, we have to go.”

I nodded but stood still.

“Now!” he yelled.

I jumped.

He pressed the button again. “En-route with the bird. Over.”

“Ten-four,” the voice said back.

Maverick didn’t waste any time. He put his hand on the small of my back like he had the night of the gala and moved us expertly through the theatre.

Down two floors and left into a service hallway, I could barely feel him breathe.

He was steady, and I was scared.

I leaned into his hand.

We hit the end of the hall and pushed into what looked like the back of the theatre, when Beau and another guy—the one I recognized from Maverick’s office and the gala—came into view.

“There you are. Are you okay?” Beau ran towards us. “Is she hurt?” His eyes travelled over my head to Maverick, just as I felt his hand slip away from the small of my back.

“She’s fine,” he clipped.

Beau cupped my face, worry in his blue eyes. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“It’s fine,” I assured him. “I’m fine.” And I was.

He lifted his chin and pressed his lips to my forehead. “I was worried about you.”

I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned my upper body into his chest.

“I have to pee.”

Yes, that’s what I said.

I’d developed a bad habit over the years of handling stress inappropriately.

I laughed at funerals.

Thus, in that moment, all I could manage to think of was that I still had to pee.

Beau’s comforting chuckle warmed the room, and I smiled into his suit, soaking it up.

There was nothing uncomfortable about being around Beau.

It was easy.

He was an easy man to like.

“The car is waiting,” the other man said to Maverick from across the room.

It was only then I became aware of the crackle in the air behind me. The emotions of the men in the room were duelling for control, and the pulse off of Maverick was hard to ignore. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t remembered seeing either Maverick or this other man at all since we arrived. I imagined it was their job to fly under the radar, but it was also somewhat frightening that you could not know they were there at all.

“Of course.” Beau shrugged out of his suit coat and held it out to me. “Your coat is still with the usher. I’ll send someone for it tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I turned and was awarded a scowl from Maverick as I slid my arms into each sleeve and Beau slid his coat onto my shoulders.

Maverick’s black eyes were at a full rage, completely magnetic, and suddenly I was the iron.

Maverick had not been easy once in the three times I’d met him.

Well, the three times I was aware of, anyway.

“Shall we?” Beau took my hand in his.

The spell I felt I was under died when he touched me.

Good.

Maverick and the other man, whose name I still did not know, led us out what I guessed to be a service entrance to the idling town car.

The other man got inside the passenger seat next to the driver. At least that was one man I knew had been there tonight.

Beau opened the door and helped me inside before rounding the trunk and settling in beside me.

I listened while Maverick instructed the driver to make no stops between here and my home. He also told the driver that the other man, whose name I now learned was Jason, would be riding with “just in case.”

I didn’t like the sound of just in case.

The car began to move, and I looked over my shoulder and out the back window, watching as Maverick disappeared behind our taillights.

We drove in silent contemplation on the quick route to my apartment, my head on Beau’s shoulder and our fingers intertwined. It was almost as if we’d ended many nights together before this one, sans the rush of danger, of course.

There was a comfort in the way our bodies fell together and his mind accepted mine.

It didn’t take but a few minutes at this time of night for us to arrive at my building. The evening had been a wonderful stir of excitement, but the last ten minutes, resting in the backseat of the car, had been my favourite by far.

“This is nice,” I whispered into his neck, and felt him smile.

Beau kissed my temple. “So nice,” he agreed.

The driver opened my door, but Beau insisted on getting out of the car anyways. He laughed when I took off my shoes and held them in one hand, his hand holding the other.

“Goodnight, Charleston.” He did that twirl thing again and kissed the top of my hand.

I stepped up onto a stair. “Goodnight, Beau.”

He stood at the bottom of the steps as I climbed, our hands eventually falling apart.

I was almost to the top when he called after me, “Wait!”

His dress shoes hit the pavement as he ran up the stairs, and I laughed at the goofy smile on his handsome face.

“What?” I asked, shaking my head.

Reaching me, he slid an arm around my waist. “I forgot something,” he declared, then he dipped me low and expertly, like the country club son he was, and his lips took mine.

It was beautiful.

My hands slid around his neck and I closed my eyes, savouring every single second.

It was slow and the way every woman dreamed of being kissed at least once in her lifetime.

It was like there wasn’t a thing on this earth more important to him in that moment than the way my lips felt on his, like I was being worshiped.

But that was Beau.

He was a stolen moment. The kind people knew of, but took for granted anyway.

He was the perfect gentleman, and the high in me became lighter.

Kissing Beau Callaway was like laying in bed listening to the rain on a Sunday morning.

It was peaceful.

“T
his isn’t going to work.” I looked up at Tom, whose frustration equally, if not more so, matched mine.

He nodded. “I could have made the changes last week if they’d asked, but now we aren’t far enough out to get the new materials in time, let alone have it put together.”

We were in his office, looking at the new stage layout for the Weizmann fundraiser. The CEO had decided he wanted a circular stage as opposed to that of the original rectangular one we’d discussed and had built specifically for the event, in which he wanted to host at his ski lodge.

I had an idea. “What if we—”

My sentence was stopped short when a breathless Kevin appeared in the doorway. “You’re going to want to see this,” he practically shouted into Tom’s office.

I looked from Tom to Kevin and back again, somewhat amused, somewhat concerned. “See what?”

“Come on!” He grabbed my hand, pulling me up from where I’d been sitting on the corner of Tom’s desk and dragging me behind him.

“What has gotten into you?” I scolded his odd behaviour, which for Kevin was saying something.

“Just wait.” He shushed me, actually shushed me. “That man, I just…” Now he was talking to himself and not me; however, I was still no less confused on the urgency in which we moved. It was as if the building were on fire.

Kevin dragged me to his desk and I pulled my hand from his grasp. “Seriously, what the…”

He smiled as familiar music started playing.

“Now I’ve had the time of my life…”

My head swung from Kevin to the singing that had begun in the waiting area.

No.

“And I owe it all to you…”

The cast of last night’s show was in our tiny office and they’d begun to perform, singing and dancing in the middle of chairs and ottomans like there was nothing abnormal about their presence there.

My eyes flew back to Kevin and found he was no longer paying attention to me. He was singing along and smiling like a loon, clearly enjoying the workday’s interruption.

Their voices carried loud in the small space, and I could do nothing but watch in awe and a tiny amount of embarrassment as they performed the final scene to the iconic movie that I, and nearly every woman, loved.

Tina and Tom clapped from their position on the wall, and Emma twirled Kevin around behind me.

My palms were sweaty, but I was smiling so hard it felt like my face was going to split in two.

In time with the music, Johnny backed up, and Baby did too, before she came running from the end of the hall.

My heart swelled.

She jumped.

He caught her.

And they did
the lift,
right there in the waiting room of Smith & Co Productions on a Wednesday morning.

I felt Kevin’s arm around my shoulders, and Emma’s came around my waist on the opposite side.

My life sometimes scared me, but it was exciting.

I shook my head and gave in, singing along with the rest of the office, and trying, for all that I had learned, to enjoy the moment.

The cast finished their performance and we all clapped—or, well, Kevin hooted and hollered, and the rest of us clapped.

After their bow, the woman who’d been playing Baby handed me my Burberry jacket I’d left in the coat check, and the man who’d been playing Johnny passed me a card before they all filed from the office, no doubt to return for some much-needed rest before tonight’s show. I knew from the posters they’d be in town for the rest of the week.

Sliding open the envelope, I read the message.

Sorry we missed the finale.

-Beau

“Oh my.” Kevin whistled. “That man.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

“Yeah.”

My hand covered my mouth, likely to cover the smile that now somewhat permanently adorned my face when anything to do with Beau Callaway surfaced. That being said, it was also joined by the twist and turn of butterflies in my gut, some good and some not.

Grand gestures plagued me with nerves.

I am an independent woman with severe co-dependence tendencies. I do not believe in needing people. I believe in wanting them, and that is far more dangerous. Need is a stable emotion. You need food, so you eat. You need water, so you drink… but want, want is unstable. You want cigarettes, so you smoke, even though you know it kills you. You want to wake up to your car in the morning, so you drive home, even though you know you had one glass too many. You want to believe him, so you do, even though you know that lipstick on his collar isn't yours. It takes practiced restraint to decline the things we want over the things we need. To want someone badly enough is to forgo the basic instinct of self-preservation.