Tempting the Ringmaster (9 page)

He was still inside of her when they crashed down on top of the bed.

Her back slammed down against the mattress. Her head hit the pillow. He thrust inside of her, pushing her legs forward to deepen his position.

His fingers dug into her thighs as his movements grew faster, his hard erection thrusting in and out of her.

“Belle.” He gasped her name against her. “Damn, Belle!” His body shuddered frantically on top of her, bringing her to the precipice along with him.

And then they were flying.

Together.

Graham slumped forward against her. “I should have held on longer. You’re just so damn tight.”

“I’ve got no complaints,” she said.

“Good to hear.” He rolled off of her, onto his side, removing the condom and throwing it out in the trashcan beside her bed. He drew her up against his body, folding himself around her so that they could relax on the small bed.

This was what she’d been looking for all those years.

The thought struck her like an anvil falling on a coyote. This was what she wanted; a man who knew her inside and out, a man who’d seen her performing as a classically trained clown—complete with red nose—and still thought she was sexy as hell.

It was only temporary, she reminded herself. The circus was going to leave town, and she sure as hell couldn’t stay.  She couldn’t let everybody down.

No matter how nice it felt to be held.

“I love your tattoo,” he said, and she could feel his fingers tracing the intricate image on her back; a cloud of butterflies of all sizes, colors, and descriptions floating from the back of her neck to the top of her ass surrounding the image of an old-fashioned compass, metallic ink accentuating the fine details.

“I designed it myself.”

Her partner—Dodge—had been the one to actually give her the tattoo. He’d done it slowly, piece by piece, over a little more than a year. Pain wasn’t her thing, but advertising their business and having a unique piece to show the world was worth the effort.

“It’s beautiful,” Graham bent to kiss a butterfly’s wing. “You’re quite the artist. If you ever decided to give up this whole circus thing, you could make some real money.”

“Uh huh.” She had made real money, enough to sink into her business and make her tattoo parlor one of the most popular in Chicago. It was a good thing too. The money she’d gotten from selling her half of the shop had kept the circus going after she’d paid off Barnaby’s debts.

“Do you ever think about it?” he asked. “Leaving the circus? Settling down?”

“Not anymore.”

The heat from his body was enough to warm her—even on this cool autumn night—and the sound of his heart beating calmed her harried thoughts. The world was so damn peaceful. Outside there was darkness and confusion, punctuated by the occasional yip from a passing dog or huff from the nearby elephant pen. Inside the trailer, there was just Graham and Belle, and she fell asleep listening to him breathe.

She woke to the sound of people screaming.

Chapter Eight

“Help! Help!” Someone was screaming, only it wasn’t just one person. Graham woke with a start. Was he dreaming? Was it some horrible nightmare full of panic and pain? But, the cries followed him into wakefulness.

“Someone get the horses!” A man was shouting. “I’m going for the elephant.”

“Elephant?” He bolted upright. He’d fallen asleep at the circus, in bed with Belle. When they’d drifted off, the world had been peaceful.

Things had changed.

Red light flickered through the trailer’s interior.

Fire. He could smell the smoke thick in the air.

Something was on fire.

He stumbled forward, recovering his jeans from where he’d left them on the trailer’s floor. He didn’t bother looking for his t-shirt, grabbing his jacket instead and pulling it on over his back as he raced out the door into the body of the fairground.

Belle hit the ground only a beat behind him. She hadn’t bothered with pants. Instead, she was wearing the same pinstriped panties he’d stripped off of her a few hours earlier. Her white tank top was pulled over her head, and when she tugged it into place he could see the dark tips of her aureoles. Any other time he would have stopped to admire the view.

The big top was on fire. The mighty vinyl walls must have had some kind of fireproof coating, but it was still coming down in the flames from the burning chairs and stands. As they watched, one of the metal poles that supported the tent from the inside began to twist and warp in the heat. The acrid scent of burning metal and plastic flooded the air. People were everywhere, shouting, screaming.

“Has someone called 9-1-1?” Graham asked.

There was no answer. No one had heard him. They were all too busy rushing around trying to save their livelihood and their homes.

The flames had danced across the narrow gap between the tent and one of the surrounding trailers. A large black man in his early thirties who Graham recognized as the company’s fire breather was organizing a fire brigade near the other trailers, handing out buckets and shovels for people to begin protecting their own dwellings.

The clowns had gone for the fairground’s water suppression system. Keith Aldridge was directing the blast from the fire hose directly into the flames.

Graham pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed from memory. He called Tiffany first. His secretary knew everyone who was anyone, and she lived two doors down from the county firehouse—she could lead the disaster response from her living room—then he called his counterpart over in Whispering Springs. When he was done, he slipped his phone into his pocket and went to help the clowns.

“There’s no use aiming at the tent,” he said. “You need to wet the trailers down. Keep it from spreading any further.”

“No,” Keith’s joints were locked in place. “We’ve got to save the tent. It’s our big top. You can’t have a circus without a big top.”

“What’s more important?” Graham yanked at the heavy hose to redirect the stream of water. “The circus or your lives?”

For a moment, he thought that the clown might object. He might even come back swinging. Keith waited a beat before nodding. He shifted his body around until he was pointing directly at the old tinderbox trailers, spraying them firmly. “Don’t think this makes me like you, Gilly.”

Right. Graham turned, looking for the next emergency.

The world was full of chaos and noise. Someone must have opened the door on the elephant pen because Tiny was galumphing away from the flames towards the open farmland. The lot manager—Frank—was hobbling after her as fast as his gnarled body would take him.

“Help,” someone was shouting. “Help!” A slim woman fell to her knees screaming, but everyone around her was moving too fast to pay any attention.

“What’s wrong?” Graham recognized the teenager from the party earlier. She’d introduced herself at the beginning of her act. “Willow.” He gripped her shoulder. “Willow, what’s wrong?”

The girl flinched back like a wild animal.

In the darkness, he could hear a dog growling—the mastiff who had performed with her earlier—protecting his owner.

Graham took a deep breath, forcing his voice to remain calm. If he couldn’t get through to Willow then he’d never be able to help her. “It’s going to be okay,” he promised. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“My brother.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m supposed to watch him, but he was sleeping. I was just gone for ten minutes!”

“Where is he?” Graham had to shake the teenager’s shoulders twice before her eyes focused. “Where is your brother?”

“In our trailer.” Willow didn’t have to say which trailer belonged to her family, not when her eyes were locked on the smoking residence near the big top.

“Goddamn.” Graham sprinted across the open space, not caring when frost hardened grass dug into his bare feet. 

“What are you doing?” A woman shouted as he wrenched open the trailer’s flaming door.

Graham didn’t answer. He didn’t have time, and he needed all the air he could muster in order to make his way through the billowing smoke. He dropped down nearer the ground and tried to concentrate on moving forward. The trailer was bigger than Belle’s, but it was essentially the same layout. He entered near the kitchen and turned left past a built in table and an extended living space, including a man’s bed.

The kid was nowhere to be seen.

Fire seared his bare feet, but he kept moving. The door to the trailer’s bedroom was closed, and on the other side he could hear a child screaming and a dog barking. He inched his way forward, biting his lip when the flooring creaked awkwardly underneath him. The bottom of the trailer could give out at any minute.

A cabinet panel crashed down behind him. He glanced back, swearing when he saw a wall of fire blocking the path to the door.

There was no way out.

He coughed and the taste of bile replaced the smoke in his mouth. The world was beginning to go fuzzy.

His teeth dug into his bottom lip, the pain helping him focus. He couldn’t die in the fire, not while his nephew still needed him. Trevor was only seven and a half, he needed a man he could depend on, someone who would let him eat ice cream for dinner.

He couldn’t die now.

He’d only just met Belle.

Graham made it to the door, pulling the sleeve of his jacket up to cover his hand as he wrenched the handle to the side and rushed awkwardly inside. A tow-haired tot was sitting on the floor in green pajamas. Boy, girl, he couldn’t tell and it didn’t matter. The toddler stuck its hand in its mouth, silencing ragged sobs.

“It’s going to be okay,” Graham promised.

The kid skittered backward, clearly not enthused by the idea of a stranger in its bedroom. Smart kid.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m here to help. I’m a policeman.”

The kid pulled its hand from its mouth. “Policeman.” It darted forward and threw itself around Graham’s knee.

The action was painfully familiar—Trevor had probably done it thousands of times over the years—and Graham’s stomach churned.

Smoke was pouring into the room. Flames licked at the window. There was no getting out through the door.

He surveyed the small bedroom. There wasn’t much, two double beds bolted to the wall and a bureau, a couple of potted plants, and some Lego pieces scattered across the floor. The creamy terrier that had attacked him on his first visit to the circus was backed up against the far wall, yipping loudly.

The room had two windows, one high over the bureau, and one near the bathroom wall to vent moisture outside. The window over the bureau might fit the kid, but neither was big enough to let Graham out.

He could hear the fire now, crackling in every direction.

The dog’s barking slowed and turned into whimpers.

He needed to think. Fast. What he would do if this were a combat operation? Assess the situation, make a plan, and then act. No use flailing around and wasting clean oxygen while he could think with his brain.

He lowered himself slowly to drink in the cleaner air near the floor. He couldn’t go through the windows, which meant he would need to go through the wall. Where was it weakest?

Near the windows.

No, think.

He took another breath.

In the SEALS, his team had stopped for a few days to help rebuild a school somewhere in Afghanistan.

It had been hard work, but worthwhile when he’d seen the smiles on the kids’ faces.

Now, it might just save his life.

The area near the window would be one of the strongest sections in the wall because of the extra trusses needed to support the window frame.

He needed to attack the windowless wall. He stood slowly and gave the wall an experimental kick. It splintered. He gave it a second kick, harder this time, hard enough to create a small hole.

“Graham!” Someone was calling his name on the other side. “Graham!”

“Belle,” he shouted back, coughing as air invaded his lungs. He grabbed a scrap of cloth off the nearby floor—a boy’s t-shirt—and held it to his mouth.

Time for another kick… Harder… harder. The hole was about the size of his hand now, just large enough for someone to reach through.

“Belle!” he bellowed her name into the fire. This time there was a muffled response. People were shouting on the other side.

He slammed his foot into the wall, not caring when pain shot through his body and radiated out from his knee. He’d felt worse.

The wall cracked, a piece of particleboard slipped away. The hole was larger now, large enough for the little blonde dog to dart outside, still yapping its head off.

At least he’d have some quiet to think.

The boy was still crying.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Graham gave the same useless promise he’d given to the kid’s sister a few minutes earlier. It didn’t appear to be reassuring. “Belle!” he bellowed.

“Graham,” the response was immediate and clear. “Get your ass out of that trailer.”

“Door’s no good.” When he bent, he could see the white of her tank top and the warm glow of her skin on the other side of the hole. “We need to come out this way.”

Belle disappeared for a moment and the talking on the other side got louder.

He still couldn’t make it out.

Then Belle was back, bending down to peer in at him. “Blue’s gone to get some shovels. We’re going to break the wall down. Just hold on.”

There wasn’t any time. Graham needed a tool. His gaze scanned the small room, settling on the bureau. He grabbed a drawer and pulled it out, dumping the contents onto the floor. He knelt down on the ground beside the hole he’d started. His position mimicked the one he’d taken earlier in the evening with Belle.

Only this time was different.

Sweat covered his backside, muscles bunched, and he slammed the bureau drawer sideways into the wall. He didn’t look to see the damage. He did it again and again, propelling the drawer with his anger and frustration.

Why was the trailer parked so close to the tent? Why wasn’t the fireproofing better? More importantly, how had the fire started? He wasn’t an expert, but over the last few days he’d been around the circus enough to know that they took safety seriously.

Either there’d been some kind of tragic confluence of events—unlikely—or it had been arson.

What if the circus had been parked closer to Buck Falls? Would the firebug have been willing to risk the old wood farmhouses too?

One more swing and the wall collapsed around his arm. Splinters dug into his bicep, but the hole was bigger now.

Big enough to fit the four year old.

“Come on.” He hauled the kid over, stuffing him out through the opening. Then he went to work with his hands, not caring when the wood tore at him and blood soaked his fingers.

“Get back!” a man shouted on the other side of the wall.

In the haze of fire and smoke, it took Graham a moment to decipher the stranger’s meaning. He lunged to the side just in time. A swarm of heavy shovels buried themselves in the wall, over and over again, digging and chopping, letting the night sky peer in and the smoke rush out until Graham could finally see the people on the other side: Mikhail Jarvis—Petra’s father—and Blue.

Behind them were two other men, matched blondes. The Gates brothers?

All four men were stained dark with soot, their faces covered in sweat, but they grinned when they saw Graham.

Graham’s breathing was coming shallower. His head was spinning. Smoke had invaded all of his senses. His body felt heavy. Tired. He couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t think.

The closest experience he could recall was that last firefight overseas. The way the machine gun had felt hot in his hand, bruising his shoulder with the recoil. The way gunshot had thundered across the valley. The man beside him had slumped forward onto the ground, blood coating his skin.

It had been so freaking hard, and it had only gotten worse.