A Little Too Hot

Chapter Seventeen

COOPER NEARLY SLAMS into the back of us, but Blake doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Damn it, Sam!” he says, pounding his palm into the steering wheel. “It wasn’t an act!” His voice comes out a growl, and just as he opens his mouth to say something else, the electronic ring of his phone comes through the speakers again.

“Everything okay up there?” Cooper asks.

When I look behind us, he’s out of his car, one hand holding the phone to his ear and the other on the butt of the gun in his holster.

“We’re good,” Blake answers pulling back onto the road and hitting the disconnect button on the steering wheel. “Look, Sam,” he says after a long, strained silence. “You know I find you attractive. I haven’t made any secret of that. But as far as what happened in that room, I was just—”

“Doing your job. I know.” I turn to face the window. “Was anything you said true?”

He blows out a sigh. “I’m obviously not a movie guy . . . and, as you already know, my name’s not Harrison Yates, but most everything else . . . yeah.”

I tip my forehead into the window and watch UC Berkeley pass by.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he says.

“Hmm . . . thanks. That really makes up for ruining my life.”

Neither of us says anything else as we wind into the Berkeley Hills—somewhere my family never could have even dreamed of living. I watch the multi-million-dollar homes flit past my window for a while, then close my eyes.

“Home sweet home,” Blake says a few minutes later.

I open my eyes and see we’re slowing near a brown, shingled garage. From the road the front of the garage is the only thing I can see. The land drops off sharply down the hill in front of us, so any house that might be associated with this garage would be well below where we are in the street. Still, I might be able to see it if it weren’t for the dense, twelve-foot hedge to the right of the garage that extends all the way to the corner of the road, obscuring the view of anything beyond it, including the house and San Francisco Bay, forever below us.

Jenkins is already parked at the curb and Cooper pulls up next to us. Blake rolls down his window. “Take a sweep of the perimeter.”

“Got it,” Cooper says.

Blake clicks a button on the console of the Escalade and the garage door goes up. He eases the Escalade into one of the garage bays.

“Wait,” he says when I reach for the door handle. He clicks the button again and waits for the garage door to close. “Okay.”

We spill out of the car and he directs me to an elevator door at the side of the garage. He slips a key from his pocket into a lock, then presses in a code on the panel. The door slides open as soon as he finishes.

We step in, and, when the door on the opposite side of the elevator slides back, it’s into a foyer, which opens on a huge great room, bright and sparsely decorated. What catches my attention immediately is the view out the wall of windows across the room. A mile below us San Francisco Bay and the city beyond is spread out as if it’s on display just for me. The fog has burned off and the water sparkles under a sapphire blue sky. It’s stunningly beautiful.

I glance at Blake, then wander to the window. My eyes follow the lines of the Bay Bridge to the city, where sunlight flashes off the windows of the skyscrapers. To the right, behind the city, the Golden Gate Bridge stretches to the north, and in the foreground, just at the tip of San Francisco, I can make out Alcatraz.

There’s a French door leading to a balcony on this level, and below is an expansive redwood deck. A stone path winds down the hill from the deck to a pool with a bathhouse, at least forty feet below me. The same tall shrubs I saw at the road next to the garage surround the entire place, and even though I know there are neighbors to the left and across the street past the pool below, it’s completely private. A sanctuary.

“Whose house is this?” I ask without turning.

“It’s a government seizure. The owner is a second-string drug runner from Miami. He was just convicted last month and all his U.S. property seized.”

I turn and see Blake is standing near the sofa, watching me. I step away from the window. “Why me?”

“Excuse me?”

“When you came into Benny’s, you came right to my stage. Why?”

His eyes flick wider for just a second before his lips press into a tight line. He opens his mouth to answer but then closes it again and moves to the kitchen, at the right side of the great room. He steps around the black granite breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room and pulls down a tumbler from the glass-front mahogany cupboards, filling it at the tap. “Would you like some?” he asks, lifting his glass.

“No. Thanks.” I turn back to the window and gaze out over the city, and a minute later Blake steps up to my side.

“I made a mistake,” he says, his voice low.

I turn to him.

He sips his water, staring out over the spectacle below as the sun starts to dip over the water, and I feel my insides tighten at the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. He is so incredibly masculine—so unbelievably gorgeous. As he answers, my eyes follow the contours of his face: the strong angle of his jaw, his high cheekbones, the straight line of his nose. “The way you moved . . . the way you looked up there on the stage . . . it just drew me to you. But I was stupid to target the girl I was attracted to. This would be so much less . . .” He rubs a hand down that amazing face. “. . . complicated if I’d gone in another direction.”

His admission stirs something deep in my belly. “I’m complicated?”

He finally turns to look at me. “This is complicated,” he says, gesturing between us with a wave of his hand.

The desire pulsing through me flows into waves of frustration and anger, and they’re all so intense, it’s impossible to decipher one from another. I spin from the window. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t set me up, and put me in so much danger that you had to kidnap me and drag me off to . . .” I throw my good hand at the window, but then my gaze follows. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

I was eleven when Mom married Greg—old enough to remember the cockroaches and bedbugs in our tiny one bedroom apartment. It was the best Mom could do on what they paid her at Food for Less, but I know she wanted something better for us. I’m not really sure if she loved Greg or not when they got married three months after they met, but he was stable, with a decent paying job and small house in Fremont that we moved into. We had the things we needed and not much more. These were the houses that we drove by when family came to visit. The Berkeley Hills were a tourist attraction, not someplace any of us ever imagined living.

But here I am.

My eyes flick to Blake and there’s a subtle twist to his face that could be chagrin.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I never expected things would go this way.”

At the anguish in his eyes when they find mine, I feel myself softening. But then I remember where I am. I’m trapped here, with no ability to contact the outside world for months, maybe. “Mom didn’t answer when I called. Can I try her again?”

He looks at me for several long heartbeats. “I’ll see what I can do.” He backs away from the window and starts across the great room. “Your room is over here.”

I follow him past the elevator and a wide staircase with a wrought-iron rail behind it, through a door into a palatial master suite. Just like in the living room, the western wall is solid glass, with an unobstructed view of the bay and San Francisco. Through French doors there’s a private balcony with a lounge chair and a small table. At the foot of an immense king-sized bed with gold linens, a fireplace opens over a whirlpool tub in the bathroom on the other side, and above the fireplace there’s a huge flat-screen TV. I step through the door next to the fireplace into a bathroom bigger than my bedroom at home. Next to the tub that I saw through the fireplace is a stall shower I could throw a small party in—if anyone was allowed to know where I was. Everything is black granite and brass fixtures. “Wow.”

“I trust you’ll be comfortable here?”

I glance at Blake, who’s leaning against the door frame, and I want to say no. I want to rail against him and tell him that I’ll be miserable here. But I can’t force the lie from my mouth. Instead, I pluck at my top—the same one Jonathan brought me before our fateful trip home. “Despite the posh shower, I’m going to get pretty unbearable to live with if I don’t get a change of clothes.”

He tips his head, indicating that I should follow, and shrugs off the door frame. He moves through the bedroom and opens a set of double doors on the opposite wall from the windows, then steps back to let me pass. Inside, I find a closet as big as the bathroom. There are drawers stacked down the middle of hanging rods on each wall. It’s mostly empty, but on the hangers I see a few blouses, sundresses, a cotton granny nightgown, and a bathrobe. “Check the drawers,” he says with a nod at them.

I pull open the middle drawer. Inside are a four pairs of faded Levi’s, almost identical to the ones I’m wearing. I open the drawer above it and find several T-shirts and cotton tops. And in the one above those there are bras and underwear. I pick up a pair of panties. They’re white cotton Fruit of the Loom bikinis, and though they’d probably fit, I can’t imagine anyone younger than my mother actually wearing them.

I hold them up. “Who bought this stuff?”

“Nichols and me.”

I pull a face. “And you thought these were my style.”

He shifts in the doorway, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “That was Nichols.”

“What did you pick out?” I ask, dropping the underwear back into the drawer.

“The jeans, those,” he says with a wave of his hand at the dresses, “and the swimsuit.”

“What about this?” I ask, fingering the thick cotton of the nightgown.

“Nichols.”

I hold his gaze. “I sleep nude.” It’s a lie, but I’m going for the reaction.

To my disappointment, he stays totally cool. “That’s your prerogative.” He scratches the top of his head and backs out of the closet. “I know there are things we didn’t think of, so if you make a list, we’ll be sure you get it. You know where the kitchen is. It will be fully stocked for you. And I’ll sleep downstairs, in case you need anything.”

Whoa! “You’re staying here with me?”

He nods slowly, his eyes lifting to mine again. “Someone needs to be here with you at all times . . . for your protection.”

A thrill skitters through me, but I keep my voice flat. “You.”

It’s not a question, but he nods anyway.

“Why you?”

He shrugs. “It just made sense. I’m not from around here, so I needed a place to stay anyway.”

“Where is your room?”

He looks at me a long second, then turns. “I’ll show you.”

I follow him to the staircase behind the elevator, and he leads me down one flight to a large room with a pool table on the far side. There’s a fully stocked bar with a black granite top along the back wall, and two large sofas positioned in a wide V, both facing a giant fireplace with a huge screen TV above it in the middle of another wall of windows. From this floor, we’re not high enough to see over the hedges to the bay, but the view is of the deck and the yard beyond. It’s like a park.

“Access to the pool is through those doors,” he says, gesturing to the French doors to the deck. “It’s heated. The perimeter is secured, so you’re welcome to use it anytime you want.” He crosses the room to a door behind the pool table. “This is the panic room. If there’s ever a breach of security, I need you to get in here and lock the door until help comes.” He steps in and I follow. “This door is bullet resistant and it dead-bolts with a pull of this lever,” he says, indicating a small red handle just inside the door.

“You think I’ll need this?”

“No. But it’s here in case you do.”

We step back into the poolroom and he leads me to a short hallway next to the bar. “My room is here,” he says, pushing open a door.

I step through into a room smaller than my digs upstairs but at least twice as big as my room at home. There’s a bathroom off to the side, and in the middle a queen-sized bed with a blue duvet and lots of pillows. He has the same view out the windows as the room next door.

I spy a pile of pocket change and a bottle of aftershave on the old wooden dresser under the mirror, and a pair of jeans crumpled at the bottom of the open closet, where clothes hang on the rod.

“How long have you been here?”

“I moved in when you were in the hospital. We needed to get the place secured before we brought you up.”

I stroll deeper into the room and peer out the window onto the large redwood deck. “Seems comfortable. Is this anything like where you live?”

He barks out a laugh. “Yes. My place is the Playboy mansion.”

I turn back to him, leaning against the windowsill. “This is the Playboy mansion?”

There’s irritation on his face that he can’t totally cover. “On the rare occasions I’m home, I live in a one bedroom apartment in Santa Monica—which now that my ex has moved out I can no longer afford. So, no. It’s nothing like this.”

“So what you said about her? That was real?”

He nods.

“What’s her name?”

His hand goes to the door frame and there’s a second where he just looks at me without answering. “Vanessa.”

“Did she really leave you because of this?” I say, flicking a hand at the room. “Because of your job?”

“She wanted more than I could give,” he answers through a tight jaw.

I open my mouth to ask if this job is really worth it, but before I can get the words out, he’s out the door. “Come on. I’ll get you some dinner.”

We climb the stairs and he moves to the kitchen. When he said he’d get me some dinner, I was picturing takeout, so I’m surprised when he opens the fridge and pulls out a bag of zucchini, red and green bell peppers, and an onion.

“What are you making?” I ask.

“Veggie frittata.” His eyes lift to mine. “If that’s okay?”

I shrug and it hurts. “Never had it before.” I open my mouth to ask if he wants help before I remember I’m trying to hate him, but as he moves around the kitchen, it becomes clear he knows his way around. As much as I hate to admit it, it makes him even sexier. Which means I have to focus even harder to remember to be mad.

He starts slicing veggies and spreading them all in the bottom of a cast iron skillet. “You want something to drink? I didn’t know what you like, so there’s a variety in here,” he says, opening the fridge.

I step up next to him as he grabs a carton of eggs and find at least five different kinds of soda, two kinds of beer, a bottle of white wine, and bottles of water.

I pull a beer out. “Is there an opener?”

“Me.” He takes the bottle from my hand and the muscles in his forearm ripple as he twists off the cap. He hands it back with a smirk just as someone clears his throat in the living room.

I jump, dropping my beer, as Blake spins toward the living room, the gun from his holster appearing in his hand as if by magic.