The Most Expensive Night of Her Life

The down lights shone off her now dry caramel-blonde hair pulled into some kind of a messy knot at her nape, the fringe occasionally brushing eyelashes that cast long shadows on her cheekbones. Her eyes were cat-like in their quality, both in the yellow-green of the irises and in the way they tapered down as if they were concealing a bunch of secrets.

Yeh, Ava Kelly was a very attractive woman.

But he’d spent over a decade in service to his country having his balls busted by the best and he wasn’t about to line up for another stint.

Blake gathered the paperwork and shoved it in his satchel, conscious of her watching him all the time. His leg ached and he couldn’t wait to get off it.

He was almost free. She was almost out of his life for good.

He picked up the satchel and rounded the bench-top, his limp a little more pronounced now as stiffness through his hip hindered his movement. He pulled up in front of her when she was an arm’s length away. He held out his hand and gave her one of his smiles that Joanna called barely there.

‘We’ll invoice you with the final payment,’ he said as she took his hand and they shook.

She was as tall as him—six foot—and it was rare to be able to look a woman directly in the eye. Disconcerting too as those eyes stared back at him with something between bold sexual interest and hesitant mystique. It was intriguing. Tempting...

He withdrew his hand. So not going there. ‘Okay. I’ll be off. I’m away for a month so if you have any issues contact Charlie.’

Ava quirked an eyebrow. ‘Going on a holiday?’

Blake nodded curtly. The delicate arch of her eyebrow only drew his attention back to the frankness in her eyes. She sounded surprised. Why, he had no idea. After three months of her quibbles and foibles even a saint would need some time off. ‘Yes.’

Ava sighed at his monosyllabic replies. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said, picking up her glass of wine and taking a fortifying sip. Something had passed between them just now and suddenly she knew he wasn’t as immune to her as she’d thought.

‘I know I haven’t exactly been easy on you and I know I can be a pain in the butt sometimes. I can’t help it. I like to be in control.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the business I’m in...people demand perfection from me and they get it but I demand it back.’

Ava paused for a moment. She wasn’t sure why she was telling him this stuff. Why it was important he understand she wasn’t some prima donna A-lister. She was twenty-seven years old—had been at the top of her game since she was fourteen—and had never cared who thought what.

Maybe it was the gorgeous wooden bench-top he’d created just for her? The perfection of it. How he’d worked at it and worked at it and worked at it until it was flawless.

Maybe a man who clearly appreciated perfection would understand?

‘I learned early...very early, not to trust easily. And I’m afraid it spills over into all aspects of my life. I know people think I’m a bitch and I’m okay with that. People think twice about crossing me. But...it’s not who I really am.’

Blake was taken aback by the surprise admission. Surprised at her insight. Surprised that she’d gone through life wary of everyone. Surprised at the cut-throat world she existed in—and he’d thought life in a warzone had been treacherous.

In the army, on deployment—trust was paramount. You trusted your mates, you stuck together, or you could die.

‘Of course,’ he said, determined not to feel sorry for this very well-off, very capable woman. She wanted to play the poor-little-rich-girl card, fine. But he wasn’t buying. ‘Don’t worry about it. That’s what you pay us for.’

Ava nodded, knowing that whatever it was that had passed between them before was going to go undiscovered. Clearly, Blake Walker was made of sterner stuff than even she’d credited him with. And she had to admire that. A man who could say no to her was a rare thing.

‘Thanks. Have a good holiday.’

Blake nodded and turned to go and that was when it happened. He’d barely lifted his foot off the ground when the first gunshot registered. A volley of gunshots followed, slamming into the outside façade of Ava’s house, smashing the high windows that faced the street, spraying glass everywhere. But that barely even registered with Blake. Nor did Ava’s look of confusion or her panicked scream.

He was too busy moving.

He didn’t think—he just reacted.

Let his training take over.

He dived for her, tackling her to the ground, landing heavily on the unforgiving marble tiles. Her wine glass smashed, the liquid puddling around them. His bad leg landed hard against the ground sucking his breath away, his other cushioned by her body as he lay half sprawled on top of her.

‘Keep your head down, keep your head down,’ he yelled over the noise as he tucked her head into the protective hollow just below his shoulder, his heart beating like the rotor blades of a chopper, his eyes squeezed shut as the world seemed to explode around him.

Who in the hell had she pissed off now?

TWO

Everything slowed down around her as Ava clung to Blake for dear life. Her pulse wooshed louder than Niagara Falls through her ears, the blood flowing through her veins became thick and sludgy, the breath in her lungs felt heavy and oppressive, like stubborn London fog.

And as the gunfire continued she realised she couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t breathe.

Her pulse leapt as she tried to drag in air, tried to heave in much-needed oxygen. She tried to move her head from his chest, seek cleaner air, but he held her firm and panic spiralled through her system. Her nostrils flared, her hands shook where she clutched his shirt, her stomach roiled and pitched.

Then suddenly there was silence and she stopped breathing altogether, holding her breath, straining to hear. A harsh squeal of screeching tyres rent the pregnant silence, a noisy engine roared then faded.

Neither of them moved for a moment.

Blake recovered first, grabbing his leg briefly, checking it had survived the fall okay before easing off her slightly. ‘Are you okay?’

She blinked up at him, dazed. ‘Wha...?’

Without conscious thought Blake undertook a rapid assessment. She had a small scratch on her left cheekbone with a smudge of dried blood but that wasn’t what caused his stomach to bottom out. A bloom of dark red stained her top and his pulse accelerated even further.

‘Oh, God, are you hit?’ he demanded, pushing himself up into a crouch. He didn’t think, he just reached for her hoodie zipper and yanked it down. Just reacting, letting his training taking over. The bullets had hit the building high but they’d penetrated the windows and in this glass and steel interior they could have ricocheted anywhere.

‘Did you get hit?’ he asked again as her torso lay exposed to him. He didn’t see her red bikini top or the body men the world over lusted after; he was too busy running his hands over her chest and her ribs and her belly, clinically assessing, searching for a wound.

Ava couldn’t think properly. Her head hurt, her hand hurt, she was trembling, her heart rate was still off the scale.

‘Ava!’ he barked.

Ava jumped as his voice sliced with surgical precision right through her confusion. ‘I think it’s...my hand,’ she said, holding it up as blood oozed and dripped from a deep gash in her palm, already drying in sludgy rivulets down her wrist and arm. ‘I think I...cut it on the wine glass when it smashed.’

Blake allowed himself a brief moment of relief, his body flooding with euphoria as the endorphins kicked in—she wasn’t hit. But then the rest of his training took over. He reached for her injured palm with one hand and pulled his mobile out of his back pocket with the other, quickly dialling 999.

An emergency call taker asked him which service he wanted and Blake asked for the police and an ambulance. ‘Don’t move,’ he told her as he awkwardly got to his feet, grabbing the bench and pushing up through his good leg to lever himself into a standing position. He could feel the strain in his hip as he dragged his injured leg in line with the other and gritted his teeth at the extra exertion.

‘I’ll get a cloth for it.’

Ava couldn’t have moved even if her life depended on it. She just kept looking at the blood as it slowly trickled out of the wound, trying to wrap her throbbing head around what had just happened. She could hear Blake’s deep voice, so calm in the middle of the chaos, and wished he were holding her again.

He returned with a clean cloth that had been hanging on her oven door. He hung up the phone and she watched absently as he crouched beside her again and reached for her hand.

‘Police are on their way,’ he said as he wrapped the cloth around her hand, ‘So’s the ambulance.’ He tied it roughly to apply some pressure. ‘Can you sit up? If you can make it to the sink I can clean the wound before the paramedics get here.’