after knowing what Ella’s elegant curves felt like beneath my touch…what the first bloom of her passion tasted like beneath my lips?
Ella.
“Christ.”
I say it and choke on it at the same time.
Did she make the media booty call?
“She doesn’t even know how to call nine-one-one,” I counter in a growl.
Then who? And why?
I stab the Bluetooth at my ear. Bark the speed dial number for Prim but end the call two seconds later. Whatever the hell has gone down, I’m not sure what started it, why it’s ballooned, or what we’re facing because of it—including these shifty bastards tapping into cell signals, if not full calls.
Waking up the phone has fired up its screen—where an unread text from Kate waits. Does she know anything?
I flip on the truck’s hazards, duck my head, and quickly read.
:: I’ve got your package. Nice ribbon. Waiting in the usual place. Avoid the tunnel. It’s packed. ::
One side of my mouth hitches up. Devious, wonderful woman. It’s all code, betraying she is more ahead of this than I am, and here’s the tow rope to help me get caught up.
The first line is the simplest. Package and ribbon equate to gift, translated into the Arcadian armeau—what Mishella Santelle has sure as hell been to me since the start.
The usual place takes a second longer. It could mean a number of our favorite dive bars around Manhattan, though that’s weak—it’s barely ten in the morning. While Kate enjoys trying to drink me under the table, the only time we indulged this early was the day I buried Lily.
The last line lends the final insight. The tunnel is Scott’s nickname for the underground delivery entrance into Temptation, accessed by the alley on the north side of the building—and a secret from the press until six months ago, when I started dating Amelie Hampton. The diva was just mildly annoying about her agenda at first—until she started responding to social invitations on behalf of us both, as well as hinting about the tunnel to a few key members of the Manhattan paparazzi corps. Three months after that, when I broke things off with Amelie, the clickers backed off. I was no longer juicy prey.
Looks like I’m back on the menu.
Which means someone, somewhere, finally grabbed a clue that I came home from Arcadia with more than a new contract and a case of the island’s fruit wine.
“Mishella.” I let it stalk up my throat like the raging, possessive lion with which I suddenly sympathize. The agony of my hand fades beneath its ferocious fire.
Because if I’m back on the media menu…
She’s in the middle of their merciless fire.
Fuck.
EIGHT
*
Mishella
There have definitely been days in my life that fit the category of challenging. Perhaps a little crazy. And one—the day I began by signing six months of my life over to Cassian and ended by stepping onto the tarmac at Teterboro—even surreal.
But insane?
I never considered any of those days as true insanity. Not in its purest form. Not like now. Not with the thought that sometime between leaving the hospital with Doyle and sinking to the living room couch now, I have fallen into a reality so bizarre, it must be insanity.
I reach out. Desperately and gratefully, curl my hand into Kate’s. Since arriving an hour ago—and enduring the gauntlet of reporters to do so—she has not been just my life ring in this turbulent ocean. She has been the life boat. Proving good to her word, she left the apartment attached to her Upper East Side gynecology office and came right over, without makeup or formal clothes, to keep me breathing through this wild storm.
“Breathe, Mishella.”
Literally breathing.
Reluctantly, I comply with her order.
My next action is easier. I snap an order at Doyle, knowing he already forgives the tone in light of the insanity. “Turn it up, Doyle.”
It—being the huge television monitor over the sleek wood mantel. The reasoning for my command? The now-familiar face that consumes the screen, accompanied by a smaller window in the upper right corner—with my picture in it.
A muscle thuds in the man’s cheek. He may forgive me for the tone, but the action itself is clearly another issue. “You think that’s really—”
“Turn it up.”
The other side of his jaw clenches. “Mishella. Don’t do this to yourself—or Cas.”
“Cas is not here!” I push Kate’s hand away, leaving her to trade another anxious look with Doyle. Beneath my breath, seethe out, “Where the hell is he?”
Kate checks her phone. “Still no response to my text.”
Doyle checks