Blaire

“Where are you?” I asked Liam when I got hold of him later that afternoon.

“What’s going on, Blaire?” My friend ignored my question, so I knew he wasn’t comfortable revealing his location.

“I had to tell them about the storage unit.” I heard a muffled curse, crackling, and then sounds of shuffling like he was moving to a different position.

“Why?” Liam asked after a while and the signal was clearer.

“The senator’s political advisor questioned the evidence we had and said we had to have supporting physical evidence for it to stick.”

“True, but even that’s no guarantee. A good lawyer can have all the evidence thrown out. I know the inner workings of Orlov’s mind. You killed his son. He wants you executed in front of him, which tells me the people who went after us in the motel were acting on orders of someone who didn’t want the evidence leaked. There’s also been chatter that Orlov executed one of his lieutenants for defying his orders, which supports my theory. That failed mugging of Grant had brought the Boston Russian gang unwanted scrutiny and in turn, the ROC. Either they’ll back off or move quickly.”

“Shit,” I muttered. “We need to get to that storage unit fast.”

“I’m working on it.”

What I had not told Grant that although we knew the general location of the self-storage facility, we weren’t sure which exact unit it was. My father was careful not to put his eggs in one basket so to speak. For two years, we thought the evidence in the flash drive was useless because Orlov destroyed all the physical evidence after he’d executed my father. It was only in January when Liam had been tipped off that we might have been misled. It turned out that my father managed to give the storage unit key to another federal agent who was working undercover unbeknownst to Liam. He’d gone rogue as well after all those DEA agents had been assassinated in Mexico.

“So you got a lock on your target?” I asked.

“I have him.”

A chill skated up my spine. “Do we know which agency he used to work for?”

“He wouldn’t say. I don’t care at this point.”

“Liam,” I cleared my throat. “Don’t do anything irrevocable.”

He grunted. “Listen, Blaire. I need to go.”

“Liam …”

The line went dead.

I stared at my phone, frustrated with my inability to help him. We were a good team. We survived on the run. Liam had trained me on guns, physical combat, and how to work surveillance. I was supposed to be helping him, not sitting in a luxury brownstone twiddling my thumbs, stressing about my relationship with my boyfriend. I hated that my existence had been reduced to this. My love for Grant had turned me into this helpless person surrounded by bodyguards. This wasn’t me.

* * *

“Not hungry?”

Colette’s voice broke through my riotous thoughts. After my conversation with Liam, I’d been fighting a push-pull with my conscience. On one side was everything I had with Grant including my talk with Amelia about not hurting her son, and on the other was my loyalty to Liam. Even if my friend insisted I was better off with Grant, I knew I could help him. I didn’t like how Liam sounded in our last phone call. He sounded reckless.

“I had a big lunch.” This was partly true, but I felt bad that I was pushing around the aromatic Coq au Vin that Colette had prepared. I forced myself to eat a forkful. The flavor burst in my mouth, but my stomach was so twisted in knots that it prevented the food from going down well.

“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” the housekeeper said as she polished the countertop, the last chore she usually did before she went home. I could feel her gaze on me, so I put another piece in my mouth. “Blaire, if you need to talk to someone, I’m here.”

I gave a shaky laugh. “Do I look that pathetic?”

“No, not pathetic,” Colette said gently. “Lost, maybe. That day you left. The day you were supposed to meet Mr. Thorne at the airport, you have that same look right now. I’m glad you came back because Mr. Thorne wasn’t doing well without you. He was functioning, but not living, you know?”

Shit! Colette was only making my already confused mind more confused.

“Don’t leave him again, Blaire. He needs you.” With a sad smile, as if she knew the war in my head, she left.

Not five minutes after, the door to the garage opened and Tyler walked through and he was smiling. He had a device in his hand.

“Our secure phones just arrived via courier,” he informed me. “Boss wants to talk to you.”

A whoosh left my lungs and, with it, the slew of negative emotions that had taken root since this morning. I took the phone from Tyler and held it to my ear.

“Grant?” I said softly.

“God, baby, I’m so sorry for leaving the way I did this morning,” he muttered.

“Yeah, it was kinda shitty.”

“I didn’t mean to put you through that shit,” he said. “I fully expected our new phones to be ready by the time I got to New York so I could have them couriered over immediately. I had a communications expert look at the configuration and she found some vulnerabilities. She installed the fixes, so we’re kosher.”

“Grant, are you not coming back tonight?”

A deep breath exhaled from his end. “No. There’s been a snag with several real estate acquisitions in Brazil and Russia that was only brought to my attention this morning. We’re at a crucial stage of negotiations right now and I promised the board I was giving it my full attention. I should wrap up in a few days.”

“Okay,” I said, deeply disappointed.

“I miss you, Blaire,” he said. “I wish you were here, but I couldn’t spend any time with you and … I can’t afford the distraction.” He chuckled ruefully. “When you’re near, all I want is to bury myself deep inside you.”

I shivered at his words.

“Look,” he continued. “I was still mad at you this morning. I also didn’t want to wake you because I enjoyed those few moments of peace watching you sleep when we were not at odds with each other.”

“You can’t just freeze me out when you’re pissed at me.”

“That’s how I deal with … stuff.”

A female voice spoke in the background and I tensed.

“Hold on,” Grant said as he talked to the person in the background. There was a hearty laughter and then he returned to the phone. “I need to go, baby. A couple of us are heading out to dinner and then we’re getting back to work for a late night. I’ll call you again tonight if I can.”

I berated myself for feeling suspicious of my man. Of course he was an equal opportunity employer and he had female employees working for him, but the woman who spoke did not sound like his PA, Heather. Isolation was making me suspicious, and what was that they said about an idle mind?

Now would be a good time to pick up the paintbrush again.

* * *

Three hours after dinner, I stopped painting and put down my brush. My memory of Cape Cod held no inspiration to put on canvas. I stared at the varying shades of pigment on my palette. My colors were prosaic, the blue of the ocean, flat.

The summer when I was twelve, a man named Sergei stayed in our house. He was an artist who used the impressionist technique. School was out and I was his shadow as he mentored me on the pros and cons of using different mediums, but his specialty was oil. We became good friends. I imagined him as the master and I was his protégé. He returned the same time every year and would stay for three months at a time. When Sergei returned the year I turned sixteen, he’d become gaunt and seemed to have aged ten years. We still painted together, but he seemed pre-occupied with something else. One night, I couldn’t sleep and saw light under the door to his room. I heard him working furiously. I knocked. The brush strokes stopped, then he opened the door and sighed in resignation.

“Come in, Paulina, we have a new lesson.”

I stared at the familiar artwork propped against the wall of his room and on his easel. “Is that a Picasso?” I asked incredulously. He was painting over it! There was also what looked like a Jackson Pollock drip painting.

For the rest of that summer, he taught me how to camouflage paintings with different mediums, particularly with watercolor, given that they were easy to wash off. I wasn’t naive. I knew those paintings were from a heist and they planned to smuggle it somewhere. My Papa wasn’t pleased that Sergei had taught me that craft. That was the last summer that I saw Sergei.

I mulled over whether I had committed a crime when he taught me to how mask a painting over a painting. After agonizing it over for twenty minutes, I decided it was no different than if I googled it and learned it on YouTube. He didn’t actually give me the brush to paint over the artwork, but I’d practiced the technique over my own paintings, fascinated by the process. Did that mean I had the blood of a criminal in my veins? Troubled, I walked over to the garage to make better use of my uninspired time. Before I even made it to the stairwell leading to the security team’s quarters, Tyler was hastening down the steps.

“Anything wrong, Ms. Callahan?” he asked, worry creasing his forehead.

“I need a sparring partner.”

“Come again?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I need to work off this excess energy.”

“It’s ten.”

“So?”

“You spent two hours in the gym this morning.”

“If you’re afraid to spar with a gal like me, maybe some of the other guys will,” I taunted. In my assessment, Tyler was six feet and two-hundred pounds of solid muscle compared to my five-seven, one-hundred and thirty-pound frame, but Liam had taught me moves to even the odds. For me to defend myself successfully, it was about speed and using my opponent’s momentum against him.

A ghost of a smile stole over Tyler’s mouth. “Wait for me at the gym.”

I wore shorts and an exercise bra. Barefoot, I started warming up by doing kinetic stretches. Afterward, I tested my speed by doing a series of fast kicks. Tyler walked in with a smile on his face.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

I hopped from foot to foot and held out both hands and signaled him to come and get me. His smile turned into a smirk and I couldn’t wait to wipe it off his face. We put on some head protection.

Tyler’s first mistake was hesitating. He chased me around the mat, and threw out a punch, but I ducked and moved closer and hit him with my elbow, then I sprang out of his reach. Tyler shook his head and came at me again. For the second time, he hesitated and when he threw a left jab, I turned so my back was against his front and his left arm was over my right shoulder. I grabbed that arm, and using his forward momentum, I bent and flipped us over with me landing on top of him.

“Fuck!” Tyler choked out. I leapt up and away from him and bounced on the balls of my feet.

“Had enough?” I asked sweetly.

“You’re in for it now, sugar,” he murmured as he dropped all formality, sprang to his feet, and went after me.

Tyler put his mind to it and he kicked my ass, but I got in my fair share of punches and kicks. I even managed to throw him over my hip once. We started to get tired and I started laughing. It was hard to laugh and spar, especially when you were almost out of breath. Tyler and I were in an armlock, with me clinging to him like a monkey and him trying to shake me off when one of the new security guys walked in.

We broke apart, still laughing and breathing heavily.

“What’s up, man?” Tyler asked.

“Boss on the phone for Ms. Callahan.”

“Thanks,” I accepted the smartphone then turned to Tyler. “Had a great time, Tyler. We need a re-match.” He chuckled and gave me a wink.

“Hey,” I spoke into the phone. I was still panting and it felt like my pulse was in my throat.

Silence.

I looked at the phone to see if we got disconnected. The seconds were moving.

“Grant?”

“What were you doing with Tyler?” The tone and manner of his question left no question that he was seething.

“We were sparring.”

“Sparring,” he repeated.

“Yes, I was practicing my self-defense skills.”

“He had his hands on you?”

“Jesus, Grant, how am I supposed to throw him over? With my thumb?”

“Did I or did I not tell you that I had problems with Tyler being near you? I had no choice because you needed a bodyguard and now you let him touch you?”

“He’s a bodyguard, Grant. Get used to it. He guards bodies,” I stressed those last three words with sarcasm. He needed to rein in his unfounded jealousy. “If he had to protect me, his hands will be on me to push me out of danger.” Then I caught myself. Why am I explaining this? “Are we actually having this ridiculous conversation?”

He sighed. “I wanted to talk to you earlier tonight, but Rafe, the manager of Thorne Real Estate needed me on some bullshit meeting. The company selling the commercial property is playing games. We’re at a stalemate and I was so frustrated because I could have been talking to you. I called Tyler instead, and this new guy answered saying he was in the gym wrestling with you.”

“Ugh, we weren’t wrestling. We were doing mixed-martial arts.”

“Tell me at least that you were wearing ugly sweats.”

My sigh was answer enough.

“What are you wearing?” Grant growled.

“You know, with the mood you’re in, I’m taking the fifth.”

“With the mood I’m in, I have half a mind to drive two hundred miles tonight, fuck you until morning, and then drag you all the way back with me to Manhattan.”

“Grant, you need some sleep. You’re tired and cranky.”

“Blaire, answer the question.”

“Shorts and an exercise bra okay?” I yelled, exasperated.

Grant swore softly.

“Well?” I prompted, my adrenaline still fueling my annoyance. “Cat got your tongue?”

He chuckled, but I had a feeling it wasn’t from mirth.

“Yeah, my tongue wants nothing more than to be buried deep in your pussy.”

“Ahhh, gahhh!” I exclaimed. “Grant Thorne, I’m hanging up now. Go to sleep and take a chill pill.”

I swiped to end the call, left the gym, and marched to my bedroom. Taking a long hot shower, I barely had the arm strength to dry my hair. My muscles were achy from all my workouts that day. Ugh, what it took to manage my Grant frustrations. I didn’t even change out of my robe. I dropped into the mattress face first and fell blissfully asleep.

Sometime between midnight and dawn, I awoke with a start. I felt eyes on me, and I almost screamed when I saw a shadow rise from the couch at the foot of the bed.

“It’s me.”

Grant.

My relief was palpable. “How?”

He didn’t say anything but slipped into bed beside me. He drew me close and started touching me, kissing me. I hungrily returned his caresses. I missed him. I missed us.

“You’re so wet for me,” he grunted against my mouth as his fingers brushed against my core. “You make me lose my mind, Blaire. I can’t function with this distance between us.” He made me come on his fingers before he hauled me up and took me hard against the headboard. When I climaxed a second time, he released inside me, groaning my name with an ache in his voice. I could barely raise my head when he eased me down from the headboard. He tucked me under the covers and left the bed.

Drifting off to sleep, I heard myself ask. “Where are you going?”

I didn’t hear his answer.