Page 23 of Wife for a Week

A timid knock sounded on the door and Hallie opened it to find Jasmine standing there holding a tea tray.

‘Peppermint tea,’ said the younger girl, pressing the tray into her hands. ‘It’s very soothing,’ she added, and fled.

‘I knew it,’ said Nick as Hallie nudged the door closed and set the tea tray on the sideboard. He was pacing now, from one end of the room to the other. This was good. Pacing she could deal with. Pacing expended energy that could otherwise be used for yelling. Tris never paced.

‘I should never have gone shoe-shopping with my mother,’ he was saying now. ‘She’s a bad influence. I should have gone to the country club and found Bridget instead. Bridget would have pretended to be my wife for a week. She’d have ripped Jasmine to shreds, alienated John, tried to seduce Kai, and driven me insane, but so what? At least she wouldn’t have ordered my execution!’

Uh, oh. He’d stopped pacing. ‘Tea?’ she offered.

‘Why me?’ he roared. ‘Why you? Why now? Do you know how close we are to securing this deal? Do you have any idea how much it’s worth?’

She knew. ‘I have a plan,’ she said quickly.

‘No! No more plans. I know your plans and they never, ever work!

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea?’ Hallie sniffed a steaming cup. ‘I think she put alcohol in it.’

He stared at her. Stared at the tea.

‘I’m calling your brothers,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’m going to tell them all about this man, wife and funeral-vase fiasco and then I’m going to get them to come and take you home.’

‘You can’t,’ she said pleadingly. ‘You need me.’

‘To do what?’ He was back to roaring.

‘To go back to the shop and cancel the hit.’

He stared at her in disbelief. And then, ‘No! Absolutely not! These people are professional killers, Hallie. They’re not going to be impressed by you saying you made a mistake and didn’t realize you were ordering my execution after all. They’ll kill you to keep you quiet.’

‘I’m not going to tell them I made a mistake,’ said Hallie. ‘I’m going to tell them I needed the job done before New Year and that they failed to deliver. I’m going to tell them that the terms of our contract have been breached and that I no longer need their services.’

‘You’re going to fire them?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe this, ‘ he muttered. ‘It’s like living in a black comedy. I’m calling your brother. The dangerous one. Maybe he’ll know how to handle you. What’s his number?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Hallie. ‘Well, I could, but then I’d have to kill you.’

‘Get in line,’ he snapped. ‘What’s the number?’

‘You can’t have it.’

‘Then I’ll ring every dojo in Singapore until I find your other brother. Or every charter plane operation in Greece. Yes, that might be best. That brother can probably get here faster!’

‘No! Listen to me, Nick. I can fix this. First thing in the morning.’

‘It’s New Year’s Day, remember? The shop won’t even be open.’

‘Maybe not the shop,’ she agreed. ‘But they’ll be contactable somehow. Kai will know how it’s done. We’ll ask him.’

‘This would be the Kai who took you to the plaza and let you buy the vase in the first place.’

‘To be fair, he didn’t know I’d bought it,’ said Hallie. ‘He’s Jasmine’s bodyguard, not mine. But I’m sure he’d agree to help.’

Nick was pacing again. Muttering beneath his breath and raking his hand through his hair. Very Luke. She opened her mouth to explain her idea some more.

‘No.’ He held up his hand for silence. ‘Don’t talk. Don’t say another word. Let me think.’

So she closed her mouth and concentrated on pouring the tea and stirring in sugar, lots of sugar, to help with the shock. She was shakier than she wanted to admit, horrified by the notion that she’d inadvertently ordered Nick’s execution. She’d wanted to make her own mistakes, sure enough, but she’d wanted to make her own little mistakes. Not huge, deadly ones she wasn’t at all sure she was going to be able to fix. ‘I’ll call Tris if that’s what you want,’ she offered quietly. ‘I can call him now.’

Nick shot her a hard-eyed glare and Hallie looked away, looked at her tea. She was going to cry, dammit, she could feel the tears building behind her eyes. She put her hand to her cheek and hastily wiped away the first escapee. Another followed.

‘No crying!’ said Nick hurriedly. ‘I don’t do crying.’

‘I’m so sorry, Nick. I’ve ruined everything for you.’

‘Not yet, you haven’t. Let’s think about this. Maybe it is as simple as cancelling the contract. We could call them. Get them to meet us at the shop. Let them know we’re coming in and that plans have changed.’

‘We? What we? There is no we because you can’t come!’ She wouldn’t let him come. ‘If I walk you into that shop they’ll shoot you on the spot and stuff you into that vase before I can say good morning. I need to go there alone.’

‘No.’ One word, simple and irrevocable.

‘You can’t come. You have to pretend you don’t know anything about it. If they think I’m cancelling their services because they botched the job and you discovered I ordered your execution, they may well kill you anyway. Out of sheer professional pride.’

‘How much alcohol did you say was in that tea?’ he asked.

Hallie passed him a cup and he swallowed the contents in one go.

‘I hate this,’ he muttered.

‘Yes, but it’ll work,’ she said with far more confidence than she felt. ‘Trust me.’

‘I do trust you,’ he said. ‘It’s the bad guys I don’t trust. What if your luck runs out? What if you get hurt? I’d never forgive myself.’

‘You have to think positive,’ she said. ‘Think Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.’

‘Lara Croft has big guns and multiple lives. You have no guns and one life.’

‘To live the way I choose. I choose to do this, Nick. This is my mistake. I want to fix it.’

He was closer now, close enough to reach out and touch, and the conflict between wanting to keep her safe and wanting to agree with her plan was there in his eyes. He lifted his hand to her cheek, his eyes almost black, his tension a living thing.

‘I can’t do this,’ he muttered roughly.

‘Which this are we talking about?’ she whispered as his lips came closer to her own and his hand slid from her cheek to cup the back of her head. ‘This as in kissing or this as in agreeing to my plan?’

‘Any of this,’ he said, and captured her lips with his own.

She expected anger from him, the remains of it at any rate, but his kiss was unexpectedly sweet, his hands in her hair so very gentle as he traced the bump on her head.

‘Does it still hurt?’ he murmured roughly.

‘No.’ She slid her hands over his chest, luxuriating in the feel of him, so warm and solid and, above all, alive. He kissed her again, deeper this time with a needy edge to it that she matched with a helpless, aching need of her own.

‘How about now?’

‘No.’ With her hands digging into his shoulders and her skin on fire from his touch. She had no defences from this man, not one, but still she tried to dissuade him, for his sake as well as her own. ‘You’re breaking all the rules,’ she whispered as his hands slid to her shoulders and his long, sure fingers started toying with the straps of her gown. ‘A bedroom is definitely not a public place.’

‘I know.’ In that gravelly bedroom voice that set a woman to shuddering all by itself.

‘And the door is shut and the curtains are drawn.’

‘No audience,’ he muttered, and set his lips to her shoulder in the exact place her straps had been.

‘And I don’t know about you,’ she said desperately, in a last-ditch effort to remind him of the rules, ‘but this is really starting to feel like sex to me.’

‘It’s not sex,’ he said with utter certainty. ‘It’s foreplay.’

Hallie gave in, gave up, shivering in pleasure as his mouth feathered over her shoulder, tracing a slow, torturous path along her collar-bone. He lifted her effortlessly onto the counter and found her nipple with his mouth, through the thin barrier of silk that her dress afforded her, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. She wove her fingers through his hair, revelling in its soft, silky texture as she arched back and he slid the straps of her dress down her arms. The bodice followed and then her breasts were bared for him and his fingers grazed her puckered nipples with a touch so gentle she didn’t know whether to weep with pleasure or scream with frustration. ‘I won’t break,’ she said huskily, by way of a hint.

‘I know that too.’ His smile was crooked. ‘You’re probably indestructible. I noticed that today. It’s just that you look so damn fragile.’

‘I’m not fragile,’ she said. ‘I’m not even a virgin any more.’ And then he bit down on her aching, swollen breasts and she screamed her approval as sensation shot through her.

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