He turns in. And cuts the engine.
“Quite presumptuous of you,” I say.
He rests his elbow on the console and turns to give me a look as flat and unreadable as the one I’ve perfected. “Is it?”
It’s not at all. I think it’s inevitable, really. There’s no way in hell I’m calling it quits. That decision I would definitely regret.
Flutters explode in my stomach. This guy is not good for my cool, unflinching mask. Soon, I’m going to be giggling like a fucking Valley Girl. “How’s your side?” There is that giant open wound to think about in all this.
“A little sore.” His gaze skates over my mouth. “Nothing hindering.”
“I guess I could take a look at it for you. Show you how to clean it properly.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” I watch his hand as it reaches out for me. His fingers dip into my top to pull the cigars out, the edge of his thumbnail skating against the inside of my breast. “And then we could smoke these.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
I duck out of the car before he can see my excited smile, slamming the door shut behind me, thinking I’m going to get ahead of him and up the stairs, so he’ll have to trail. But he’s somehow already out and waiting for me by the time I get around. “Do you do everything so fast?”
Amusement sparkles in his dark eyes. “When it matters, yes.” He steps closer, pushing my hips into him with one hand on my back. He cups the back of my head with his other hand. “And when it matters,” he says as his breath skates across my lips, “no.”
And then his mouth is on mine, firm and demanding and arrogant, because he already knew I wanted it. He ropes a fist around my hair and pulls my head back to get a better angle of my neck. He takes it, and when I feel the edge of his teeth scrape against the underside of my jaw, I know that we may end up doing this right in front of Ned’s house.
“Inside,” I whisper, pushing against his chest. I charge up the steps while fumbling for my keys in my purse. Not because of the whiskeys I pounded back—I sweated those out on the dance floor—but because I’m suddenly very nervous about being with Sebastian. About pleasing Sebastian.
I finally find my keys. I pull them out, then drop them—twice—each time earning a loud clank and a groan from behind me as I bend over to retrieve them, my extremely short dress not made for modesty at that angle. This is the longest, most graceless trip up a set of stairs in my life. If I wasn’t so anxious to get inside, I’d be mortified. Finally, I get a good grasp of the ring, climbing the last few steps.
It turns out I don’t need my keys.
“What the . . .” I come to a dead stop in front of the iron gate with the visibly mangled lock. The door sits open a crack.
Sebastian grabs my arms and shifts me back behind him before slipping through, the tension suddenly radiating off him palpable. When we find that the front door sits ajar as well, he smoothly reaches back and hands me his keys. “Take my car and drive down the street. Lock the doors,” he whispers calmly, without looking behind him. Then he disappears through the front door.
Leaving me standing there, debating whether I should actually listen to him or not.
TWENTY
ICE
This is not a coincidence.
Ivy’s home has been trashed, the flat-screen smashed instead of taken, the heating vents ripped from the walls, drawers pulled out and overturned, the couch torn apart and emptied.
Someone was searching for something.
I slide my piece out of my boot and flick off the safety. Standing in the living room, I simply breathe and listen. For creaks, for windows sliding, for anything that might indicate the person is still here.
Or people. Because what I see here suggests more than one person.
Whoever it was, we missed them by only minutes. I can still smell their sweat in the air. I’m now sure that the guy at the club tailed her all the way there from here and was tasked with being on lookout while whoever he is working with ransacked her place.
Was this on Bentley’s orders?
My adrenaline courses through my veins as I slink from room to room, expecting that someone might be waiting in a closet or behind a curtain.
They’ve been through the entire house.
I check my watch. It’s only twelve thirty. Ivy would have left to meet me just before eleven. That gave them less than two hours to do this much damage.
Sirens sound in the distance. They could be for anyone, but I know they’re not.
Ivy must have called the cops. Fuck.
This entire house will be canvassed for prints. I quickly dart into Ivy’s room, intent on wiping down the perfume bottle—the one thing I touched without a glove in this house—only to find the glass smashed, the alluring scent now too potent as it seeps into the carpet.
Careful not to touch the walls, I run down the stairs, bending over to slide my Beretta back into my boot when I reach the bottom.
When I stand, I find Ivy in the living room, aluminum baseball bat gripped in her small, talented hands, ready to take a swing. Watching me.
“The house is empty, but they were upstairs.”
She twists her mouth, glancing down at my boot—wondering, I’m sure, why I’m carrying a gun when I’m “off duty”—but she doesn’t ask about that. “I called the cops.”
“I can hear that. You also didn’t take my car, like I asked you to.” I should have known she wouldn’t listen.
She relaxes her arms, tossing the bat to the floor. “I’ll need their report to file any insurance claims,” she says, ignoring my chastising. She gazes around the main floor, her attention not really grabbing onto anything for more than a second. “Why would someone do this? There’s nothing of value to steal in here.”
I know exactly why, but I can’t tell her.
I shouldn’t be here. I should leave right now.
I close the distance and rope an arm around her as the screams of sirens approach.
Ivy flips through her sketchbook, the sheets half torn from the spiral spine and dangling. “Seriously? Even my sketchbook?” She whips it across the dash of my car in a fit of rage, blinking repeatedly to stave off the tears that coat her eyes.
I pull up to the curb in front of a simple green California bungalow in the Haight, an artsy neighborhood that my mom used to like to drive through on hot summer days, to look at the brightly painted Victorian houses. My parents actually aren’t far from this quiet side street, no more than a ten-minute drive.
Reaching over, I silently retrieve the book from my dashboard and shift the pages as best I can to fit within the cardboard cover. A man’s profile fills the page in front of me.
“The police sketch artist did a shitty job. I’ve been trying to get it right,” she mumbles. “Haven’t, yet.”
Probably a good thing. I don’t want to give Bentley’s guys any more reason to consider her a risk.
I say nothing, continuing to tidy the pages. The last one before a stack of blanks is a sketch of me. A highly accurate depiction, which I can’t say I’d want ever handed to law enforcement.
When she sees me studying it, she reaches over and yanks the book out of my hand. “I like to draw people I meet,” she explains simply, holding her ruined sketches close to her chest, her arms roped around the book. If she’s blushing, it’s too dark to tell.