LITMIR.BIZ

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needs.’

      ‘Ava!’ Reggie spluttered.

      Blake gave an incredulous half-laugh, a half-snort. ‘What?’

      Ava rolled her eyes. ‘It’s simple. I’ve had a very traumatic evening and I don’t feel safe. I don’t like not feeling safe.’ It reminded her too much of when her mother left and she was supposed to be past that now. ‘But you made me feel safe. And my gut tells me that means something. I’ve survived a long time in a cut-throat industry by going with my gut. So what’s it going to be? You want the money or not?’

      ‘Ava,’ Reggie warned.

      ‘Relax,’ Ava told him. ‘It’s for a charity. It’s all tax deductible.’

      ‘Oh...well, that’s okay, then.’

      Blake shook his head as the heat that fizzed earlier flared again, morphing into white-hot fury. ‘No,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘it’s not okay. You think you can just buy people? Just throw some cash around and get what you want?’

      She shrugged that haughty little shrug again and he wanted to shake her. ‘Everyone has a price, Blake. There’s nothing wrong with that. This way we both get something we want.’

      Blake ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. Joanna called it dirty blond and was forever trying to get him to grow it longer now he was out of the army. But old habits died hard.

      Joanna.

      Who he’d already failed once.

      He’d told Charlie he’d think of a way to help their sister and the charity that meant so much to her—to all of them. And it was being presented to him on a platter.

      By the devil himself. In the guise of a leggy supermodel.

      A very bratty supermodel.

      ‘You don’t even know what the charity is,’ Blake snapped, trying to hold onto his anger as his practical side urged him to take what was on offer.

      ‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I looked it up after we spoke earlier. A charity that supports our soldiers and their families. Very good for my profile, right, Reggie?’

      Reggie nodded. ‘Perfect.’

      Blake had been in enough war zones to know when he was fighting a losing battle. He also knew he should do the honourable thing and offer her safe haven for free. But he resented how she’d manipulated him and if she could drop a cool mil without even raising a sweat then, clearly, she was good for it.

      Still...it all sounded too good to be true.

      ‘It’s as simple as that?’ he clarified. ‘One night at my place and you’ll give Joanna a million quid for her charity?’

      Could he put up with a pain-in-the-butt prima donna for one night for a million quid?

      ‘As simple as that.’

      Blake regarded her. His practical side was screaming at him to take the cash but the other side of him, the one attuned to doom in all its forms, was wary as hell.

      ‘You know there are thousands of men out there who would give anything to have me for a sleepover?’

      She shot him a coy look from under her fringe and Blake glanced at her mouth. It had kicked up at one side as her voice had gone all light and teasy.

      He didn’t want that mouth slumming it at his place.

      But one million quid was hard to turn down.

      ‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘But I leave in the morning for my holiday and you have to be gone.’

      ‘Absolutely.’ She grinned. ‘I promise you won’t even know I’m there.’

      Blake grunted as his doom-o-meter hit a new high. He sincerely doubted that.

      * * *

      ‘This is where you live?’

      Ava stared down at Blake’s apparent abode floating in the crowded canal. They’d slipped out of a private exit at the back of the hospital into a waiting taxi after her hand had been sewn up with four neat little sutures and she’d been discharged. Blake had refused to tell even Reggie where he lived and she’d been too overwrought to care but even so this was a surprise. If someone had told her this morning she’d be spending the night on the Regent’s Canal in Little Venice she’d have laughed them out of her house.

      ‘You wanted to slum it.’

      Ava took in the dark mysterious shape. ‘People actually live on these things?’

      ‘They do.’

      Ava realised she couldn’t have picked a better place to hide away—no one she knew would ever think to look for her here. But still...

      She was used to five-star luxuries and, while she could forgo four-thousand-pound taps, basic plumbing was an absolute must. ‘Please tell me there’s a flushing toilet and a shower with hot water?’

      ‘Your fancy suite looking better and better?’

      Ava was weary. It was past midnight. She’d been shot at, grilled by the police as if she were somehow at fault, then poked and prodded by every person wearing a white coat or a shiny buckle at the hospital.

      She didn’t need his taunts or his judgement.

      Yes, she’d bribed him. Yes, she’d told him she could handle it. Yes, she was used to her luxuries. But, come on, she just needed to stand under a hot shower and wash away the fright and the shock of the day.

      Why couldn’t he be like any other salivating idiot who was tripping over himself to accommodate her? But, oh, no, her knight in shining armour had to be the only man on the planet who didn’t seem to care that she was, according to one of the top celebrity magazines, one of the most beautiful women of the decade.

      And she was just about done with his put-upon attitude. He was getting a million bucks and bragging rights at the pub to the story—embellished as much as he liked because she was beyond caring—of the night Ava Kelly slept over.

      She felt as if she was about to crumple in a heap as the massive dose of adrenaline left her feeling strung out. All she wanted was a little safe harbour.

      So, he didn’t like her. She couldn’t exactly say he was her favourite person at the moment either, despite his heroics.

      Life was like that sometimes.

      ‘Look, you’re angry, I appreciate that. I railroaded you. But you have the distinct advantage of having being shot at before. I’m sure you’re used to it. I’m sure it’s just another day to you. Me, on the other hand...the only shooting I’m used to is from a camera lens. I promise I’ll be out of your hair in the morning, but do you think in the interim you could just lose the attitude and point me in the direction of the hot shower?’

      He didn’t say anything for a moment but she could see the clenching and unclenching of his jaw as a streetlight slanted across his profile. ‘You never get used to being shot at,’ he said.

      Ava blinked. His words slipped into the night around them with surprising ease considering the tautness behind them. It was a startling admission from a man who looked as if he could catch bullets with his teeth.

      It struck her for the first time that he might have been more deeply affected by the incident than she’d realised. But his jaw was locked and serious. He didn’t look as if he wanted to talk about it.

      She did though—she really did. Suddenly she needed to talk about it as if her life depended on it.

      Debrief—wasn’t that what they called it in the army?

      ‘Were you scared?’ she asked tentatively, aware of her voice going all low and husky.

      She was greeted with silence and she nodded slowly when he didn’t answer, feeling foolish for even thinking that a brief burst

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