Riske and Revenge: A Second Chance, Enemies Romance (Revenge series Book 1) Page 9

  I suddenly felt the urge to tear it into two, to keep myself from beating the smug ass Sears with my bare hands. I knew if there was any way that I was going to make it through a meeting with the bastard after the rough couple of days I’d been through, I was going to need the cafe’s strongest caffeine. A shit ton of it. I’d resort to snorting it, if I had to.

  Anything to keep from shooting myself in the fucking foot. I sighed when the cashier sauntered in front of me.

  “Got anything stronger than crack cocaine?”

  The overweight woman behind the counter smiled at me, flashing flirty eyes. She pointed up at the billboard above her head.

  “Premium crack or run-of-the-mill?” she asked.

  “Your garden-variety is just fine.”

  “Well, we’ve got the Monster, a local favorite. Four shots of espresso, a splash of milk, a little dash of caramel.” She sniffed. “You might have a heart attack, but you’ll enjoy the ride on the way.”

  I smirked, taking the offer, and found my fingers suddenly sliding over the pages of another discarded newspaper left by the register, the publication left open on a page with some provocative opinion piece… and a story about the fire.

  Just when I was trying to avoid thinking about the past, the fucker had followed me, sneaking in when I least expected it. I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the paper and reading it.

  Authorities are still baffled by the cause of the fire that burned bright into the night at the new Taylor Tower in midtown Tampa. Sometime before midnight Thursday evening, a spark blazed above the fifty-eighth floor, creating massive amounts of smoke and fire damage in the newly constructed building, prompting investigators to speculate as to the origin of the would-be inferno.

  The blaze is but one of a seemingly recent rash of office fires originating within fifty street blocks. Firefighters and personnel responded one week earlier to a fire in downtown’s 200 Tower Way building near Sensory Stadium.

  Local office resident Katarina Lexington had this to say of the recent fire that threatened to overcome her own headquarters in Tower Way: “It’s a curious thing—the fire. Whatever the reason, whoever is responsible, the building will continue to prosper under the fantastic facilities personnel and awesome employees that have banded together to rebuild after the damage.”

  More details to come.

  My hands were shaking by the time I read the last sentence.

  Katarina. Katarina Lexington.

  Kat. Lexington.

  I didn’t think twice. Wrestling my cell out of my back pocket, my fingers fumbled with the keypad on the phone screen, sweat making the shiny surface of my phone slick. The barista slid my cup of coffee across the counter, and I snatched it from the surface, slapping a hundred dollar bill in its place. I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

  My tie felt as if it had tightened in the seconds it took for the other line to ring, and with my coffee in one hand and my cell in other, I stormed towards the sidewalk outside of the cafe, ignoring the stares of the people in my path. Wind whipping, the air filling with the smell of summer rain, the impending afternoon thundershower was nothing compared to the storm that was brewing inside of my mind.

  Maybe I really was having a heart attack…

  The wait felt like forever, my cell phone ringing for what seemed like an eternity. A slew of businessmen and women came from all sides, pouring out of whatever office building they were trying to escape from for lunch. I was drowning in them, but I barely noticed.

  My brain was buzzing, but my entire body was numb. A man brushed my shoulder. A woman tripped into me. They were insignificant as far as I was concerned, and even when a paperboy barreled into my body on his way down the block, I didn’t even pay attention.

  I had dropped the cup of hot coffee in the middle of my lap. And for a few moments, I didn’t feel a thing…

  Before Midnight

  In the dark attics of our minds, all times mingle.

  - Charles de Lint

  KAT

  My biggest problem tonight wasn’t that I couldn’t feel anything… It was that I could feel everything.

  The silk was cool against my skin, almost cold. The mattress beneath my body seemed stiffer somehow, more rigid. Seemingly soft, the pillow I previously had loved had roughened in a matter of minutes, and my body sensed every rough edge, every wrinkle along the surface.

  I sighed, beating a fist into the sheets.

  Elena’s advice hadn’t worked. Mr. Two-Strokes was no longer doing the trick tonight. A groan worked its way up my throat, and I released it, sinking back under the covers. It was a good thing my older sister slept sooner than I could because if she hadn’t, she might hear the ragged scream that was seeping out of my open mouth.

  Even my “Me-Time” was a mess, the cherry on top of a shit night—a night that had started with a bang… and ended with me on the floor.

  It started the second we stepped into the bar, buying our first round of drinks.

  “That’s my next baby daddy.”

  I sipped my drink. “I think you have to have at least one baby daddy before you can technically look for your next.”

  Elena shrugged. “True. Okay… He’ll be my first baby daddy.”

  I stared at my sister, watching her watch the man on the other side of the room. “You have a boyfriend.”

  She grinned, a sexy smile spreading on her pretty face. “He doesn’t have to know that…” She turned to the sight of me rolling my eyes. She smacked my wrist. “I’m kidding… You know I’m looking for someone for you.”

  “You’re better off looking for that baby daddy.”

  “And lose out on my now-unemployed stoner of a boyfriend, Ted?” She rolled her eyes even harder than I just had. “Not for anything in the world.”

  I looked at my sister, side-eying her as she mused about her mess of a boyfriend. I didn’t understand it. She was phenomenal; she looked phenomenal. She wore a thigh-hugging black dress. Mostly blonde hair and perky boobs, Elena had the sort of figure that couldn’t be hidden by clothes, the kind of attitude that most men both feared and loved, and though she’d had the mouth of a sailor, she also had the ballerina legs of a dancer; she’d been one all her life.

  Men flocked to Elena like moths to a flame. And me? I had trouble just talking to the hot bartender. Maybe I’d just been a tomboy for too damned long…

  I took a deep breath that was full of water. The air was heavy, thick with humidity. Tampa Bay at night was breath-taking, and though I was high above the city, hundreds of feet above the surface of the ocean, in all actuality, I might as well have been beneath it.

  I was drowning, suffocating in the typical Tampa bar-club scene, and I couldn’t tell if it was the crowd, the memories that wouldn’t go away… or the strange feeling that refused to, either, but halfway between panicking and partying, I sipped at the cocktail, willing the nightmare hiding behind my eyelids to disappear.

  Suddenly, another lemon drop shot of vodka appeared in front of my face, the clear-ish yellow concoction pushed towards me at the bar.

  I looked up. The bartender smiled.

  “Sorry to scare you,” he said. He slid a piece of paper in my direction. “The guy at the far table wanted me to give you and your…” He glanced at Elena, grinning. “…gorgeous friend this note.” He spun back towards the bar. “And these, of course.”

  He placed two more lemon-drop drinks in front of us and winked. The attractive barkeep disappeared just as quickly as he had shown up, and before I could ask him who the guy was, some stranger was talking Elena’s ear off to the tune of some cheesy Train melody playing in the background.

  And I was left alone at the makeshift bar, wondering why after all these years, a lifetime of losing out to the likes of the Elena’s and Laney’s, why I couldn’t just be like other women—flirty and free… I’d grown into my looks at eleven, learned to love my Loubotins at twenty-two. I waxed. I shaved. I primped.

  But I didn’t look like an
yone else on the beautiful rooftop patio. Still in a day’s work clothes, dark hair piled atop my head, I hadn’t felt this adrift, unwanted and abnormal in such a long time—at least not since I was seventeen. I’d never been the life of the party, networking didn’t come natural to me, and though I enjoyed people, I never partook in the brown-nosing that ran rampant in my own profession—publishing. I never adhered to the kiss-ass mentality that pervaded every “hi,” “bye,” and “Lunch later?”

  I was the only party-pooper in the place—a complete mess under my dress. On the outside, I was primped and powdered, ready to put the fire behind me, but on the inside? It was as if the fire had never died. Five nights ago, Laney and I had turned around after finally settling on the street only to discover that the man who had saved us was gone—vanished into the night. Authorities, firefighters and police had arrived within minutes to battle the blaze, questioning us the whole night through, and yet he never resurfaced—our rescuer.

  It was almost as if I had imagined him, and for a few moments, I’d been ready to deem him a dream… until I remembered that Laney saw, heard, felt him too. He’d haunted my thoughts ever since…

  Elena snapped her fingers near my face, waving.

  “Hey! Earth to Kat. I’m trying to get you drunk here, if you don’t mind…”

  “Oh!” I dropped my head, staring at my cup. “Sorry. I just…”

  “Less ‘sorry’s.’ More sipping.”

  It was a reminder I wasn’t sure I needed. It was bad enough that I’d been interrogated by the cops. I was raked over the coals by my sister the second she stepped into town. Her taxi had pulled up to my apartment two days after the TravelTalk fire, and she stepped out of the cab, all boobs and blonde hair bouncing in the wind, her high heels clicking across the concrete as she ran towards me before grabbing me in a tight hug, squeezing—probably bruising what few parts of my body managed not to turn black and blue.

  Nonetheless, she’d sat beside me during my police precinct interviews, slapped my wimpy lawyer into shape and threatened to pistol-whip a detective who’d gotten a little aggressive during questioning. And after all of that, after I talked until I was blue in the face and beat the police over the head with the same version of events, Laney and I barely managed to squeak our way out of a Breaking and Entering charge, our role in the fire still listed as unclear, a big question mark that the Tampa Police refused to erase.

  Truth be told… neither could I.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the vision of the fire off my mind or the sound of it out of my head. I thought of nothing but the flames… and the man emerging from them, saving me from the fiery fate I had almost resigned myself to.

  It was all so beautiful… and terrible. The air around me had crackled with finality, its rhythm dancing on a deadly drumbeat of sparks and snaps. Blue bursts intermittently emitted from the blaze, roaring and raging in a way I’d never seen before, the mounting fire making its way across the floor and all but stapling me to the ground, holding me fixed. Frozen. I was completely and utterly helpless on my own heels.

  Until him. The mysterious man from the fire—a man that was much more myth than reality.

  I’d taken to calling him Dante (from “The Inferno”). At the very least, he was the Greek God, Icarus—a figure of imagination flying much too close to the sun, his exploits burning as bright as the flame that threatened to consume him. I could cope with what had happened in the fire when I focused my thoughts around him. But then a flaming shot on the liquor bar sent me into pure panic attack mode, my knees giving way from under me, my legs collapsing as I nearly fainted in the center of the floor, my skin cold and clammy as my sister rushed to my side, shaking me back into consciousness.

  It wasn’t my brightest moment. Advised to “take it easy,” I plotted to do just that after a twenty-minute cab back to my place, but Mr. Two Strokes had different plans. And if an orgasm wasn’t going to take my mind off my near-death experience, then work was going to have to do the trick.

  Sliding my battery-operated boyfriend back under the pillow, I reached for my laptop at the edge of the bed. I slid it over the silk nightie hugging my thighs, opening the screen to stare into my e-mail inbox. Instead I found a message, waiting to pop up as soon as I signed on.

  I clicked on it, making the red notification button disappear, chuckling at the fact that our chat group—the one that Laney and I had started on our company-wide messaging system—was still entitled, #DesperateforDick.

  Laney:

  How was your “Back to normal” night?

  It was Laney, in our private chat channel. I started typing back.

  Katarina:

  Half a success. The drinks were good. Elena was Elena. I was a spaz. Nothing new there.

  Laney:

  Did you meet anybody?

  Katarina:

  Yes.

  I replied.

  Mr. Jack Daniels and Sir Jose Cuervo.

  Laney hesitated before writing back.

  Laney:

  Two men in one night…?

  The messenger showed that she was typing.

  SLUT.

  Katarina:

  HAG. And don’t try to lecture me. Before the night is over, I fully intend to cozy up with a big heap of Dr. Johnny Black.

  I turned my TV on, flicking through the channels before getting bored.

  Care to join us?

  Laney:

  A foursome…? No, thank you. I’ve actually got an early lunch date with a man who doesn’t require batteries. I suggest you do the same. If you keep abstaining from sex, your vagina is going to shrivel up like a raisin. I don’t want to be the one to tell you so, but if it comes down to it… I am NOT putting money on your vaginoplasty. That’s all I’m saying…

  Katarina:

  Some friend you are. What’s a friend if she can’t sit beside you while you’re getting your vagina walls reworked? And how do you know I haven’t been getting some? We’re not ALL as vocal as you are. Maybe some of us like to keep some secrets…

  Laney:

  OH PUH-LEASE. You haven’t been able to keep a secret from me since the day we met. Remember: I was the one who found out you were arrested for what happened in Mrs. Wentworth’s store… EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T CALL ME.

  I’m the only person in the world who knows about the Corey Feldman posters stashed under your bed. And IF you were getting laid (or at least successfully flicking the bean), I would know it the second you did. You’ve never been able to fix your face when you were feeling some sort of way. It’d be a cold day in hell before you were able to mask an emotion. And you definitely know it.

  I tapped the edge of my screen, tempted to close it on my speculating best friend. I hated when she was wrong, even more so when she was right.

  It was Corey Haim that was under my bed, not Corey Feldman. But even a broken clock was right twice a day because facts were… I hadn’t been laid in sixteen months, and even then, it had been a drunken mistake, a senseless romp in a back-room bar with my ex, Greg Sears… a man I now hated more than anything.

  Truth was… I didn’t trust myself to have sex. My track record hadn’t been stellar up until this point, and even the unforgettable ones—the once in a lifetime lays, were incidents I wished I could forget, men I wished I could forget… feelings I wished I could forget.

  One man more than most, actually. But I wouldn’t allow myself to think about him. I pushed him out of my mind and responded to Laney’s message.

  Katarina:

  Here’s an emotion for you. Pop Quiz: Can you guess this emotion? EAT A DICK. I am getting off. Byeeee, Laney.

  Laney replied immediately.

  Laney:

  Joke’s on you, too. I WILL eat a dick. Probably tomorrow night. JEALOUS? And I don’t want to hear about you getting off. Not unless it’s the good kind of “getting off.” I’m leaving this chat-room channel because it no longer applies to me right now. I’m a newly formed “cocks-pert.” Ca
ll me when you cum, Kat.

  And yes… I meant “cum.”

  I stuck a virtual tongue out at her.

  Swinging my feet over the side of the bed, I went reaching for those retro posters under my mattress frame when my computer pinged, indicating a new message.

  I clicked on the red bubble that appeared. I stared at the first thing I saw.

  We need to talk.

  I groaned, replying without a second thought.

  Katarina:

  Sorry. You need a reservation for #DesperateforDick party of one. All parties who are currently getting some need not apply. No floozies. No whore-bags. No “cocks-perts.” BYE, Laney.

  I hit the final key with a loud tap. I bent over the side of the bed. I squeezed my arm under the space beneath it, my fingers finally reaching it after a full minute. My arm practically stretched out of its socket, I sat the Corey Haim posters beside me, considering making good use of them. Except I wasn’t a teenager anymore… and no “The Lost Boys” remake was going to make my girly bits do a dance now at the age of twenty-six.

  I sighed, slumping back onto my headboard. The sigh slid into a gasp the second I peeked at the returning message on my screen. I blinked, fearing that I was losing my mind. The bad part was… I wasn’t.

  Brendon:

  Sorry. No Laney here…

  I looked again. I had been added to a new #WorkChat conversation, a private invitation—not a channel, with only one other member. None other than Brendon Foxx himself…

  My heart beat against my chest as I sat there, staring at the words, unable to pick up my fingers and make them type. I swallowed thickly as the private message showed that he was responding. Another bubble popped up.