Julie Walker - Born Wild

“I gossip like a girl?” Ace queried, dragging Bill from his ruminations. A shit-eating grin was spread across the man’s pretty-boy face. “Why thank you, Bill. I take that as a compliment.”

“Yeah, well, the next time you think of opening your mouth to discuss my private life,” he grunted, and it occurred to him then that he was emotionally exhausted, bone-tired of holding on to scorn and hostility that was more than a decade old. It was time to move on, “why don’t you try counting your teeth instead, huh?”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Ace winked, but Bill knew they were only words. Ace would continue to butt into everybody’s business with impunity. Just like he always had. “And now,” Ace continued, reading the surrender on Bill’s face, “why don’t you go up and talk to Eve. If I’m right, and I always am, she could use a little comforting right now.”

Now that made Bill’s chin jerk back on his neck like he’d been the recipient of a five-finger sandwich. “I thought that’s what you were going to do.”

Ace rolled his eyes, heaving a long-suffering, overly dramatic sigh. “She’d much rather that comfort come from you, you nitwit.”

No, she wouldn’t. No way. No how. “She would?”

“Without a doubt,” Ace stated with conviction. “So get to it.”

“But…” He glanced back at Mac who was still seated at the conference table.

All right, it was confession time. Because in all honesty, the thought of going upstairs to comfort Eve scared the living shit out of him. He may never be able to forget what had happened, he may never be able to trust her again, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still want her more than he wanted his next sunrise. If he lived to be a hundred years old, he figured he’d never stop wanting Eve. And that meant, in order to save himself more grief and misery, he had to stay away from her whenever he possibly could.

Now being the perfect example.

“Don’t we still have things to discuss?” he asked Mac, and it was only partly a stalling tactic. Because Bill hadn’t missed the flicker in Mac’s eyes when Eve asked if he really thought whoever was doing this was someone she knew. Mac smelled a rat. Bill was certain of it. “Like, who you suspect is really behind these attempts on her life?”

“I don’t know who’s behind them,” Mac said, his expression contemplative.

“There,” Bill pointed a finger at the guy’s face. “That look right there tells me you know more than you’re saying.”

Mac shrugged. “Here’s what I know. There are usually two reasons people commit premeditated murder.”

“And those are?”

“Love and money.”

“Jesus,” Bill swiped a hand over the back of his neck where a patch of goose bumps had suddenly erupted. Love and money, huh? Well, shit. That could mean only one thing. “So you suspect it’s someone very close to her,” he murmured, unconsciously shooting a worried glance toward the stairs leading to the third floor.

“Let’s rule out everything else first,” Mac stated. Then he added, “But let’s do it in the morning. Because right now, I’m tired as a cactus.”

Ace snorted. “You’ve been hanging around with the ragin’ Cajun too long, Mac my man.”

“Hey,” Mac frowned, “I’m from Texas. We have our own expressions and—”

Bill stopped listening, instead turning his full attention toward the staircase.

Did he dare?

“Go,” Ace came up beside him, giving him a little shove even as Mac continued to rant about the superiority of Texans when it came to the inventiveness of Southern colloquialisms. “But I warn you, you better just talk to her, just comfort her. I don’t want to hear you up there smudging her cookies.”

“Smudging her what?” Bill asked, only half listening since all his attention was focused on those stairs. Was it a stairway to heaven or hell?

“You know what I’m talking about,” Ace insisted. “Eating her cake, flicking her bean, smudging her cookies. None of that.”

And, shit, had his thoughts been plastered all over his face?

He turned to lift a brow at Ace who flattened his mouth and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, I can see the gerbils spinning the wheels in your head. But I trust you to keep them, and yourself, in check. Can you do that for me?”

“Of course I can,” Bill said, but he wondered who he was trying to convince more, Ace or himself. Then he decided there was no use standing there pondering imponderable thoughts, so he pulled his determination around himself like a steely mantle and stomped across the room to the metal steps.

Somewhere on Lake Shore Drive

11:02 p.m.

She needed to die. It was the only way…

And it broke his heart that’s how it had to be. But there was a law in the jungle: Eat or be eaten. And, as sad as it might sound, it didn’t matter what the relationship was. The female praying mantis ate her lover. The chimpanzee was known to eat his enemy. Even polar bear fathers had been filmed killing and eating their young.

He didn’t make the rules, by God. But he’d certainly learned to live by them. And the only way he could see to get free of his current predicament was for Eve to meet her maker.

Unfortunately, she was proving far more difficult to kill than he ever imagined…

Tough. That’s what she was. Tough and smart and beautiful. And there was a part of him that was so damned proud of her and how far she’d come from that young woman who’d suffered nearly paralyzing shyness and self-doubt. A part of him that adored her and scorned himself and the decisions he’d made that necessitated her death.

No. He shook his head, gazing out of his living room window at the cars zooming past on Lake Shore Drive, and beyond, to the calming blue of the lake itself. You’ve made your decision.

As always, the inner pep talk steadied him. And he could admit that he no longer had the time to stage her death, to orchestrate another accident. The clock was ticking down to the final hour, and he had to act fast. It needed to be quick. It needed to be dirty. And it needed to be soon.

Which meant it was time to call in the cavalry, otherwise known as the lowlife Chicago thugs who were threatening to break his knees before breaking his neck…

Picking up a cheap, plastic pre-paid phone, he dialed a number he knew by heart. One quick string of words later, and it was done. Eve’s life—or the end of her life—was no longer in his hands.

It’s just as well, he thought, sighing. It’d been obvious that night when he hesitated in putting a bullet in her brain that he really didn’t have the stomach to see this kind of nasty business through. He loved her, after all. But he hadn’t been able to countenance the thought of the half million dollars he’d have to pay that seedy Chicago gangster—on top of the wad of money he already owed the man—for services rendered.

Then again, time—and an impending deadline—brought clarity. And, really, what was a measly five hundred thousand when compared to continuing to breathe without the help of a tube? Which was exactly what would happen to him if Eve didn’t meet her end soon.

So, yes, he’d done the right thing, calling in the hit. And now all he had to do was sit and wait. Wait to give the big, sleazy assholes with their big, sleazy guns her whereabouts.

Glancing down at the glass of scotch in his hand, he watched the amber liquid catch the light from a nearby Tiffany lamp. It sparkled like agate, reminding him of the style of life he was used to living, of the style of life he deserved.

Raising the glass to his nose, he sucked in the peaty aroma of well-aged malted barley.

Yes, he assured himself. I did the right thing.

She was crying.

He could hear her through the door.

Damnit! The sound of her sobs, of her quiet sniffles, stabbed through him like shrapnel from a car bomb, tearing apart his insides. He was a sucker for women’s tears, no doubt about it. Really, what decent, honorable man wasn’t? But Eve’s had always been particularly heartrending. She cried with her whole body. She shook from head to toe, her tears seeming to come up from the depths of her soul.

His steely cloak of determination slipped, and he pressed his forehead against the cool metal door, fighting the urge to just turn away. From her sorrow. From his own. Then he reminded himself of Ace’s words and metaphorically reached back to adjust his mantle.

Flyboy was right. It was time for him to, if not forget, then at least begin to forgive. To heal his hurt as well as hers. And, yes, as much as it might grieve him to admit it, ever since their reunion he’d been doing his best to hurt her, to give her a taste of his suffering.

Of course, healing their hurts meant he had to start by marching into the room and asking her to answer the question that’d eaten at his brain like a tumor since the day he’d received that wedding invitation in the mail…

He needed to ask her why?

Why had she done things the way she’d done them? Why hadn’t she treated him with a little more respect, a little more compassion? Hadn’t he deserved that?

And maybe after he’d asked those questions, depending on her answers—or perhaps her answers didn’t really matter so much as the act of finally confronting the issue—he could begin to move forward. Move on.

Okay, Billy boy. Let’s man up and do this.

“Eve?” he knocked softly. “I…” He had to swallow the ton of sand that’d inexplicably taken up residence in his throat like the place was a friggin’ Saudi desert or something. “I’m coming in, okay?”