Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology

by Violet Vaughn

  “If you’re sure it’s okay,” said Andrea with hesitation.

  “I’m positive. We would love to meet him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Andrea.”

  21

  “It’s not my fucking problem!”

  His angry words, in a voice she barely recognized, stopped her cold outside her front door.

  Andrea had never heard Riley swear before and shock paralyzed her. She froze at the sound of his hollering from inside her apartment.

  “I took this on your goddamn recommendation, Claydon.”

  She moved her hand away from the lock and considered the possibility of getting into her car and driving off. Her curiosity wasn’t as strong as her fear of what she might discover.

  But she was unable to walk away either. Her mind and ears stood on alert. Who was he talking to? She clutched her keys in her hand, as her heartbeat reverberated through her body. Blood rushed through her and in the next instant anger took over and gave her strength.

  This was her apartment.

  Whatever problems he had were nothing to do with her. She opened the door.

  “Fuck you too!” His words flew through the air along with his cell phone which hurtled across the room as soon as she walked in. He glowered at her as she crept into the living room and for a few awkward moments silence filled the air.

  She looked around, then sniffed. Was that cigarette smoke she smelled in the air?

  “What’s happened?” she asked, eyeing him warily.

  “A lousy deal, that’s all.” He threw his hands around the back of his head and stretched out his shoulders in a way she had admired not so long ago.

  She swallowed, having difficulty understanding the markets anyway. Yet she knew that they were risky. How much trouble was he in?

  “How bad is it?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” he said, walking towards her. The abrupt change to normal unnerved her and she was amazed by the speed with which he had easily switched from one mode to the other.

  Too easily.

  “It sounded bad.” She tried to still her wavering voice. A sense of fear loomed over her. So much for getting home to relax.

  “I can recover from this, Andrea. Don’t you worry. I’ll have to watch the markets carefully for the next few hours.” He wiped his hands through his hair and gave her a smile that would have warmed her soul had she remained blissfully ignorant of his mood.

  “You’ve been watching the markets like a hawk for a while,” she said, recalling that he was often working late and hardly ever came to bed the same time as her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her gently on the lips. She crinkled her nose up at the sharp smell of cigarettes as he moved closer.

  “How was your day?” he asked, calmly.

  She tried to read him, tried to work out how he’d gone from almost exploding to being so completely normal in the blink of an eye.

  “Busy, as usual,” and then she looked at him. “Are you in some sort of trouble?” She didn’t like the way he’d said it was something he could ‘recover’ from. The word implied damage, irrespective of how cool he now tried to play it.

  “No,” he replied, with a laugh; almost as though she’d told him a joke. But his face turned serious. He didn’t know how long she’d been at the door, and she knew—could almost hear his brain ticking away—that he was trying to figure out how much she’d heard.

  “Like I told you, Andrea,” he said slowly, “It’s nothing I can’t take care of.” But his voice was tight and he didn’t look like his usual self.

  She placed her bag over by the table and tried to sound as casual as he had, even though she had an uneasy feeling—like acid eating away at her stomach—that all was not well.

  “Is that cigarette smoke I can smell?”

  He closed his eyes as if listening to her words was a trial.

  “Is it?” she asked. “I could smell it as soon as I walked in.”

  He threw his hands up as if admitting defeat then laid them on his hips. “Andrea, I’m sorry. I guess there’s no hiding it.”

  “No hiding what?”

  “Yes, it’s cigarette smoke. I stand to lose a lot of money on this latest deal. When I’m stressed I smoke. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it in your apartment.”

  “You shouldn’t have. I can’t stand the smell of it.” She felt her face harden, felt the muscles tighten around her jaw; felt weary and longed to be able to come home to an empty apartment for a change. How many months had it been since she’d had the place to herself?

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and he was soft and gentle as he came up to her. “Sit down, here,” he pulled her gently over to the couch. “I’ll make something to eat.” He did that sometimes, when it took his mood, and he hadn’t done it in a while. But if he was offering…and he seemed desperate to make it up to her.

  “I thought you had to watch the screens like a hawk?”

  “I can do both. Would pasta with sauce be okay for you?”

  Anything would be good for her right now. She wasn’t too hungry and walking into this mess hadn’t helped. But if it got him out of her way, so that she could sit in relative peace and quiet and have the living room to herself, it was worth it.

  How strange that she now saw him through a filter of irritation. She heard him shout from the kitchen.

  “We don’t have any sauce!”

  We? Funny how he’d phrased is as ‘we’ but there was no ‘we’ when it came to shopping for groceries. She let out a loud exhale. There wasn’t a lot of food in the cupboards because she hadn’t gone grocery shopping in a while.

  He stuck his head out of the kitchen, obviously noticing her silence. “Don’t worry. I’ll make some, the way you showed me.”

  “We don’t have any tomatoes either, fresh or canned.”

  He made a face and settled his hands on either side of the door frame, filling the open space with his well-built body. Once upon a time she’d been content to stare at him and melt.

  Once upon a time.

  “I should have gone shopping. I meant to. It’s just that this deal got out of hand.”

  You used to go shopping, in the beginning, she remembered. They didn’t talk about it and she’d never asked him to but in the beginning he’d offered willingly.

  “It sounds like a real big problem.”

  He took a few steps into the living room. “Andrea, drop it. I can handle it, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m going out to get the stuff we don’t have.”

  “You can’t drive.” She reminded him. And it was late, even if he got a taxi, it seemed too much trouble.

  He slipped onto the couch beside her and stared at her with blue eyes filled with concern. She could still smell the smoke on him and this time when he leaned in to kiss her again she pulled away from him.

  “Let’s go out. My treat,” he suggested.

  “I’m too tired to drive,” she said, not looking forward to having to wait for food in a restaurant either. “I’d rather stay in. I’m exhausted and I’m out all day tomorrow.” She was going to visit d’Este and sign all the necessary paperwork as well as check that they had their shipping processes in place.

  “You are?”

  “I’m visiting a supplier,” she told him, thinking how odd it was that she was now visiting d’Este again, the same supplier that she was supposed to have visited when she’d first met him at the Villa Costanza. But she didn’t feel like reminding him of that time. Or remembering it much herself either.

  “You look tired.” He wrapped his finger around the curls that had fallen over her shoulder. “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That I’m getting in the way.”

  “In the way?”

  “Maybe it’s time for me to move on. I hadn’t intended to stay here that long. It seems like you want your place back again.”

  “Do you want to leave?” Now that he had br
ought the topic up she wasn’t so sure. Days like today, when she was especially tired, were hard and having her own space would be wonderful.

  She didn’t like that he’d been in a mood, shouting and yelling on the phone and that her place smelled like a sleazy nightclub. But at the same time she had become used to having him around. Maybe a small break might do them both some good? It was all so confusing and the line between what she wanted and what she thought she wanted, seemed to blur.

  He shook his head, directed his gaze at her so strongly that it made her heart swell. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Andrea.” He looked away, and the shock of those words fell upon her chest like an axe to her heart.

  Her mouth fell open.

  “I didn’t want to get so involved so quickly. But with you, I just fell.” Blue eyes locked onto hers and she tried to reach inside his mind, desperate for the part of him that she felt he still kept away from her.

  Yet she didn’t feel compelled to repeat the words to him; couldn’t bring herself to tell him that she loved him back. Because she wasn’t sure that she did.

  If she loved him the words would have come quickly and without hesitation. The fact that she wasn’t sure about it made her realize that she probably wasn’t. That her words didn’t come readily revealed more to her than his admission of love.

  He appeared to take her silence for shock at hearing his words and this time when he leaned in with a kiss to seal his love for her, she let him, and slowly closed her eyes, trying to forget the taste and smell of tobacco that attacked her nostrils.

  “Garlic,” he said, pulling away from her and standing up. Was it embarrassment or her lack of a response to his words that made him get up abruptly and change the subject so obviously?

  “Garlic?”

  “I’ll make that other sauce with garlic and butter and herbs that you showed me once. Sit back, relax. I’ll get on with it.”

  “About what you said…” she began, standing up.

  “I sprang it on you quickly.” He touched a hand to her face. “I said it because that’s how I feel. That’s all.” He seemed eager not to dwell on it.

  “What about your deal?” She looked over at his laptop, at the black screen on one of the monitors and the colored, moving graphs. He waved his hand dismissively. “It can wait.”

  “I wanted to tell you something,” she said, suddenly remembering her visit to Ava. She winced, thinking it might not appeal to him. He watched her with a look of expectancy.

  “You’ve been invited to the wedding.”

  “What wedding?”

  “Ava and Nico’s.”

  “The wedding?”

  She nodded. “The wedding. I saw Ava earlier today. I told her about you. About us.”

  The words made him smile. “You told her about us?”

  She nodded. “She wants to meet you, said she’d love for you to come to the wedding. I know it’s short notice but I hadn’t told her about you before.”

  “You wanted to keep me all to yourself?” he said, smiling as he squeezed her hand.

  “I haven’t been able to meet up with her as much as I should have. They are so busy, her and Nico. He’s opening a new hotel soon, they have a baby on the way, and then with this wedding...”

  “You’ve been busy yourself,” he said, softly.

  “But still. I should have made more of an effort. Anyway, I met with her today and she has invited you to their wedding.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, she’s looking forward to meeting you, though she’ll be too busy to even know we are there.”

  “I’ll need to get a suit.”

  “You will. I want you to look your best. I want to show you off.” The idea of attending the wedding with a partner suddenly appealed to her. For a moment her earlier irritability was hastily forgotten in place of attending this high profile wedding with a gorgeous man by her side. Things still bothered her, but for the wedding she would push these thoughts to the back of her mind and deal with them later.

  “I’ll do you proud,” he said and kissed her on the nose. “Sit back, and relax.” Then he disappeared into the kitchen.

  22

  Breaking down the boxes into sheets of flat corrugated cardboard was time consuming, Leo decided. And he knew it was one of those tasks that Andrea didn’t like. Not that she was afraid of breaking a nail or chipping her nail polish. She wasn’t vain in that way. Thinking about it, he’d never seen her nails painted.

  She was too busy worrying about her business to be concerned about all things beauty related.

  He liked that about her. He liked that she was unconcerned with her looks and had no real idea of how striking she was. Yet a man like Riley had hooked onto her. A brief meeting one weekend and now he was practically living with her. What worried Leo the most was that here was a man who had no fixed address and who had been traveling for a few years yet seemed to portray himself as a wealthy man making a living as well as having made a lot of money back home. Leo wasn’t so sure he believed the story about him being wealthy. As an entrepreneur himself, he knew the two types of personalities didn’t co-exist easily in that way. Richard Branson had bought himself an island and worked like a mad man to make it profitable. What he didn’t do was go and live on it for years.

  Now this man had taken up residence with Andrea. She didn’t say much but sometimes, he could tell by the look on her face or something she said, that perhaps all wasn’t as it seemed.

  He hadn’t mentioned any of this to Dominic since it wasn’t his place to get involved in Andrea’s private life. But he knew something wasn’t right and that Andrea didn’t look too happy lately. Leo went by gut instinct and his gut told him that there was more to Riley James than met the eye.

  Andrea had put him in his place once when he’d tried to probe, and he’d backed off since then, despite his reservations about him. Anger flamed inside his stomach each time he thought of her with that man. As much as it pained him, he wanted to like Riley for Andrea’s sake. At least, that’s what he told himself.

  Leo tried not to feel that way about her.

  But it was impossible to bury his feelings, especially since they worked together so closely; which was why he was deeply thankful that he worked elsewhere for two days in the week.

  She was Dominic’s sister and he’d known her for almost a decade. In the past he’d often heard Dominic joke about his sister’s latest business ventures, but ever since she’d been in the children’s supply business, the joking had stopped. Dominic had been impressed and Leo had become interested in her new ventures. When Dominic announced that she was looking to expand, Leo had taken a closer look at her business and had become more interested because she had a good business going. He knew that with the right type of expansion, perhaps a bigger warehouse, more re-investment back into the business, and a bigger product line with targeted advertising, they needed a handful of businesses like Ava’s to supply to and then her business would explode.

  Perhaps Gianna was right. He needed to get out more. Join a few dating agencies. Perhaps he felt drawn to Andrea because they spent half the week working together and he didn’t socialize much. He was guilty of being a workaholic too. It has been something that Gianna had found hard to come to terms with.

  Or maybe he liked Andrea the more he got to know her because she had a heart of gold, because she was smart and funny, and generous, and because she got more pleasure out of a cinnamon Danish pastry than any woman had a right to.

  He stared at the neatly piled up rows of boxes. The warehouse now fully replenished with stock. He stared at the huge pile in ‘Ava’s corner’. Her shipments were going out more frequently due to growing demand and he was surprised that Andrea had chosen to wait until she had a huge shipment to maximum capacity before she sent this one out. He’d been tempted to arrange for her products to be picked up today by the container firm, but Andrea had told him to wait.

  He looked at the now flattened piec
es of cardboard and was thankful that it was the end of the day. No customers were expected and he could shut the warehouse and leave for the day but the sound of the bell ringing and then the clickety-clack of the front door opening caught his attention.

  “Leo.” Riley nodded as he stepped inside.

  “Riley,” he responded, his stomach clenching. What did he want?

  Riley glanced down at this watch. “Is Andrea back yet?”

  “No.” And if she was, he didn’t think it would be until later. Surely Riley knew that?

  “Women,” said Leo, attempting an easy air. “I’m not even sure that she’s coming back here. I was under the impression that she would go directly home. Why don’t you call her and find out?” He was eager to be out of here and this man was the last person he wanted to see.

  “Working late today?” Riley asked, getting out his cell phone.

  “It’s not that late. I’m always here until closing time.”

  “Andrea says you work part time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Three days?”

  “You know it.” Leo folded his arms. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  Riley put away his cell phone without making a call. “I need a suit for some wedding in a few days.”

  “Some wedding? I’d say it’s been hyped as the wedding of the year in these parts.”

  Riley ran his hands through his hair. “Whatever. Do you know where I can buy a reasonably priced suit from? Or maybe hire one?”

  Reasonably priced or hire? Leo looked at him carefully. Here was a man who had stayed at an extravagant hotel in Bellagio, a man who didn’t need to work and had no business, as far as Leo could tell. And he needed a reasonably priced suit?

  Like other things about Riley, Leo didn’t believe it.

  “You’ve left it until the last minute, haven’t you?” Leo asked. “The wedding’s only a few days away.”

  Riley gave him a hard look. “It doesn’t matter when I buy it, does it? As long as I have a suit for the day.”