by Zara Chase
Releasing a breath she’d been unaware she was holding, Jodie hastened to do precisely that. She worked like a maniac, keeping up, doing more than her share, giving Ty no reason to criticize her. But he didn’t praise her either. In fact, he didn’t speak a single word to her, or bump against her, or comment upon the perfect batch of fudge sauce she’d made for that night’s desserts.
Who knew she’d miss being on the receiving end of his scathing tongue? Don’t think about his velvety tongue, she told herself, or the way it had felt to have it inside her mouth. The heat in the kitchen definitely wasn’t responsible for the elevation of her core temperature whenever such thoughts gripped her. But they were futile. No matter what happened, he wouldn’t be interested in kissing her again. Some things, once said, couldn’t be unsaid, and accusing a man of murdering a woman he very possibly loved definitely fell into that category.
By the time they’d finished prepping and were dismissed for their two-hour break, Jodie’s nerves were at breaking point. She’d intended to gauge Ty’s mood and confront him after service that evening but didn’t think now that she could wait that long. She let the others go back to the hotel ahead of her, conscious that Ty had already left the kitchen before she could ask for a private word with him. Deliberately? She couldn’t follow him into the guys’ private lounge, but if she hung around, perhaps he’d reappear. He had a habit of creeping up on her when she least expected it.
Loitering in the kitchen, she heard the sound of masculine laughter coming from the parking lot. She peered through the kitchen window and did a double take. Oh my, that wasn’t a sight a girl got to see every day. All six of the Yanks were out there, bare-chested, shooting hoops. There was a hell of a lot of shoulder charging, shouting, and joshing going down as they put a lot of energy into letting off steam. Darcy, Ross’s partner and the ski-school cinematographer was there shooting the action with a video camera, and the guys were playing up to her. But all Jodie could see were the powerful muscles in Ty’s chest flexing and contracting as he caught the ball Leo passed to him and then leapt in the air to make a basket. Even amidst five equally impressive torsos, Ty’s stood out for her. Guilt or animal attraction?
Jodie couldn’t decide.
As though sensing her watching him, Ty’s looked toward the kitchen window and their gazes locked. He didn’t acknowledge her, but it was a moment before he looked away and returned his attention to the game.
Aware that she wouldn’t be able to talk to him now after all, Jodie returned to the hotel. If she didn’t manage at least an hour’s sleep to make up for a virtually sleepless night, she would be more of a hindrance than a help during dinner service, and she was fiercely determined not to incur Ty’s wrath.
Not again.
* * * *
Ty felt better after letting off pent-up steam during the game with the guys. It had been a while since all six of them had slugged it out on their makeshift court, but they had lost none of their competitiveness in the interim. Ty knew it was down to Leo that they’d gotten together today, at a time when Ty could use the distraction. A word from Leo that Ty needed their support was all it took for them to put aside the stuff they ought to be doing to be there for him. Ty felt a fresh wave of appreciation for the solidarity of their friendship.
As he showered he wondered at Jodie’s nerve in returning to the kitchen. You could have knocked him down with a wet haddock when she walked in that morning, as bold as you please, challenging him with a defiant cut of her eyes to throw her out in front of the others. He still couldn’t say why he hadn’t done it. Perhaps because he respected her courage. He had sensed her nervousness, so it must have taken grit to show her face. She knew just how mad he was at her, suspected him of being capable of murder, and still wouldn’t back down. That earned his reluctant admiration.
Perhaps he’d let her stay because, having calmed down, he recognized in her a misguided need to find justice for her friend. The same need that had motivated Ty these past five years, without anything to show for it. He admired her tenacity and knew she would take the first opportunity she could to corner him and get some answers. That fact had been confirmed when he’d seen her in the kitchen, watching them shoot hoops when she ought to have been back at the hotel.
Bad luck, baby.
She looked terrible, like she hadn’t slept any better than he had. Ty ought to be glad. She deserved to suffer after leveling unfounded allegations against him. But he wasn’t that petty. Yeah, he’d let her catch him after service tonight and they’d clear the air. But he didn’t intend to make it easy for her.
Credit where it was due, he thought, when they reached peak service time that evening and the kitchen was struggling to keep pace. Jodie knuckled down, did more than her fair share, and her fudge sauce was nigh on perfect. He hadn’t told her so and he could see she was burning to ask his opinion. She’d be shocked rigid if she knew he was actually imagining her naked, handcuffed to his bed while he smeared that sauce all over her pussy and tits so he could remove it again, one slow, lazy lick at a time. Shit, now his was rock hard, right in the middle of service, simply thinking about it.
Get a grip, Vaughan! This woman thinks you killed your lover and all you can picture is fucking her senseless.
“Okay, good job, everyone,” he said when the last plate went out. “Let’s get this place cleaned up.”
“Ty.” He pretended not to hear Jodie’s voice as he headed for the door to the private lounge. “Sir!”
That got his attention.
“Something I can do for you?” he asked brusquely, turning to look at her.
“If you have a moment.”
“Clean the kitchen. I’ll be back.”
Ty took his third shower of the day, pulled on a comfortable pair of jeans and another of his favorite tanks, ran a comb through his damp hair, and returned to the kitchen. She was there alone, changed into her street clothes, watching him warily as he stood in the doorway.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” she said, her voice contrite.
“Come through,” he said, holding the lounge door open for her.
Neither of them sat. Instead they stood with several feet of daylight separating them as he waited for Jodie to speak.
“I, er…that is, the things I said to you last night. Perhaps I was hasty.”
“No perhaps about it, but if that’s your idea of an apology then I accept it.”
“Yeah, I guess it was. You need to understand that I tend to lose objectivity when I think about what happened to Flavia and that no one’s been held accountable for it.”
“Join the club.”
“I met her when we were both twelve years old. Did she tell you that?”
“She mentioned something, but I didn’t know your last name. That’s why I didn’t make the connection.”
“Yeah well, we were thrown into a French school where neither of us felt like we fit in. We hit it off from day one and remained friends right up until…well, until the end.”
“She spoke about you a lot.”
“She was beautiful.” Jodie choked on the words. “I miss her so much. I still can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Yeah, she was beautiful all right,” Ty agreed. The remnants of his anger fell away and he guided Jodie to the nearest couch. “Would you like a drink?”
“No, thanks. What I need is to understand what happened to my best friend so I can eventually stop feeling guilty about not being there when she needed me.”
“Guilty? You?” Ty sat beside her and shook his head. “You’ll have to stand in line.”
“I was backpacking around Asia at the time of her death,” Jodie explained. “I’d just finished final exams and was taking a gap year. You probably know that Flavia dropped out of school, aged sixteen, when she was talent-spotted by a top French model agency.”
“Yeah, she told me.” Ty sighed. “And I can understand why. The camera loved her.” He lowered his voice. “But not as much as I did.
I worshipped the ground she walked on, if you want to know the truth.”
“I believe you,” Jodie said softly. “Every e-mail I received from her since you guys got together, every phone conversation, was full of stuff about you. About how you kept her grounded. How you were the guy she’d spent her entire adult life waiting to meet.”
He glanced up at her. “She said that?”
A ghost of a smile flirted with Jodie’s lips. “And more, but I’m not telling. Your ego is already inflated enough.”
“We liked the same things.”
“BDSM?”
Ty elevated a brow. “She told you that?”
“Oh yeah. I knew she was into all that stuff. She started reading up on it, experimenting, when she was still at school. She liked pain, didn’t she?”
“There’s a very thin dividing line between pleasure and pain. You might be surprised.”
“Is that what connects you guys here?”
“What makes you ask that?” Ty replied, playing for time, unsure whether to be honest with her. Unsure if he could trust her to keep her mouth shut.
“I noticed the way Tanya winces sometimes when she walks. I was at a fashion show in Paris once, not long after Flavia got better known. She was walking that way but it looked real sexy on her as she wiggled her butt and strutted down the catwalk like she owned it.” Jodie’s smile was tinged with sadness. “She did, of course. All the other models paled into insignificance against her. Anyway, I asked her why she walked like she was in pain and…well, she told me that some guy had flogged her backside at her request the previous night.”
Ty flashed a slow smile. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. But yeah, we’re all into the life, and just in case you’re wondering, Tanya loves having her ass whipped in front of whomever happens to be in the dungeon. That and a lot of other stuff that to the uninitiated would probably seem perverted. Ward is more than happy to oblige her, and she will do whatever it takes to make Ward, her Master, pleased with her. That’s the way it works.”
Jodie swallowed and Ty was unable to decide whether she was more disgusted or turned on. It was hard not to notice that her nipples had pebbled and were pressing against the thin fabric of her top and the lacy bra she wore beneath it. So he figured…well, that he’d figured her right and that she was a player in the making. If only!
“You met Flavia in a dungeon in Boston?” she asked.
“Yeah and we connected straight off.”
“So what happened? How did she finish up with her…” Jodie swallowed again, and this time Ty knew it wasn’t a sexual reaction. “With her throat cut?”
“Flavia was driven by ambition but she also had a wild side. She was always the first to try something new. Always pushing the boundaries.”
Jodie nodded. “That about sums her up.”
Ty sighed. “I could control her when we were playing sex games, but the rest of the time she was very much her own person. A bit like you are. A free spirit trapped in a beautiful body. She was in demand as a model, flying all over the world on assignments, but she made Boston her base and always came home to me.” Ty closed his eyes and threw his head back, lost in the past. “Our reconciliations were phenomenal. All the time she was away, we’d phone and e-mail back and forth. I’d tell her what I wanted her to do for me when she got back, and she’d send me pictures of her…well, let’s just say graphic pictures of her putting my requirements to the test, using sex toys and her imagination.”
“I know she loved you, Ty, and it’s obvious you returned her feelings. So I still don’t get how she—”
“She was on drugs, you know that?”
“I guessed.” Jodie trapped her lower lip between her teeth, as though holding in her emotions through that gesture. “A lot of models do, to help keep their weight down.”
“Yeah, but her habit was getting out of control. She’d graduated to crack cocaine.”
Jodie’s body jerked upright. “Hell, that I didn’t know!”
“She said the strain of all the traveling was getting to her. I told her she didn’t need to work nearly so hard. I was doing real well in the restaurant. I could support us both and she could pick and choose her assignments. But, like I say, she was independently-minded. She said if she didn’t keep working, she’d be replaced by younger…well, models. We fought about her drug use. She was spending all her earnings on her habit, and I refused to help her out when she got into debt. I was being cruel to be kind, or so I thought. Tough love, if you like.”
“Ah, so that’s what it was about.”
“What?”
“She e-mailed me a few days before she died. Said you guys had fought, that you were being stubborn and unreasonable. That she had it under control so you didn’t need to get on her case. But she didn’t say what. She was rambling.”
“Most likely high.”
“Yes, I expect so, given what you’ve just told me.”
“If I told you the truth,” he replied, a bitter edge to his voice. “You think I killed her, remember?”
“Perhaps I jumped to conclusions.”
“Perhaps you did. You still don’t sound certain.”
“I e-mailed back asking her what problems she was having and why it made you so mad, but she never replied.” Jodie said, avoiding giving Ty a straight answer to his assertion, implying she still hadn’t made up her mind about him. “She would have been dead by then. That’s why I thought you had something to do with it. It was obviously a really serious fight this time because you were threatening to break up with her, but Flavia didn’t say why. She was devastated at the thought of losing you.”
“I never would have let her go,” he said, so softly that he was unsure if Jodie actually heard him. “I was just trying to save her from her demons.”
“When news of her death finally reached me, I contacted the Boston police, sent them that last e-mail, and said I thought they should talk to you. They said they already had and that you’d been eliminated from their enquiries. I couldn’t understand why since her body was found not far from your restaurant, but they wouldn’t tell me much else—said I wasn’t a relative and that until an arrest was made they had to keep the details confidential. I was furious. I was more of a relation to Flavia than her family had ever been. They hadn’t had much time for her until she started making the headlines.” She huffed out a long breath. “So, I focused my anger on you and decided to try and find you, do the police’s job for them.”
“How did you find me, just as a matter of interest?”
“Your signature dish of lobster ravioli.” Jodie smiled. “Flavia used to rave about it, and given how little she used to eat, I figured it had to be special. I thought if you were still cooking, you’d do it again eventually, so I put up an online alert, and lo and behold, a brilliant review about a similar dish served in this restaurant appeared. I didn’t recognize your name and you didn’t appear to give interviews, which I thought was odd. No offence, but all top chefs like to shout about their skills.”
“None taken,” Ty assured her, his lips quirking.
“When I read about Hadleigh’s and discovered a load of Yanks hung out here, I put the rest together. Then I saw an ad for the contest and figured it would be a good way to get in here without creating suspicion.” She blew air through her lips. “Unfortunately, taking the tactful route doesn’t really work for me.”
“You don’t say.” Ty stretched his arms above his head and sighed. “I didn’t kill the woman I loved and still love, Jodie. She was discovered not half an hour after she was killed and I’d been in my kitchen for hours, surrounded by a dozen people. Besides, Detective Barker told me it had all the signs of a professional hit. So, as I say, I didn’t kill her, but Flavia did a pretty good job of almost killing herself with those damned drugs. She definitely had a destructive streak.”
“Yeah, she believed in living for the moment.”
“I didn’t kill her, but…”
“Go on,” J
odie softly urged when the words of self-condemnation stuck in his throat.
“Okay, I didn’t actually wield the knife, but I might just as well have done.” Ty leaned his forearms on his splayed thighs and stared at the floor. “That’s quite a burden to have to live with.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” she demanded hotly. “You had me convinced that you loved her. Now you’re implying that you know something about her death.”
“Oh, I loved her, but I was so goddamned bullheaded that I thought my being tough with her, giving her an ultimatum, would make her quit using.” His expression probably reflected his self-disgust. “I figured a little determination and she’d be able to go cold turkey. God, what a jerk I was! I should have booked her into a rehab center and driven her there myself. Instead, I drove her to the point where she had no choice but to smuggle drugs for the guy she got into debt with—”
“Her supplier?” Jodie gasped. “I had no idea.”
“When I found out, I went ballistic. That’s what we argued about and why I threatened to break up with her if she didn’t quit running drugs for them. It was easy for her, you see, what with her traveling all the time with the whole modeling caboodle. They didn’t get searched, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t get caught. I made her see sense and she agreed not to do it anymore. But,” he added in a tormented voice, “don’t you see? Your accusations were spot on. By making her go against that cartel and not protecting her properly, I am responsible for her death and I have to live with that for the rest of my days.” With his elbows still wedged on his thighs, he rubbed his face in his hands as tears of bitter regret coursed down it. “I should have hidden her away somewhere safe and dealt with those bastards myself.”
Chapter Six
Jodie watched, appalled, as Ty’s broad shoulders shook and he sobbed for the senseless loss of the woman he had clearly adored. Tears sprang to Jodie’s own eyes for the same reason. But this wasn’t about her. Ty hadn’t gotten over the guilt he felt at having failed Flavia, and his life had been on hold for five long years because of it. She must somehow find a way to make him see he’d done nothing wrong, which she was now convinced he had not.
