I growl and lift the bar off the hooks, lower it to my chest and then slowly push it up, holding it until my arms tremble, and then lower it again. Rep after rep, until my arms are jelly, and then I move to the leg press and pound out set after set until I can barely walk, my abused muscles on fire.
The pain is my friend, though. It gives me something to think about besides Leila. When I’m done punishing my body I go back home and order take-out and watch TV and try not to think about her.
I dream of her, though, and they aren’t innocent dreams.
* * *
I go into work the next day and begin sorting through the piled-up paperwork.
Captain Archer swings by my desk. “Hale, my office,” she barks, and I follow her down the hall. She leans back in her chair and sighs. “Listen, Carson, I think you need to take some time off.”
I stare at her. “You’re taking me off the case? What do you mean?”
“No,” Archer shakes her head. “I’m sending you on vacation, because there is no case.”
“Wait,” I say. “Are we talking about the al-Mansour case?”
Archer shakes her head. “Unless you came up with something new that I don’t know about yet, then that case is dead.” She eyes me, waiting.
The moment of truth. I consider for a moment, but I know there’s nothing else to say. “No. There was nothing. It went nowhere.”
She nods. “All right then. That’s closed.”
“Then what case am I off of?”
She shrugs. “I’m not taking you off a case, Carson, because there’s no case to take you off of. I put Jackson and Roberts on it, and they came up with nothing. No signs of anything that would make me think it was foul play. So officially, whatever happened at that bar was a freak accident. I can’t afford to waste any more manpower on it. We’ve got too many other cases that do have leads to follow.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense! I saw the photographs—”
“It’s closed, Hale,” Archer interrupts. “You’re on vacation for two weeks, as of this moment. You don’t have a choice. You haven’t taken a single day off in four years, and you were just injured. You need a vacation. Go to California and learn how to surf. Sit in your apartment alone and get drunk. I don’t care. What you do with your time is up to you, but I don’t want to see you back here for two weeks, you hear me?”
I nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
She leans forward and jabs at me with a pen. “And you better not try to investigate it on your own, either.”
Shit, well, there goes that idea. “Take all the fun out of vacation, why don’t you.” I try to make it a joke, but the captain just stares at me impassively.
“Go on, now. Git. Try and relax, Hale. Find yourself a girl or something.” Archer waves a hand and turns to her computer screen, dismissing me.
Find a girl? Now there’s an idea.
There’s not much in the way of paperwork on the Old Shillelagh case, but there is Leila’s statement, along with her contact information. I copy her phone number and address into my phone, and then leave the precinct.
Ten digits.
Call her? Text her? Just show up at her front door?
I’m off the case, or rather, there is no case to be off of, so there’s no conflict of interest, professionally.
But personally?
I don’t even know.
* * *
I end up perched on a bar stool, a drink in hand, watching baseball highlights and trying not to think about Leila.
That lasts for all of two innings.
By the time I’m crunching the ice at the bottom of my glass, my phone is out and I’m staring at her number. All I have to do is press the call button.
What am I going to say? She seemed pretty final in the way she’d said goodbye; maybe she really doesn’t want to see me. Maybe I’m imagining a connection between us that isn’t really there.
But no. She kissed me back, not just once, but twice. She wouldn’t have done that if she didn’t want me, on some level at least.
The fear I’d seen in her eyes gives me pause. What is she afraid of? Me? The possibility of us? Herself? Someone else?
There’s only one way to find out.
I touch the green button.
Chapter 8: Maelstrom
Leila
I’m going crazy.
Hassan is calling me nonstop, leaving threatening voicemails. Classic Hassan. It’s his way of intimidating me. Hassan is an extremely powerful fire-elemental and has consummate control over his powers. As if that’s not enough, he’s the heir to one of the most powerful ifrit clans in the world, which gives him access to essentially unlimited funds and somehow endless ranks of both mortal and ifrit henchmen. And, oh yeah, he’s a bloodthirsty sociopath with zero compunction about killing anyone who gets in his way.
And I’m supposed to marry him? If it weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Then there’s my father. He sounded frightened at the end of my conversation with him. My father is not an easy man to frighten. He’s thousands of years old and immensely powerful. He’s watched empires rise and fall. But now he’s going on the defensive because of Hassan al-Jabiri? Something is wrong, but I can’t figure out what. Sure, a deal might have gone wrong, but it was just one of hundreds of deals. Surely it can’t mean that much to my father. Hassan must have some kind of chokehold on my father’s business; it’s got to be something like that. There’s no other way he’d let an arrogant, evil excuse for a man like Hassan threaten his family without severe retaliation.
But my father will never tell me what’s going on, not in a thousand years. I’m a woman, and his daughter, and men do not discuss business with mere females, not in his chauvinistic, patriarchal world.
I don’t know what to do about Hassan, or about Father, so I push them out of my head…and, of course, my thoughts turn back to Carson. I never gave him my phone number or address, but I keep hoping he’ll show up. I glance at my phone every five minutes, and find myself listening for the doorbell. He’s a cop; he can find me if he really wants to.
I want him to come after me; I can admit that much to myself. I’d tell him everything, if he were to show up right now.
I would risk my family’s wrath to be with him. The strange thing is, though, I have a feeling he’d protect them, if he were to know the truth. There’s a sense of restrained power about him, a kind of primal strength that’s part of the reason he makes my knees weak when I’m around him. It’s impossible, though. Even as much as Carson can undoubtedly take care of himself, Hassan would torch him to a crisp without breaking a sweat.
I can’t help remembering the way he touched me in the hospital. I wanted so badly for him to slide his fingers inside me; my legs were shaking as he moved his touch from knee to thigh to groin, and I had to tense all my muscles to keep them from quivering like some virginal schoolgirl. Quivering…I was actually quivering.
It would’ve been embarrassing, but I could see very clearly how it affected Carson. It took even more self-control to keep my hands under the blanket, to restrain myself from touching the source of his desire. In that moment, I was willing to let him do whatever he wanted; I’m not a public-display-of-affection kind of girl, but something about Carson Hale destroys my inhibitions. We were in a hospital room with the privacy curtain open, his fingers less than an inch away from my core.
The memory has me hot all over again. If he showed up right now, I’d jump him. Literally, I’d dive-tackle him and tear off his clothes, kiss every inch of his muscular body and beg him to take me, right here on the living room floor.
And I realize something even more frightening: if Carson doesn’t at least call me before Hassan drags me back to Chicago, I’ll be heartbroken.
Which tells me how far this has gone between us: he’s a cop, and I’m falling head over heels for him.
Me, the daughter of Ibrahim Najafi, ifrit patriarch and underworld crime boss. Falling in love with a huma
n cop.
I chew on the thought; I’m in love with Carson Hale.
God, I’m in so much trouble.
I’m falling in love, but I’m supposed to marry a sociopathic ifrit killer?
What do I do?
I retreat to the kitchen and make tea, hoping it will calm me down, but I’m so distracted and upset that I leave the silverware drawer open. When I notice it, I can’t be bothered to close it. I lean back against the island and sip at the scalding liquid, thinking about Carson and hating Hassan and resenting my father. I don’t even feel the power leaking out at first. I’m so lost in the tangled mess of my life that the vortex whirling around me doesn’t register until a steak knife flies past my face to impale itself into the drywall beside the fridge, leaving a stinging scratch on my cheek where the blade grazed my face. My powers have gone haywire. A tornado is howling around my head, catching silverware from the drawer and tangling my hair in a wind-tossed halo. Knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks, all hurtle around me in gale-force winds, tearing the tiny kitchen apart. Cabinets are ripped off their hinges, drawers are pulled free and thrown across the room, bottles of spices smash against the walls, sending cardamom and cinnamon and garlic and salt and pepper and paprika into the tornado. A stream of plates hurtles across the kitchen, smashing against the wall and cracking the drywall one after the other in a ceramic hailstorm.
I close my eyes and focus on calming the raging hurricane of emotion within me, on bottling my powers before I destroy the entire building. When the winds are quiet once more, I open my eyes and curse weakly. The walls and ceiling and floor around me are peppered with silverware, dishes lay smashed in piles all over the floor, herbs and spices float to the floor in a choking, scented cloud, cabinet doors are cracked and hanging loose…there’s a plate lodged in the ceiling tiles, somehow still intact.
The scene would be comical if it didn’t mean losing my damage deposit and possibly even being evicted. I spend an hour and a half cleaning, sweeping up broken flatware and spices, dislodging silverware from the ceiling and the walls, closing the cabinet doors that will close and removing the ones too broken to close. I haul a garbage bag full of smashed plates and bent silverware and broken cabinet doors to the dumpster, and then slump onto the couch, sweaty and irritated.
Just then, my phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Leila.” Carson’s deep voice washes over me, and I feel a rush of joy. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“No, not at all. It’s just—I didn’t think I’d given you my number. I meant to, but…”
“Oh, I got it from the case file. I hope that’s okay.” He hesitates, and I take the moment to gather frazzled nerves and inject some strength into my voice. “I just wanted to talk to you. Are you busy?”
If he asks me out, I know I won’t be able to say no. I should, but I won’t.
“No,” I say. “I’m not doing much. Just…cleaning up a bit, you could say.”
“I thought maybe you’d like to meet somewhere for dinner.”
Suddenly, I’m ravenous. “Sure! That sounds great. Where should I meet you?” I hate how eager I sound.
“Xochimilco’s, maybe? Somewhere like that?” I can hear excitement and relief in his voice.
“Okay.” My heart is hammering in my chest.
I know I shouldn’t do this. If Hassan finds out, it would be bad for me and worse for Carson. I know it, but I can’t stop myself. The words are tumbling out before I can stop them, like my heart is acting without my brain, like my heart is in control and my common sense is left out entirely.
“We’ll meet outside Xochimilco’s, then”
“I’ll be there in…maybe half an hour? I need to get ready.”
“That’s fine.”
“See you soon,” I say.
“Sounds good. Bye.” He hangs up, and I’m relieved.
I shower and get dressed faster than I ever have before, my heart hammering with excitement and my stomach twisting and lurching. Unsurprisingly, I hesitate over what to wear. Eventually I decide on a summery orange sundress, not too slinky or revealing but still sexy. I’m nervous. I haven’t been on a date in a long time. And this is a date, no mistake about it.
I try not to wonder how far things will go tonight. I’m not very successful, because as I drive to meet Carson, my thoughts keep running back to the image I had of him in my bathtub, long limbs wrapped around me, muscular arms drawing me close to his hard body…
God, I’m in so much trouble. I’ve had that thought so many times now, and every time the amount of trouble I’m in where he’s concerned has increased.
My earlier thought flits unbidden through my mind: I’m in love with Carson Hale. I just have to hope I can keep that thought under control tonight, especially my impulse to tell him everything.
Chapter 9: Wind-Borne
Carson
I stand outside Xochimilco’s, waiting for Leila.
I’m already attached, and it feels good, even if she isn’t telling me everything.
I shove the questions away. I can’t worry about any of that; either she’ll tell me, or she won’t. It’s her choice, and I have no right to demand the truth from her, no matter how much I need to know, no matter how much dishonesty pisses me off.
Then she’s here, swaying toward me in a short orange dress, the hem brushing an inch above her knees. It’s not super low-cut or immodest, but the way it drapes her body shows off her curves in a way that makes my breath catch. Her thick black hair is loose around her shoulders, blown by the slight breeze drifting between the buildings in downtown Detroit.
I stay where I am as she approaches, trying to cover my sudden rush of nerves; this girl affects me in strange ways. She reaches me, hesitates a moment, and then presses up against me in a long, soft embrace. Her arms are around my neck, her lips against my cheek and now on my lips tasting, as always, of cherry lip balm. Her full breasts are crushed against my chest, and my hands skim down her back to curl around her backside.
She pulls her face away to look at me, smirking in coy amusement. “Oh really?”
“What?” I ask, feigning innocence.
Leila shakes her head, laughing, but doesn’t move my hands. My heart is hammering in my chest. I hadn’t meant to put my hands there, but when I felt her body pressed against me, I just couldn’t help myself.
She doesn’t seem to mind, though, and even pushes back into my hands for a moment before backing away from me.
“Dinner?” Leila asks. “As much as I wouldn’t mind making out all night with your hands on me, I am hungry.”
I reluctantly step away and dig my hand into my pocket so I don’t grab her lush ass again. “Do you want to go into Xochimilco’s, or find somewhere else?”
“Oh, this is fine,” Leila says, pointing to the restaurant behind us. “I’ve never been here before.”
We go in and are seated after a short wait. I order us some chips and salsa and a pitcher of sangria. We spend a few minutes perusing the menu, even though I know it by heart at this point. I’m careful to keep the conversation light and innocent, keep it away from anything that might lead to awkward questions I know she won’t answer.
Despite the small talk and the good food I can sense that she’s…distant? I’m not sure if that’s the right word. It feels like she’s not entirely here with me, as if part of her is somewhere else, focused on another problem. I recognize the behavior, as it’s something I myself do all too frequently.
When I’m working a case, it tends to overwhelm my entire being, even when I’m off-duty. I’ll be talking to someone and, on the surface, I’ll be listening and paying attention, eyes making full contact, nodding and agreeing and responding in all the right places, but I would never be completely there. Part of me is always locked away and working, examining facts and evidence and problems. Leila is in that mode. She listens to me talk about some of my less morbid cases and funny stories from my days as a patrol officer, but I can t
ell her mind is elsewhere.
I stop in the middle of a story and change tracks. “Is there anything wrong? You just seem like you’ve got something bothering you.”
Leila shakes her head. “No, no, I’m fine. I’m sorry.”
I reach across the table and take her hand. “Look, Leila…I know there are things you can’t or won’t talk to me about, and I’ve promised both of us that I won’t pry. But I can tell you’ve got something heavy going on in that pretty head of yours. If you don’t want to talk about it, fine, but just…whatever it is, know that I won’t pass judgment, and I’ll do my best to help you if you’ll let me. All I’m saying is, you don’t have to put on a game face for me, okay?”
Leila smiles at me, and squeezes my hand. “I know I’ve been kind of…I don’t know…evasive, or whatever. It’s not that I’m trying to keep secrets from you, it’s just that there are things I simply can’t talk about. With anyone, not just with you. I know that probably only makes the curiosity worse, and I’m sorry.”
“So there’s nothing bothering you? For real?” I can’t stop the question from popping out.
Leila sighs, exasperated. “There is something, yes. I’m not going to lie to you about that. You’re a cop; you’re trained to read people. But can you just…just let it go, for now? I promise, I’ll explain it all when I can. If I can. I just want to be here with you, have a good time, and try not to think about it. Okay? Please?”
I sense a desperation hidden in her words, and don’t know what to make of it. On one hand, she’s only made my curiosity worse, but on the other hand, I can clearly see she can’t talk about whatever is eating at her. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to push away all the questions yet again.
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