The Screwdriver - Dirty Martini 2

by George, G. R. ; George, Renee;

Fresh heat flooded Phoebe’s face. Her eyes widened. Had she really said that?

  Damon’s nostrils flared, his dark eyes locking on hers.

  “Yes, Pheebs,” William’s steady voice played over her wrought senses, “we would.”

  She jerked her stare to his, her pulse pounding.

  Then why hadn’t you before?

  The question sliced into her soul.

  With a nod, she turned and left. Eager to be gone from the depressing remains of her burnt-out studio.

  Aching for the two men inside it who she’d sworn she never wanted to see again.

  * * * *

  Damon stared at his best friend. “What. The fuck. Was that?”

  “That was a train wreck,” Will answered, walking across the blackened debris to crouch beside a particularly charred pile of rubble.

  Damon shook his head, watching his partner inspect the rubble with a keen, practiced eye. “Why didn’t we just corner her like we’d discussed on the drive up and show her exactly what we had in mind?” He drew his own well-studied inspection over Phoebe’s gutted studio, the sight depressing him on a level he couldn’t indulge. When he turned his attention to a fire scene, it had to be as an indifferent investigator, not a worried…whatever the hell he was to Phoebe at the moment. “You saw the look in her eyes when she saw us,” he said instead, turning back to Will. “Well, after she stopped coughing, that was. She wants us as much as we want her.”

  Will poked at the pile of charred debris with a finger before standing and giving Damon a nod. “I did, and you’re right. But think, Damon. Her studio has been destroyed. She’s pretty bloody highly strung right now. The last thing she needs is two horny blokes coming on hard and fast.” He narrowed his eyes, his hands coming to rest on his hips. “Besides, take a breath for me, a deep breath, and tell me what you smell.”

  Damon narrowed his own eyes, staring at his partner as he did just that. The acrid, almost sour stench of burnt materials flowed over his olfactory system, a distinctive odor of destruction his brain, after thirteen years as a firefighter and arson investigator, catalogued without conscious thought. With the next breath, however, he tuned out everything in his mind—his concern for Phoebe, his desire for a past once had, his longing for a future few dared hope for—and focused solely on the smell and taste of the air in the studio.

  Burnt wood and glass, melted plastics, sodden charcoal, smoke-painted metal, all smells he expected to detect in the fire of a glassblower’s studio. And something else. Something…wrong.

  He’d been in the Newcastle studio Phoebe had shared with another artist many times before she’d moved; knew quite well her working practices. She was an “archaic” artist, which meant she worked with the traditional glassblowing materials and techniques the ancient Romans used—three furnaces used to melt and heat the glass, naturally derived pigments to color it, metal blow pipes and marble and steel benches.

  He drew another breath, through his nose and mouth, tasting the air as well as smelling it…

  And his gut dropped. “Ethyl Alcohol.”

  Will’s jaw bunched. “An accelerant. Easily mistaken for the smell of alcoholic beverages. But we both know Phoebe’s stance on alcohol so it’s not the smell of wine or spirits she may have kept in the studio.”

  Damon ground his teeth at Will’s words. He remembered all too well Phoebe’s revelation a year ago about her abusive drunkard of a father who had no qualms beating his wife and only child. Phoebe, as a result, almost never drank.

  He ran his stare over the blackened chaos around him, his hands balling into fists. “So the fire was deliberately set.”

  Will nodded, his expression unreadable, his body tense.

  Damon’s chest squeezed. Hard. “You’re not thinking Phoebe did it?” He couldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t. Despite what the Morpeth fire captain had put in his report, Damon wouldn’t believe Phoebe had torched her own studio.

  Will dragged his fingers through his hair. “No. For three reasons. One, she loves her art more than she loves life, we both know that. Two, Sami’s father. After years of her best friend’s dad being the closest thing to a real father Pheebs had, she would know a structural fire like this meant an investigation.” He stopped.

  Damon studied him, not liking the pause at all. “And three?”

  Will let out a ragged sigh. “She would know we would be the ones sent to investigate. And as much desire as I saw in her eyes, I also saw hurt. A lot of it. Hurt and mistrust. She wasn’t happy to see us, didn’t want to see us, and it had nothing to do with the fire.”

  Damon drove his nails into his palms. “You’re right. Jesus, she even told Captain Kilgour she didn’t want us up here. Fuck it.”

  Will didn’t need to nod; his eyes said it all. Phoebe hadn’t set her studio alight, which could only mean someone else had intentionally and maliciously started the fire and destroyed her studio.

  Why? Who would do that? And to what end? A knot formed in Damon’s gut, a bloody tight and convoluted knot he recognized well. Fear. It had been a long time since he’d experienced the emotion, and the last time had involved Phoebe Masters as well. That time, however, had nothing to do with a possible threat against her life and everything to do with an entirely different emotion overwhelming him.

  You can’t think about that now, Damo. For the moment, you’ve got to be nothing else but an arson investigator. Not a man too dumb-shit stupid to admit when he was falling in love.

  He huffed out a breath, casting the burnt-out shell of Phoebe’s studio another slow inspection. “We won’t tell her. Not until we know who started it and why.”

  One of Will’s eyebrows cocked. “You think that’s wise?”

  Damon snorted. “No. But that’s the call I’m making. As Senior Investigator.”

  “As Senior Investigator?” Will narrowed his eyes. “Not as the guy who came up here with the goal of seducing Phoebe back into his bed?”

  The question made Damon growl. “As both. And I’m not the only one who wants her back in his bed, am I?” He withdrew his keys from the hip pocket of his jeans and tossed them to Will. “Now shut the fuck up, Tiny, and go get our kits from the car.”

  Will snatched the keys from midair. “Yes, boss.”

  Despite the wholly disturbing discovery they’d just made, Damon laughed. “Yeah, remember that later when I’m telling you where to put that dick of yours.”

  Will grinned. “As long as it’s not inside you.”

  Damon laughed again. “Oh no. It’ll be inside a certain glass artist we both know.”

  Will’s grin turned wry. “That’s if she’ll have us.”

  The knot in Damon’s gut rolled. “She will,” he said. But he wasn’t sure.

  And that scared the shit out of him more than anything.

  Chapter 3

  It was no use. She was officially screwed.

  Phoebe stopped pacing the converted mechanic’s garage that was her home and dropped herself into the old, worn armchair she’d only five minutes ago flung herself from. She should be worried about her destroyed studio. She should be worried about her materials and supplies and all the works she’d lost in the fire, all the tools and equipment now damaged beyond repair by the flames. She should be freaking out about how the fire started.

  Instead, she was obsessing over the naked want she couldn’t miss seeing in Damon’s and William’s eyes.

  She scrunched up her face and gnawed on her thumbnail, staring at the large abstract sculpture sitting on the floor in front of the window opposite her. She’d only finished the artwork the day before yesterday, a commissioned job for the Prime Minister that would soon be collected by courier. Thank God she’d brought it home with her to photograph, otherwise it would’ve been destroyed along with the rest of her studio.

  She let out a sigh around her thumb. She was exceedingly proud of the evocative piece. Tall and elegant, the twin glass columns stood pressed together, two blown forms of black glass manipulated
to the brink of shattering and yet still dominating the space they held with irrefutable power. When she’d created it she’d done so purely from the heart, with no pre-planned conception of how it was going to finish. Looking at it now, she couldn’t help but wonder if somewhere along the line it had become prophetic.

  The two forms, one darker in its blackness and slightly taller than the other, could be Damon and Will.

  “You jinxed yourself, Masters.” She glared at the artwork. “You bloody well blew them into existence and now they’re out there in your studio picking over the remains of what was once your life.”

  Jesus, how melodramatic can you be?

  She curled her lip, glaring some more at the sculpture. “Very. Example, only two hours ago you were holding a scorched piece of glass in your hand and referring to it as an accidental dildo. How’s that for melodramatic?”

  Actually, if you take into account you created an artwork that was meant to represent the mystery of forever that instead embodies the two men who forever changed your most secret fantasies, I’d say the accidental dildo was Freudian.

  With a groan, she flung herself from the armchair. Again. And paced the area of the converted garage designated as her living room. Again.

  Ten paces to the left. Spin. Ten paces to the right.

  She chewed on her thumbnail some more. She shot the glass sculpture—until about a minute ago titled Untitled Time, now more likely due the title Oh Fuck, Why Can’t I Get Them Out of My Fucking Head?—a glance over her shoulder. Her sex twinged with unsubtle insistence over the twin shapes.

  “Damn it.”

  She came to a halt, nowhere near the armchair this time, and closed her eyes, pulling a deep breath. Of course, her brain told her she could smell Damon and William on the air. They had, after all, held her, their fingers wrapping around her arms as she was coughing, their thighs so close to her hips she wanted to whimper—would have whimpered if she hadn’t been so asphyxiated by burnt studio air. In the six months since she’d left Newcastle, she’d imagined their smell on every item of clothing she owned, no matter how many times said item had been drowned in a washing machine. It was only natural her deluded, pathetic, lovelorn brain would tell her their smell lingered on her flesh now. Clean, distinctive, evoking memories of days and nights in their arms, their bodies moving over hers, inside hers, their mouths on her throat, her lips, her breasts, her—

  “Sex.”

  The word fell from her lips on a whisper.

  That was the answer. Sex.

  The two men in her studio, less than a mile away from where she stood now, had awakened in her a sexual appetite she hadn’t been prepared for. Her stupid heart—to match her stupid brain, it seemed—had insisted what she’d been feeling for them was love, but it wasn’t. It was just sexual fantasy stuff to the extreme. What woman didn’t want to be made love to—no, no, wrong word—fucked by two hot, sexy guys at once? They’d awoken in her that fantasy and she’d buggered off before she got that fantasy out of her system. That was all.

  One more night in Damon’s and William’s arms, in bed with them, and she would have been able to move on. One more night of fucking and it wouldn’t have mattered they didn’t want what she’d thought she’d wanted—a happy-ever-after, bucking-society’s-convention threesome.

  All she needed to do was sleep with them one more time and they would be out of her system. For good. And she could get back to the important things in life—blowing artworks that didn’t make her think of Damon Hunt and William Bradley, and freaking out about how her studio had become a showpiece symbolizing the dangerous force of fire.

  One more night of being fucked by them both. That’s all she needed.

  One more. Just one more and she was over them.

  Bullshit.

  Before she could tell the scoffing little voice in her head to shut the hell up, someone knocked on her door.

  Her belly flipped-flopped. Twice, in fact.

  Hurrying across the room, she curled her fingers around the handle of the massive sliding panel door, swallowed once, and pulled it to the right. Opening her home to Damon and William.

  Except it wasn’t.

  Harvey Kilgour smiled at her, a nervous, sheepish smile, his firefighter’s uniform replaced with crisp, unfaded blue jeans and a T-shirt that said “Han Shot First”. He dipped his head a little, looking for all the world like an oversized, slightly balding eight-year-old. “I’ve been worried about you, Phoebe.”

  She blinked, her heart still thumping with excited nerves over who she’d anticipated seeing on her threshold. “Err…”

  “I wanted to ask if you’d like me to take you to lunch,” he hurried on, cheeks pink, his gaze once again fighting to stay on her face. “I know you must be upset about the fire, but you have to keep your energy levels up when in times of stress and the Cressida’s Riverview Café gives me free garlic bread for being a firefighter.”

  Phoebe blinked again, her fingers still gripping the door handle. “I—”

  “And after lunch, I can come back to your studio and look around,” Harvey continued, the words almost falling over each other, “to see if I can find what caused the fire. Maybe help you with the cleanup. Two hands are better than one, they always say, and if I stay through to dinner we could order in Chinese and then finish cleaning after we’ve—”

  “It’s okay, Harvey,” she blurted, a prickling heat climbing up the back of her neck. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Besides, we probably shouldn’t do anything to my studio until Will and Damon…until the arson officers are finished investigating.”

  A scowl flickered over Harvey’s face, there and gone in less than a heartbeat. He fidgeted, his knuckles white as he shoved his fists into his jeans pockets. Phoebe bit back a sigh. She felt bad always saying no to him, she really did. He was sweet and genuinely nervous. It mustn’t have been easy, plucking up the courage to put himself out there considering all the times she’d refused him, but she couldn’t say yes. It would be unfair. Especially when she’d just decided to sleep with—

  Damon appeared behind Harvey, Will joining him, both men dwarfing the Morpeth firefighter, both regarding her with unreadable, ambiguous expressions.

  Phoebe’s pulse tried to thump its way out of her neck. Her heart tried to beat it by smashing up into her throat. She parted her lips, and then caught her bottom one with her teeth.

  Harvey frowned. “Phoebe?” He took a step toward her, his fingers brushing her wrist. “Are you okay? Do you want to lie down? Where’s your bed? Let me walk you to it and—”

  “I think Phoebe needs some comfort from an old friend,” Damon stated. His voice was low and laced with mirth. Or anger. She couldn’t tell. Either way, it made Harvey jump, his whole body flinching as he jerked around to stare up at them.

  “Or two,” Will finished, giving the shorter man a steady gaze.

  It was Harvey’s turn to “err”. The sound left him like a rattling buzz saw, his cheeks growing redder by the second.

  “Harvey.” Phoebe placed her hand on his arm, feeling his nervous pain. The way her own nerves were running amuck at the sight of the two men, she understood completely how Harvey felt. Of course, Harvey’s nerves most likely had little to do with the constant, impatient longing twitching between his thighs. At least, she assumed it didn’t. “This is Damon Hunt and William Bradley, the arson investigators from Newcastle.”

  For a split second, Phoebe thought Harvey was going to launch himself at Damon and Will and tear them limb from limb. His nostrils flared, his jaw bunched and she could have sworn she heard a low growl rumble deep in his chest.

  And then he was ducking his head and shuffling backward, eyes jumping around their sockets like agitated insects, looking everywhere but at her and Damon and Will. “Sorry,” he mumbled, face now almost a brilliant shade of vermillion. “I have…” His gaze flicked to hers for a beat. “I have stuff…work to do.”

  Without another word, shoulders hunched, face glowing,
he fled. There was no other word to describe the way he moved away from Phoebe’s door and the two men standing in it.

  “Who’s Harvey?”

  Phoebe scowled at Damon. “The guy you just scared the crap out of.”

  Damon’s eyebrows shot up. “What did we do?”

  She opened her mouth. And closed it again. What did they do to make Harvey bolt? “You didn’t have to…to…” She pulled a face. “Be so tall.”

  Will burst out laughing. “True. How dare you be taller than Harvey, boss.”

  Damon grinned. “It’s what I get for eating all my Wheaties as a kid, Tiny.”

  Phoebe’s heart thumped hard, just to remind her how much she enjoyed their banter, and how much she missed it. “Oh shut up, you two.”

  Both men turned their grins on her, Damon stepping closer to lean his elbow on the metal doorway. “It’s not our fault, Phoebe. After not seeing you for six months, do you really think we’re going to stand by and let another man attempt to take you out?”

  Phoebe’s pulse skyrocketed into rabid flight at Damon’s question. Or maybe it was at the blazing, unquestionable hunger in his eyes. Or the way he leaned closer to her, his warmth licking at her body, his stare holding her prisoner. Her pussy constricted.

  “When what we really want to do is take you,” he continued.

  She licked her lips. “Where?”

  Moving with fluid grace, Will slid around her body, his hands smoothing over her belly and down to cup her hips. “Right here,” he murmured, his lips brushing her temple.

  As if that was the signal, Damon destroyed the minute distance between them. “Right now,” he finished. His hands reached up to frame her face, his mouth claiming hers with all the forceful dominance she remembered oh so well.

  He drove her back into Will’s hard body, his hands still holding her face as his tongue plunged into her mouth. Will’s hands dragged up her body to capture her breasts, pinching her nipples—rock-hard and straining against her bra and shirt—with gentle pressure.

  She moaned into Damon’s mouth, sliding her palms between their bodies, pushing him.