The Man I Need (The Man I Need #1)

by Loretta Steel

  ‘You think a lot,’ he said.

  I wasn’t sure how to reply so didn’t bother.

  I got the impression that beneath his self-assured exterior lay a man who was capable of loving. Because I thought, there, in that room with the soft lighting weaving a gentle atmosphere around us, he looked calm. Later I would discover that it was control which kept him content. The army feeding into or creating his desire for structure. But there, in that room, I was comfortable with him, relaxed. I had no intention of letting a man into my life, and despite my obvious attraction towards him, I wasn’t looking for a relationship.

  At the door, I hugged him awkwardly. He leaned down to offer me a kiss on the cheek but the thought of his stubble grazing my skin forced me to reconsider.

  ‘It’s been nice.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Okay, it’s been fun.’

  ‘Friday night. Let’s have dinner,’ he said.

  I saw his smile and said, ‘why not.’

  And with our plans made I tread lightly down the hall as if my feet were several inches above the ground.

  How lucky am I? I thought, before I pressed the key into the lock of my apartment, flat 15, and opened the door to a cold breeze forcing its way in through the open window. A window I knew had been locked when I left the flat a few hours before. A window I had no key for. But someone clearly had.

  BLAKE

  I’d had a hard day at work and was longing for some company, a glass of wine, some expensive bottle I’d found in the cupboard when I’d moved in. The apartment was alright. It would do for now. And the people around Knightsbridge and Kensington were friendly enough but minded their own business most of the time. I wasn’t looking for anything from Ezra, except her company, but when she looked at me with those doe eyes, tracing the contours of my skin, she did things to me no woman had been able to do for a long time.

  She had a killer smile. There was nothing false about her. She laid herself bare, and all I could think about as we sat opposite one another was what it might be like to have someone like her in my life. A career woman, not too obsessed with her job, gorgeous, funny, clever. And I thought why the hell not so I invited her out to dinner on Friday.

  When I heard someone thumping on the door a few minutes after I’d seen her out, I wasn’t expecting to find Ezra stood there. I was about to take a shower. I’d wrapped a towel around my midsection to answer the door, thinking it couldn’t be Ezra because she hadn’t left anything behind. I’d checked, hoping she had so I’d have an excuse to knock on her door, but she stood in front of me, her face pale, and her eyes filled with terror.

  EZRA

  ‘There’s … someone in my apartment.’

  He didn’t need to be told twice, he almost dropped his towel and ran down the corridor into my flat.

  I stayed in the entrance, glancing up and down the hall, willing him to hurry up, convinced the intruder was still inside my flat.

  ‘All clear. Just a dumb cat,’ he said returning.

  ‘But the window was locked. I don’t even own a key.’

  ‘There’s no-one in there.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you.’ I noticed he’d been about to take a shower.

  He didn’t notice my blushing cheeks, embarrassed to have bothered him over nothing.

  ‘The window latch looks faulty,’ he said, turning back towards the door.

  ‘Please, don’t go.’

  ‘I’ve got a screwdriver in my apartment. It’ll only take two minutes to fix.’

  I hated being at the mercy of others.

  I shook my head, walked towards my apartment, and came to stand at the window I knew had been locked. But the latch was broken-on the inside. I jumped back in fright as something lunged at me from the sofa. A cat. A cat couldn’t open a locked window from outside. A cat couldn’t even open a damned window.

  ‘He yours?’ said Blake from the doorway, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a new window latch in the other.

  He saw me look and said, ‘I keep spares.’

  I supposed this was just an everyday occurrence to him, but to me, he was my savior.

  I left a small bowl of water on the floor for the tabby cat that sat eagerly waiting at my feet.

  ‘Naughty kitty,’ I told him.

  My knight in shining armor smiled as if I’d said something funny.

  ‘I feel like an idiot.’

  ‘You were scared, and you had every right to be.’

  He didn’t know the first thing about fear, not really.

  ‘Will you be alright. Only I’ve got to shoot. I’ve got a meeting.’

  ‘I’m a big girl,’ I said, curious to know what kind of work was taking him away from his home so late in the evening.

  ‘I’ll call you later.’

  To check up on me obviously.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, snapping up a pen from the coffee table and scribbling down my number on a receipt I’d found there.

  ‘Why don’t you let whiskers keep you company?’

  ‘Would you like that?’ I bent down to stroke the cat, but he skulked off and headed towards the door where Blake stood.

  ‘I guess he doesn’t like me.’

  Or the cat sensed what I’d felt as I’d entered the apartment. Even with Blake beside me, I’d felt like my home had been contaminated. Violated. I couldn’t explain it, but I sensed someone had broken in and done something, but as I entered each room and glanced quickly around, nothing seemed out of place.

  I thanked Blake and wandered towards the window after he’d left to see his form heading towards the car park.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the folded piece of paper left in the center of the small dining table. It wasn’t the kind of paper I used to write reminders to myself. Being clumsy was part of being blonde. That and an unhealthy appetite with daydreaming, which together created the perfect combination of forgetfulness and ditziness.

  I took the paper in my hands and unfolded it, thinking Blake had left me his number and I hadn’t noticed him write it down, but what I found took my breath away. One word was scrawled on the center of the white page. I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but it was enough to make me certain I knew who’d written it.

  Scared?

  There was only one person who knew how to frighten me, but he had no idea where I lived. I hadn’t used my true identity for anything since signing up to the dating app that professed to find me, my one true love. I’d since changed my name by deed poll. Even the apartment was in my pen-name. There was no way he could have found me, unless …

  Unless they’d let him out.

  I shuddered at the memory of what that man did to me. What he tried to do to me. Locked up in the basement of his family home, tortured beneath the dining room where he ate and played happy families with his wife and children. And now it seemed, he was back. And he wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted: me.

  BLAKE

  I didn’t want to leave her, alone and scared, but she made it clear she had no further need for me, and if I hadn’t made arrangements to meet with my client, I would have invited her to stay. But, putting on a brave face, I knew she’d probably tell me she was on top of things when it was obvious someone was after her. Beneath her hard exterior, I knew she hid an awful secret. Something in her eyes gave it away. It should have repelled me, but it only made me want to hold her, caress her, kiss her pain away. The trouble was, I wasn’t used to a woman so headstrong. I could do without that right now. I had a lot on my mind.

  Everyone has a past, but Ezra seemed haunted by something. I only wished she could bring herself to tell me what it was, because when I assured her the latch must have broken of its own accord, she seemed to accept my prediction too easily. Cat’s can’t break locks. And it was broken from the inside. If she was my woman I’d have had it out of her in no time, but she wasn’t so it wasn’t my place to push her to tell me who she was running from. The irony was, she see
med to think it was I who was trying to escape my past. They call it projection.

  No woman of mine would stay in a flat worrying over someone breaking into her apartment, but I had no right to tell her what to do.

  I called later to check on her, but my prediction was confirmed. There was someone after her, and whoever had broken into her flat had left a sickening note.

  EZRA

  I was glad when Blake called an hour later. I’d been fretting, sat on the step outside my apartment block, wondering if I should have called the police instead, then worrying over the fact that it was late, and I’d disrupted what seemed to be an important meeting of sorts between Blake and one of his clients.

  It was dark outside and the street took on an eerie quiet. I started as footsteps approached me from behind where the car park was hidden from direct view. I leaped up and screamed when I saw the man coming towards me from the darkness, but it wasn’t Tyler. As memories darted across my eyelids my vision blurred and I tripped over the curb.

  Blake reached out and caught me before I fell. He held out his hand and I took it wearily.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said.

  I followed him back inside the building and hesitated in the doorway of his apartment.

  ‘I don’t bite,’ he said, waiting for me to follow him into the living room.

  Just a couple of hours before I’d have been imagining his teeth sinking into the flesh of my neck as he fucked me hard against the wall, but right then it sounded like a threat.

  As I made my way into the living room, lit only by the small table lamp, its orange glow lighting my way to the kettle where I stood longing for a strong coffee to wake me from the nightmare I’d fallen into, I was sent backwards in fright when my phone began to sing from the pocket of my coat, flung over my shoulders in haste as I’d clambered out of the flat and onto the street earlier, glad when Blake had called giving me someone to talk to.

  I answered on the second ring. It was Madison calling me back.

  ‘I was trying to get hold of you.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry, I got caught up in a bar with Nate. He’s had way too much to drink. We’ll have to get a taxi back.’

  ‘Maddie, I …’

  ‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’

  Madison knew me better than anyone. She was the reason I’d held out hope of escaping that monster, Tyler. She was why, when searching for a place to live, somewhere I could blend in, I’d chosen London, almost two hundred miles from my home city of Birmingham. She lived close by. She also knew that when I was struggling to keep my head above water, to stop me from sinking into my past I needed her strength, not her sympathy.

  ‘Girl, you’re not upsetting yourself again are you?’

  ‘No. Actually, someone … someone broke in. They left a cat. A note.’

  Our conversation was broken by a hand on my arm. Blake mouthed ‘who’s that?’ then, when I didn’t reply, ‘do you want a drink?’ and, I nodded.

  ‘A strong one,’ I said.

  He gave me a stern look suggesting I shouldn’t be drinking, but I’d had a shock and I didn’t care what he thought I needed. It wasn’t like he knew me.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Madison repeated.

  ‘Thanks. I’m not in the flat, obviously. I’m down the hall. Number 15.’

  ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she shouted above the din in the bar.

  As soon as she’d hung up I searched for somewhere to sit.

  Blake appeared with a glass of wine left over from earlier. It was now almost 10:30pm and I chugged it back, hoping it would help me unwind, but my heart was still thudding against my chest a second glass later.

  When almost twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door, I sat up straight resigning myself for a lecture. Sure enough, when Blake let Madison in that was exactly what she did.

  ‘What took you so long to call me? And, who is this?’

  ‘Blake,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  Madison pouted and turned her back on him. I sensed the immediate rebuttal he was hiding behind his deep green eyes.

  ‘What can he give you that I can’t?’

  Protect me? Search my flat for an intruder? Fix the latch?

  ‘I’ve been looking after her.’

  ‘Possessive,’ she said, deliberately within earshot.

  ‘He …’

  ‘Wants to get inside your knickers,’ she finished.

  He shook his head and left the room, visibly wounded. I could also tell that he wanted to say something but wouldn’t, or couldn’t.

  ‘So, he’s looking after you?’ she said, smiling.

  Maybe I wanted him to. Maybe I was over what happened between Joe and I. Maybe I was sick of remembering what Tyler did to me. Maybe I needed closure. And what better way of getting it than with another man. Blake was confident, sexy, and willing to protect me. Wasn’t that what every woman wanted?

  ‘Girl, what’s going on in there?’ she said, pointing to my temple. ‘You’re acting all shifty and … oh, I get it. You’re fucking him.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Girl, you lie,’ she said, giving me the eye.

  ‘Okay, okay, he’s a bit of alright, but we’re friends. That’s all.’

  ‘For now. Girl, you don’t want to be getting yourself in trouble.’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ I said, knowing exactly where her thoughts were when she spoke. She thought he might be a bad boy. Another player like Joe. Or a sadistic abductor like Tyler. I hadn’t realized Blake could hear her every word.

  Blake’s gaze was intense, sending electric shocks down my spine, but his strong features weren’t the only thing that concerned me. I had too much baggage. Tyler had a vendetta gainst me. He thought he owned me. He wouldn’t stop until he had me. Blake didn’t want that kind of shit in his life.

  When Madison left to use the bathroom Blake sat beside me and said, ‘ she’s a hot-headed minx, isn’t she?’

  I thought for a second that he was referring to Madison before I realized he was looking at me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t think you had it in you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She clearly hates men.’

  Still not understanding what he was getting at I twigged. He thought she fancied me.

  ‘She’s got a boyfriend. Why do you look surprised?’

  ‘I don’t envy any man who has to put up with her mouth.’

  I knew what he meant, but didn’t bite back. I was surprised I felt relieved knowing he didn’t find her attractive. That meant he must like me more than her. It was a start I supposed. But he still didn’t seem keen on sleeping with me.

  ‘What is he after?’

  I was about to say who but knew it was pointless lying to him. Blake seemed to be able to wind the truth out of me with one look.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘You, why?’

  ‘He thinks he owns me.’

  ‘Why break in and leave a note?’

  ‘To scare me.’

  I came up with a theory as Madison reappeared with the keys to my apartment in her hand.

  ‘Come on, girl. Let’s get out of here.’

  Blake was about to say something, but she said, ‘I can take it from here, thanks.’

  He looked at me as if to say, ‘what do you want?’ but I knew that a note and an open window wasn’t going to deter me away from my apartment.

  ‘She’s right,’ I leaped up and grabbed the keys from Madison who stood in the doorway waiting to leave.

  Once back inside my apartment, I spent the next hour going over the reasons why Tyler must have done this to me, convinced he’d been released from prison and because I’d changed my name and moved the police hadn’t been able to find me to warn me.

  I’d escaped the basement through a small window, smashing the glass when he was out, and climbed my skinny body through the small gap until I dropped onto a pile of rubble, and ran. My legs in a
gony from disuse, my body sore from remaining in the same position for so long.

  ‘Tyler broke in through the window to let me know he hasn’t forgiven me for betraying him.’

  ‘Betraying him?’

  ‘Leaving.’

  ‘Right, said Madison, yawning.

  Tyler knew that by leaving my home exposed he was leaving me vulnerable. Just like I had been when chained in that basement, my wrists cuffed to the stone walls, ankles to the concrete floor. He reveled in my pain, my misery. The nightmares and panic attacks began six months after my escape. Post-abduction trauma my therapist called it. Changing my name by deed-poll and buying a flat one-hundred-and-eighty miles away hadn’t enabled me to escape him completely. He’d been released from prison, and now he was coming for me. I had no choice but to keep running.

  I turned my head and saw that Madison had fallen asleep, drunk and curled into the fetal position. I tread carefully so as not to wake her, folded a throw over her and nestled down on the sofa opposite watching her sleep. Madison had been my rock. I had no idea what I’d have done without her. She was right, Blake didn’t need a high-maintenance hysterical woman in his life. I’d do fine on my own.

  BLAKE

  If Madison hadn’t have steered Ezra back to her apartment on the pretext that I was only after Ezra’s body, I’d have made sure she stayed with me, and I’d have got her to talk, one way or another. It was obvious to me that Madison was jealous of my attention to her best friend. But, knowing that Ezra wasn’t alone meant I slept that night. Knowing she was safe was all that mattered to me.

  EZRA

  I didn’t sleep well that night, and when Madison appeared to have no intention of getting up, I dressed for work and left her to sleep off her hangover. I had one house call to make and wasn’t planning on being late.

  I set off to work. It was Saturday morning, the sky light blue, but the sun not quite reaching the heat it had the day before. It was late summer, and I could smell the icy note in the air. Taste autumn on my tongue. I had my tongue out when a wolf-whistle stopped me in my tracks.