The Most Expensive Night of Her Life

by Amy Andrews

  ‘But no one in particular recently?’ Ken pressed.

  Reggie shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll need to see them all.’

  Reggie nodded. ‘You guys have got a whole file of them somewhere.’

  Ken made a note. ‘I’ll look into it.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ a hovering paramedic interrupted. ‘We’d really like to get Ms Kelly to the hospital to X-ray her head and get her hand stitched up.’

  The police officer nodded, snapping his notebook shut. ‘Do you have somewhere you can stay for a while? I would advise you not to return here while the investigation is being carried out and the culprits are still at large. Hopefully we can close the case quickly but until then lying low is the best thing that you can do.’

  Reggie shook his head. ‘Impossible. She’s up for a new commercial—she has a call back in LA in two days. And she’s booked on half a dozen talk shows in the US next week to promote her new perfume.’

  Blake bristled at the agent’s obvious disregard for his client’s safety—wasn’t he supposed to put Ava first? But the police veteran was already on it.

  ‘Cancel them.’

  Reggie, who was a tall, thin streak with grey frizzy hair and round wire glasses sitting on the end of his nose, gawped like a landed fish. ‘You don’t just cancel, Detective Sergeant’ he said, scandalised.

  ‘Look, Mr Pitt, in my very long experience in the London Metropolitan Police force I can tell you that the best way to avoid trouble is to not go looking for it. Your client enjoys a high public profile, which, unfortunately, makes her very easy to find. Every pap in London knows where she lives, for example.’

  ‘I’ll get her a private security detail,’ Reggie blustered.

  ‘That is of course your prerogative,’ the policeman conceded. ‘But my advice would still be to lie low, which, by the way, would also be the advice any security person worth their salt would give you.’

  Blake decided he liked Ken Biddle after all. He seemed solid. He obviously knew his stuff and didn’t suffer fools gladly. And he clearly thought Reggie was an A-grade fool.

  Reggie shot the police officer an annoyed look before turning to Ava. ‘I’ll get you booked into a hotel, darling. Get some security organised first thing in the morning.’

  Blake also decided Reggie was an A-grade fool. ‘I don’t think you’re listening, mate,’ Blake said. ‘I think the detective sergeant knows what he’s on about. It sounds like it might be best for her to go dark for a while.’

  ‘Ava, darling,’ Reggie appealed to her. ‘I think they’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’

  ‘Someone freaking shot up her house,’ Blake snapped. ‘Aren’t you supposed to have her best interests at heart?’

  ‘It’s in Ava’s best interests to keep working,’ Reggie said through gritted teeth.

  Ava’s head was about to explode as they discussed her life as if she weren’t there. Her hand throbbed too and she felt incredibly weary all of a sudden. She just wanted to lie down somewhere dark and sleep for a week and forget that somebody had shot up her house. Her beautiful, beautiful house.

  ‘Do you think I could just go to the hospital and get seen to first?’ she interrupted them.

  It was all the encouragement the paramedic needed. ‘Right. Question time is over,’ he said, stepping in front of them all, and Ava could have kissed him as he took over as efficiently as he’d bandaged her hand earlier. ‘We’re taking her to the nearest hospital.’

  Reggie shook his head. ‘No. Ms Kelly sees a private physician on Harley Street.’

  The paramedic bristled. ‘It’s nine o’clock at night. Ms Kelly needs an X-ray, possibly a CT scan. She needs a hospital.’

  ‘The nearest hospital is fine,’ Ava assured the paramedic, before Reggie could say any more.

  ‘Are you okay to walk to the ambulance?’ the paramedic asked her.

  Ava nodded. ‘I can walk.’

  Blake checked his watch. He could be home and officially on holidays within half an hour. He could almost taste the cold beer he had waiting in his fridge to celebrate the end of having to deal with Little-Ms-Red-Bikini.

  Except Ava Kelly looked far from the diva he’d pegged her as right now.

  She looked pale and shaken, her freckles more pronounced. The small cut on her cheekbone was a stark reminder of what had happened to her tonight and part of him felt wrong walking away. Leaving her in the clutches of her shark-like agent. He hesitated. She wasn’t his responsibility; he knew that. He’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and she was a big girl—what she chose to do next was none of his business.

  But he didn’t feel she was going to get the wisest counsel from good old Reggie.

  ‘You need me for anything else, Detective Sergeant?’ he asked.

  Ken shook his head. ‘I have your details here if I need to contact you.’

  Blake nodded. That was that, then. Duty discharged. But before he could say goodbye her hand reached out and clutched at his forearm. ‘Can you come with me?’

  Blake looked at her, startled. What the?

  Sure, he’d felt wrong about leaving her but he hadn’t expected her to give him a second thought now she was surrounded by people to look out for her. And even though the same part of him—the honourable part—that had urged him to join the army all those years ago somehow felt obligated to see she was okay, the rest of him wanted nothing to do with Ava Kelly and her crazy celebrity life.

  They were done and dusted. He was free.

  He was on holiday, for crying out loud.

  Not to mention he’d had enough of hospitals to last him a lifetime.

  But her yellow-green eyes implored him and the doom he’d felt earlier today pounced. He sighed. ‘Sure.’

  * * *

  Blake strode into the hospital half an hour later. He’d waited for the mass exodus of press chasing the blue lights of the ambulance at breakneck speed before he followed at a more sedate pace. Then he’d parked his car well away from the main entrance on one of the back streets. He wasn’t sure why but when he spotted the bright lights of cameras flashing into the night as he got closer he was pleased he had.

  Being photographed nearly every day on his arrival at Ava’s and questioned every freaking day as to their relationship when clearly he was just the guy running the reno had been bad enough. He didn’t need them spotting his car then adding two and two together and coming up with five.

  He entered the hospital and enquired at the front desk and a security guard ushered him along the corridors to Ava. He clenched his hands by his side as he followed. Hospitals weren’t exactly his favourite places and the antiseptic smell was bringing back a lot of unpleasant memories.

  They stopped at a closed door where two other hospital security personnel stood, feet apart, alert, scanning the activity at both ends of the corridor. They opened the door for him and the first person he saw was Reggie speaking to a fresh-faced guy, clearly younger than his own thirty-three years, wearing a white coat and a harried expression. Reggie was insisting that a plastic surgeon be made available to suture his esteemed client’s hand.

  ‘That hand,’ he said, pointing at the appendage in question, ‘is worth a lot of money. I am not going to allow some junior doctor to butcher it any further than it already is.’

  The doctor put up his hands in surrender. ‘I’ll page the on-call plastics team.’

  ‘I need a consultant,’ Reggie insisted. ‘Someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  Blake caught a glimpse of the doctor’s face as he backed out of the room. He looked as if he truly regretted coming to work today.

  Blake knew exactly how he felt.

  He was beginning to think Reggie was actually the bigger diva out of the two of them. He was surprised Ava p
ut up with it. In three months he’d seen her fire an interior decorator, a PA and a personal trainer because they’d all tried to manage her. But she just lay docilely on the hospital trolley and let Reggie run the show.

  He wasn’t used to seeing her meek and mild.

  But he supposed having your house shot at while you were inside it was probably enough to give anyone pause.

  At least there was some colour in her cheeks now.

  Ava looked up from her hand to discover Blake was in the room. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, levering herself up into a sitting position.

  The last half an hour had passed in a blur and she’d been unaccountably anxious lying in the CT scanner. The doctor had assured her it was clear but it wasn’t until right now she felt as if it was going to be okay. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the way Blake had pushed her to the ground. It played over and over in her head.

  He’d just reacted. In a split second. While she’d been confused about what was happening he was diving for her, pulling her down. She was on the ground before the noise had even registered as gunfire.

  ‘I thought you’d skipped out on me.’

  He returned her smile with a fleeting one of his own. It barely made a dent in the firm line of his mouth. Ava wondered how good he would look with a real smile. Would it go all the way to his dark blue eyes? Would it light up his rather austere features? Would it flatten out the lines on his forehead where he frowned a lot? Puff up the sparseness of his cheekbones? Would it break the harsh set of his very square jaw?

  ‘I said I’d be here.’

  Ava blinked at his defensive tone, his dialogue as sparse as his features. A man of few words.

  ‘Everything check out okay?’ he asked after a moment or two.

  This time he sounded gruff and he glanced at Reggie, who was talking on his mobile, as if he was uncomfortable engaging in small talk in front of an audience. Ava was so used to Reggie being around, she barely noticed him any more.

  ‘CT scan is fine,’ she said. ‘Just waiting for a plastic surgeon for the hand.’

  He nodded and she waited for him to say something else but he looked as if he was done. Then Reggie finished his call and started talking anyway. ‘I’ve booked you into your usual suite,’ he said. ‘We’ll organise for a suitcase to be brought to you tomorrow.’

  Ava watched the angle of Blake’s jaw tighten at the announcement. ‘I thought the point of lying low was to not go to any of her usual places?’ Blake enquired.

  The hardness in his tone made Ava shiver. And not in a bad way. Blake Walker was a good looking man. Not in the cut, ripped, metrosexual way she was used to. More in a rugged, capable, tool-belt-wearing kind of way. The fact that Blake Walker either didn’t know it or didn’t care about it only added to his allure.

  The fact that Mr-Rugged-And-Capable was looking out for her was utterly seductive.

  It had been a long time since someone had made her feel as if she mattered more than her brand. Her mother had cut and run when she’d been seventeen, leaving her to fend for herself in a very adult world, and Ava had never felt so alone or vulnerable.

  Sure, she’d coped and it had made her strong and resilient—two things you had to be to survive in her world. But tonight, she didn’t have to be any of those things because Blake was here.

  ‘They have very strict security,’ Reggie bristled. ‘Ava will be perfectly safe there.’

  Blake snorted in obvious disbelief. ‘Have you cancelled her commitments yet?’

  Reggie took his glasses off. ‘I’m playing that by ear.’

  ‘You know, in the army you learn that you don’t secure an object by flaunting it in front of the enemy. I think you need to take the advice of the police and have her lie low.’

  ‘If Ava put her career on hold for every whack job that ever wrote her a threatening letter she wouldn’t have had much of a career.’

  ‘Well, this whack job just signed his name in automatic gunfire all along the front of her house. I think her safety has to take precedence over her career for the moment.’

  Ava had to agree. Frankly she’d been scared witless tonight. She took Reggie’s advice on everything—he’d been with her a long time—but in this she needed to listen to the guy who had crash tackled her to the ground to keep her safe.

  Who believed her safety was a priority.

  Reggie hadn’t been there. He couldn’t understand how frightening it had been.

  ‘I’ve known Ava a long time, Mr Walker,’ Reggie said. ‘A lot longer than you. And she’s stronger than you’ll ever know. She’ll get through this just fine.’

  ‘He’s right, Reggie,’ she said as the silence grew.

  Just because she was strong, it didn’t mean she was going to go down into the basement while she was home alone to investigate the thing that had gone bump in the middle of the night.

  Because that was plain stupid.

  And she hadn’t had longevity in a career that wasn’t known for it by being stupid. Strength also lay in knowing your limitations and accepting help.

  After a solid sleep she might be able to think a little straighter, be a little braver, but tonight she just needed to feel safe.

  ‘I’m pretty freaked out,’ Ava continued. ‘I think listening to the advice of the police is the best thing. At least for tonight anyway.’

  ‘So where are you going to go, Ava?’ Reggie demanded. ‘You can’t go back to your home and everyone else you know in London is as famous as you.’

  Ava didn’t even have to think to know the answer to that question. She just reacted—as Blake had done earlier tonight. ‘I can go to Blake’s.’

  THREE

  Blake gaped at Ava as her yellowy-green gaze settled on his face. ‘What? No.’ He would rather amputate his other leg than have Ava Kelly as a house guest.

  ‘Just for the night,’ she said.

  Blake shook his head. ‘No.’ She sounded so reasonable but he had to wonder if the bang to her head had sent her a little crazy.

  He was on holiday, for crying out loud.

  Reggie—bless him—looked at his client askance. ‘Absolutely not!’ he blustered. ‘You don’t know this man from a bar of soap.’

  Blake watched as Ava pursed her perfect lips and shot her agent an impatient look. ‘I have seen this man—’ she pointed at Blake ‘—almost every day for the last three months. That’s the longest relationship I’ve had with any man other than you, Reggie. This man—’ she jabbed a finger in his direction again ‘—pulled me down to the ground and shielded me with his body while some nutcase fired bullets at my house.’

  ‘And thanks to him you have a cut face, a gash in your hand that requires stitching and an egg on the back of your head the size of a grapefruit.’

  Blake bit off the bitter you’re welcome that rose to his lips. He didn’t expect thanks or praise for yanking her to the ground. His military training had taken over and he’d done what had to be done. What anyone with his background would have done. But he didn’t expect to be accused of trying to maim her either.

  Ava reached her hand out to Reggie and he took it. ‘I was frightened, Reggie. Petrified. I couldn’t...breathe I was so scared.’ She’d been like that after her mother left—terrified for days. Then she’d hired Reggie. ‘He makes me feel safe. And it’s just for tonight.’

  Reggie looked as if he was considering it and Blake began to wonder if he was invisible. ‘Er, excuse me...’ he interrupted. ‘I don’t know if either of you are interested but I said no.’

  ‘You were the one who said she should lie low,’ Reggie said, looking at him speculatively, clearly coming around to his client’s way of thinking. ‘You said the point was for her not to go to any of her usual places.’

  Blake could not believe what he was hearing. They wer
e both looking at him as if it were a done deal. As if his objections didn’t matter in the face of the fabulous Ms Kelly’s needs.

  ‘I meant wear a wig, don some dark sunnies, throw on some baggy clothes and book herself into some low-rent hotel somewhere under a different name.’

  ‘Please,’ Ava said, the plea in her gaze finding its way directly to the part of him that was one hundred per cent soldier. ‘I feel safe with you.’

  ‘She feels safe with you,’ Reggie reiterated, also looking at Blake, his hands in his pockets.

  Blake shut his eyes and shook his head. ‘No.’ He opened his eyes again to find them both looking at him as if he’d just refused shelter to a pregnant woman on a donkey. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘I could live in a dive for all you know.’

  Ava shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’

  Blake snorted. ‘Right. A world-famous supermodel who insisted on four thousand quid apiece tap fittings is happy to slum it?’

  She shrugged again, looking down her nose at him this time, her famed haughtiness returning. ‘I can slum it for a night.’

  Blake’s gaze was drawn to her mouth and the way it clearly enunciated each word. Her lips, like the words, were just...perfect. Like two little pillows, soft and pink with a perfectly defined bow shape. But somehow even they managed to look haughty—cool and mysterious. As if they’d never been touched. Never been kissed.

  Not properly, anyway.

  Kissed in a way that would get that mouth all bent out of shape.

  If she really wanted to slum it—he could bend her perfect mouth well and truly out of shape.

  A flicker of heat fizzed in his blood but he doused it instantly. Women like Ava Kelly didn’t really want to slum it—no matter how much they thought they might. And he wasn’t here for that. He’d entered into a contract with Ava to do the renos on her home. Nothing more.

  Certainly not open up his home—his sanctuary—to her. And he’d held up his end of the bargain.

  Duty discharged.

  ‘I’m on holiday,’ he said, his voice firm.