by Apryl Baker
The Healing Touch
A Manwhore Series Novel
Apryl Baker
The Healing Touch – Anniversary Edition
Copyright © 2020 by Apryl Baker.
All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: June 2020
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
www.limitlesspublishing.com
Formatting: Book Pages By Design
Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design
ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-925-4
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For Janna and Maria.
I love you both, and I understand
your struggle with anxiety even
when you think I don’t.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter One
Someone decided to blow up her phone, and Becca chose to ignore it and snuggle deeper into the comforter. It was too early for this. She needed sleep. Everyone who knew her understood you did not disturb her until after ten a.m.
Ten minutes later, the phone started ringing.
And ringing.
And ringing.
Growling obscenities, she threw back the covers, and sure enough, the room was still dark. Not even a hint of daybreak yet. The alarm clock mocked her with the time of 4:32. Who the hell was calling this early?
Dimitri Kincaid’s smiling face flashed on the screen. Becca’s first instinct was to cut the phone off and toss it across the room. Yes, he paid her to be his PA, but that didn’t warrant him calling at all hours. Rude.
She also knew him well enough to know he wasn’t going to stop until she answered the damn thing.
“What?” Becca purposefully made her voice as mean as she could to let him know she was good and proper pissed.
“Took you long enough.”
His voice might be sexy as hell, but she was not in the mood for it right now. Sleep. All she wanted was sleep.
“Do you even know what time it is, D?” Becca yawned through the sentence. Couldn’t help it. She’d barely gone to bed.
“It is about one thirty.”
“Wrong, asshole. It’s one thirty, LA time. It’s four thirty, east coast time.”
“Ah, that’s why you sound like you just woke up.”
Sometimes she had to wonder how bright he was. Eye candy? Hell, yeah. But moments like this, his IQ was questionable.
“What do you want, Dimitri?” He needed to hurry this up before her brain clicked on and she couldn’t go back to sleep. Once she was up, even if she’d only been asleep for a few minutes, that was it. There would be no going back to sleep.
“We need to talk about this book tour itinerary you sent me.”
“Dimitri, I sent that to you almost a month ago, and you just now want to talk about it? At four-thirty-in-the-fucking-morning?”
“The first event popped up on my calendar as a reminder at midnight.”
“And?” she prompted when he stopped talking.
“And I didn’t know this thing started in two days, Becca.”
Geez. He sounded as pissed as she felt, but he’d known about it for months. It was his freaking bright idea, after all.
“Dimitri. I. Sent. It. To. You. A. Month. Ago.” How much plainer could she be? “You were the one who decided you wanted to get out there, meet the readers, connect with some authors. Not me. You. ‘Becca, get me set up on some book events and author signings this summer. Do it ASAP,’ you said. I did. I scheduled everything, booked your rooms for all the events just like you asked, and sent you all the damn information a month ago! Don’t get pissed at me because you forgot!”
He was quiet for a moment. God only knew what was going through that head of his.
“I’m sorry.”
Not what she was expecting. Becca pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it, dumbfounded. Did he really apologize? He never apologized.
“Becca? You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Just not sure who I’m really talking to. Did someone steal Dimitri’s phone?”
He laughed, and the sound went straight to her girl parts. The man had a damn fine voice with that sexy Russian accent.
“Funny, Rebecca, funny. I’m serious, though. I didn’t know the thing kicks off two days from now. I’m not prepared. I can’t do this. We need to cancel.”
Cancel? He was out of his ever-loving mind if he thought he could cancel on event coordinators two days before an event. She got up and turned on the bedside lamp.
“You can’t cancel, Dimitri. Not this close to Southern Book Bash’s author event. It took me three months to wheedle a spot for you. They are booked solid. Sheila will never offer you another table. It’s a huge event. They’ve sold something like five hundred tickets, and some of those tickets are people who are coming specifically to meet you. They’ve advertised you as coming. You can’t back out.”
“I can’t, Becca. I…” He sighed, and she caught a hint of panic behind the words. What was going on with him?
“What is it? Why can’t you go?” She was already scrambling to figure out a way to cancel on Sheila without pissing the woman off.
He didn’t speak for several long moments, and she patiently waited, all her earlier irritation forgotten. It wasn’t often she’d seen him in full-on panic mode.
“I can’t go. That’s all there is to it.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Dimitri Sean Kincaid. Not after all the trouble and begging I did to get you into those venues.”
“I think my mouth is rubbing off on you.” He let out another one of those sexy as sin laughs. “When did you start cussing so much?”
“When my boss started waking me up at four in the morning.”
“I didn’t think.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
“You already said that, and apology accepted, but you’re still not getting out of this signing.”
“Aren’t you my PA?” he asked. “Don’t you have to do what I tell you to?”
“Only when it makes sense and won’t put my ass in the frying pan with people I respect. You’re going, Dimitri, and that’s that.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“You sound like a three-year-old who’s sulking.”
“I’m allowed. I’m an author.”
“I call bullshit.”
“Bullshit this, Rebecca Joyce Rhodes. If you’re going to make
me go to this damn thing, then you’re coming with me.”
“Absolutely not.” The words came out in a whoosh of air. He did not just demand she leave the comfort of her apartment to go out, where she had to talk to people. Nope, not going. Not for anything.
“Look, I’ll pay for the plane ticket and your room. Hell, I’ll cover food too. I just need someone…”
“No.” She stopped him before he could get started. “I’m your PA, Dimitri. I do all the book stuff you don’t have time for. I do the Facebook group postings, and I do all your promo designs. I handle email, your fan club, setting things up when you’re out partying your ass off. I work, and I work hard. But I do it from the comfort of my own home. I am not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are.” His voice took on a stubborn lilt. “If you’re going to make me suffer, then so will you. Either come with me or you’re fired.”
The phone disconnected, and she pulled it back and stared at it, dumbfounded, once again. He did not just threaten to fire her if she didn’t go with him to this signing, did he? And then hang up on her?
Could she go with him? Her breath caught, and she couldn’t breathe thinking about it. She stumbled to the window and threw it open, trying to get air. Thinking of all the crowds at the airport, sitting next to people she didn’t know on the plane, and all the people at the hotel sucked air from her lungs. Then there was the signing. People who would expect her to talk to them. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
Black spots started blinking in front of her, and she desperately fought to calm down so she could breathe. Panic struck hard and fast. She couldn’t go.
Even if that meant quitting her job.
She picked up her cell and texted him.
I quit.
Chapter Two
A whole day.
That was how long it had been since he’d heard from her. She hadn’t answered a single email, phone call, text, or Skype notification.
Dimitri shoved the sunglasses up his nose when they slipped down. The GPS kept telling him this was the place, but Becca couldn’t possibly live in this neighborhood. It was a shithole. Gang members stood lounging on the street corner eyeballing his rental car. It was only a Mercedes, but the parts alone were probably worth stripping it down for.
Fuck it. He pulled to a stop outside the building that was supposed to be hers. He knew she lived on the third floor in apartment 321 because he’d mailed enough stuff to her over the last several years to know it by heart. He beeped the alarm and went inside. Taking off his shades, Dimitri looked around at the dingy, stained walls and muddy floors. Did they not employ someone to clean around here?
A quick search confirmed his worst suspicion—no elevator. He straightened his spine and headed for the stairs, dreading each step that would wear him out. He hadn’t brought his cane, and he refused to touch the railing. He could only imagine what might be on it. His white sports coat was the cleanest thing in the whole place.
Dimitri’s legs started to burn right before he hit the second floor. That took less time than he’d hoped for. By the time he dragged himself to the third floor, the burning morphed into all-out pain. If he didn’t need to talk to her so badly, he would have said “fuck it” and left, but he did need her.
And he hated it.
This was a new situation for him. The neurotoxin he’d been exposed to forced him into his present situation, and it was one he couldn’t handle on his own. He’d kept everything that happened right before Christmas off social media. No one knew how badly he’d been injured thanks to the Boston serial killer who’d set his sights on Kade’s wife, Angel. Not that he blamed her. Angel suffered far worse than he.
But it put him in a shitty place, both mentally and physically, as these damn stairs proved.
Becca’s hallway reeked of pot. He could only assume the place was full of dealers. Why did she live here? He found her door easily enough, but instead of knocking, he stood there a moment.
Maybe he’d lost his mind. She quit. Without even a moment’s thought. She’d fucking up and quit and then wouldn’t even discuss it. To be fair, he did flat-out tell her she was fired if she refused to go, but he’d never expected her to quit. Maybe call and argue and give him a chance to convince her she had to go, but this? No.
Or maybe it was because he wasn’t used to being told no, especially from a woman. Women were always there, gladly doing whatever it took to get his attention. His baby brother, Nikoli, had learned all his moves from him. Dimitri was the original manwhore and proudly wore the title. He enjoyed his women. He just didn’t enjoy them when they got all clingy.
Rebecca was the longest relationship he’d ever had with a woman. She was the one person he spoke to at least once a day, and sometimes a few minutes would turn into hours late at night when sleep eluded him. They were friends. Or he’d thought so. He knew her from high school. She’d been a freshman and he a senior when they met. His math teacher thought making him do detention in the library would be a hardship for him. Unfortunately for Mr. Lester, Dimitri loved books. Books of all genres. It was where he’d found Becca, her nose buried in a book at the very back of the small school library.
He’d scared her half to death when he’d said hello that first day. She’d jumped, lost her balance, and crashed into the shelves. Face flaming, she’d run away. He watched her go, amused. Typically, he’d have chucked off the experience, but spending two months’ detention in the library had put her squarely in his line of vision every day. She’d been shy and tended to stay to herself. He still wasn’t sure why he’d made it a point to say hello to her. Maybe because no one else did. Regardless, she’d been worth the effort.
Dimitri used their shared love of books to start a conversation with her. Not that it had been easy to get her to talk to him. Becca hardly ever spoke a word to anyone. Hell, she barely said a word to him, but he refused to let her ignore him. He’d eventually convinced her to friend him on Facebook, and that was how he’d gotten to know the real Rebecca Rhodes. She opened up in chat. The girl was funny as hell and had a heart the size of Texas. They’d been friends since.
She was also a wizard when it came to Photoshop. Photoshop hated him. He’d had a war with the program over layers that lasted three days. Photoshop won, and he’d deleted the program from his computer in a fit of spite. She’d bailed him out big time, and it happened to be for the book that blew up and introduced readers to him. He’d hired her to help him with graphics and making teasers and banners after that. Their working relationship grew until she officially took on the role of his PA. Becca was right about one thing. She worked damn hard doing all the things he couldn’t or wouldn’t. And he didn’t pay her nearly enough, especially if she lived in this rat hole. First thing he was going to do was give her a raise.
Rolling his neck to ease some of the tension, he knocked. He wasn’t about to lose the one woman who mattered a damn to him outside of his mother and babushka over something as stupid as telling her she was fired if she didn’t come to a signing.
Not that she wasn’t coming. She was. She just didn’t know it yet.
When no signs of life stirred behind the closed door, he knocked more forcefully. Given the neighborhood she lived in, an unexpected knock at the door might be the wrong way to go about this.
“Becca!” He raised his voice loud enough for anyone in the nearby apartments to hear him. “I’m not going away. I can stand here all day!”
Not that he could. His legs would soon give out if he didn’t sit.
He heard movement, the sound of feet running, and then the door was all but ripped open. She stood gaping up at him, all five feet, three inches of blonde fluff. She didn’t even come to his shoulder. A strong gust of wind could knock her over.
“Wh…what are you doing here?” Her voice was as soft as he remembered it. Dainty.
“What did you expect me to do? You quit and then wouldn’t answer your damn phone.” Three doors opened, and her nosy neighbors made no bon
es about eavesdropping. “Can I come in? Please?”
She stepped back and held the door open. Her brown eyes were not friendly, though. She went from shocked to see him to pissed in a matter of heartbeats. Did she honestly think he’d just let her quit without a fight?
Her apartment, unlike the rest of the building, was clean and tidy. The small loveseat that served as a couch was a deep red, with a white quilt across the back of it. White and black throw pillows decorated each end. The scuffed-up coffee table looked worn out. Thrift store purchases, maybe? Here she was, living in a dump with secondhand furniture, while he was out living it up. She deserved better than this, and he’d make sure she had it.
“I repeat, what are you doing here, Dimitri?” She stayed with her back pressed against the door, and he delved deeper into the living room. Her laptop lay open on the table, and he noticed she was looking through job openings on Monster.com. Damn, she really was looking for a new job.
“What the hell is that?” He gestured to the laptop, his irritation growing.
“A laptop?”
“Don’t be cute, Rebecca. You know exactly what I mean.”
Becca did know exactly what he meant. She was job hunting. He’d given her an ultimatum—come to Charleston or be fired. Since there was no way her anxiety would allow her to go to his signing, she’d quit and started looking for something else right away. She had rent to pay, and it wasn’t easy finding something she could do from home.
What she hadn’t expected was for him to show up at her door before she’d even had a shower. Here she was in a Got Coffee? nightshirt, and he was there dressed in some designer special. They weren’t exactly on even footing at the moment.
“I have to find a job, D. I have bills to pay.”
“You have a job.”
“No, I don’t, because I can’t go with you.” She pushed off the door and went into her barely there kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. She needed caffeine if they were going to verbally brawl. It would help soothe her nerves. Having Dimitri in her space wasn’t helping her anxiety either. Yes, she’d known him for what seemed like forever, but she hadn’t seen him in person since the end of her freshman year in high school. He took up the entire room without even trying. Dimitri was a big man. Tall, over six feet, easily. Blond hair like her own with blue eyes that reminded her of a cloudless summer sky. He was beautiful.
