“This. Never. Happened. And it won’t happen again.” He couldn’t look at her as he stepped into the kitchen. Ran trembling hands through his hair. Took a moment to gather himself…
And only then did he notice the smoke, stinging his nose with a strange burned coffee scent. Thick and black, it billowed along the ceiling, poured in from the front dining area, where he saw the dance of fast-moving yellow flames.
Jesus, no wonder he was dripping sweat. He hadn’t heated up. The room had.
“Fire!” He whirled to grab Shelby from the office, but she was already behind him. Fear chased away her indignant expression, and her complexion drained of color, leaving her so pale her faded purple lipstick stood out in stark contrast.
She raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
“Where’s the nearest exit?”
She pointed across the kitchen to a spot on the far wall. Where the smoke was heaviest, naturally.
“Yeah, of course it’d be there.” He stripped off his suit coat and wrapped it in a makeshift bandana around her face, tying the arms behind her head.
“Wha—what about you?” she sputtered.
He untucked his button-down shirt and lifted the front to cover his mouth and nose. “All right?”
She shot a glance at the thickening smoke and firmed up her shoulders. Nodded. Her show of bravado would have been convincing if he didn’t feel her trembling when he closed his hand around hers.
“Stay low. We’ll be out of here in no time.”
Chapter Two
The walk to the fire exit seemed endless, each step taking them deeper into the blackness, until Reece shoved open the fire exit and pushed her out ahead of him. Shelby’s eyes and lungs burned, scoured raw by the smoke that rolled from the door behind them, thick and black. It seemed to reach out and wrap itself around them as if it planned to drag them back inside to their deaths.
Her heart was trying its damnedest to swan-dive out of her chest. When she saw those first dark tendrils creeping across the ceiling, she had never been more frightened in her life. Which was saying something, since she’d landed herself in some pretty scary situations over the years.
But the whole time, Reece never let go of her hand, and she drew strength from the connection. It calmed her. Allowed her to function past the fear that threatened to paralyze her. If she had been alone, she honestly didn’t know if she’d have made it out of the building.
Across the street from The Bean Gallery, the shock finally caught up to her, and she lost her footing on the ice-slickened sidewalk. Reece was right there, his arm a solid weight around her waist, keeping her upright. She tilted her head back, stared up at him through blurry eyes. His tidy white dress shirt was no longer tidy or white, and soot streaked his face, coated his hair.
“I have you,” he said softly and tightened his grip.
Reece Wilde—genius, workaholic, millionaire muckety-muck—had her, the girl from the way wrong side of the tracks. And he wasn’t just slumming it for a night like she first suspected. Oh, no. Because if that was the case, he wouldn’t want to be publicly associated with her in any way other than through their siblings’ upcoming marriage, and he’d be outta here before the fire department showed. Instead, he looked as if he had no intention of leaving. Which maybe was a good thing since he was all but holding her up at the moment.
No, tonight hadn’t been about slumming. Had it been his clumsy attempt at…courting her? He was just that type of guy to court a woman, all hero with a core of pure goodness and solid honor. He was the type of man to stick around. His freak-out in the office when she would have let him do just about anything to her on that desk proved as much, made her realize how uncomfortable he was with the whole idea of a slam, bam, thank you, ma’am.
So, yeah, he’d stick around. Maybe for good, which kinda scared the hell out of her, because she didn’t do permanent anything. Except for her tattoos, but that was different, because they were the storybook of her life, the forever-present reminders of her mistakes and her triumphs. But in every other aspect of her world, she was completely, 100 percent anti-permanent. Hell, even her hair color changed every other week.
Reece was the human equivalent of tattoo ink. She was henna.
But for a moment, with his arm around her and the heat of his body easing her shocked shivers, she did wonder…
Oh, no. What was she thinking? She so wasn’t about to rehash Pretty in Pink with him. For one thing, he didn’t need her kind of trouble in his life.
She shrugged out of his arms and turned to watch the fire eat away her one chance at a normal, straight-and-narrow life. Smoke and flames roiled from the broken front window and blackened the outside brick. She rubbed her hands over her eyes and only then did she realize his suit coat was still wrapped bandana-like around the lower half of her face. She yanked it off and scrubbed away the tears that made her vision go all wavy.