A fire, of course. She was probably much better at fire-starting than cooking. Actually, she once tried to combine the two. Unfortunately, the smell of burned pizza stuck around her condo, and to be fair, the hall of her building, for a week.
She hustled over to the fireplace and searched for fire-starter logs or those cute pinecones stuffed with candle wax or something to make fires start easier.
There wasn’t so much as a fireplace match, just a book of matches with the name of the bar in town. Braven’s. She could have, should have stayed there in the bar. Too late.
She poked around for fire-starting aids and gave up.
She wasn’t any better at fire-starting than she was at cooking, so when she heard the footsteps on the stairs, she fled back to the kitchen area where she could keep the center island between them, duck behind it if she had to.
He unloaded the wood and knelt on the floor in front of the fireplace. Then he reached inside and opened the flue. Oh, she would not have remembered that. With wood chips and bits of flimsy bark, he started a small fire, feeding it twigs and shards of wood, and of course, he had used the stubby matches.
Just like now, she always managed to have someone around to start her fires and usually to cook. She wondered if he expected her to do it, to cook. Good luck with that one, buddy.
The fire grew tall and she was a bit envious. She’d have to research fire-starting when she had time.
When the fire blazed, he stood and headed in her direction.
His sandy blond brows drew together in fierce concentration. There was clearly a side of this man she knew nothing about, possibly a deeply dark and sinister side. She should be running away. She should go back to the house, push the four-poster bed up against the door and tie the sheets together to let herself out the window in case she needed to flee into the storm.
He paused and dropped his keys into a dish on the long table behind the couch.
His expression did not challenge nor welcome as he continued toward the kitchen.
Nonreactive. Ego-sheltered.
Serial killer? Chain-saw murderer? At least the two of them weren’t in a basement alone. A basement? Did the place have a basement? Yes, the lift up doors in the breezeway would lead to a cellar of some kind. Maybe that’s where she’d be buried.
She was crazy, the chatter in her head crazier.
Maybe it was he who should be afraid.
As he drew closer, he seemed to grow in size and his expression in intensity. She stiffened, searching for the best exit if she had to run.
And then she relaxed.
Yeah.
She could run away, go back to a world where she would cover stories for microfame and a couple of dollars.
Then she could go live under a bridge in a refrigerator box and wear newspapers on her feet and stuffed into the sleeves of her lightweight coat as she had done when she investigated and had written the series Life Without a Cause to critical acclaim only four short years ago.
Hale came around the counter and stopped a mere two feet from her. He placed one hand, deliberately it seemed, on the counter beside her, and she inhaled.
By being here in his living space, she had made her move, set out her pawn. The next move was his.
A second later he stepped around her to the freezer, from which he took two glass bowls filled with something green. He took off the lids, popped them into the microwave and covered them with a sheet of crinkly sounding paper he’d taken from a box in the drawer under the microwave.
Eat? His move was to feed her. Or maybe he was hungry and planned to eat both...in front of her...while she salivated.
Addy watched the bowls spin on the microwave’s carousel and then realized he was heating pea soup.
Food was a good move on his part. She hadn’t eaten since early this morning. If she accepted food from him, she would be in his debt.
Yeah, as if she wasn’t already—deeply.
He pulled two plates from the cupboard.
He was dreadful at portraying himself as a bad guy, or he was as “diabolically clever” as the tabloids had called him when they alluded to his making off with a few billion dollars.
If she didn’t have an absolutely reliable source, she would begin to doubt the veracity of her facts. The SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, a U.S. government agency set up to prevent investment fraud, had come down hard on Hale and Blankenstock.
More importantly, according to her younger sister, Savanna, this guy was worse than a robber or a thief who stole once and disappeared into the night, Hale was heartless. He had repeatedly taken from Savanna—trusting, single mother Savanna—and many others.
He went back to the fire, hunkered down and carefully placed a pair of logs on the flaming pile. He stayed squatted, silhouetted in the soft light until the fire roared.
He looked handsome. And fit. She wondered how fit—she couldn’t help it, picturing him naked and... It was easy to see, this man lifted heavy things, not just fountain pens and martini glasses.
She shook her head at the silliness of her thoughts.
He had set out a pea soup pawn. Now she was going to have to sit down and eat with him or give up the game without trying and walk back to town beaten down by the storm and failure.
Lunch it was, and so be it.
She pulled open a drawer in the butcher-block island and found place mats and napkins that most likely had never been used. Carefully she set them on the table in strategic places. At right angles so she could better watch him when she wanted and ignore him if it seemed necessary.
She took the plates he had placed on the counter, where they would have sat side by side on the bar stools, and moved them to the table.
If she was to get a story, if she was going to find out what made this guy tick, she’d have to make nice. Pea soup with a swindler. She had done scary things before to get to the truth.
She’d do worse to get his real story if need be.
She opened another drawer where she supposed spoons would be and bingo, there was a tray of flatware. She took a soupspoon for him and a teaspoon for her. Soupspoons were too large and made her slurp soup. She preferred a teaspoon where the contents cooled faster and the spoon fit her mouth. Her former boyfriend had called her a delicate flower for demanding such things. He never did understand her.
Her former boyfriend had also deserted her when the fiction she had unwittingly written had hit the fan.
Former. Back in the part of her life when she soared, Wesley had stuck himself to her side whenever she was home in Boston. He hadn’t liked the falling-flat part, however, so he split quickly, taking with him everything from her condo she had thought was theirs.
So long and good luck.
When Hale left the fire, he came over to where she stood waiting for the microwave to finish. Reaching into the cupboard beside her head, he grabbed a bag of oyster crackers.
He smelled of wood smoke and she could feel the heat of the fire radiating from him. She inhaled and when she shivered, the quaking in her knees wasn’t just because the place was one degree warmer than freezing. She wanted to...move in on the story, grab it and not let go until she had everything she could ever want.
But she held her ground. Letting him know how eager she was would not help her bond with his deepest soul.
When he took the oyster crackers and turned away toward the table she asked, “Why are you doing this? Why are you treating me as if you don’t hate me? You must hate me.”
“You give yourself too much credit,” he responded calmly without