Chapter Three #2
I sigh. ‘Unlike you, I don’t make a habit of consorting with criminals, so I don’t carry a whole bunch of disguises around with me.’
Something skids across her eyes, and then she tilts up the delicate arc of her chin.
‘So, are we good to go?’
I look at her critically. Most people look anonymous in a baseball cap.
But Hennessy isn’t most people. On the plus side, it’s Sunday afternoon so no one’s around.
I nod and she shoves open the door and moves, sashays, down the street like some catwalk model.
Swearing under my breath, I stride after her, catching her hand in mine and locking my fingers.
Her eyes turn to mine, the pupils pulsing outwards to swallow her irises. It’s like an electric current jerking through my veins.
Outside the office when she was engulfed by the paparazzi, my body was so awash with adrenaline, I barely registered the momentary contact between us as I led her to the car.
But this touch is different. It makes the super-sized buildings disappear.
Makes my brain blank, and my body feel as if it is loose and shapeless, but also tense, alert and quivering with a longing I have never felt for anyone.
I feel the ripple of her irritation dance over my skin as she attempts to free her hand, but I merely tighten my grip. She rolls her eyes. ‘Why are you so untrusting?’
‘Would you like the long form answer or just the edited highlights?’ I ask, and she stares at me steadily and then pulls the cap lower over her face.
Sam is waiting for us at the back door. He is old enough to be Hennessy’s father.
‘Hi, Sam, thanks for doing this. You really are a treasure.’ Hennessy’s face and voice soften as he shuts the door behind us. ‘How did Lynette’s operation go?
‘She’s doing well. She was stoked about the flowers you sent her.’ Sam lowers his voice. ‘There’s a whole bunch of photographers and some people from the news stations out the front of the building, so it’s lucky I was here. I mean, some of them look like real lowlifes.’
He glances up at me as if to include me in that statement, his eyebrows meeting in the middle, but before I can introduce myself Hennessy says, ‘Oh, I forgot—this is Jonas, my security detail.’
She unlocks the door to her apartment, and we step inside.
‘Jonas?’ I say as I shut the door.
‘I thought you wouldn’t want me using your real name.’ She stares back at me and gives me one of those taunting smiles but there is an edge to her voice as she speaks. ‘We don’t want your squeaky-clean reputation brought into disrepute.’
I hadn’t given much thought to what Hennessy’s apartment would look like. Chaos, probably—piles of magazines, discarded clothes, half-drunk martinis everywhere. But the apartment is immaculately, disconcertingly, tidy.
‘What’s wrong?’
Hennessy is staring at me, her forehead creasing in that way it does when she is confused. I stifle the urge to reach out and smooth her skin.
‘Nothing. I was just wondering if you had a bag you need me to get down?’ I lie.
‘It’s fine. I don’t need your help.’
She makes as if to close the door to her bedroom.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Getting changed.’
I shake my head. ‘Later. We don’t have much time. Just grab your stuff and we can go.’
We have another of those staring competitions but then she gives up and disappears into a walk-in wardrobe, and I watch from the doorway as she pulls clothes off the rails.
‘Just be selective. I don’t like lots of luggage.’
I would have bet my shirt that Hennessy would be an indecisive packer, but she proceeds to pack her moderate-sized case quickly and efficiently. Then she hesitates and I sense her watching me, although she is not looking in my direction.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m thinking. Can’t you find something to do? You employ thousands of people. Surely there’s someone, somewhere on the planet, you can call and persecute for a few minutes?’
‘I have no idea where you get this perception of me, but I don’t persecute my staff.’
She does that looking thing again. She has so many ways of looking at me and each one makes it impossible for me to turn away. ‘So, it’s just me, then.’
I watch as she begins to move swiftly through the apartment, lifting cushions and peering under chairs. She is obviously searching for something, and there is tension in her movements now that makes me edgy. ‘Okay, we’re done here,’ I say. ‘We need to leave.’
Her head snaps up, her violet eyes wide with panic.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Look, I told Kenny to circle the block. But those guys outside have a sixth sense for sniffing out a story. And if they spot the car, we’re going to have a rerun of what happened outside the office.’
She edges backwards and folds her arms. ‘There’s something I need and I’m not leaving without it.’
It.
I feel anger and frustration that my body can’t contain, and I remember why I don’t want her in Antony’s life. Why I tipped her off my lap three years ago. She is chaos personified. If I let her lead me, she will take me to the outer edges of the map beyond the realm of control and reason.
I watch her push an armchair away from the wall and edge back into the bedroom.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I shake out her duvet and check under the pillows.
I’m on the verge of losing my temper when I notice that the huge floor-to-ceiling mirror is not flush against the wall, because it is a door.
As I push it ajar, a light flickers on and I glance inside, expecting more rails of clothes.
But then I realise it’s a room without any windows, that the door is made of steel and there is a radio frequency ID access control box on the wall…
which makes this a safe room. More accurately, it is the room I expected to see when I walked into Hennessy’s apartment, minus the half-drunk martinis.
But there are clothes everywhere, and the duvet sprawls haphazardly across the bed.
‘Okay, we’re good.’
Her voice cuts across my thoughts and I shut the door quietly and return to the living room just in time to see Hennessy zip up her bag.
There are no photographers or reporters outside the back door when Kenny pulls up beside us smoothly.
I should feel relieved as Hennessy slides onto the back seat, but I can’t stop thinking about that messy bed in the safe room.
Because that’s the thing about safe rooms—panic rooms, whatever you want to call them—they’re standard in my world.
And these days they’re not some spartan bunker from a dystopian movie.
Most, including the ones in my properties, are as stylish as a five-star hotel.
But typically, they are not in frequent use, at least not as a bedroom.
So why did it look as if Hennessy slept in there? Make that, sleeps there regularly.
That question, or more accurately the possible answers to it, preoccupies me, and Hennessy seems similarly preoccupied by her own thoughts, so the journey to my apartment passes in silence.
There are no paparazzi waiting. But then, my address is off-grid, and I don’t court publicity like the Wades do. The penthouse has its own entrance, and I inhale the calmness of the foyer as if it is pure ozone.
As the doors to the lift open, Hennessy hesitates. It is a whisper of a pause, so infinitesimal I doubt anyone else would notice, but it triggers a sudden vivid memory of that lift in Vegas, and I hesitate too. But then, lifting her small, defiant face to mine, she steps inside and the doors close.
My nerve endings stiffen like antennae because we are alone. And will be alone until tomorrow morning. I feel the word pulse inside me like an alarm.
Alone.
Alone.
Alone.
My blood scrapes sluggishly through my veins as her nearness envelops me and I have to stop from flattening myself up against the walls of the lift.
Or her body. Annoyingly, either would draw attention to the mess inside my head, so instead I stare fixedly at the doors.
As they open, I step aside to let her pass.
She has recovered her poise outwardly, but her pulse must have missed the memo, because I can see it beating jerkily against the soft skin of her throat.
As I press my card against the security pad.
I feel her watching me. She won’t be able to leave without me knowing, and I wonder if she’s going to kick up a fuss, but after a moment she follows me into the huge living area.
She walks slowly around the room, occasionally pausing, like a deer sensing danger.
‘So how does this work, then?’
She turns, her eyes locking onto mine, and I blink. It doesn’t matter how many times she looks at me, it always feels like the first time.
‘Am I taking the sofa, or are you? Or are we topping and tailing?’
Topping and tailing… My chest tightens. That was something we did in the kid’s home when someone had a bad dream.
I hadn’t so much as forgotten doing that as pushed it aside, like so much of my time spent in care.
But now, as I remember the ache of misery and the swamping feeling of powerlessness, I sense Hennessy’s gaze on my face, and I shake my head.
‘Neither will be necessary. There are three guest bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. The kitchen is through there and there’s a gym and a pool downstairs.’
Her sugared-almond eyes are steady on my face.
‘You know, you’re wasted at Wade and Walters.
You should be a realtor.’ Blowing out a breath, she glances across the living room again and then turns to face me.
‘I’m going to get changed.’ She holds out her hand for the bag I am holding, but I don’t give it to her.
‘What are you doing?’ She frowns. ‘I need my bag.’
‘And I need to see inside it before I give it to you.’
Her eyes widen. ‘What for?’