“Sue Ellen!” O’Neill screamed.
“I’m fine . . .” Paige whispered. But she did not sound fine; she sounded shaky and frightened and far away.
Panic ate at him, his sight a black and gray blur. But his hand was steady, his gun ready, aiming at . . . just aiming all over the place. Hot in his hand. “Paige, talk to me. Where is he? Twelve o’clock? Two o’clock? Where?”
“One o’clock! I think. Dammit, I don’t know.”
Forcing his gaze on the blurry figure merging with a smaller one and straining to focus, Zach finally managed to hone in on O’Neill.
“Don’t shoot!” Paige cried. “He’s unarmed. He . . . he has her in his arms. He shot her.” Her soft, sweet voice traveled from a different direction. Coming closer to him. Tearing up into a sob. “Zach, you’re bleeding.”
It took a moment to bring her to focus.
God, no, she was crying. Her cheeks were flushed, her lower lip quaking uncontrollably. What he saw in her eyes— so damned beautiful to see once more. She still loves me. For a moment he thought he’d pass out when she slowly folded to her knees before him. His world tilted.
“Yes, shoot, Rivers!” O’Neill sobbed. “Do it.”
Zach jerked his attention back to him, his finger hot on the trigger, lips pulled back into a fierce, teeth-gritting snarl. “I’ll do it, asshole, don’t fucking invite me!”
“No!” Paige cried. “He killed his wife! She’s . . . she’s dead. He’s going to jail.” Weepy blue eyes sought out his, and her hands shook with indecision as they hovered above his chest. “Zach, you’re . . .” She made an awful little sound. “You’re shot!”
Screaming with rage, O’Neill dropped the limp figure in his arms and charged for Paige. “Bitch! It was supposed to be you, not her!” He lugged her up by the hair with an angry grunt and violently smashed her forehead against the wall.
Blood burst across the tapestry.
Stumbling to his feet, Zach roared, “Son of a . . . !” In a breath-clogging move, he wrapped his numbed, blood-caked arm around O’Neill’s thick neck and wrenched the bastard’s shiny bald head around. He pressed the weapon to his temple. “Let go of her!”
O’Neill growled and pulled Paige’s head back for another slam. The instant Zach heard her terrified scream, he gave a brutal jerk and pulled the trigger. Pop!
O’Neill crashed to the floor. Paige landed flaccid under him.
Cursing, Zach rolled the man’s lifeless body off hers. Pain exploded along his shoulder and arm as he gently eased her away from the bastard’s prone body. He dragged her limp figure across the floor, leaving a trail of fresh blood across the carpet.
He lifted his cell phone painfully from the floor and called 911, code officer down. See if the cruisers didn’t come screeching.
Blood continued soaking his left shoulder, hot and wet and never-ending. Clasping Paige’s limp body against his right side, he shifted until he reclined on the wall, grunting at the pain. “Paige.” He gathered her closer with his one good arm, his trembling hand awkwardly searching for pulse. He found it. Quick and sure, pushing into his fingers.
She was unconscious. A bright red gash raced up her forehead and her nose was dripping. A trail of blood streaked down the corner of her mouth. He rocked her, making a strange, animallike noise. “Baby.”
“He’s dead?”
His breath tore out of him as her lids opened. “Oh sweetheart, yes. Hang on. Hang on.”
Her warmth seeped into him, and his chest flooded with something other than blood, something not mushy but strong and steady and loyal and hers. Always.
Hers.
Her eyes shone with tears as she gazed up at him and he could feel his own burn with emotion. If he’d lost her . . .
If he’d fucking lost her again . . .
She reached up to gingerly caress his jaw but her hand fell, her face scrunching up at the sight of his crimson-soaked chest.
“Zach,” she murmured. A sigh shuddered out of her lips. “Zach Rivers. I knew . . . I saw you and I knew . . . you were my love.”
“Am I, Paige? Am I?”
“Yes.”
“Oh Christ.” He was afraid to hurt her, tried to be careful, but he could not stop holding her, rocking her, smoothing her hair away from her damp, pale face. “Everything you said.” His fingers shook on her face. “It tore me apart listening. I love you. I want to have babies with you, baby. I want to buy you a house.” He kissed her lips, rocked her harder. “Would you like that? Hmm? To be with me? To be my wife? I promise we’ll do everything we couldn’t do before and more of what we could.”
She murmured, “How lovely,” and drifted away, her lashes resting on her cheekbones.
Sirens wailed outside and his brows shot up in surprise. That was even faster than he’d expected. Within seconds, Cody and his tie crashed into the room, gun drawn, eyes bouncing the walls, settling finally on them. “You two okay?”
The rest of Zach’s team burst onto the scene. A dozen detectives, all of them homicide, guns drawn, badges flashing. Within seconds they found the corpses, prone on the blood-soaked carpet. Not looking as fine as their surroundings.
As Cody maneuvered to where he and Paige were slumped against each other, Zach gazed into her face. “I thought you were bluffing.”
“So did O’Neill.” She grinned weakly.
“An ambulance is on its way,” Cody said, eyeing them both with grim solemnity. “Rivers, you’re a lucky man.”
“I know.” Zach closed his eyes, then stared down at Paige Avery and placed a kiss on her blood-soaked lips. “I know.”
CHAPTER 8
HER NAME WAS . . .
Beep.
Paige Avery.
Beep.
Her name was Paige Avery and she was twenty-five years old. Daughter of Thomas and Leticia Avery. Born in Phoenix, Arizona. Had a cat named Whiskers who ate nothing but tuna, and a degree from the Art Institute of Seattle.
Her name was Paige Avery and she was terribly in love.
“Sir, you can’t be in here! You should be in your room. Where’s your IV?”
The bed creaked, and suddenly she was surrounded with the scent, the solidness, the delicious familiar heat, of one Zach Rivers climbing into her hospital bed.
Her lashes fluttered open.
She gasped at the mesmerizing sight of him, shifting to his side so he didn’t fall over the edge of the tiny bed. He held her against him with one arm and drew her gently to his chest. A bandage covered his left shoulder. Vaguely she wondered why he got to wear his clothes, and she a plasticky blue robe.
He’d been shot and he was still so gorgeous, his expression terribly concerned and his eyes . . .
They shone down on her like beacons.
“Zach, your shoulder,” she whispered.
He smiled a bit, squeezed her. “Bullet’s out now.” He gazed guardedly into her face, bringing the back of a folded finger to graze a sensitive bump at her forehead. “Look at this boo-boo,” he said.
Her eyes filled with tears, and her chest with love, with gratitude that he hadn’t married some pretty police officer, that amnesia or no, he had not forgotten Paige when he could have.
She leaned into that broad chest, gloried in the strength of that arm around her, while every lost memory danced across her mind. “I know what I thought that day,” she whispered, a tear streaking down her cheek, “when I first saw you.”
He swiped it with his thumb. “You do.”
“I do. I do. I thought, ‘God, if he’s in my class, I’m going to flunk.’ ”
He smiled faintly, preoccupied by wiping the tears again. She tucked her wet cheek into his chest and rubbed it dry with his shirt. “Did you mean what you told me? About wanting to marry me?”
“God, yes, will you?”
She could not speak, her throat was locked, her vision blurred, but quickly she nodded against him. Yes yes yes. She was in a hospital bed. Her head banging. Dizzied by the continual beeps.
And yet . . . “I’m so happy.”
His arm firmed around her body. “Christ, Paige, don’t ever leave me.”
“No no no, never.” She grasped his face between her hands, and it was a beloved face. “You just found me.”
He made a sound— the kind he did that made him sound tormented— and covered her lips with his, kissing her with all the love and passion and tenderness in the world, and she kissed him back with everything she had, ignoring the wild sound of her excited heartbeats.
Beepbeepbeepbeep . . .
Her name was Paige.
TEMPT ME
Alexis Grant
CHAPTER 1
ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY
“GET OUT!” THE crystal vase left her hand at the same time the high-pitched shriek left her mouth, crashing against the wall.
“What’s wrong with you, ’Nita?” Antwan leaped from his bed dragging the sheets and his two angry bedmates with him.
“You better tell your crazy sister something!” one tall, cinnamon-hued groupie said, scowling at Anita.
“And you’d better tell this heifer that your sister can fight— goes to the gym and works out eight hours a damned day to make it look easy onstage!” Anita shouted, advancing on the woman who’d wisely jumped behind her brother. “That’s right! And she needs to know that I’m not too Hollywood to punch her in her plastic face and then pay the fine . . . I’m from Philly. Got it?”
The other beauty clung to Antwan with a scowl, finger-combing her long, blonde tresses. “All of this drama is unnecessary.”
“You do not speak— because you don’t pay any bills here, I do. Now get out!” Anita rubbed her moist palms against her back jeans pockets and then balled up her fists. She placed her feet in a boxer’s stance, her Chuck sneakers holding firm against the carpet.
“They’re right,” Antwan said, pushing the naked women behind him as he took a stance against his sister. “I’ma tell you something real important— all of this is totally unnecessary this morning!”
“Tell me something?” Anita said quietly, coming deeper into the room and taking out her diamond earrings to shove them into her pockets. Oh, it was so on! Fury-induced perspiration made her tank top cling to her body. Her ears were ringing and she was sure that insanity was glittering in her eyes; it was the way her brother stopped advancing for a moment and backed up. “Unnecessary?” She yanked the envelopes out of her back jeans pocket and thrust the stack of hotel bills toward Antwan, and then threw them at him when he refused to take them from her hand. “Get these video hoes out of my suite!”
“Who you calling a—”
“Chill!” Antwan said, whirling on the women for a second and gathering up his sheet to follow his sister. He slammed the bedroom door behind him and crossed the room to grab her arm. “What was all that back there, huh? Why you trippin’?”
Anita shook off her brother’s grip, now so angry that she feared passing out. “No more, Antwan! You, Derrick, Dad, your boys— I’m done!”
“Whatdoyou mean, you’re done? We family!” Antwan shouted back. “Listen, you can run that Queen B mess for the public, but I’m your brother, so is Derrick, and Pops—”
“You all have been sucking off me like big fat ticks,” she said so quietly that her brother was momentarily stunned. “I got into this music industry with hard work and to you all it’s just a game— but this is my life.”
“We all are supposed to stick together, you know Mom said so before she died,” Antwan stammered. “When one has, all have.”
Anita shook her head as tears came to her eyes. “Still running that same old tired bull, huh? It’s sad, ‘Twan. Well, it’s not going to work anymore.”
The siblings looked at each other for what felt like a long time. Anita drew a weary breath as the tears fell from her eyes. Resentment roiled within her like a silent storm. Instead of bodyguarding her and protecting her from the sick bastard who was stalking her, her brothers were laying up with women and so high they couldn’t do the job she was supposedly paying them for.
Not to mention that, listening to their advice, she’d moved from soulful R&B to attempting rap as a way to make fast money, more money— because of them. But that had only been to pay off spiraling debt that they’d created. The result had been disastrous to her reputation and career. Now she was given a chance to do a comeback tour of sorts, her big break back into R&B, and they were acting like this?
“I bought you all houses—”
“Oh, here we go,” her brother said, blowing out a breath of exasperation and beginning to pace. “Wait, let me guess . . . We’re supposed to be grateful till the day we die because you bought us some cheap-ass, three-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar houses in Philly and—”
“I bought us all houses that we could afford to keep up in a normal, suburban community, if my career tanks. Me, you, Derrick, and Pops— and the only reason I got those so inexpensively was because the bottom dropped out of the housing market. Same with the cars. I couldn’t go buying Maseratis and Lamborghinis; I got you guys something fly but moderate— like a Lexus, a Benz, and not some mess you see on Access Hollywood. Do you know what the insurance alone is on a Bentley, not to mention the maintenance? Be serious. I don’t even drive that kinda car. And for the record, it cost me almost a cool one-point-five for four homes, by the time I loaded on taxes, titles, and insurance, okay? Be clear— there was nothing cheap about what I did for you guys!”
Fury made her walk a hot path between the sofa and the love seat, talking with her hands as she spoke. She couldn’t believe her brother was so naïve and so terribly ungrateful.
“You know how fickle this music business is, ‘Twan,” Anita snapped, stopping to place her hands on her hips. “How many artists have tax problems or have these big mansions that they can’t afford to maintain or heat after their careers crash and burn, huh? You wanna go back to living in Bartram Village Projects in Southwest Philly, if say, next year, my new R&B album doesn’t go platinum? That’s why I got us all something we could manage after the music dies. So don’t you start trippin’.”
She needed her brother to understand that the gravy train was over, and so was all the waste and partying at her expense. Common sense told her to diversify, invest in a potential future that didn’t involve strutting on the stage half-naked and belting out scandalous lyrics. The money was great, but the grind was wearing her down and wearing her out . . . and after Jonathan walked out on her, she knew her days in the industry were numbered. Nobody crossed Jonathan Evans and had her career survive more than a season. When her brother simply rolled his eyes at her, she pressed on.
“Listen,” she said, more calmly. “I have paid off all your debts at least two or three times. I’ve even taken care of your baby mamas . . . and all you do is run up bills like I’m Santa Claus.”
When he only grunted a response, she glanced at the duplicate stack of hotel check-out folios on the coffee table that she’d requested, the ones that now more accurately separated out all the expenses by room instead of putting everything under her name, and then just stared at her brother. “I came to the Trump Plaza to work. While you guys were ordering champagne and having a grand ole good time, I was doing back-to-back concerts, working my tail off. I have to work to keep all this going.”
Antwan tied his sheet in a knot around his waist tighter and then folded his arms. “You act like nobody else works, ’Nita . . . like, I’m on security with Derrick, your so-called driver, and Pops is—”
“Oh, save it,” she said with a wave of her hand, cutting her brother off. It was all a sham and she flopped down hard on the white sofa and closed her eyes. “You’re on security? Right . . . smoking blunts, running women, and drunk at every one of my shows. I might as well call a cab, waiting on Derrick to bring the car around because he’s always got some hoochie in there and not where he’s supposed to be when he’s supposed to be. We already know somebody is stalking me, leaving things under my hotel room door,
in the hallway of my apartment building, just to let me know he can. That scares me. You’d think that would scare you too, as my brother.” Her voice broke as she pressed her hands to her chest, truly feeling the heartache of loving people who were so callous in the way they cared for her in return. “If somebody wanted to do me real harm—”
“Me and Derrick would be all over it, just like when we was kids, ’Nita,” her brother argued. “Just like Pops is handling your business.”
She laughed and it came out as a sad, hollow sound as she opened her eyes and looked up at her brother, shaking her head. She remembered the time when they had nothing, and she and her brothers stood as a united front against anything going down in the old neighborhood . . . but that was so long ago. Now she didn’t know who to trust.
“You really think I’d let Pops know about all my contracts and what I’m working on? Do I look crazy to you? After the way he mismanaged my transition into an area of music I should have never gone near, not to mention the public relations insanity that he got me into just to create controversy and media attention, as he put it . . . why would I ever let him handle my reemergence into R&B?”
“So you’ve been holding out on the family?” Antwan said, sounding indignant and completely missing her point.
“Pops can’t manage his way out of a paper bag, and it’s disgraceful the way he’s behaving— all the women, all the scandal . . . now I know why Mom left him while she was alive. Me, like a dummy, I fell for the ‘I’m your daddy and I need you back in my life’ scam. I only did it because I missed Mom so much— but she never conducted her life like this.”
“Conducted, well, ain’t we high siddity now?” Antwan said, mimicking her in a high-pitched voice. “You can take the girl out of the projects, but you can’t take the projects out of the girl, ’Nita. You need to be real and stop trying to be somebody you’re not! Using fancy words and—”