I sighed. “It’s just…. I don’t know. My life was never peaceful. Especially with Rosie as a best friend and you as a sister, not to mention all the crazy women who ended up with the men I thought of as brothers. And lovers occasionally.”
Polly smirked at me. “And because of you. You can’t blame all the craziness of youth on me and Rosie being the bad influencers. I think you were the influence, and you just made us think it was our idea to throw a party on a boat, that sank, if you remember.”
I laughed at that memory.
“Fine. Whatever. It was chaos. Some sort of balanced chaos, if that oxymoron even exists.” I tossed the wand in my hand. “But now I’m starting to get the balance without the chaos.” My eyes misted up for a bit. “Not that that means Rosie’s absence is to do with it. I’d take all of the chaos in the world to have her back. Or at least to know where she is.”
I paused in a moment of worry for my best friend until I convinced myself that she was okay. That she was running from her own demons, or maybe her own saints. Fair enough too. She was more comfortable with demons. They were better bedmates than saints. “But now I’ve lost it. With him. My balance is history and I can barely stand upright because he’s tilted everything on its axis and I can’t have that. Someone taking away my balance.”
It was as candid, as vulnerable as I’d been with my younger sister, or anyone, ever.
But I had to let this all out at some point.
Polly regarded me. “Sometimes you’ve got to lose your balance in order to find it again.”
I gaped at her. “Polly, that’s really… deep,” I said finally.
She grinned. “Thanks, it’s what my new yoga teacher told me when I was trying to perfect bird pose.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Which was before he asked me out.”
And there it was.
She glanced to her phone. “Shoot, and that’s the date that I’m already ten minutes late for.” She downed her mug, shoving it on the bedside table she’d already taken over before shooting up to quickly fluff her hair in front of my mirror and reapply her lipstick.
I watched her, shaking my head slightly.
The person who tried to keep up with Polly better be a very fast and long-distance runner. Or at least have big enough arms to hold her in one place. Or make her want to stay in one place.
“Okay. Well, got to go.” She leaned in to kiss my cheek. “And maybe have fun with not-so-balanced chaos. Some of the best positions come from there. Trust me, I’ve done the legwork.” She winked and ran out the door.
I watched her and thought maybe I’d had it all wrong after all. It wasn’t that Polly knew nothing about love.
She knew too much.
So, I decided to take my sister’s advice and leap.
Bungee jumping.
I zipped up my suitcase.
Smiling.
“So fucking late, so fucking late,” I chanted, hopping around on one heel while trying to shove the other on my foot. Once done, I scuttled over to my bag, rifling through it to try and find the lipstick I needed. When my initial search didn’t prove fruitful, I gave up and tipped the contents onto Keltan’s dining room table.
I unleashed the chaos of a woman’s handbag onto the orderly and clean surface.
Orderly made it that much easier to understand chaos—and find my lipstick. I snatched it up.
Arriving at his place the night before, I hadn’t known what to expect. We hadn’t spoken about the mundane things like how his business was going, or anything about his life here, in fact. I only knew what I heard. And in Hollywood, what you heard was either a complete exaggeration of the truth, a complete lie or anything in between.
His building told me it was going well.
It wasn’t overly swanky, but Cypress Park was becoming very trendy, hence a lot of new developments in the area, one being Keltan’s block of apartments. The exterior was sleek and not overly tall, which meant there was a small amount of units and a lot of space.
And once we’d gone inside I saw just how much.
It looked like he had the entire floor, and everything was open-plan. The polished wood floors started at a bedroom area in one corner, containing a huge bed with a gray slate bedspread and an oak headboard and side tables. Off the bedroom was a sofa, a large bookcase and weight equipment. No TV.
A big wooden table took up the middle of the wide-open room, in front of the front door and right by the floor-to-ceiling glass revealing the twinkling lights beyond. The kitchen was all stainless steel and new.
Everything was immaculately tidy. No clutter.
So Keltan.
Then again, he had enough clutter with me in his life.
I watched the journey of his ass in his jeans as he walked over to the bedroom area with me following.
He placed my bag just inside an open door to what looked like a walk-in closet. There was a closed door next to it that I guessed was the bathroom.
He turned to face me, his eyes impassive.
“Your place is nice,” I said, suddenly awkward at being in his space, so big yet it couldn’t seem to contain all of us. “Business must be going well.” I pointed out.
He nodded once. “Not bad.”
So Keltan. I would bet if he ever did get employed protecting the queen, the answer would be the same.
In a town where everyone was eager to tell you their bank balance and broadcast their success, Keltan was happy to just quietly succeed.
I glanced around again. “Was it originally like this?”
He stepped forward, easily taking me into his arms while continuing the conversation. “Nope, bought two, knocked down all the walls.”
It was nice. That ease. The naturalness of being in his arms while having the mundane conversations. Though getting to know him was, and never would be, mundane.
I glanced up at him. “All the walls? Why?”
He kissed my head. “Told you, baby. I don’t like cages. Not for you. Not for me. Need open. Need space. Apart from with one thing in my life. Then space is the last thing I need. Or ever want.”
He squeezed me and I melted a little more at his meaning, But I wasn’t ready to be a puddle at his feet just yet. It was nice, talking.
“Space,” I repeated. “From the army?”
He nodded once. “Always in a fuckin’ box. Tiny rooms, beds, spaces. And the ever-present box of a coffin that was waiting for you at any moment.” His eyes went faraway. “So yeah, space.” Then his eyes darkened. “But I’m not craving space right now. Check that—I’m craving the tightest most delicious space I’ve ever been in.”
And with that, most talking for the night was lost.
We had a lot of time to make up for, after all.
Which was why I’d slept in. And Keltan had too. Strange for the man who was usually up at dawn. He must have been exhausted too. I forgot how hard he must work. For someone who only drank one coffee a day, I didn’t know how he did it.
And I knew he had a belly button too; I’d done the research the night before while paying attention to his carved six-pack. He was human, just not any ordinary one.
Keltan’s heat at my side, plus the smell of what he was holding, distracted me from those thoughts and from scraping the entirety of my handbag back into its home, so I just got the essentials.
His orderly apartment could handle some of my chaos. It looked right there.
“Yes,” I breathed, eyes on the steaming mug he was holding out to me before snatching it.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “What do I have to do to get you to look at me like that?”
I gulped the first sip, regarding his sparkling eyes over the top of the mug. Then I moved down to his shirtless body, ridges of abs and the V pointing down to the goods, which were unfortunately covered by low-slung sweats. My eyes moved back up at a leisurely pace, sipping the coffee.
“Well, make you drinkable, and delightful, and able to make me a functional human being,” I answered.
&nbs
p; Keltan’s eyes darkened as he stepped forward, taking the coffee—that I’d only had two sips of—from my hand.
“I can do all of those things, baby,” he murmured. “And the way you just looked at me makes me think I’ve got a chance over caffeinated beverages after all.” He was leaning forward so his lips pressed against mine as he spoke.
My stomach dipped deliciously, and all thoughts of meetings and general responsibility that didn’t include Keltan melted away.
“I was holding a caffeinated beverage,” I argued, my voice breathy. “Which you have taken away from me.”
He smiled against my lips, setting down the coffee. “That’s because I’m going to make my case for being all the things you listed coffee as being,” he growled.
I leaned into him, so ready for that too. That was until his eyes focused on the table where he’d just put the coffee. Or more accurately, the glint of silver that caught in the morning sunlight.
Then the air changed, the sparkling glint in his eyes disappearing. He stepped back, snatching something off the table in a violent gesture.
“What the fuck is this?” he half snarled at me.
I blinked at the change in the mood. Then I focused on the small owl that was clutched so tightly in his hands, his knuckles were white.
“Um, it’s an owl,” I told him. “Or the representation of one. I’m guessing you don’t like owls?”
He didn’t smile. In fact, fury spread to every part of him. “Where the fuck did you get this?” he demanded, stepping forward and clutching my hip tightly.
I clenched my teeth. “Keltan, you’re hurting me,” I told him, more shocked than anything at the gesture.
He flinched at my words, glancing down at his hand as if it was a foreign object. Then his hand left my hip, but he stayed in my presence. “Lucy, where did you get this?” he repeated quieter. But there was no calm in the quiet.
“I didn’t get it anywhere,” I told him, extremely confused but not exactly afraid. An owl was just a mighty strange thing to get this worked up about. “It was on my desk the other day. I must have put it in my bag—”
“Jesus, fuck!” he roared, interrupting me and making me jump as the figurine went flying through the air and hit his wall with a clambering echo as he threw it with all his strength.
His considerable strength, if the huge dent in the plaster was anything to go by.
“Okay, you really don’t like owls,” I muttered.
He didn’t find me funny. “You have no fuckin’ clue what that is, do you?” he seethed.
Something started to click. Something that took longer because of the only two sips of coffee and the rather jarring change in Keltan’s demeanor. “No, but I’m guessing it’s not good,” I surmised.
His face was a blanket of fury. “No,” he clipped. “It’s not fucking good.”
Then he turned on his heel and stalked over to his countertop, snatching his phone off the charger, pressing a button on it and putting it to his ear. He didn’t take his eyes off me as he waited.
“Heath, I need you at the offices. Now. Call Duke. We’ll meet you there in twenty.” He paused. “Yeah, we got problems. Fuckin’ big ones.” He didn’t wait for a response, just hung up.
He silently padded over to the wall and, amidst the crumbling plaster, snatched up the figurine. He closed his fist around it and was still for a split second, closing his eyes. He was the unnatural kind of still, the scary kind that had me wondering what chaos that small figure represented.
Then he turned back around, striding towards me but stopping a good space away.
I lost purchase on his eyes as he regarded the mess on his table.
“Get your shit together,” he ordered roughly. “And then don’t fuckin’ move.”
I put my hand on my hip. “Keltan, I don’t really know what’s going on, and I don’t know what this owl means. Obviously shouty, broody things. But I’ve got a meeting to go to. I can’t go to your offices and have whatever kind of badass powwow you’re planning. I’ve got a job.”
“Yeah? Well so do I,” Keltan hissed. “My main fucking one. Remember that one? Keeping you alive.” The words were little more than a hiss. He held up the little piece of silver that hadn’t seemed so threatening until about two minutes before. “And this means my job is about to get a fuck of a lot harder. We don’t have time to explain right now.”
I crossed my arms. “Make time,” I ordered.
His eye twitched.
“I’m not having you drag me around and shout things and go from sexy to furious in the blink of an owl without an explanation,” I told him. “And considering you alluded to my being alive or not was connected to that particular bird—” I nodded to his hand. “—then I think I deserve an explanation.”
He regarded me, my folded arms. Sighed.
His eye twitched once more and his jaw was stone, but he began to talk.
“The owl is considered in a lot of different cultures, including South American, to be the bird of death,” he said, the words harsh and sharp with his accent and fury.
I tilted my head. “Okay. Not exactly an explanation.”
I actually heard him grind his teeth. “In the right, or wrong, circles the owl and the delivery of one is known to be the delivery of a death sentence,” he continued. “A promise of it, in fact.”
I swallowed. “And what circles would they be?”
“Ones that a Columbian drug lord by the name of Rafael Martínez lords himself over,” Keltan said in a flat voice.
I bit my lip. “I’m not liking where this is going,” I muttered.
He glowered at me. “Yeah, you fucking shouldn’t,” he clipped. “Considering you’ve found the break in the story you’ve been looking so hard for.”
He held up the owl, such a little thing, something I’d looked at and mocked before. It suddenly seemed so much bigger.
“Your scoop just landed in your lap. And the threat of your fuckin’ death just landed in mine,” he all but snarled.
His words somehow final, a premonition of what was to come.
It turned out Keltan had been contracted by a client—who would remain anonymous, thanks to that pesky thing called client confidentiality—to investigate Rafael and his entire operation. The client had a lot of money and a personal stake in this, from what I could glean from the furious man, which wasn’t much.
The meeting at his offices, with Heath and an attractive and better-humored hottie named Duke—the Duke, I was guessing—wasn’t fun. Especially with Roger texting me demanding to know “where the fuck I was” every five minutes.
It was meant to be a debriefing for all staff. Just because I had been given a relatively long leash to investigate this story didn’t mean I still wasn’t chained to the place.
“You can’t do this story anymore,” Keltan informed me after glaring at me for checking my phone for the third time.
“Why?”
His knuckles clenched and I watched him visibly take a breath to calm himself.
The air thickened, tasting bitter, like it had ever since Keltan had glimpsed the figurine.
“Because,” he ground out, “you have a Columbian drug lord sending you direct death threats, which means he not only knows you’re the sole witness to a murder he most likely ordered, and therefore a loose end, but you’re investigating the fuckin’ thing. As soon as he gets wind of that—”
“What, he’ll send another owl?” I asked. “I’ve already got one death threat, so I assume I can’t get any more since they probably lose their effect after that. So, I don’t understand how it makes any difference whether I investigate the story or not. I’ll only be more bored and less likely to get a promotion while doing whatever we do to deal with this.” I paused. “What do we do? Call the police?” I screwed up my nose at the thought. Even though I didn’t doubt the seriousness of this, I didn’t envision much safety at the thought of the police.
Sitting in that room, in the offices of Gree
nstone, crisp and pleasingly cool, I felt safe.
Duke grinned at me. “I like her,” he told Keltan.
Keltan glared at him. Then me. “What we do is catch this motherfucker,” he gritted out. “And we end him.”
I tilted my head at him. “I thought you were a security company, not assassins,” I said blandly.
He stared at me. “This has shit to do with my business. This has to do with someone threatening my woman, and when that happens, I’m anything I fuckin’ need to be.”
I swallowed, then glanced to Heath and Duke. “And you two are down with the whole ‘killing a Columbian drug lord’ thing? I imagine it wouldn’t be just him. Moustache man obviously has to go too,” I said, trying to be helpful and more than a little sarcastic. Trying to hide my fear at these men doing something like this. Trying to hide my complete and utter panic at the thought of Keltan being in danger because of me.
Heath grinned. The first I’d seen on his blank face. And it wasn’t a happy grin; it was depraved and little scary.
And a lot hot.
“I was getting bored with all these posers here, anyway. It’d be good to spice it up,” he said.
Duke grinned too. “Agreed, brother. And I couldn’t think of anyone more worthy. Especially considering the shit we’ve already uncovered on him. Plus, our client would likely give us a hefty bonus if we did this.” He looked at Keltan.
“Killing for revenge or for breathing is one thing. Getting paid for it is another. We gotta draw a line,” Keltan informed him.
Duke pouted like a little kid getting refused ice cream before dinner. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I guess I don’t need that new boat anyway.”
So that was how it was planned that my man, the one who I’d only finally got my shit together with, was going to seek out and kill the Columbian drug lord who had threatened to kill me with an owl.
And he said we were simple.
One Week Later
Keltan’s fury at the small figurine and the subsequent war council had me believing the threat was imminent. I expected some death squad to march up to me on the street the entire week.