He wanted to protest. He wanted to tell her he’d already had a shower and was happy to leave Kendra to it, but she’d know he was lying. Stacie could always read the Thorne brothers like books.
‘You sure you can handle Walker?’ He was already halfway to the stairs.
‘Of course I can.’ She waved him on. ‘Just go.’
He shouldn’t be here now. Dear God, he shouldn’t. What was he thinking? This wasn’t his plan. This wasn’t supposed to happen, but he couldn’t stay away. He just couldn’t. The woman was like a magnet. No fucking way could he stay away from her! It would be the easiest thing in the world to end it all now. All he had to do was go into the bathroom, open the shower door … A simple snap of her delicate, slender neck, and no one could stop him. No one would even know until after he was long gone. He felt giddy with the power of it, the control of it. Her very life was literally in his hands right now, and she didn’t even know it. No one in the house, no one outside in the yard, not the press, not the security, no one knew it but him. Her life in his hands. The thought made him hard, made him drunk with the power of it. He flexed his hands in the latex gloves.
He could hear the shower running. She was there. Just on the other side of the door. His heart raced like he’d been running, like he’d been lifting heavy weights. The prize was within his reach. With hands dead steady, in spite of the jumping of his heart, he carefully, ever so carefully, curled his fingers around the doorknob, took a deep, steadying breath, and slowly, patiently tried it with a silent sigh of satisfaction. Exactly as he’d suspected, it wasn’t locked. He could hear Thorne downstairs, talking to his slut of an ex. He heard the mention of the shower and was just about to turn and flee when Thorne’s cell phone rang. He relaxed his hand on the door, and stood quietly listening, holding his breath. When he was certain it wasn’t going to be a short conversation, he began to breathe again. Then he pushed the door opened slowly, ever so slowly.
Kendra leaned her forehead against the cool tiles of the shower, letting the hot water course over her, desperately struggling to calm down. She hadn’t expected to take it so personally when the people on the television had started in on Garrett, like they knew him, like they understood what drove him, like they understood anything about him. Of course they were only aping the same sentiments she had felt only a few days ago. But that was before she knew him, understood who he really was on the inside. Still, how could he stand it? How the hell could he just sit there and take it? And how could he have sat back and taken it all these years? She couldn’t have. She couldn’t have taken it for one minute. It was all so unfair, so wrong. And here she was trying to help him continue the farce.
And damn it, this was a job! Nothing more, this was just a job, she reminded herself. Garrett Thorne had hired her to be Tess Delaney for him. It was just another one of those delicate PR tasks that K. Ryde was famous for handling so exquisitely. So why the hell was she behaving like some lovesick teenager? She was a pro. She was the best, and this situation was a walk in the park. This situation wouldn’t even phase K. Ryde. That it didn’t go by the book, well, nothing ever did, did it? That was why K. Ryde was so good. She could think on her feet, she could fix it when it didn’t go to plan. This was no different. This was just another situation that didn’t go to plan. And the emails, well, Garrett himself said Tess had gotten lots. They were nothing, really, and she was ashamed of her overreaction, but that had nothing to do with the mess they found themselves in now, did it?
Ultimately it was Garrett’s mishandling of the Golden Kiss banquet that screwed everything up. Lest she forget, K. Ryde would have given him an ultimatum to shape up or she’d walk. So why was she still here? Why was she trying to clean up the mess that kept getting worse and worse, first with Garrett, and now with Stacie showing up? And why the hell was she letting this situation get to her so much?
It was as she turned in the shower and lifted her face to the hard spray that she saw him standing there in the open door. Her heart skipped a beat and everything inside her went warm and liquid. She could just see the shape of him, the dark of his jeans, intimations of the broad expanse of his chest; the rest was lost in the rising steam and the mist on the glass. She should tell him to go away. She knew she should. Garrett Thorne was trouble when she first met him, and Garrett Thorne was still trouble. The last thing on earth she needed was more trouble, more complications. She should tell him to go away. But she didn’t.
‘Well?’ she said. He took a step closer.