Muscle for Hire(69)
She’d wriggled against him, laughed her denials and reached for the doorknob at her hip. She’d twisted it and yanked the door open before he knew what she was doing, squealing in delight as she tumbled over the threshold.
They’d both stood frozen for a split second—Rowan in the hallway, naked as the day she was born, Aslin staring at her from inside, equally as naked.
“Holy shit,” she’d burst out, her eyes sparkling with sheer happiness, her fingers pressed to her smiling lips. “I opened the door, Rhodes. I opened the fucking door!”
He didn’t get the chance to respond. Laughing, she launched herself back into his suite. She wrapped her legs around his hips, her arms around his shoulders, and then they were both on the floor. Rowan kissed him, laughing and crying over and over that she’d opened the door, she’d opened the fucking door, as the door closed behind her.
They’d made love. He’d given her her demanded three-orgasm climax, and then they’d showered and gone out to the movies, catching a late showing of the newest superhero film playing.
Life couldn’t be more wonderful.
Except for the nagging belief she was still in danger.
“Are you ready, Chris? Vin?”
Nigel’s amplified voice sounded through the silence, jerking Aslin back to the here and now. He looked over at the scene about to be shot—an intense moment when the film’s antagonist declares his intentions to Chris’s hero before supposedly shooting himself in the head.
Aslin wasn’t needed for this scene. In fact, he wasn’t required at all for the rest of scheduled shooting. His job as a consultant during the Australian component of filming was essentially finished.
But Nigel had asked him this morning to remain in the role until wrap, which meant Berlin, followed by London and finally Hollywood.
Aslin hadn’t told Rowan. He had to tell Nick first.
“Just going outside for a sec,” he whispered in her ear, unable to wait any longer to do so. “Need to talk to my old boss.”
She’d studied him for a long beat. “Old?”
He dropped a kiss on her lips and walked away before she could whisper the question he wasn’t ready to answer yet.
“Aslin?” Chris’s voice drew him to a halt and he turned back to the set. “Any chance you can grab my script from my trailer while you’re out? Fucking left it there. Tilly, can you give Mr. Rhodes the key?”
“I can get it, Mr. Huntley,” Tilly called from beside a tungsten light.
“It’s okay, Tilly.” Aslin calmed her eager-puppy expression with a wave of his hand. “I can do it.”
He waited for the young woman to hurry over to him, giving her a smile as she handed him the key. “Thanks.”
“Okay, now are we ready?” Nigel called into his megaphone as Aslin turned and exited the building.
Chuckling, Aislin pulled his phone from his back pocket and dialed Nick’s Upper West Side apartment as he walked across the old Hyde Park Barracks’ large courtyard.
Nick didn’t answer. Aslin didn’t expect him to. It was early evening in New York after all. The Blackthornes would no doubt be out having dinner. “Heya, boss,” he said when the singer’s answering service activated. “I’m pretty certain you know what I’m going to say. Give me a call when you’re ready.”
Disconnecting, he shoved the slim phone back into his pocket. A sense of disconnected grief stirred within him. He’d been Nick Blackthorne’s bodyguard for close to sixteen years. He’d watched a lost, brash, egotistical young man grow into a mature, centred, loving father and husband. He’d shared a life with the singer. And yet, while he could hardly believe he was bringing that life to an end, another one waited for him.
One that he could no more deny than drawing breath.
Two steps later, his phone rang. “Rhodes,” he said, pressing it to his ear.
“Heads up, mate,” Leiv Reynolds’s broad accent came through the connection. “Inside word says the arson investigator has declared the explosion deliberate. His report states the ignition was caused by gas leaking into your trailer from the gas heater found inside it. He also detected nylon residue across the floor from the door to the stove. It’s likely it was triggered to ignite when the door was opened.”
Aslin’s gut rolled. He stared at nothing, his pulse a deafening hammer in his ear. “How do you know this?”
Reynolds snorted. “I’m a firefighter when I’m not a bodyguard, Rhodes. Remember? I’ve got connections.”
The hair on the back of Aslin’s neck stood on end. He gripped the phone harder. “Do you know if the cops have a suspect?”