White Heat (15 page)

“Why not?” he asked curiously.

“Because she loved you,” Emily said matter-of-factly. “She’d never tell tales about you, especially not to your father. Is that what Daniel was like in his youth? A philanderer?”

“Big time.”

Instead of answering she stretched the hem of her sweater away from her body and grimaced, then noticed Max still watching her and glanced away, folding her arms tightly over her chest.

“After he left for the last time things were considerably better at home’ he said to the curve of her cheek. She was maintaining her composure, but barely. “My mother attempted to divorce him a couple of times. I suspect she didn’t try that hard. Still, he ignored the papers she had her lawyer send.” He shrugged. “After a while he didn’t seem to matter to her. He was gone, and she went back to building a life.”

“That was their relationship,” she told him quietly. “And sad as that was, you and Daniel could have, should have, made some sort of connection, don’t you think?”

Although she was keeping up her end of the conversation, she still looked too fragile for his peace of mind. Max felt uncharacteristically helpless. “Obviously not.” The last damn person he wanted to discuss was his father. On the other hand, talking about her mentor, hell,
defending
her mentor, put a lively fire in Emily’s wounded brown eyes, and brought a flush to her pale cheeks.

He decided to piss her off a little more, in the hope that she’d forget, if only for a few more minutes, the horror she’d witnessed. “Drop it,” he told her, his voice grim. He wanted to get her in the shower, where he would personally wash the blood from her skin. He couldn’t stand seeing it on her. Couldn’t stand that she’d bear the memory of what had happened to her friends whenever she closed her eyes.

He couldn’t
fix
that. Couldn’t erase those memories.

Crap. He didn’t remember when he’d ever felt this helpless. The knowledge made him feel hollow inside.

He knew she wouldn’t appreciate that the only way he could think to help her was to fuck her brains out until neither of them remembered their names, let alone the bloody massacre. And then he wanted to do it again until they were both too exhausted to move.

Damn it to hell, he wanted that look gone from her eyes. He wanted the hard, grim line of her mouth to go back to the soft sweet curve he was familiar with.

“Drop it?” She gave him just the exasperated look he’d expected.
“Drop it?
We don’t always have to
like
the people we love. Sometimes we don’t even know our parents, or who they are. Every parent/child relationship takes
work.”
She took a swig out of her water bottle. “Connections can’t flourish unless one of you is willing to do more than fifty percent to
make
that happen,” she told him flatly.

“Who are we talking about here?” He kept his voice carefully neutral. “Me or you?”

“You.” She sounded genuinely angry now.

“Hmm. We didn’t
love
each other. We were strangers.” Even he wasn’t sure if they were still talking about his relationship with his father, or if somehow the conversation had veered off into something a damn sight more personal. And dangerous.

“You should have tried harder.”

He shifted in his seat, stretching out his legs, getting more comfortable. No. Not getting more comfortable. Feeling less uncomfortable, damn it. “This conversation is a dead end.”

“Fine. But don’t sit here interrogating me, when you refuse to answer a simple damn question.”

The plane leveled off at altitude. “Nothing is that simple.”

“Well, I’m simply tired of answering your questions. How about that?” She got out of her seat and stepped into the aisle.

Max released the polished chrome clip on his seatbelt. “Come on.” He got up, too. Not liking the way he crowded her, Emily stepped back. “You’ll feel better once you’ve showered and put on some clean clothes.”

“I doubt if a
hundred
showers will make me feel better:’ she replied. “But, yes. I would like to shower and get on some fresh clothes.”

They’d been sitting close to the mahogany door leading to the aft cabin, and Max slid the door open, preceding her inside. The room contained a compact, but extremely efficient, high-tech office and second bathroom. Wall units discreetly housed a small conference table, and a couple of fairly comfortable beds.

He opened the narrow door to the bathroom and flicked on the light. Despite its small size, the bathroom, like the rest of the jet, was the height of both luxury and efficiency. Bronze mirrors covered the walls, plush carpet lay underfoot, and a man-sized, glass-enclosed, navy-and-gold tiled shower stood in the corner. The liquid soap in the dispenser was specially formulated with active enzymes. No smell, and it would remove any stain, particularly blood. But that was TMI for Emily right now. “There’s plenty of hot water,” he told her. “Take as long as you like. I’ll leave you something to change into when you’re done.”

“Okay.”

“Towels.” He removed several from the cabinet beneath the sink, placing them on the closed toilet seat. “Yell if you need anything.”
Me for instance.

“I won’t.”

He stepped through the doorway. “I’ll be in the forward cabin.”

Her response was to slam the door in his face.

The moment she was alone, Emily’s knees gave way and she dropped to the carpeted floor. Arms wrapped around herself, she folded over at the waist, face pressed against her knees. The band of pressure across her chest was so tight she could barely breathe.

OhGodohGodohGod.

If Max had expected her to respond intelligently to one more question she would have started screaming and never stopped. Her stomach churned and her heart pounded so fast she thought she was going to pass out.

Eyes open or closed, her brain was filled to capacity with
red.
She’d had no idea blood was as bright, as shiny, as slick as what she’d seen in the Bozzatos’ kitchen. She’d never get the grotesque images out of her head.

Never.

Now, co-existing with those horrific images were images of the violence and terror of the gunfight in the streets of her neighborhood. The world gone mad.

As sickening as it had been to see the blood and gore there, she didn’t know those men. Nothing could compare to what had happened to Franco and his family.

Details she hadn’t realized she’d absorbed at the time were coming back in a sickening flood of hideous, Technicolor images that turned her stomach and made the vise around her chest ratchet even tighter. Like a vile and vivid copy of a Jackson Pollock painting, the walls and ceiling had been splattered with blood. The savagery of the attack was almost incomprehensible.

It had taken a few seconds for Emily’s brain to process the scene. Janna—her neck practically sliced through—lay half-on, half-off the kitchen chair.

Emily’s stomach clenched. Janna’s lifeless eyes had been open, communicating the terror she’d suffered long before the life had drained from her body. Nonna Maria— Oh God! Nonna Maria’s blue dress had been black with wet blood. They’d cut her chest and face so that she’d been unrecognizable, then taken one leg of her walker and jabbed it into the gaping knife wound on her chest.

While Nonna Maria and Janna were victims of a blitz attack, Franco hadn’t been as fortunate. His body was riddled with stab wounds. Three of his fingers had been sliced off. Defensive wounds, she thought, sickly. In what was surely a fight for his life, Franco had grabbed at the knife in a futile gesture that had only added to the brutality. The killer had gone out of his way to inflict a maximum amount of wounds. Neck, chest, forearms, upper thighs.

As part of her training, she’d gone beyond the normal life drawing classes and studied nudes, and taken pre-med classes in anatomy. The assassin had purposefully hit every major artery in Franco’s body. With each frantic heartbeat, Franco’s blood had pulsed from his body.

Why would
anyone
slaughter an entire family? It didn’t make sense.

Bile rose in the back of her throat.

If someone had wanted them dead, why not a bullet to the head? Why the massacre?

Why? Why? Why?

She pressed her forehead hard against her knees. God. She wished she could at least cry to relieve some of the intense pressure squeezing her chest. But though her eyes burned with unshed tears the situation was way beyond crying.

Somehow
she’d
brought
that
on the Bozzato family.
How
or
why
she didn’t know. But there was no doubt in her mind that, but for her, they’d all be alive right now. A raw, painful sob caught between her chest and throat, but there were no cathartic tears to ease their path.

Emily pressed her clenched fists hard into her diaphragm where an ever-tightening band squeezed so hard she could barely draw a breath. Folding over on herself she rocked, unable to contain the overwhelming pain that had accumulated over the last several weeks.

Her teeth chattered. Cold. Cold. Cold. She couldn’t get warm. It was as if the whole emptiness of her was filled with brittle shards of ice. Slivers that sliced and cut her deep inside.

Intense, unrelenting emotion had been building, giving her no time to decompress or figure things out before the next God-awful thing body-slammed her emotions.

Daniel’s death, followed by the break-in, followed by the emotional whirlwind of Max’s return, followed by the Bozzatos’ grisly murders, followed by the attempted kidnapping and gunfight in the streets had left her emotionally reeling.

She should get up, she thought vaguely as she pressed her face against her knees and rocked. In a minute or two when she was sure she could stand without screaming. A sob ripped up her throat, followed by another. She didn’t even attempt to stop them no matter how badly they hurt.

“Christ—” Strong hands closed around her shoulders, jolting her back to her surroundings. Max pulled her to her feet in mid- sob. Eyes more green than hazel met her startled tear-drenched gaze with such compassion Emily’s heart wrenched. Tears clogged her throat as he wrapped her in his arms, holding her tightly.

“I— P—please g—g-—” She didn’t trust herself to finish. She wanted to climb inside him where she’d feel warm and safe. Insane. Max wasn’t safe. Far from it.

“Ah, sweetheart.” He wiped her wet cheek with a gentle thumb, then cradled the back of her head in his palm and pulled her wet face against his chest, his fingers tangled in her hair. He rubbed a big, warm hand up and down her back in a sweetly tender attempt at consolation.

For a moment she felt too brittle to accept that comfort, but after a moment her body recognized the safe haven he offered and she responded by wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. Fisting the back of his shirt, Emily pressed her cheek against his chest and cried in jerky sobs that hurt her throat.

“Yes, that’s right,” he murmured, pressing his lips against her hair as he cradled her against the furnace heat of his body. “Get it out. Let it go.”

She wanted him to leave her alone until she could get a grip on her emotions. She wanted him to hold and comfort her. Hell. She didn’t know
what
she wanted at the moment.

Yes she did.

She wanted
Max.

Emily tightened her grip on the back of his shirt and lifted her head. She looked up at him through a blur of tears. “I-I’ll be o-okay in a m-minute.” She would if she could get her feet under her emotionally and pull herself together. Right now that wasn’t even close to a possibility.

“Yeah,” Max told her gently. “But in the meantime let me take care of you, okay?” His tone belied the taut planes of his face, and the grim set of his lips. “Let’s get your clothes off so you can take a shower, okay?”

“In a m-minute.” For a moment she rested against him, drawing in his quiet strength. She’d hit an emotional wall and she didn’t have the strength to fight it. She was drained, and tired of being frightened. She wanted to forget everything and shut off her brain.

But of course when her brain woke up again, everything would be right where it had been before. What she had to do was pull herself together, she knew that better than most. She made an effort to push him away. It was a pretty puny effort, she admitted, as her eyes welled again. Having him here, now, when she was at her most vulnerable, was dangerous.

But God, it was seductive, too.

“Make love to me.” Standing on her toes, Emily wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers. She didn’t want gentle. She didn’t even want
emotion .Just
sex. Hard fast driving sex until she couldn’t think or feel any more.

“No. Fuck me.”

He froze, and for a moment she thought he was going to resist. He didn’t, thank God. He looked down at her for the space of several erratic heartbeats, his eyes a hard, glittering green. The look was hot enough to make her blood race like quicksilver through her veins. He was going to take her now. Here. Standing pressed against the tiny sink, in the equally tiny bathroom.

A muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth as he lowered his head, his hands splayed possessively on her back, drawing her flush against him. She felt his hardness, and shifted against him as her lips parted beneath his.

But instead of ravishing her the way she wanted him to do, Max’s mouth closed over hers in a slow, hot kiss that made her ache. She whimpered as his tongue sought and found the slick velvety recess of her mouth. His kiss curled around her jangled senses as sweetly as warm honey. Tightening her arms around his neck Emily relished the deepening of the kiss, but she wanted more.

She wanted him to fuck her. To batter her body and leave her limp and satiated and without a cognizant thought. She wanted him. Harder. Faster. Still, the maddeningly slow thorough exploration made her heart hammer, and her body burn.

Max didn’t give her what she was asking for, he gave her what she needed.

Tenderness. Understanding.

He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her jaw. His mouth trailed up to her ear, and the damp heat of his breath made her shudder. And all the while he cradled her protectively in his arms.