Melt For Me (Against All Odds Book 3) (13 page)

“The third floor’s on fire. Get everyone out of here.”

“The third floor,” Fulton said, pushing away from the bar, his brows drawn together. “Are you su—”

“Just do it,” Tate said, already rushing for the stairs.

“Oh my God,” someone exclaimed in a loud voice. “That’s smoke!”

Chairs skidded across the floor. Voices rose. Tate clawed his way through rushing bodies exiting the bar and finally reached the stairs that led to the upper floors.

“Kendrick!” Kelly called. “Don’t go up there!”

Tate didn’t listen. He hustled up the steps. Shoving the second-floor apartment door open, he called, “Ella?”

Her apartment was empty, the only sound a radio playing music in the corner. After checking each room, he moved back for the stairs and skipped steps to the third floor. The smoke grew thicker the higher he went. Tugging his shirt up and over his nose and mouth, he coughed and blinked rapidly as he called, “Ella!”

He reached the open loft. Flames were traveling up the wall in the kitchen, filling the loft with smoke. He looked around for a fire extinguisher, but couldn’t find one. No one stayed up here. Odds of there being one were slim.

“Ella!” He scanned the smoke for any sign of her. A groan echoed somewhere to his right.

He turned in that direction. Sirens sounded outside. “Ella!”

Someone coughed on the far side of the room. He rushed past the cot he’d slept on earlier in the week, flipped it over, and spotted Ella lying on the ground, blood oozing from a cut on her forehead.

“Sweet Jesus. Ella, baby, are you okay?”

“T-Tate?” She struggled to sit up.

“Where else are you hurt?” he asked, checking her arms and legs for wounds.

“I-I don’t know.”

She was dazed, and the smoke was growing thicker by the second. Red, swirling lights flickered through the windows, disappearing in the black smoke. “We have to get out of here.”

“Y-yeah.” She grasped his arm, struggled to her feet. Coughed again.

“Pull your shirt up over your face, Ella. And don’t let go of my hand.”

She did as he said, and he tugged her in the direction of the window where he remembered the fire escape being. When he reached it, he placed her hands on the sill so she wouldn’t get lost, let go of her, and forced it open. After climbing through, he pulled her with him. She coughed again and again, grasping his arms and shoulders as if her legs weren’t working.

“Hold on to me,” he said, sweeping her up into his arms. “I’ve got you.”

Somehow they made it down the fire escape and into the alley behind the pub. The sirens were louder out here, along with voices from the front of the building where firefighters were rushing inside. He moved thirty yards away from the building and set Ella down on the curb. She leaned forward and coughed.

“Just breathe,” he told her, rubbing her back.

Her coughing finally subsided, and she looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. Soot covered her face and hair and clothes, and out here in the orange streetlights, the gash in her head looked even worse. “H-how did you find me? Why did you come back?”

He winced at the sight of the cut on her forehead, pulled his hand inside his sleeve, and pressed the cotton against her head. “Because I love you, that’s why. And when I realized the person messing with your bar was linked to me, I had to make sure you were okay.”

Ella’s eyes widened. “The woman.”

“You saw her?”

She nodded. “Just before she hit me with someone hard.” Her gaze lifted to the smoking building. “Who is she?”

“A fan.” His chest squeezed tight. “A crazy, stalker fan who’s supposed to be in jail. I’m sorry, Ella. I’m so sorry she did this. I didn’t know she was the one vandalizing your business. I didn’t mean for you to get hur—”

Her fingers closed over his wrist, pulling his hand away from her head. “I’m okay, Tate.”

“You’re not fine. You’re bleeding, and your pub—”

“The pub is fine. Look.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Firefighters already had the third floor doused in water, containing the damage.

“You came back for me,” she whispered.

He looked back down at her, confused about why her eyes were going misty when she should be pissed at him. “Of course I did. I love you, Ella. I was planning on coming back here tomorrow after my gig to win you back, but then I heard Hayes had been released from jail. You got it wrong. I wasn’t here for revenge. I didn’t write that song, Tommy did after his wife dumped him. And I wasn’t talking to another woman on the phone when you came up to the loft earlier. I was talking to my buddy Ryan’s twelve-year-old daughter, Julia. She’s the one who convinced me it was time to find you and win you back. When I was in the kitchen at that stupid dinner party, hiding from my blind date. Julia’s a perceptive kid. Too perceptive sometimes. And she’s the one who came up with this silly plan for me to act as if I were only passing through town. She thought it might spook you if you knew I was still in love with you. She called earlier today, wondering how it was going, and I was just calling her back to tell her—”

Ella pushed to her knees, wrapped her arms around Tate’s shoulders, and pressed her lips to his for a quick, confession-stopping kiss. “I love you too. I never stopped loving you, Tate. Never. I’m so sorry I jumped to conclusions. I knew as soon as you left that I’d made a giant mistake. I was just…”

“Scared,” he finished for her, sliding his hands down to her waist.

“Yes,” she whispered. “My dad left me when I was little. Then you left me, then Kyle. I was just afraid it would happen again. That this was too good to be true. And I knew I’d been able to survive those other losses, but if you left me again, I didn’t think I could.”

He framed her face with his hands. “You don’t have to, Ella. You won’t ever have to. Because I’m never leaving you again. You’re the one. You’ve always been the one. You
will
always be the only one for me.”

“Oh, Tate.” Her eyes went soft and dreamy, and when he kissed her, the fear and longing he’d lived with all these miserable, empty years finally drifted away.

“Well,” a woman said somewhere behind him, “isn’t that sweet. Too bad he’s lying.”

Tate pulled away from Ella’s luscious mouth and looked over his shoulder, then froze when he saw Belinda Hayes standing in the lightly falling snow, holding a gun pointed right at them.

“I’m the only woman for him,” Belinda said, her eyes crazed. She shifted the gun toward Ella. “And once you’re out of the way, he’ll finally figure that out.”

T
ate lurched to his feet, putting himself between Ella and the gun. He held up his hands. “Put it down, Belinda. No one has to get hurt here.”

“Oh, she does,” Belinda exclaimed, her dark hair a wild mess around her midthirties face. “I’m the lost love you wrote about in those songs, not her. Not her!”

Ella’s heart felt as if it leaped into her throat. She leaned to the side to see around Tate. The gun shook in Belinda’s hand.

“Okay,” Tate said in a calm voice. “They can be about you. Just put the gun down.” He took a hesitant step her way. “Put the gun down, and I’ll leave here with you right now. No one has to know about this.”

Ella knew he was lying. He was just trying to get the psycho fan away from her. Her pulse whirred, and she glanced around for something—anything—in the alley to distract the woman.

“I tried to get you to see what a loser she is,” Belinda said. “A loser who can’t even take care of her own pathetic bar. I know how driven you are, Tate. I know you’d never be happy with someone who lives in a Podunk little town like this and is as careless as she is. But you didn’t see it. You wouldn’t leave. So now I have to get rid of her. Don’t you see? It’s the only way.”
 

“Belinda.” Tate’s voice rose, and he took taking another step toward her. “I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. Put the gun down, and everything will be the way you want it to be.”

Belinda’s wild eyes narrowed, and she shifted the gun toward Tate, stopping him in his tracks. “Why now? Why are you agreeing to go away with me now? You never agreed to that before. You let them put me in jail before.”

“That wasn’t me.” Tate moved closer again. “That was the police.”

“It was you! You could have stopped them. You let them lock me up!”

The gun shook harder in her hands, and Ella knew the woman was about to lose it. Spotting a rock to her right, she slowly reached for it and closed her hand around the hard, palm-sized object.

“Belinda,” Tate said, shuffling even closer, only feet from her now. “You know I wouldn’t—”

“No.” Belinda shook her head, her dark hair falling over her face. “It’s you. You’re the real problem here. You’re a liar and a manwhore. I can’t believe I ever loved you! You’re the one who has to die!”

Fear grasped Ella by the throat. She chucked the rock toward the building. It clattered against the bricks and fell to the ground with a
thunk
. Wide-eyed, Belinda swiveled toward the sound, taking the gun with her. Tate lunged forward, slamming into Belinda and knocking her to the ground with a grunt. Gunfire exploded in the alley. Ella screamed.

Tate pressed his knee into Belinda’s chest, trapping her on the ground, then gripped the arm that held the gun and knocked her hand against the snowy pavement until the weapon fell from her fingers. “Enough!”

Voices echoed from the opening of the alley, followed by footsteps rushing across the ground. A police officer yelled, “Freeze!”

In seconds, several cops were in the alley, taking control of the crazed fan. Tate pushed to his feet and looked back. “Ella?”

“I’m okay.” On shaky legs, Ella rose and tried to dust the snow and dirt from her pants. It was useless, though. She was soaked clear to the bone and covered in soot.
 

His hands grasped her shoulders, then he pulled her into the warmth and safety of his embrace and closed his arms around her. “Thank God.”

Her arms circled his waist, and she pressed her cheek against his shoulder, holding on to him as tightly as he held her, feeling the last of the ice left inside her melt away.

Long minutes passed. She heard voices but didn’t bother to look. All she wanted to focus on was the man who’d found her again, the one she never wanted to let go.

“Promise me something,” she said against him.

“Anything,” he breathed into her hair.

She drew back and looked up at his gorgeous, familiar, soot-covered face. “Promise me Christmas Eve will be a lot less exciting from here on out. All I want…all I’ve ever wished for at Christmas…is you.”

“Aw, Ella. You have me.” He framed her face with his big hands. “You’ve always had me.” He leaned down and brushed his lips over hers as the snow picked up around them. “Now and always.”

She sighed and opened to his kiss. And knew that, finally, she had her Christmas miracle.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading MELT FOR ME
,
the 3
^rd
book in my Against All Odds Series. I hope you enjoyed Tate and Ella’s story!
 

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