Quiver (Revenge Book 1) (11 page)

It was still there.

She dropped her bag on the kitchen floor, praying the aroma would eventually dissipate. She pulled off her scrubs as she moved toward her bedroom, dropping them on the floor as she went, popping on lights.

When she made it to her room, in just her bra and panties, she stopped in her tracks.

In the middle of her bed, sheets still rumbled from their fervent activities, sat a breakfast tray. Two glasses of untouched orange juice called out to her from the doorway, and she made her way over on a slow foot, as if the tray were really a ticking time bomb.

When the rest of the tray came into her view, Veda didn’t know why but tears stung her eyes. She clapped a hand over her downturned lips as she gazed at the pancakes he’d arranged to look like a sunrise.

The pancake served as the core of the sun, and thin slices of strawberries surrounded it to make rays. He’d even found her blueberries to make eyes, and her bag of chocolate chips for the smiley face. Strips of bacon served to give the sun a body, complete with arms and legs.

He’d even taken one of the pink flowers she knew grew on the dogwood tree outside and placed one on each plate.

Veda was surprised by the whimper that left her throat, and when she tried to fight it her body only shook with more ferocity, refusing to be ignored.

She slapped the tears off her cheeks and pressed a fist into her lips, shaking her head down at the breakfast tray and speaking into the quiet air of her apartment.

“You’re a real asshole, Veda Vandyke.”

6

“You’re a real asshole, Lincoln Hill.” Vino Maretti pushed his hands on his hips, eyes full of dismay. “This is the third heavy bag you’ve destroyed in under a month.”

A smirk lifted the corner of Linc’s mouth, bare chest heaving and buckets of sweat dripping from his chin, hands still curled into tight fists. Fists that, just a moment earlier, had been annihilating the heavy bag lying at his bare feet on the bright red mat. He shrugged at Vino, owner of the largest gym in Shadow Rock, as dust and debris floated down from the ceiling where the heavy bag had been hanging. “Is it my fault you’re not willing to pay the money to have this thing installed properly?”

“Is it
my
fault you got suspended?” Vino countered, bending down and attempting to lift the heavy bag from the floor. A blush crept to his cheeks when he was hardly able to move a bag, with his entire body, that Linc had just demolished with two fists alone. “Why must we all suffer because you can’t control your temper?”

Acquiescing, Linc moved Vino aside with the back of his hand, bent down and wrapped the chain of the heavy bag around his hand. He dragged the bag across the floor with ease, leaning it on the wall.

Chest still heaving and gleaming with sweat, he pushed back the wisps of dark brown hair that had escaped his drenched bun.

“I’ll re-install it for you when I have time,” Linc said, unfurling the spandex wraps tied around his hands and wrists.

“How about right now? You’ve got another week before you’re back to work, so what else do you got going on? Not a damn thing, that’s what. Not a damn thing outside of tearing my gym apart.”

Linc brushed past him, his hard green eyes on the glass doors to the boxing room. “Gotta take care of something.”

Vino followed Linc’s angry eyes. When he caught sight of what Linc was looking at, he reached out and claimed the man’s arm, which was twice the size of his, stopping him.

Linc looked down at his arm, then over his shoulder at Vino.

“If you really want to find her…” The owner looked back out of the glass where Gage Blackwater and Todd Lockwood were marking each other on the weight bench. “You’ve gotta get your mind right. Don’t let the anger steal your focus.”

Linc searched his eyes, then snatched his arm away.

“Linc,” Vino begged, his shoulders collapsing in defeat when Lincoln yanked open the door and left the room without another word.

—

Veda had abandoned the Clinical Anesthesia book she’d had open on her elliptical machine ages ago, too taken by the various events unfolding before her. Across the gym, behind the glass walls of the boxing room, she’d found herself entranced by Detective Lincoln Hill, pouring sweat and looking on the verge of collapse as he demolished a punching bag. Even when he began to tremble wildly from exertion, sweat dripping from his taut body like a waterfall, he didn’t relent. He actually picked up the speed of his pummels, giving it so much heart that the heavy bag eventually came unhinged from the ceiling and crashed to the ground.

The panting and grunting from her fellow gym-goers pulled her out of her stupor, and Veda blinked back to reality.

Her gaze went to Todd, the reason she was in that gym in the first place, spotting Gage on the weight bench across the room. In the week Veda had been trailing Todd, she’d learned he came to this gym every weekend at ten on the dot, but this was the first time anyone had accompanied him. When she’d seen Gage walk in alongside Todd, and they’d locked eyes across the room, it had taken her breath away. He’d broken their gaze immediately and hadn’t looked back. Not once.

One week.

One week since they’d slept together. One week they’d been forced to endure one another at work while struggling to maintain professionalism. One week he’d been pretending she no longer existed to him. One week, and her body still responded to his scent when he’d breezed past her elliptical machine on the way in.

Veda was yanked back to the present once more when Lincoln pulled open the glass door of the boxing room. His eyes went straight to Todd as he took long strides across the room.

Todd straightened, smiled at Linc, and waved. In the weeks she’d been trailing him, Veda had come to know Todd well—his schedule, his habits, and his every tiny mannerism. She knew he would never bestow such a pleasantry as smiling and waving. Not with good-natured intention anyway.

No.

He was taunting Linc.

But why?

Veda’s eyes flew back to Linc just in time to see him curl his lip at Todd. He tightened his fists, making his biceps explode to twice their size. His ardent stride skipped a beat, and then he stopped walking completely.

For a moment, Veda was sure Linc was about to fly across the room and take Todd around the neck. His eyes said he would—they said it was seconds away—but a small Italian man appeared and took Linc’s constricted arms in a death grip, shaking him. It took a few seconds for the detective to break his disgusted gaze from Todd and look down at the man, but once he did, he allowed himself to be pulled away.

Veda watched them go, her eyes wide. A part of her throbbed to stop that elliptical and follow Linc. The fact that he clearly despised Todd, maybe even more than she did, aggravated that need to an almost unbearable level. She ached to help him. Save him, the same way he’d saved her all those years ago. But how? What would she do? What would she say?

“Hey, I’m the girl you gave mouth-to-mouth to on the beach ten years ago, remember? I was wearing a white dress that barely covered my underage, too-grown-for-her-own-good ass? Doesn’t ring a bell? C’mon, you must remember. You gave me your mother’s sober chip to help calm me down? I still have it, by the way.”

Veda poked her lips out. It didn’t sound half bad. Her finger lingered over the Stop button on the machine, but the more logical part of her brain kept her from pushing it.

If she was really going to finish what she’d come there to do, it would be foolish to befriend Linc. Even if he
had
saved her life, he was still a detective. If she told him who she was right before the dead bodies of all her rapists began popping up like penny candy, he would put the pieces together in seconds. Then she’d be put under arrest and thrown in prison—and she’d already decided that she would die before she went to prison.

She would, literally, have to die.

So no, Lincoln Hill could never learn who she truly was. She could never return that bronze chip the way she’d always planned. It had helped her so much over the years, and from the scene she’d just witnessed, she knew he needed it now more than she did.

She poked her lips out, wondering if she could find out where he lived and slip it in his mailbox. But no, that was out of the question too. She couldn’t alert him to her presence in any way.

“Checking out your next victim?”

Veda’s eyes shot forward, a stunned gasp coming from deep in her throat at the sound of Gage’s voice. She met his hard brown eyes, less than a foot away from her machine as he walked past, slinging his gym towel over his broad shoulder.

“He hasn’t been with a woman since his wife disappeared,” Gage said, nodding toward the path Linc had just made, where Veda had been staring. “I doubt he could handle you.”

“It’s a good thing he’s not my next victim, then.” Veda tightened her grip on the elliptical handles, still slippery from her sweaty palms. “I’m still having too much fun with the first one.”

His mouth fell open. Clearly he assumed she was speaking about him, and not the ape racing up to him from behind.

“Why are you always talking to that crazy woman?” Todd took Gage in a chokehold, whispering in his ear without whispering at all. “She’s
crazy
, bro. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

Gage craned his neck as Todd pulled him away, never breaking his gaze from Veda’s, his eyes filled with an emotion, a depth, that made her hold on until he and Todd disappeared around the corner.

She stopped her machine once they were gone, snatching up her water bottle, wet with icy condensation. She emptied it with a few heavy chugs.

Even as the ice water cooled her throat, it still felt dry. Her heart pounded for more of something she didn’t have to give.

How was it possible that a man who could be friends with Todd Lockwood had that kind of hold on her body?

What the hell was
wrong
with her?

—

“Latika, do you ever do any work in this hospital? Or am I paying you to sit on your ass all day long?” Gage smiled when a pen came flying at his head from behind the hospital welcome desk. “When’s the last time you touched a patient? How is it possible all this paperwork hasn’t been filled out when you’ve been lounging behind this desk since 5 a.m.? What the hell do you
do?
Honestly?”

“Boy, if you don’t get the hell out of my face—” Latika caught herself in mid-rant, motioning to him with her pointer finger. “You know what? I am not losing my job over you today. Not today, Satan.” She pretended to be focused on her computer, fighting a smile when Gage burst into quiet laughter, leaning one arm on the welcome desk while his eyes searched the lobby.

“Quiet tonight,” he said.

“Always is on holiday weekends. You might know that if you were ever here.” Latika leaned forward, cradling her chin on the back of her hand. “But since you’re here all the time
now, I suppose you’re going to start learning all the little secrets that keep this place ticking. You know, since you’re here…
all the time
now.”

Gage tightened his lips. “The search for a new chief is taking much longer than expected—”

“Mmmhmm.”

“No matter what
General Hospital
scenarios you’ve dreamed up in that head of yours, I am only here to make sure my hospital runs smoothly until a new chief is hired.”

Latika looked up at him from over the rims of her glasses.

Gage looked away from her with a roll of his eyes. “You got any big plans tonight?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Oh yeah?” He leaned on the desk with both arms, waggling his eyebrows. “Hot date? Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Denzel,” Latika answered. “Followed by a tall drink of water I like to call Jack Daniel’s.”

Gage chortled and went to respond, but when someone came up next to him at the desk, he shot them a look and the words got trapped in his throat.

Veda Vandyke came to a panting stop next to him, slamming her hands on the welcome desk. When she turned her head and caught sight of him as well, Gage held his breath, standing tall and straightening his tie. His eyes fell to the American flag designs on her nails just as he turned his head away from her, and her soft voice wafted through the air.

“Hey, Latika,” Veda breathed. “You paged me?”

Gage shot Latika a heated look, and she did a phenomenal job pretending not to see it.

Latika’s voice grew sweet and warm like peach cobbler. “Yes, sweetness. You forgot to sign off on the paperwork clearing Mr. Harrison for his endoscopy tomorrow morning.”

Gage cut a look at Latika, wondering why she never used that pleasant tone with him. He drew in a breath when Veda’s voice rang out.

“God, I’m such a mess today. A few people take off for the holiday and I guess I completely fall apart.”

“That’s okay, sweetness,” Latika said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Thanks for having my back.”

The scribble of pen on paper rang into the quiet air. From the corner of his eye, Gage saw Latika watching him. Knowing what she was looking for, he made sure to keep his gaze, and his body, turned completely away from Veda. He tried to focus on the minuscule amount of patients sitting in the waiting room, loosening his tie when it began to feel like it was choking him.

Veda still wore the same shampoo, and every time he took a deep breath the aroma sent a different memory from the night they’d spent together blasting back into his psyche. With every whiff, his breathing came shorter and his fingers trembled harder. He pictured her full lips, parted in ecstasy. The lips she’d refused to let him kiss, not even once. The supple give of her curves under his greedy fingers, curves she hadn’t allowed him to see, refusing to remove her dress. The slick warmth of her pussy hugging his dick, which had grown as stiff in that moment as it had been that night. He could still feel her velvet walls tugging him, even then.

He licked his lips when they became parched.

He could still feel the foreign sensation that had soothed him while he made her breakfast the following morning, and the all too familiar sensation that had wrecked him when he’d realized she was gone.

Slamming his eyes shut, he covered his forehead with his hand, stunned that it was damp.

A long silence fell in, and he knew it wasn’t just Latika giving him the eye at that point but
both
of them.

He refused to give either of them the satisfaction of seeing the sweat collecting on his forehead, or even a passing glance.