Crista McHugh - The Sweetest Seduction

Adam had planned on telling her tonight, but he feared ruining the moment if he brought up the subject right now. Instead, he focused on matching the rise and fall of his chest to hers. “I could die a happy man right now.”

She threw her arm around his chest and hugged him. “Me, too.”

His heart squeezed tighter. Lia had become the one thing he desired more than anything in his whole life. “I want to spend every night like this, Lia, with you lying next to me.”

She lifted her head from his chest, her lips parted and her brows drawn together. She searched his face as her fingers trailed along his chest, finally settling over his heart. A small smile appeared. “And you always get what you want.”

“Yes, as long as you’re willing to stay here.”

The crease reappeared above her nose. What had he said that caused her concern?

Before he could ask, his phone rang. This time, however, it was Bates’s ringtone. What would possess him to call this late at night?

A second ring tone pierced the silence, and Lia jumped. The two phones continued to ring, each one echoing the other, demanding their attention until Adam grabbed his and stepped into the living. “What is it, Bates?”

Lia’s phone stopped ringing as well, followed by the hushed sound of her voice as she answered.

“Mr. Kelly, there’s been a fire in the Michigan Avenue property.”

A sheen of sweat broke out over his skin. “Where in the building?”

“The top floor, from what I’ve been told.” Shit! La Arietta. He sucked in a breath and held it, praying he’d heard Bates wrong. “I’m en route now to see if I can get in and assess the damage.”

“I’ll meet you there.” He hung up and stood outside his bedroom door, listening for Lia. When no sound came from the room, he gently pressed on the door to open it.

Lia sat on the edge of the bed, the phone cradled in her hands. Wet lines streaked down her pale face. She stared straight ahead like a statue, letting her tears fall.

A crushing sensation of helplessness engulfed him. If he could wave a magic wand, the spell he’d cast would keep her from ever learning the truth about the fire. Instead, he settled for the role of being the person she could lean on in this time of trouble. He found her clothes and laid them next to her. “Lia, let’s get dressed and go see the damage.”

Her shoulders shook, lightly at first but quickly growing into a sob that wracked her entire body. He sat next to her and held until her initial grief passed and the flow of her scalding tears ebbed.

“We’ll get through this together, Lia,” he whispered. “I promise.”

She lifted her head with a sniff and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You’re right, Adam. Crying doesn’t help anything.” She slipped her panties up over her hips. “Let’s go and see what’s left.”

The calm of her voice belied the droop of her shoulders, the half-hearted effort in which she dressed. She rode down the elevator with her arms wrapped around her waist, hugging herself while she stood several feet away from him. Her face remained void of emotion as they drove to the restaurant and the sea of flashing red lights that greeted them when they arrived.

After explaining to the firemen that they were the owners, they were allowed to enter the parking garage and go up to the top floor.

The acrid stench of smoke filled his nostrils as they got closer to La Arietta. A gasp broke free from her lips when the elevator doors parted. The fire may not have consumed the entire restaurant, but the damage was enough to call it a total loss. Smoke stains blackened the ceiling of the lobby, and wet plaster dripped off the walls. Beyond them, the charred remains of tables and chairs stood like ghastly skeletons at the far end of the dining room near the kitchen door.

Bates approached them, his eyes flickering to Lia before speaking. “It’s not as bad as I first thought.”

If Lia heard his words, she gave no indication.

Bates gave him a quick jerk of his head, indicating there was more he wanted to say in private.

Adam squeezed her hand. “Will you be okay here for moment?”

She nodded, her gaze still fixed straight ahead.

“I didn’t want to upset Ms. Mantovani any more than she already is.” Bates led him into the heart of the once-vibrant dining room, stopping at the line of black on the tile floor that marked the edge of the flames near the kitchen door. “From what I gather, the fire started in the kitchen near the deep fryer. The inspector is already investigating the cause as we speak.”

As if on cue, a man emerged from the kitchen deep in conversation with one of the firemen. He scribbled a few notes on his clipboard and nodded before coming toward them. “Are you Mr. Kelly?”

Adam nodded. “Is the building safe?”

“You wouldn’t have been able to come in if it wasn’t.” The inspector made a few more notes. “I’ll have to look at the levels below before I can make the final call on whether they’ll be safe for people to return to work or not.”

“I’ll call the smoke and water damage crew and have them here in the morning,” Bates offered.

Adam waited for the inspector to answer the one question plaguing his mind, but when he didn’t offer the information, he asked, “Any clue as to the cause?”

“Looks like a faulty plug above the fryer.” He held up a charred, twisted mess of metal and plastic. “A few sparks from that thing, and the oil would have ignited like gunpowder. Classic grease fire.”

“I’m glad the firemen were able to contain it so quickly.”

“Yeah, me too. Makes my job simpler.” He dropped the evidence into a plastic bag and sealed it. “Now, let’s take a look below.”

“Bates, you take him. I’ll stay here with Lia.”

The two men disappeared into the stairwell, and Adam faced the ominous task of trying to console the woman he loved.

* * *

Lia took a few steps and halted, her chin quivering as she took it all in. It was all ruined. Everything she’d poured her heart and soul into for the last year was now sopping wet and reeking of smoke. Every dime she’d invested into La Arietta had gone up in flames, leaving her nothing.

A flash of light called to her, and she crossed the lobby to where the framed issue of Food and Wine hung on the wall, still dry behind the pane of glass. She took it down and hugged it. Even if she never rebuilt La Arietta, she had proof that it had been real, that she’d created something wonderful and marvelous and....

Her thoughts choked up in a silent sob. It didn’t matter what it had been. Now it was all gone.

A pair of warm hands rested on her shoulders. “It’ll be all right, Lia,” Adam said in a gentle voice meant to soothe her. “We can rebuild it.”

“No, we can’t.” A new batch of tears threatened to spill over. “I don’t have the money. My fire policy will barely cover the repairs needed to get it back to usable condition. It won’t replace the furniture or the appliances or the lost income.”

He pulled her into his arms and made a few shushing noises. “Don’t worry about the money.”

A spark of fury ignited deep inside her chest, spreading as quickly as the fire in the restaurant had. “That’s easy for someone like you to say. You’ve never had to worry about how to make ends meet or how you’re going to afford to move out of your mother’s apartment while still keeping your business afloat.”

“Then what do you want me to say?” he asked, his arms falling to his sides.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, hugging the framed magazine even tighter. “If you offer to lend me the money to reopen La Arietta, then I’d always feel indebted to you. It would feel like you owned part of my soul.”

“Then are you saying you’d rather walk away from this?” He hooked his finger under her chin, increasing the pressure until she finally looked up at him. “Listen to me—I’ll take care of everything—the repairs, the inspections, the paperwork. You can move in with me and never have to worry about a thing ever again.”

Her gut wrenched. He was offering to take control of everything and set up her up in his home. Her pulse pounded in her temples, and her mouth went dry. It was the gilded cage all over again. He wanted to lock her away and keep her from the one thing that could tear them apart.

Mr. Bates thankfully spared her from having to tell him no. “Mr. Kelly, perhaps you should come downstairs and take a look before we form a plan of action.”

Her throat tightened as though someone had slipped a noose around her neck. She’d overheard the inspector. A grease fire had caused all this damage. It was all her fault for not staying here and making sure everything was in order before leaving. If she’d been here, maybe she could have put the fire out before it spread. Now she’d destroyed not only her restaurant, but the surrounding businesses in Adam’s building.

Adam ran his thumb over her lips. “Think about my offer.”

She didn’t need to think about it. She already knew her answer, but she was too much of a coward to tell him right then. She stood there while he followed Mr. Bates downstairs, forming the best plan. She couldn’t resurrect La Arietta on her own, and she couldn’t become a kept woman. Each beat of her heart confirmed the inevitable, deepening the ache in her chest.

She had no future with a man like Adam Kelly.

Now was the time to slip out of his life for good, before her body seized control of her better judgment and she surrendered to his touch. She pressed the button for the elevator and caught a cab home to her mother’s apartment, carrying only the memories of a few shattered dreams with her.

Adam punched in Lia’s number one more time. Like every time he’d tried to call her over the last two days, it went straight to voice mail. He hadn’t heard a word from her since the fire except for a text telling him she’d gone to her mother’s, followed by the e-mail he’d received less than an hour ago letting him know that he could give the lease to Amadeus Schlittler.

“Damn it, woman! Why are you being so stubborn?”

Her silence didn’t just hurt—it tore at his heart like some sadistic punishment that inflicted pain every time he thought of her. He’d offered to have her move in with him and let him take of everything that worried her. In truth, it was the closest he’d come to proposing to her. Maybe he would’ve been better off doing that.

He pulled up the e-mail again and let her cold words prick his skin like dozens of little daggers.

Dear Adam,

Seeing as how the damage to La Arietta will require extensive time and money to repair, I think it is in your best interest to offer the space to Amadeus Schlittler and forget about me.

Sincerely,

Lia Mantovani

He slammed his keyboard against his desk in frustration. Maybe he’d been wrong in his assumption that she’d really cared for him. Maybe it had all been an act to seduce him into letting her keep the restaurant, and now that she couldn’t afford it, she was done with him.

But when he remembered the way she’d told him she loved him in that sleepy voice a few days ago, he knew she hadn’t been pretending. She loved him as much as he loved her. He just needed to find out what had her running scared.

A brisk knock sounded at his door. Bates came in carrying two folders. “Mr. Kelly, Mr. Volowski has been rather, um, insistent to learn your final decision on the Michigan Avenue property. I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up two different leases—one for Mr. Schlittler and one for Ms. Mantovani.”

Bates placed each folder on his desk and opened them up to the documents inside. It was time to make a decision. He skimmed over the prospective agreement with Schlittler, then the one with Lia. He halted when he saw the monthly rent on her lease. “Is this correct?” he asked, pointing to the number that was a quarter of what he’d normally charge.

Bates put on his reading glasses and checked the figure. “Yes, sir. That is the amount in her original sublease.”

“Who authorized it?”

His assistant flipped past the new lease to reveal the original one. On the very last page, the delicate loops of his mother’s signature filled the owner’s line.

Adam took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. He should’ve known there was one more piece of the puzzle that he’d overlooked. “I think I need to have a conversation with the owner before I do anything else.”