Everything You Need: Everything For You Trilogy Book 1 Read Free Page B

off the corneas of the Chinese mafia with the nearest emery board, I opt for the tennis racquet propped against the wall. I’m told I have a dynamite fore-hand volley for a girl with few obvious arm muscles.
    Not that I intend to attack them. I just want something for self-defence if they discover my hiding place. I search for one. I wonder if I have time for a pee first. I’m pretty desperate. Of all the inconvenient moments to be invaded by triads.
    Halfway to the closet the voices stop. Sure footsteps move in my direction and the door flies open. I whirl round holding the racquet, ready to serve, between me and them.
    “The police are on their way.”
    It’s a complete lie. How could I think about calling law enforcement when all I can think about is having a pee?
    Seeing Jack Keogh standing there, I nearly take one right where I’m standing.
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    The heart-stopping hotness and amazingness that is Jack Keogh halts in my bedroom doorway just a couple of feet from where I’m hunched over the racket, quaking. And only a moment ago I’d been absolutely convinced I’d sobered up fast.
    His sharp business suit trousers and quality cotton shirt look like he’s spent the night in them, especially with the top shirt buttons undone. I stare at the triangle of tanned flesh. His jacket and tie are missing. And he’s in my apartment. What the hell is he doing in my apartment?
    At thirty-two he’s even more outrageously, dangerously masculine than he was four years ago and I hate that I’m still so instantly attracted. But I’d defy any heterosexual woman with even one of her five senses intact not to be.
    The man’s seriously scorching.
    My stomach clenches so hard in reaction I’m surprised my bladder doesn’t rupture. It isn’t doing anything to stem my arousal either. Anyone would think I’d spent all last night thinking about sex when I can’t remember what I spent last night doing, let alone thinking. But I’m incapable of any other rational response when Jack is standing two feet away from me – beyond checking to see my jaw isn’t hanging.
    “Feeling up for a game of tennis?” He narrows his eyes on my weapon. “That’s a good sign.” The humour is delivered dead-pan.
    Those Arctic blues force a purely visceral reaction. I’m more affected by him standing in my apartment after four silent years than I would have been staring down Genghis Khan and his entire Mongolian horde. My total body reaction to that faint scent of Clive Christian feels so intense, the room darkens and I stagger.
    Jack rushes towards me, removes the sports equipment that I’d visualised holding off a whole army of triads with, with one flick of his wrist and lowers me to sit on the bed. I’m weak before him in every sense of the word and I’m burning with shame. This isn’t how the big reunion was meant to be.
    “Catch your breath a minute. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    Sitting plagues my bladder even more which prompts me to remember the empty water jug. I glance over at it and back at Jack. I turn my head towards the open window, then back to him once more.
    “You broke into my apartment.” My gravelly voice doesn’t sound like my own.
    “I’m having the door fixed now.”
    Door? “I thought you came through the window.”
    He twists his neck round and frowns at the window before looking back at me with a dubious expression on his face. “You live on the top floor, Tabitha. I opened that to get some air in here but I came through the door.” Only Jack could make breaking and entering sound perfectly reasonable.
    “It was locked.” And one of the last things I absolutely remember doing.
    He shakes his head at me. Top floor or not, I don’t think Jack Keogh should make me feel like an idiot just because he’s not up to a four-storey climb. He’s still an intruder.
    “I know it was. And you weren’t answering when I knocked and kept on knocking. That’s why I’m having it fixed now.”