Chapter 5

A flashlight shone on my face and I was immediately set free, nearly crashing into the mahogany desk in the process.

"Ms. Westfeild!"

"Will?!" My mystery attacker clicked on the desk lamp and it became clear that he was none other than William-the-Pesky.

"What the hell?" I snapped. I thought I was as good as dead! In a wave of fury, I seized a letter opener on the desk and pointed it towards him. He responded by lifting his hands up in surrender.

"You were following me!" I accused, trying to still my shaking hands.

"I most certainly was not!" He admonished.

His expression turned from anger to deep concern as he scanned me for injury. "I could have killed you. Would it hurt to communicate once in a while? I thought you were sleeping and an intruder was here!"

"I can do whatever I want! I'm the one that hired you, you know." I paused for a second to breath. My heart was still beating wildly. "And talk about communication!" I hissed. "You've barely spoken a word to me since we met!"

We both stood silent, me fists and letter opener ready for attack. To my surprise he put his arms down and a slow torturous smirk spread across his lips. It only fueled my resentment.

"Ms. Westfeild, put the dangerous letter opener down before you kill someone." I lurched forward until I had him pinned against the back corner, letter opener near his throat. He looked like he was enjoying every second of this charade.

I was running out of resources, fast.

"You don't even know how to use that thingproperly or any knife for that reason." His slow gaze fell from my arm to my shoulder. My face felt red and hot. I shook it off quickly. No doubt the lack of sleep and being scared out of my wits was causing me to act more than just a little crazy.

"Sure I do." I said, feeling the ice in my own words. "Pointy end goes towards you."

He sat there for a few more seconds, continuing to not take this seriously. "So then if that's the case, what's up next, Sherlock?" He said. "I doubt Gio would be very happy that you killed his best student." I backed away. Clearly I wasn't going anywhere with this.

"Student?" I felt the repulsion growing. Gio had failed to mention Will being a former student. I shook my head, there were more important things to deal with.

"Well look, I have some very important work to do, so why don't you just go back to bed and leave me alone." I placed the letter opener back to its rightful place and crossed my bare arms over my chest. I was sure that he was surveying me which made me just the slightest bit uncomfortable.

"Anything involving this?" He held up a folded paper. Panicked, my hands instantly flew to my shorts pockets.

"Theif!" There was something about this man that drove me to the breaking point. I reached to snatch it from him but he held it out of reach.

"Maybe I can help you find what you're looking for." He offered.

"The only thing you can help me with is getting Charles his job back." The moment I said it, I regretted it. Damn me and my stupid big mouth.

"Ouch." He looked down for a second, feigning injury, then his eyes found mine. The darkness in them made me step back an inch.

"Look." He said finally. "This is my job. I'm staying here until you go back to bed. Whether or not you accept my help is your choice."

I straightened my posture. I wasn't leaving now, so I was just going to have to play the cards I'd been given.

I walked over to him cautiously and took the paper and flashlight from his warm fingers. The realization that this was the first time I touched his hand sent weird sparks up my arm. Idly, I wondered if he felt it too. Not after the way you insulted him, dummy.

I sighed and picked up where I had left of, scanning the bookshelf for what I thought I was looking for. He stood beside me and followed my lead.

"The letter is from my Father. He mentioned reading A Tale of Two Citiesto me when I was younger." Bingo- my eyes landed on the sacred copy and I instinctively tried to reach it, but in vain. It was all the way on the top shelf. I looked back at William for help. He just stood there eyeing me, a smirk playing on his lips.

"So now you actually wantme to help?"

"Gio tells me I'm paying handsomely for it. Consider it part of the job." On that note, he walked beside me and slowly reached for it. I tried not to take in his masculine scent of old spice and something else- cologne? I stood frozen as his arms slowly came back down, encircling me against the bookshelf.

"Your book, madam." He held it just below my chest. He was too close.

"Th...thank you." I stammered.

He backed away, leaving a cold rush of air in his wake. I felt like all of the air had been sucked from my lungs in one punching blow. Recover, Eva! I tried my best to shake it off and focus on the task at hand. I held the old book tenderly and peeled away each fragile page. What would I find? A picture? Another note? As if on que, a small, square paper slid out of the 7thpage; But, it wasn't a letter or a picture at all! It was a series of numbers, in pairs of two. Desperate for more, I leafed through the other pages to see if there was anything else, but to no avail.

"Let me take a look at that." William took the paper and examined it carefully. "It's some sort of a code. To a safe, or something."

My Father had perhaps given me the code to his safe; but where was it? I glanced around the office, it was too small for it to be out in the open. We immediately began searching together. In shelves, drawers, behind books, but we didn't find anything. I yawned, now suddenly feeling the toll of the late-night escapade.

"You're going to have to tell Gio about this in the morning." He whispered, handing the paper back to me. I nodded my reply. I was going to have to tell him about that and the fact I knew my Father was a weapons dealer. I bit my lip, picturing his reaction when I would explain this whole night.

"Come on, I'll walk you to your room." He led me back upstairs. Part of me wondered if that was out of genuine concern for my safety or just another part of the job. My mood turned somber when I realized he must have already been the bodyguard to hundreds of beautiful women. Perhaps he was even married by now! I mentally slapped myself.Remember why you're here, Ev.Of all the silly nonsense.

When we entered my room, I realized the window was shut. I quickly rushed over to it. "W...Will, did you shut the window?"

"No," He replied slowly "Why?"

My heart began to pick up pace. "I left it open."

Will's eyes filled with alarm. He flipped on the light and began ransacking my entire room. Bed, closets, and the bathroom were cleared in five minutes. He went to check the window next.

"Are you sure you left it open?"

"Positive." I replied. "Look, it's still unlocked from in here. Someone shut it from the outside."

He nodded. "Let's not wake the others up. I'm staying in here until dawn."

"What?" I gasped in disbelief. "You'll do no such thing!" I hated it when people watched me sleep.

"Go to sleep, Eva. You have an important meeting tomorrow."

There was no winning with him. Ever. "Fine." I grumbled.

Keeping my eyes on him, I walked back to bed. He stood there menacingly until I had disappeared under the sheets. He then shut the door and turned off the light. Being in complete darkness with a handsome stranger in the room was an alien feeling. I wasn't sure whether I liked it or hated it. I watched his dark shadow move slowly across the room and sit in one of the empty antique chairs near my bed. It was so quiet, I could hear my own heartbeat.

"Will?" My voice broke out like a siren in the darkness.

"Yes?" His voice was soft, a deep timber. I was familiar with the English accent by now, but I still felt like I could listen to him talk for ages.

"I didn't mean what I said earlier, about Charles." I sighed. Now it was my turn to apologize. "If it hurt your feelings, I'm sorry." For the longest time, he was silent and I regretted bringing it up again.

"Don't worry about that." He spoke slowly. I heard a sound of distance coming from his voice- It wasn't the first time I had heard it. "I don't have feelings to hurt, Eva Westfield."

I rolled my eyes. Of all the dramatic—certainly he didn't mean that! I propped myself up on my elbows and gazed into the darkness where he sat. The moon was shining directly on me from the window, which meant that he could probably see me but I couldn't see him. Something must have screwed this man up bad in his past.

The silence only continued, so I laid back down, my mind swimming with all of the details of the day. My Dad owned a huge weapons manufacturing company and there's a safe somewhere that I now apparently had the combination to. But of all the mysteries swimming around in my life, William was by far the greatest. I didn't know anything about him, not even his last name, yet somehow, I was expected to trust him with my life.

I sighed deeply. Why did all of this matter? He was going to be gone in a few weeks anyway.

*********

It had finally worked, and it was because of him. Not like when Jeb screwed it all up in LA by shooting the stupid bodyguard, threatening to expose the whole operation. He lit a long cigarette—a blaze of fire appearing under a black sky and blue moon. He took one long, glorious drag.

Another classic case of "if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself." He could see the window from here. Her lithe ghostly shadow passed across. A slow grin spread across his face. He didn't know the fool had a daughter or she would have been gone from the picture long ago. At least she could be useful now that she found her Father's note. As long as her entourage didn't muck anything up, it was all smooth sailing from here.

She was lucky to be alive for now, but even Gio couldn't protect her when her time came, just like her old man.

The light clicked off in the window and he took one more slow drag. That's right. Lights out, Eva Westfeild.

*********

That morning I woke up feeling like the last night was a dream. A dream including a very handsome stranger and... did I really attack him with a letter opener? I sat up and whirled around.

Will was gone.

The morning light flooded in soft waves through the open window. Birds I had never heard before chirped and sang in a symphony. In a rush of excitement, I hurried out of bed and into the bathroom, gasping at the horrible, almost ghostly sight before me in the mirror. Another classic case of bedhead gone bad.

I covered my eyes in humiliation. Hopefully William hadn't seen that this morning. He got a bad enough spectacle the other day. Shit! I combed it down as best I could and whipped it up unto a high ponytail. I hadn't had a good run in a long time, so I decided to get one in before getting ready for the meeting with the board at WWM. Besides, I wasn't exactly looking forward to confronting Gio with the news of last night, Including the window incident. I walked downstairs and I noticed it was much quieter than yesterday. I didn't see Woody or Pia or William. Gio sat on one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter, staring at a newspaper. Every time I saw him in the morning he always had a glass of orange juice and a bagel.

I clenched my teeth and dashed across the foyer, hoping he missed me.

"And just where do you think you're going young lady?" Busted. I chuckled, it reminded me of the time I was young, when Gio would visit and find out Charles had let me slip from his observation a time or two.

He had always won in our games of hide-and-go-seek. Like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar, I padded over to where he sat. Gio lowered his paper and eyed me above his circle reading glasses.

"I was going for a run." I admitted.

"And were you also going to leave without telling me about last night?" That bastard Will must have told him everything. I scowled. "And no, before you ask, William didn't tell me anything. I heard you two bumbling around downstairs like a couple of school rascals." I quietly chewed on my bottom lip. Before he could say another word, I took the two pieces of paper out of my pocket and tossed them in front of him.

"They're from my Father." He picked them up and examined them slowly. I started setting the timer on my watch and moved to the front door.

"Oh, and by the way," I said over my shoulder. "The second one contains a combination I think."

I pounded every thought out into the ground in front of me as I ran. I decided to run around the pond, since it was still on the property and there was a graveled path.

I kept running faster and faster, trying to keep up with my thoughts about everything. The only thoughts I couldn't keep up with were the ones about Will. No matter how hard I pushed myself, I couldn't get over his complexity. One minute he's smirking like a school boy and the next he tells me he has no feelings at all. I stopped by another dock on the other side of the large pond, grabbing my knees trying to catch my breath. Thinking and running never mixed well for me. The beautiful boat I had seen Harry and Andrew in the day before hid underneath a large canopy. It was big from what I could see, but a large part of it was covered. Maybe Will would humor me in an evening jaunt out on the water. The thought brought a smile to my face. Then again, maybe Mr. No-Feelings didn't take pleasure in anything fun like that.

I tucked a strand of loose blond hair back in my ponytail and surveyed the long trek back to the house. Oh, brother, I did it again. I had a bad habit of losing myself in a run. Now I was going to have to run back. I checked my watch. 10:30 am on the dot. Better get a move on before Gio loses his Scottish salt, especially after I left him with those notes and a quip about the combination. I plucked up my courage and thrust one foot in front of the other in fast repeating motion.

I wasn't surprised to see Gio, arms crossed, waiting for me on the front porch. I wheezed and coughed my way up the steps. Mental note never to run that fast without pre-conditioning myself again.

"Bloody hell woman!" He shouted. "You can'na go a day here without almost getting yourself killed!" Then he tossed his hands up in surrender and mumbled something about responsibility and adulthood while following me inside. I smiled inwardly. Poor Gio putting up with me for all of these years.

To my surprise, William was seated on one of the bar stools. All I could think of was how nice he looked in that casual black sweater and pants. When he noticed me, he stood immediately. His eyes traveled downward and I realized what a sweaty spectacle I must be. My whole body tensed under his gaze.

"Now you're going to sit here and tell me everything that happened." Gio walked past me to the kitchen counter where he was seated earlier, oblivious of the exchange of glances between Will and I.

"I think I'll shower first." I said pointedly. I hoped Will realized what a fool he looked, staring at me like that. I squinted suspiciously at him.

"No, I need to know everything now." Gio sounded serious and the mood dropped. I sat myself down on one of the stools

"Will told me about the window."

"It was shut from the outside." Will reminded him.

"That doesn't matter." Gio pinched the bridge of his nose. "they know where you are now, but they didn't attempt to kill you. There must be a reason."

Will and I both exchanged knowing glances. "He must have seen me with Will and backed off."

"No.." Gio sighed.

"Why does this guy want me dead? I'm not my Father."

"No, you're not. But you are his daughter." He replied. "And the future of his business."

Westfield Weapons Manufacturing. I folded my hands in my lap. "I know it's a weapons company." Gio didn't look surprised. "Why didn't you want to tell me?" I asked. "These people—whoever they are—are involved with it, right?"

He nodded slowly and scratched the bottom of his chin. "I don't think you're ready for this--"

"Ready for what?" I demanded. I looked to Will for answers, but his face didn't give anything away.

"I launched a government investigation while we were in LA. I think they may have a lead on who is responsible for your Father's death." I felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest when he said it. I heard William move behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. The warmth hardly melted the icy blades in my heart.

"If you want to know why these people didn't kill all of us last night--" Gio took the two notes I gave him out of his pocket and thrust them on the counter in front of me. "This is the reason why."

Author's Note

5 chapters in 5 weeks, whoop! There's still so much in store yet for Eva. Very excited about the next section of the novel! :)