oxygen. She tried to move her head from his chest, seek cleaner air, but he held her firm and panic spiralled through her system. Her nostrils flared, her hands shook where she clutched his shirt, her stomach roiled and pitched.
Then suddenly there was silence and she stopped breathing altogether, holding her breath, straining to hear. A harsh squeal of screeching tyres rent the pregnant silence, a noisy engine roared then faded.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
Blake recovered first, grabbing his leg briefly, checking it had survived the fall okay before easing off her slightly. ‘Are you okay?’
She blinked up at him, dazed. ‘Wha...?’
Without conscious thought Blake undertook a rapid assessment. She had a small scratch on her left cheekbone with a smudge of dried blood but that wasn’t what caused his stomach to bottom out. A bloom of dark red stained her top and his pulse accelerated even further.
‘Oh, God, are you hit?’ he demanded, pushing himself up into a crouch. He didn’t think, he just reached for her hoodie zipper and yanked it down. Just reacting, letting his training taking over. The bullets had hit the building high but they’d penetrated the windows and in this glass and steel interior they could have ricocheted anywhere.
‘Did you get hit?’ he asked again as her torso lay exposed to him. He didn’t see her red bikini top or the body men the world over lusted after; he was too busy running his hands over her chest and her ribs and her belly, clinically assessing, searching for a wound.
Ava couldn’t think properly. Her head hurt, her hand hurt, she was trembling, her heart rate was still off the scale.
‘Ava!’ he barked.
Ava jumped as his voice sliced with surgical precision right through her confusion. ‘I think it’s...my hand,’ she said, holding it up as blood oozed and dripped from a deep gash in her palm, already drying in sludgy rivulets down her wrist and arm. ‘I think I...cut it on the wine glass when it smashed.’
Blake allowed himself a brief moment of relief, his body flooding with euphoria as the endorphins kicked in—she wasn’t hit. But then the rest of his training took over. He reached for her injured palm with one hand and pulled his mobile out of his back pocket with the other, quickly dialling 999.
An emergency call taker asked him which service he wanted and Blake asked for the police and an ambulance. ‘Don’t move,’ he told her as he awkwardly got to his feet, grabbing the bench and pushing up through his good leg to lever himself into a standing position. He could feel the strain in his hip as he dragged his injured leg in line with the other and gritted his teeth at the extra exertion.
‘I’ll get a cloth for it.’
Ava couldn’t have moved even if her life depended on it. She just kept looking at the blood as it slowly trickled out of the wound, trying to wrap her throbbing head around what had just happened. She could hear Blake’s deep voice, so calm in the middle of the chaos, and wished he were holding her again.
He returned with a clean cloth that had been hanging on her oven door. He hung up the phone and she watched absently as he crouched beside her again and reached for her hand.
‘Police are on their way,’ he said as he wrapped the cloth around her hand, ‘So’s the ambulance.’ He tied it roughly to apply some pressure. ‘Can you sit up? If you can make it to the sink I can clean the wound before the paramedics get here.’
‘Ah, yeh...I guess,’ Ava said, flailing like a stranded beetle for a moment before levering herself up onto her elbows, then curling slowly up into a sitting position. Her head spun and nausea threatened again as she swayed.
‘Whoa,’ Blake said, reaching for her, his big hand covering most of her forearm. ‘Easy there.’
Ava shut her eyes for a moment concentrating on the grounding effect of his hand, and the dizziness passed. ‘I’m fine now,’ she said, shaking off his hand, reaching automatically for the back of her head where a decent lump could already be felt. She prodded it gently and winced.
‘Got a bit of an egg happening there?’ Blake enquired. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘I just kind of reacted.
Ava blinked. Blake Walker had been magnificent. ‘I’m pleased you did. I didn’t know what was happening for a moment or two. Was that really gunfire?’
Blake stood, using the bench and his good leg again. ‘Yep,’ he said grimly. A sound all too familiar to him but not one he’d thought he’d ever hear again. Certainly not in trendy Hampstead Village. He held his hand out to her. ‘Here, grab hold.’
Ava didn’t argue, just took the proffered help. When she was standing upright again, another wave of nausea and dizziness assailed her and she grabbed him with one hand and the bench with the other. She was grateful for his presence, absorbing his solidness and his calmness as reaction set in and the trembling intensified. His arm slid around her back and she leaned into him, inhaling the maleness of him—cut timber and a hint of spice.
She felt stupidly safe here.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured against his shoulder as she battled an absurd urge to cry. ‘I don’t usually fall apart so easily.’
Blake shut his eyes as she settled against him. Her chest against his, their hips perfectly aligned. She smelled like wine and the faint trace of coconut based sunscreen. He turned his head slightly until his lips were almost brushing her temple. ‘I’m guessing this hasn’t been a very usual day.’
Her low shaky laugh slid straight into his ear and his hand at the small of her back pressed her trembling body a little closer.
‘You could say that,’ she admitted, her voice husky.
And they stood like that for long moments, Blake instinctively knowing she needed the comfort. Knowing how such a random act of violence could unsettle even battle-hardened men.
The first distant wail of a siren invaded the bubble and he pulled back. ‘The cavalry are here,’ he murmured.
Blake stuck close to Ava’s side, his hand at her elbow. ‘Watch the glass,’ he said as a stray piece crunched under his sturdy boots. Her feet were bare, her toenail polish the same red as her bikini.
He could hear the sirens almost on top of them now, loud and urgent, obviously in the street. He flicked on the tap and removed the cloth. ‘Put it under,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll go get the door.’
* * *
An hour later Ava’s house was like Grand Central Station—people coming and going, crossing paths, stepping around each other. Uniformed and plain-clothed police went about their jobs, gathering evidence. Yellow crime-scene tape had been rolled out along the wrought-iron palings of her front fence and there were enough flashing lights in her street to outdo Piccadilly Circus in December. They reflected in the glass that had sprayed out onto the street like a glitter ball at some gruesome discotheque.
And then there was the gaggle of salivating paparazzi and the regular press who’d been cordoned off further down and none too happy about it either. Shouting questions at whoever happened to walk out of the house, demanding answers, calling for an immediate statement.
Safely inside, Ava felt her head
