CHAPTER FIVE
The day before Thanksgiving
‘WHYDON’TYOUclose up the bar now and clear out, honey?’
Ellie looked up as the afternoon light hit the countertops of Sully’s Bar in Staten Island. Her new boss, Bethany Sullivan, the woman who had saved Ellie’s big American adventure after its disastrous start nearly a month ago in Alex Costa’s penthouse, smiled at her.
‘But it’s only three o’clock?’ Ellie said, lifting the glasses out of the industrial dishwasher under the bar’s counter.
‘Ellie, it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow and I’m driving to Philly tonight to spend the vacation weekend with my grandbabies.’
Ellie had known Bethany was planning to close the neighbourhood bar over the next four days, but she’d hoped to make at least a few tips tonight to keep her solvent this month.
She’d taken the Staten Island ferry on a whim the day she’d run out of Alex Costa’s penthouse in tears. The Help Wanted flyer in Sully’s window had been a lifesaver. But the knowledge she couldn’t return to Manhattan had limited her considerably.
The residual pulse of heat and longing and hurt whenever she thought about that morning returned, humiliating her all over again.
She never wanted to see Alex Costa again, why couldn’t her body get the message?
In many ways that morning still felt like a strange, confusing dream. A dream that had become a nightmare so quickly. She still wasn’t quite sure how it had happened. But she knew he was to blame for it.
He’d accused her of things she hadn’t done. So why couldn’t she forget him?
How could she possibly be another of the gold-diggers who had turned up out of the blue ten years ago claiming to be Roman Fraser’s sister?
She understood the search for his missing sister had probably been traumatic for Alex’s friend. Nobody liked being scammed. Or given false hope. But what did any of that have to do with her?
What she hated most, though, was how much Alex Costa’s paranoid accusations had hurt.
‘Hey, honey, you got anywhere to go on Thanksgiving?’ Bethany asked, breaking into Ellie’s pity party.
‘No, but I’ll be fine.’
Bethany opened her mouth to protest, when the rumble of a plane passing overhead became deafening. ‘What the...?’ Bethany murmured, then left to investigate.
Following Bethany out of the back entrance to bar, Ellie was almost bowled over by the gust of wind as a huge black helicopter settled in the empty lot at the back of the building.
A door opened and the roar downgraded as the blades slowed. People gathered on the outskirts of the lot, staring at the new arrival.
Was it a rescue helicopter? Ellie didn’t think so. The logo on the side—a shining gold C with a T over it—looked vaguely familiar.
‘Whoever he is, he sure fills out that suit nicely,’ Bethany announced as an impossibly tall man, dressed in a designer business suit perfectly tailored to his muscular physique, walked down the chopper’s steps.
As he strode towards them, pushing his wavy hair back as it got whipped up by the helicopter’s blades, recognition streaked through Ellie’s body like a lightning strike.
Alex Costa.
She lurched back, hitting the bar door with a dull thud.
‘You okay, honey?’ Bethany’s voice seemed to come from a million miles away. ‘You look spooked.’
Ellie shook her head, unable to form words as her gaze remained glued to the approaching figure.
You’re dreaming, Ellie. Wake up.
But she couldn’t seem to move, her limbs felt like they were encased in treacle, the lightning strike reaching her abdomen as the X-rated memories came flooding into her head. Of that big body shooting her to paradise, the cruel humiliation that had followed as he held out a wad of bills and plunged her self-esteem into the toilet. The hole in her chest cracked open. The same gaping hole she’d spent nearly a month attempting to fill back in, with hard work and determination.
Then his head rose and those hazelnut eyes locked on her face.