Page 27 of Wicked Heat

“Topic. Closed.”

She presses her lips tight together, and I know she’s counting to ten. “Fine,” she says when she breathes again, and a noisy, uncomfortable quiet fills the air between us. She starts to say something else, then shakes her head.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’ll hate it.”

“What?” I repeat.

She hunches into her shoulders and looks at me sideways. “Why not ask him for the money?”

I frown, not quite able to compute her words. “I don’t—what?”

“Ash. Ask him for the three million.”

I gape at her.

She shrugs. “You said yourself that the millions he just lost haven’t really hurt him. He can probably liquidate at least that much for you. If he cares about Anne and Damien—and you said he does—then he’ll give you the money.”

“But I can’t⁠—”

“Why not?”

“Because….”

I flounder for a reason, trying to put the mixed-up jumble of reason and emotion into words. “I—I don’t want to tell him what’s on those tapes. And he’s only been in their family for like five minutes. I can’t just dump this on him. Besides, the voice said no law enforcement or investigator types. What if he pulls someone in?”

“If you tell him not to, would he? Because if you don’t trust him about that, you shouldn’t trust him for any of it.”

I slump, my mind desperately trying to come up with another alternative.

“Look,” Aria says. “I adore those kids, too. And Nikki and Damien are the coolest. That’s why you want to protect them, right? And if you had the money lying around, you’d pay out of your own pocket, wouldn’t you?”

I nod. Even knowing that paying might not make it go away—blackmailers don’t exactly radiate trustworthy vibes—if I had three mil lying around, I’d pay it in a heartbeat.

“Well, Ash loves them, too. That’s what you’ve been telling me, right? You don’t think he’d want to help?

I stand up and start to pace, because that’s what I do when I need to think hard—I move. Plotting books. Pondering real estate purchases. Deciding what to do about a blackmailer.

I’m even in constant motion when I’m writing. Ear pods in and my music playing while my fingers clack over the keys and my body starts to move with the characters. Aria says she can tell where I am in a book—action scene, love scene—just by watching my shoulders and back move with my imagination.

Most of the time, I don’t even know I’m doing it. I guess that’s because when I’m writing, I’m not really me.

As if reading my mind, Aria asks how I’d write this.

“What do you mean?”

“If you got a wild hair and decided to write a thriller. Where would the heroine get the bucks? Stark’s brother? His best friend? His close business associates?”

I know those people, and they’d jump to help. But I’ve already decided that I can’t go to them. It could get back to Damien. Or to law enforcement. I trust them all—I do. But I don’t trust them more than myself.

“Ash is his son,” I say. “It’s a hell of secret to foist on him.”

She cocks her head and smirks. “We already know that Ash can keep shit from Damien.”

“Five seconds ago you were practically accusing him of being the blackmailer.”

She shrugs. “Maybe he is. Doesn’t mean you can’t ask him for the money. Unless you’ve got a better idea.”