Page 10 of Ashes to Ashes

ChapterFive

Rae

With Charlotteand Gage off collecting everything she’d need for the two weeks she’d be sequestered, I was culling through some of the lyrics I’d penned over the years, pulling out ones that best touched on the highs and the lows of my relationship with Ford and explained how I’d hit rock bottom and then come back out on top again. Honestly, it was a struggle. That time of my life wasn’t one I liked to revisit, and while it was necessary for the album Rocky and I had proposed to the label, I hesitated to give away too much of myself in the process.

I was playing around with the chorus of a song that was giving me the most trouble when a knock at the door forced my attention away from the pad of paper perched on the table next to me. I wasn’t expecting visitors, so my immediate reaction was fear, but I tamped it down almost as quick as it had come. Aside from Rocky, Charlotte, and me, the only other people who were getting in here all had government-level clearance and were well acquainted with blackops.

I set my guitar to the side and made my way to the door. There wasn’t a peephole for me to look out, but the small digital screen built into the wall let me see who was on the otherside.

Ash.

Charlotte and I had spent twenty minutes debating whether that was his first name or his last, and I still didn’t know. With the way things worked around this place, there was no telling.

“Hello?” I said, pressing the button so he could hear me speak.

“Can I comein?”

In the days Ash had been guarding me, he’d spoken maybe fifty words in my presence. Lots of head nods and grunts, but that was about it. Oh, and he’d called me ma’am a lot. This question—all four words of it—were the longest sentence he’d strung together in aweek.

“Um, sure,” I replied and hit the release.

Ash stepped over the threshold, looked around, and shoved his hands in his pockets before facing me. Dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather band wrapped around his wrist, he looked more like the man I’d met at that bar in Boise, and less like the hardened ex-soldier I now knew he was. When he continued studying me without speaking, I grew nervous.

“Can I get you something to drink?” I turned toward the kitchen.

“No,” he barked. And then, more gently, added, “Sorry. No thank you. I’mfine.”

“Okay,” I responded weakly.

Sliding my hands into my skirt pockets so I wouldn’t wring them, I asked, “What can I do for youthen?”

“I didn’t recognize you—” Ash blurted “—that night.”

Ever since he’d walked into the conference room and saw me sitting across the table from his boss, I’d wondered as much. We hadn’t done a lot of talking that night, and the words we had shared hadn’t exactly lent themselves to polite conversation.

“And later?”

Was it wrong that I was curious if after Ash left my room he’d put two and two together? If not immediately, I was certain he would have in the weeks that followed. When the press reported I’d been wheeled out of a hotel room by ambulance after having suffered an overdose, my face had been plastered on every network and on the cover of every gossip magazine known toman.

“I only learned who you were when I walked into the meeting,” he answered.

And though his words seemed genuine, I had a hard time believing them. How Ash hadn’t figured out the woman he’d slept with was a bonafide celebrity worth millions of dollars wasn’t very likely. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I didn’t have a TV back then and I don’t spend much time on the internet.”

“Were you living in a cave?” I didn’t mean to sound snide, but there’d been an honest-to-goodness death watch outside my hospital.

Overdosing would have required me actually being on drugs, which I’d never been. But I hadn’t been healthy either. Almost immediately upon arrival, the doctors had diagnosed me with exhaustion, dehydration, malnutrition, anxiety, and depression.

Ash scanned the apartment and gestured toward the living room. “You mind if we sit for a spell?”

“Sure.” I shrugged as I made my way toward the sleek, leather sectional that was placed in the corner of the room large, openroom.

Ash sat at the far end of the sofa. Rubbing his hands together, he observed offhandedly, “The apartment looksnice.”

My annoyance spiked. This past week, Ash had done his best to keep his distance and now he was behaving like an 1800’s gentleman caller, making small talk with the woman he was courting. I had a lot of things to square away before I was sent into exile, and I’d rather be working through my to-do list than sitting here feeling awkward.

Pulling my legs into a crossed position, I tugged a throw pillow into my lap and fiddled with the fringe. “It’s nice, but I’m trying not to get too comfortable.”

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