Kat Black - Playing With Fire

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.mischiefbooks.com

Copyright © Kat Black 2015

Kat Black asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780008128241

Version: 2015–01–15

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue: Teach na Tulaí, Co. Cork, Ireland

Acknowledgements

More from Mischief

About the Publisher

This one is for my readers. Your support made this book possible. Thank you so much.

It was happening again.

Please, no. Not again.

A bubble of fear inflated in Annabel’s chest, trapping the air in her lungs as it rose to clog her throat. She fought to release it, to cry out, but the dark shape looming over her shifted closer; a crushing vice tightened around her neck, squeezing off her voice, cutting off her very breath.

She didn’t understand. How? How could this be happening?

Panic flared as she tried to get her bearings, to work out where she was. But dimness rendered her surroundings murky, indistinct. In the shadows, even the threat bearing down on her with such suffocating weight remained faceless. Terrifying.

No … no . Horror-spiked memories of pain and helplessness flooded her mind, jolting her into action. She couldn’t do this. Not again.

Never again.

Lashing out, she rained a storm of wild swings and strikes upon her attacker. But not once did she connect with solid form. Her fists seemed to pass through the nebulous shape as though her enemy was no more substantial than mist. She renewed her efforts, tried to pinpoint her aim, but black spots began to bloom around the edge of her vision and the watery blur of tears made it impossible to focus on what it was that she needed to fight.

Move , every atom of her being screamed. It was her only chance. She had to move, to get away. Scrabbling and heaving, she fought frantically to escape. But the weight held her pinned. So heavy. Far too heavy to allow her to struggle free.

Second by desperate second, her flailing efforts weakened as the strength leached from her body. Try as she might, she could find no energy in reserve. With her lungs ready to explode, the blackness tainting her vision thickened, threatening to extinguish the last of the light from her world …

‘No!’

The force of her own defiant cry snapped her awake. In an instant, the fog of darkness was dispelled, the malevolent shades of her nightmare extinguished by the soft golden glow of the bedside lamp that revealed familiar surroundings to her darting, fear-widened eyes.

Muscles locked stiff with shock, she lay temporarily frozen in her bed, the sound of her gasping breaths amplified in the blanketing stillness of the night. Displaced, the bed covers tangled low around her calves, leaving the winter air to chill the sweat that filmed every inch of her skin and stuck her nightshirt to her damp chest.

It took only a moment to register each of these details, to process them and ground herself in reality. Just a dream. A bad dream. Not real.

The sudden wave of relief that broke over her brought a rush of weakness that turned every locked joint and tightly knotted muscle to quivery jelly. She was OK, she assured herself as she exhaled a shaky breath’. Of course she was. Shaken, but safe. Because, despite her sleep being haunted by memories of the awful attack she’d suffered at the hands of her mother’s ex-lover, in reality the man himself was no longer a waking threat.

Instinctively, protectively, her hand went to her right forearm, the sensitivity of the skin there a reminder that the limb had been cut free of its cast only earlier that day. She traced with her fingers the line of the newly knit bone. No, Tony Maplin couldn’t hurt her any more. The drunken violence he’d unleashed upon both herself and her mother, coupled with a long list of outstanding court summonses and unpaid dues, had put him where he belonged – behind the bars of a prison cell.

Releasing another slow, unsteady breath, Annabel blinked at her alarm clock. Not even midnight. With a groan, she raised trembling hands and scrubbed them over her clammy face. It was going to be a long time until dawn.

Keen to rinse away the thick aftertaste of fear, she pushed herself to a sitting position, careful of her weakened arm. Reaching for the glass of water on the bedside table, she stalled as the sight of the photograph standing at the edge of the pool of lamplight brought a further rush of memories and powerful emotion.

While the frame itself was new – an elegant, unfamiliar replacement for the original, which had been broken at the same time as her arm – the image it held was one she was thoroughly acquainted with. A perfect picture of her five-year-old self, held aloft in her father’s arms, the two of them laughing in the summer sunshine in front of the inn that had been her childhood home. It was the most important record she had of that distant time. A frozen snapshot of love and laughter that she’d been forced to use as a weapon in the fight for her life. A glimpse of forgotten happiness that had smashed and splintered, leaving her believing it damaged and lost for ever.

Until today.

Until Aidan had walked back into her life and returned the precious gift of the past as well as offering the unnerving promise of a future.

Her barely slowed heartbeat threatened to skyrocket again as the name conjured a breathtaking image of dark masculine beauty, and raised a whole different set of fears that left her mouth suddenly dry.

Swinging to sit on the edge of her bed, she reached for the glass and took a mouthful of water. Chilled as she already was, the cold liquid caused a shudder to shoot from scalp to toe. She got to her feet and made for her wardrobe, aware that the turn of her thoughts towards a certain Irishman had done nothing to improve the weakness in her knees.

Aidan Flynn. Impossible, infuriating … and apparently irresistible. The man who’d turned her nice orderly life on its head from the moment fate had put him behind the bar of Cluny’s – the London restaurant she managed – until long after circumstances had caused him to leave. A rule-breaker, a force of nature and a law unto himself, he’d blasted his way past the barriers of accepted professional codes of conduct and personal etiquette and got closer to Annabel than anyone had before … until, ironically, the prospect of losing him had made her push him away.