Burning Heart: Fighting Heart Erotic Bad Boy Romance Series Book 4 Read online

  Burning Heart

  Fighting Heart

  Erotic Bad Boy Romance Series book 4

  Nicole Hamilton

  NicoleHamiltonBooks.com

  Burning Heart – Fighting Heart 4

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by NicoleHamiltonBooks.com in association with Great Leap

  Digital Edition June 2015

  Copyright © Nicole Hamilton 2015

  Edited by OnlineBookServices.com

  Nicole Hamilton has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this e-book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, without the prior written permission of the author.

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  One

  I moved out of Tom Ridgley’s apartment as soon as the student support people did what they promised. They fixed up a one bedroom place in the heart of the urban jungle, a stone’s through from the old college building, not far from where I lived when I first arrived in London… that long forgotten fraction of time before Brandon whisked me off my feet then dumped me on my ass.

  Living with Ridgley had offered up some fine experiences, like sharing a great big comfortable bed with a man who was both fit and mature. And he was clever and experienced in many other arts besides literature. Those sweet memories will keep my cardio-vascular system in top shape for some time to come! But there were plenty of downsides too. It turned out that the Prof was totally paranoid about the prospect of his neighbours seeing him with me - a student. I could see that plenty of students lived in his neighbourhood, so I understood the reason for his anxiety, but it still sucked nonetheless. Ridgley’s career was hanging by a thread, and if a student had seen me leaving his place their classroom gossip could have found the Dean’s ear, and Tom would have been hung out to dry. We both knew that. The result was that I wasn’t allowed out of his place much at all, and we always travelled to college separately. And even if the sex was good, and believe me it was good, those fleeting moments were only feasible after the Prof got back from his late chats with Professor Cantor, and after all his marking and preparation for the week. As much as Tom liked me – and I knew he liked me a lot – Tom was far more dedicated to his job than to me. The man swotted. He read journals. He strained his brain as he wrote articles for scholarly publications. In my few days with him I only got glimpses of what his life was like, but I saw that if we were together we would be heading for a crash. Maybe one day I would be as focussed as the Prof, but right now I wanted to live! And living was one thing I couldn’t do well at the Prof’s place. I was hiding behind net curtains, being careful as I left his apartment and leading an altogether separate life from him. Aside from one mind blowing half hour a night in each other’s arms, there was no joy for me there. After what I’d been through with Brandon I needed to enjoy my freedom to the max. So when the student support worker Bonnie Davis gave me the keys to my new pad, I felt like dancing. Even better, because of the college’s ‘lapses’ (Bonnie’s words not mine) the college gave me a bonus three months rent-free period paid for by the college’s student support fund. It was conscience money from the Dean’s office, of course it was- but who cared? If someone else was paying, I didn’t mind. I was free of Brandon – and I didn’t have to hide any longer. Finally, I was free. It felt like I was starting over. I was looking forward to spreading my wings and letting all the tutors and students see me in my full glory. And I couldn’t wait to prove a whole swathe of people wrong. Yet my life had been a sequence of spectacular and stressful events since the day I set foot in Smiths College. So I should have been prepared for what happened next, but I wasn’t. For the first time I thought I was safe. I chose to forget all about Brandon’s madness and his violent streak because I wanted it to be over. I needed to bury my head in the sand, and so that’s what I did. Unfortunately, if you have your head in the sand, it leaves you blind to the dangers all around. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

  After I spent my whole first weekend enjoying my new flat in the heart of New Cross, I went to college first thing on Monday morning and checked in at Student Services. I’d spent my whole weekend drinking coffee, lounging in a big old armchair, watching TV and drinking wine by myself in the evenings, in a place which I could finally call my own. I felt grown up and sophisticated for the first time ever! Not having a prison guard like Brandon on my case was totally amazing, and not having to hide behind the Prof’s net curtains gave me another high. It was like liberation, and man, I was enjoying it all. I was still on a high on Monday when I checked in with Bonnie Davis at Student Services, the woman assigned to make sure I was happy until the college stopped thinking that I was going to sue for mishandling my situation. I thanked Bonnie for her help and I meant it. Still on my freedom buzz, I went to my lecture with my smile still fixed in place. Lo and behold, there was chatterbox Penny, lady of the poison mouth, patron saint of bitches. Penny pretended she didn’t see me, so I walked past her and waved a huge circular hello at her to rub it in, which could not be ignored. The girl had taken plenty of digs at me, I wanted to level the scores, just a little. She squirmed something like a hello then quickly scuttled away to her own part of the lecture theatre, then we all settled in for one of Nurding’s lectures on Tudor Theatre. Tudor Theatre? Not my favourite topic to say the least, but what did I care? Not even the strange new looks I got from the gossips could affect me. The gossips had changed tack ‘look at that slut’ to ‘did you hear what happened to that poor girl?’ I even heard Brandon Lynes’ name dropped a few times like he was some kind of horror movie villain. I tried my best to ignore all of them. The gossips weren’t far behind Penny in my eyes. Then I noticed the absence of Luke and Amanda in the lecture theatre. Sometimes one or the other of them would be absent, but never at the same time. I knew I would never see Brandon in these classes again, not after the Dean was forced to suspend him- and that felt so good, but I was upset to see Brandon’s dark influence over Amanda and Luke had persisted. They shouldn’t have lost out on their studies because of him. I was thinking those very thoughts when my phone buzzed in my jeans pocket. Right that second I knew it was Amanda. Don’t ask me why. Intuition. Bad vibes, whatever, I just knew. I picked the phone out of my pocket and got prepared for a long text, but the text carried just one word and a polite kiss. “Sorry x.” I didn’t understand at all… and because I didn’t understand I didn’t like the text one little bit. Sorry seemed to carry the weight of a thousand possibilities. The word settled over my mind like a shroud.

  Professor Nurding elaborated about life in Tudor London as she went on, getting more excited as she spoke. Did you know real life bears and big cats in chains were a common sight on the London streets? Just as it was getting interesting, my mobile phone started ringing – right there in class. Good job I had set it on silent, but it was vibrating and wouldn’t give up. I looked at the screen and the number jarred me. It was my old home number – my mother
’s house. My heart started thudding like a jackhammer. I stared at Nurding, and tried to keep my cool. I didn’t want any obvious freakiness on my part to alert those around me to my inner panic, but I still needed an outlet. I needed to freak out in private. I slid out of my seat and skipped down the steps towards the door as gracefully and unobtrusively as I could. I felt a few people looking, including Professor Nurding, but after the text from Amanda and now the call from my mum, I wondered what the hell was going on. Why was I getting so agitated? My mum called me once a week, sometimes more often, but she never called me during working hours because she knew I was always busy. Something was up at home, that was obvious. Add to that the unnerving feeling from the text I’d just received from Amanda, and suddenly I’d gone from life’s a bowl of cherries to what next?

  I spoke only when I was sure the lecture theatre door was shut. I whispered so loudly it hurt my throat.

  “What is it, Mum?”

  “I’m sorry Ashley, I just didn’t know what else to do…”

  I’d heard that same damn line so many times before that a familiar irritation rose up inside.

  “I was in a lecture! You can’t just call me like that!”

  “But I had to.”

  I tried to stop being irritated and waited for her to explain.

  “Why did you have to?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you… I know how important your studies are, Ashley.”

  “Mum. Spit it out. You’re worrying me.”

  “Yeah, I’m worried too. It’s Regan.”

  My dear, dear brother Regan. Of course it was Regan. Dear Regan, I wish he had been abducted by an alien at birth.

  “What now?”

  “He’s gone missing.”

  I listened and I processed quickly, and flipped straight into rational/cynical mode just like dad would have done in the days before he turned jerk and ran away.

  “So… maybe he smoked too much pot and floated away. Maybe he’s back with that girl with the dreadlocks, what’s her name…?”

  “Suzy,”

  “Yeah, that one. She almost had brains.”

  “He’s not with Suzy, Ashley. And he’s not floating anywhere. He’s gone missing and I’m genuinely worried.”

  “You always worry about him too much.”

  “So you tell me, Ashley.”

  “What if he’s staying around a new girlfriend’s place? He never did like telling anyone much, mum. He always liked keeping us on the edge of our seats.”

  “I thought about all that, Ashley, but his phone is off, and his friends have been calling around here to find him. No one knows where he is… no one at all.”

  “How long has he been missing?”

  “A day and a half.”

  “Come on, mum! A day and a half? He’s 21 years old! After a day and a half, he’s probably still high as a kite.”

  “Ashley, please don’t trivialise this. Something is wrong and I’m scared, I don’t know what to do.”

  My mother’s voice was shaky and broken. I could tell she’d been crying and I was over forty miles away getting ready for another crack at my dream life. My mother used to cry a lot. She was fragile. But she was still my mum. If I left her in the lurch I knew I would never feel good about it, even if I was right. I had to do something. Nurding’s class could wait.

  “Just wait for me. I’ll call you back soon. Don’t worry, mum, I’m going to help.”

  I hung up and sat down in the corridor, chewing over a lot of things and giving myself a pep talk. I wanted to help, but at the same time I didn’t want to at all. I loved my mother but Regan had almost ruined my college dream and acted like he hadn’t given a shit about it. I had left behind a lot of problems at home, and here they were trying to drag me back to them all over again. I wasn’t sure I could handle that, not after everything else that just happened. Instead of chewing over my dilemma, I should have been thinking ‘what next?’ again, because, my phone buzzed once more. I took a deep breath and saw a text from my least favourite person in the entire world. Brandon Lynes.

  How are you? Did you miss me? I’ll be seeing you very soon.

  “Not on your life,” I said out loud, and deleted his text. I hoped he’d sent it to the wrong girl. I hoped, but I knew I was kidding myself. I felt ill at ease, a bit like the feeling you get after waking from a nightmare. A text from Amanda. The call from my mum. A psycho text from Brandon. It was all stacking up like a bad game of Jenga. There was only one way through this – the quickest route between two points was a straight line. I needed to deal with what was in front of me and forget about the Brandon crap. I had to go home and solve my mum’s little Regan mystery. After my Brandon nightmare, I guessed helping Regan one more time would seem like a sideshow. How wrong can a gal be?

  Two

  My first thought was to help from afar. There were things I could do without wasting two hours on a train journey back to Essex. I’d left my bag and folder in the lecture and had a good twenty minutes before it finished, but with my brain sizzling with new worries there was no way I wanted to hear about Tudor London. I sat down by the corridor window overlooking the smoker’s quadrangle. My first thought was to phone the Essex police but I already guessed what they would think about the time frame. It was common knowledge that nobody cared about a missing person until they had been missing for at least 48 hours, and Regan had only been gone 36. But I guessed it couldn’t harm matters if the police knew he was missing ahead of time. Besides, there was a very good chance they would tell me that Regan was nice and safely locked up in one of their cells. Case closed.

  It took me a while tracking down the local Essex police numbers on Google, and when I eventually called through I needed to get past the gatekeeper. As it turned out, that was pretty easy.

  “Regan Pearson?” said the gruff policeman at the other end of the line. “Your brother is Regan Pearson? And you want to report him missing? Excuse me for saying, Miss, but some of our officers will probably want to throw a party if they hear Regan Pearson’s done a bunk.”

  “That’s a pretty insensitive thing to say,” I said.

  “Miss Pearson,” said the cop, his voice getting defensive. “Your brother has been missing 36 hours, right? Pardon me for saying so, but could it be he’s on the boat to Amsterdam because he’s run out of supplies. Did you think of that?”

  “Excuse me? Are you for real?” I said to the guy. I asked for his name and his badge number just to get him further on the defensive. But I knew there was more than a grain of truth in what he’d said. Regan doing something slightly iffy and unpredictable? That was hardly strange. But Amanda’s text left me wondering. I called her number and it went straight to voicemail after a few rings. Then I sent her a text. “Call me.” I waited. She didn’t call. Her apology still had my spider senses tingling.

  I knew Cody wasn’t in class until much later at 2pm, but I needed to see him right away. I couldn’t bother the Prof, but I did think about it. I’d only just moved out from his apartment into my own, and having seen how busy his brain was with all things academic, I wanted to give him a break and set out on my own again. The other reason was sex. It complicated everything, and even though I knew The Prof would have wanted to help, he would have thought I’d come back for something extra. As good as that had been, I knew it was over now, for both our sakes. Besides, Cody was a listener and he had a level head. In short, Cody cared, while the Prof thought he cared, which were two very different things.

  I made it to the block in Deptford where Cody lived as someone was leaving the front door, saving me the need to buzz him through the intercom. It was before eleven am, and I wasn’t sure what Cody was doing. Maybe he was in there rolling around with Joanna Laws in the heat of passion, but I hoped not. If they were entwined my worries gave me a good pretext for disturbing them. I walked up the steps getting more antsy and nervous all the way until I reached Cody’s door. My hand shook as I knocked. A half minute later, Cody Barnes came to the d
oor all dressed in smart slacks with his chest bare. He was carrying a bowl of cereal. As soon as he saw it was me, he stopped chewing his cereal. He leaned against the front door like he was about to get all modest and hide his body behind it.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Cody. I’ve seen all that before, remember.”

  Hey presto, my nerves were gone. Seeing Cody’s upper body had done wonders for my peace of mind.

  Cody blushed and smiled, and I walked through to a tiny living room after he’d shut the door behind me.

  “I take it Her Majesty didn’t visit last night?” I said.

  “Her Majesty? Come on! You mean Joanna? You’re unbelievable, Ashley.”

  “I know. That’s what they all say, time and again. But I’ve got an excuse today, Cody. I’m pretty stressed out.”

  “You’re stressed? But I thought it had all been straightened out? You’ve got a new place. You’re away from Brandon. You’re not stressing out about helping Amanda, are you? She wouldn’t waste a moment of her prissy little life helping you, would she? Let Student Support deal with her.”

  “It’s not that, Cody.”

  I looked at him, and found myself admiring his aquiline features, slim but muscular neck and shoulders, and the definition of his torso. Cody coughed to snap me out of it. There was a raised eyebrow on his face and the faintest kind of smirk.

  “Sorry, I was just thinking, that’s all.”

  “Right. So what’s up, Ash?”

  “Don’t worry… I haven’t come to throw myself at you or something. I wouldn’t want to disrupt your love affair with the queen.”

  Why the hell did I say that? Have some self-respect. Don’t be an idiot. The voice in my head gave me the full two second lecture before I carried on.