Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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Chapter 2
     
    Heather let the hot water pound her head, neck and shoulders. She lifted her thick black hair as the steam rose in gauzy clouds and tried to let the water melt her tension away. Fat chance with that man in the other room. He made her question things she didn't know if she wanted the answer to.
    She had a very keen sense of self—who she was, what she was—down to the bone. She was no longer just a person. She was an entity, a business. A face on a billboard, a body to drape with clothes. The best, most expensive, most exotic clothes handmade for her measurements alon e …
    Heather Grace Kantos was a logo, an icon and the wet dream of a million boys and men… and not a few women, too.
    And she was far from fucking sad about it. She had worked for this her entire life. Well, not just this. She wasn’t done ascending. Not by a long shot. She still had far to go. Modeling was only the beginning, and the least, of what she wanted. The only one who could keep her from getting there was herself.
    Her and her goddamn demons.
    Heather closed her eyes and inhaled the wet, mist-laden air, trying to drive out memories of cool, dry air perfumed with roses and linden trees.
    Aidan had been an escape—that was all. An escape from one of the black moods.
    Ever since she was a small child, growing up in her father’s Greek restaurant on the shores of Lake Superior, Heather had had what her papa liked to call ‘spells’.
    Heather herself thought of them as drop-offs. When she was little, she liked to wade in the icy waters of the big lake. Her toes would be safe on stone and sand. She could twirl, play and splash in the gentle waves for ages. But she would invariably try to go out too far. The solid ground would disappear from under her feet with a suddenness that could take her breath away. The water would close over her head, dark, glassy and swirling indifferently while she struggled to get free and breathe.
    The moods were like that.
    Drop-offs. Dark places where solid ground sank away and pulled her into that cold, black pit. Anxiety, depression, panic disorder… Hell, the shrinks had diagnosed her with all of the above and more. They’d even tried to tell her she had PTSD.
    ‘From what exactly, you stupid sonofabitch?’ Heather had screamed at that particular quack.
    She’d had a happy childhood; a good, solid upper Midwest upbringing, a father who doted on her, a mother who was sweet and a bit dim, maybe, but still a good mom.
    Her best friend, Lacey, now…there was a girl who had a reason to have PTSD, too damn many of them. Losing her mom and dad in a plane crash, then her guardian and aunt to a heart attack just a few years later. If someone like Lacey had ‘spells’ they'd deserve comfort and sympathy. Heather, with her pretty much as-perfect-as-it-gets life, had no excuse.
    Heather despised herself for that, but she couldn’t make it stop.
    She'd found ways over the years, if not to float over the blackness, then to tread water whenever she felt the bottom start to slip away.
    For a while, it had been school:  crazy-hard work, all-nighters, ace-every-test-Hermione Granger-type madness. Then, toward the end of her junior year, she had tried partying and sex. Both had their satisfying points, but since she was too driven and way too smart to lose herself to either of those pursuits, they hadn’t lasted long. Ditto regarding her foray into hard drugs at the beginning of her career.
    College had been easier because she’d found Lacey. Lacey with her big, jewel eyes, fiery hair and sweet natur e, as well as that streak of quiet stubbornness, was the sister she’d never had. They'd roomed together at U of M all four years, not to mention worked together on the award-winning public TV show that they had created as partners. That friendship had solidified the ground beneath her a bit, but not completely. There were still times when it all crumbled away again.
    When the black moods struck