Into the Fire Read Online Free PDF

sweetheart?
    “I don’t know,” Lopez’s voice in Izzy’s ear broke into his little fantasy. “He got a phone call from his mother, and then…he was gone. Tore out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.”
    And didn’t Izzy know
that.
So okay. Maybe the mud-in-his-face thing hadn’t been entirely intentional.
    “Do me a favor, Jay,” Iz said now, “and call him. Let him know that…” What? He gazed at Maybe-Susan, who was biting a fingernail now, which made her look about twelve. “Just tell him to call me, ASAP.”
    “Will do.”
    Izzy hung up his cell phone. “Lopez said Gillman went home, to Vegas, for a few days.”
    She laughed at that, even as tears filled her eyes. “Of course he did.” She immediately steeled herself so that she didn’t cry—so much for Izzy being a strong shoulder. In fact, she flat-out turned away from him, surreptitiously wiping her eyes as she pretended to look out toward the setting sun. She breathed and focused—damn, watching her was like watching a home movie of himself as a kid. Never show your fear. Never let ’em know they’ve won. Deny that you’re bleeding, even when your blood is dripping on the kitchen linoleum.
    It was as if she were bracing for a catastrophe that was yet to come. Izzy knew that particular feeling well.
    “I don’t know what went down between you and Gillman,” Izzy started. “But—”
    She cut him off. “Look, I’m in trouble,” she admitted, as she turned back to him, squaring her shoulders and assuming what he was starting to think of as her default fighter’s stance. “My wallet, my bag—all my stuff—was…stolen.”
    Okay, so
that
was a lie. Izzy took a mental step back, settling in to hear her out—but more as an audience member instead of someone with an emotional connection—really just ready to enjoy the upcoming dramatic performance.
    But then she recanted, choking out what had to be the truth.
    “I don’t know if it was stolen intentionally—it might have been. But, see, I got ditched. By my asshole of a boyfriend. All my stuff was in the car and he just…left me. I was in the bathroom. In a Krispy Kreme. When I came out…”
    It was that grim little detail—Krispy Kreme—that convinced Izzy. Jesus Christ. The humiliation factor here was so high. No way could she be making this shit up.
    She continued, her voice thick with her misery: “I hitched down here from LA because I thought maybe Danny might…”
    She paused, her eyes averted, and Izzy waited. Of course, maybe she was merely a brilliant actor. A con artist who knew, just from glancing at him, that he would buy her story if she told him she’d been dumped at a Krispy Kreme rather than, say, a Home Depot.
    Intermission over, she took a deep breath, and started Act Two, her eyes still fixed on the cracked and potholed tarmac. “I have no money and no place to stay.”
    And here it came.
Can I borrow some cash? Just a few hundred dollars to tide me over. I’ll pay you back…
    “Is there any chance,” she asked, forcing herself to look up and meet his gaze, “I can stay with you until Danny gets back?”
    Whoa.
    Izzy was more than merely surprised. He was taken aback. This woman—girl really—was a total stranger. And even more importantly,
he
was a stranger to
her.
A large, strong, dangerous-looking, malodorous stranger.
    Yeah, he’d fantasized about her coming home with him and doing the naked Macarena, but he’d imagined that discussion happening in more of a heated moment—
your place or mine?
—after Danny’d told her it was Sophia or the monastery for him, and that he was taking his vows tomorrow. Izzy’d pictured it happening after she’d cried herself dry in his sympathetic arms, and he’d given her some comforting kisses that turned—unexpectedly, natch—to pure fire.
    Why that should have made a difference to him was absurd, but it did.
    Izzy realized that his stunned silence was stretching on. And on. It no doubt was seeming