Ardent Strangers: An Ardent Strangers novel (Ardent Strangers series Book 1) Read online

  “Is that a yes to dinner?”

  I don’t know if I can do dinner. Not with him, not with anyone. But he is unpredictable enough to jump if I say no. “Well, we can’t go anywhere, not until you’re standing safely on the path beside me.” I point to a nice strip of concrete.

  He scoffs a laugh. “Are you normally this hard a negotiator, or is this the Rambo dress talking?”

  “Come here and find out.”

  “Tell me your name and I will.”

  I sigh. My name is going to sound more than a little ironic. “Evangeline.”

  “Ah. The name of an angel.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “Fine,” he says. “You win.”

  I blink at him, sure that I’ve misheard, but I can feel my smile growing by the second as he swings his closest leg over the edge, so that he’s straddling the barrier. His hand is cold as it slips around mine, but it warms in seconds. “That was easy,” I say, amazed that he’s getting down. “Now the other leg.”

  He shoots me a troubled look. “I need a few moments first.”

  “Okay.” He’s not going to get down.

  I sidle up against the barricade on my left, peering over to the death-defying drop. Trembling, it takes me a second to realize he’s pulling me closer. When I turn back my nose brushes his collar. I breathe in the sweet and sharp notes of his cologne, but as he lowers his head I get a hit of vodka from his breath. “How drunk are you, if you don’t mind—?”

  “Not drunk enough to be sitting up here much longer.”

  “Okay, I was only wondering…”

  “What?”

  “If you’d remember this later when…” you woke up tomorrow.

  He looks thoroughly insulted, as if he might toss me over the edge instead of himself. “I’ve got an excellent memory, if you must know. As for that bottle of vodka, there was only a few shots left when I started drinking it an hour ago. I’d say I’m sobering up pretty fast.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “If Doctor Brown could see me now…”

  “Doctor Brown?”

  He tenses, then shrugs as if he’s given up. “The doctor treating me for depression.”

  “Do you want me to contact him for you?” I pull out my phone, but he passes me his, the number already set on ‘Az’, waiting for me to hit call. “Who’s Az? Shouldn’t we call the doctor?”

  “Az will do that. Trust me, he’ll be all over it. He’s been trying to get me there for days. Anyway, I need him at the hospital. Benedict Hospital.”

  “That’s the new one, right?”

  He nods, not meeting my eyes.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not opposed to hospital then, because the ambulance is on their way,” I say. “Forgot to mention that, sorry.”

  “You were trying to help me from the very beginning, weren’t you? Before we even met?”

  I give a wobbly smile and face the road, his body warming against my side as I hit the call button. A man answers: “Where are you? I’ve had everyone looking for you for hours, you selfish son of a bitch!”

  “Hello? Az?” I say.

  I hold the phone from my ear as Az shouts, “Stop whatever deed you’re doing to the bastard and put him the hell on.”

  “Excuse me?” I spit out. “I’m not doing anything to him, but thanks for including me in his running tally. It’s a proud moment for me.”

  There’s a grumble behind me, and I kick my stupid brain for its lack of sensitivity.

  Az grunts into my ear. “I never caught your name.”

  “Evangeline,” I breathe. “But why I called is that your friend needs you. An ambulance will be picking him up shortly.”

  The man must cover the phone, because there is a string of muffled curse words before he says, “What happened? What’s his condition?”

  “I found him sitting atop a bridge. That was about fifteen or twenty minutes ago. He’s still sitting here, and he’s just agreed to get down.” I turn my back, looking at the streetlamps down the slope of the bridge, showing how high we are. “Except that he hasn’t yet.”

  “Request Benedict Hospital, and ask for Doctor—”

  “Brown.”

  After a pause, he says, “Yes.”

  The phone disconnects. I stare at the phone and automatically exit to the home screen where one app sits in the top corner on the first of many pages, but it’s the wallpaper that grabs my attention: a photograph of scrawled numbers and Greek letters and mathematics. The equation stares back at me like a beast of mythical proportions.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “A problem,” he says, tapping the screen in my hand, “one that’s been doing my head in for weeks.”

  “I can see why.”

  “Really? Do you see a flaw or a solution? If so, you’re a genius.”

  “Ha.” I stare at the equation. Year twelve math taught me nothing. “Sadly neither.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Seriously, what kind of brain comes up with something like that?”

  “That would be my brain.”

  “Oh.” Holy crap, the man is a genius. His whole mind must operate on an entirely different wavelength to mine. I turn, ready to pass him his phone when I’m greeted with a face that is bleak and pale. Idiot. I forgot about the phone call, that he was listening, that he had to get a stranger to call his friend because he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He looks down at my fingers balled into his jacket, closes his eyes for a second, then whispers into my ear, “Can I tell you a secret?”

  I nod.

  “Why I’m up here. It’s not what you think.”

  “It isn’t?”

  He clears his throat. “This time last week, one of my best friends sat in this very spot.” His voice cracks. “At 2:30am Damien left me a text—”

  A chill races through me. He can’t mean…

  “—I tried calling him back. Again and again. There was no answer.” He dares a glance at me before peering up at the windy sky. “An hour later, I found a note on Damien’s desk. It was addressed to me and his brother. A brief goodbye.”

  Tears run down my cheeks.

  Noticing this, his eyes turn glassy. “Damien and his brother have been my closest friends for…well, forever. But the past week…”

  “What?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s all fallen apart. We all have.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He pulls out his pocket watch and stares at the time. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I need to be here, to understand what had been running through his mind—what he’d felt and seen in those last few moments. That is why I’m not quite ready to get down, Evangeline.” He peers across at me. “Before you arrived, I’d spent some minutes on this bridge, drinking, deliberating. At one point, I’d muttered this prayer to…someone or something to make sense of it all—call it Fate, or Heaven, or whatever. Minutes later, your little white car came hurtling toward me, headlights shining like a beacon. Now here you are, clinging to my jacket, telling me to hope again.”

  I’m still comprehending the depths of his story when he clicks the pocket watch shut, startling me. As he slips it back into his vest pocket, I ask, “Do you mind if I see it?”

  An intense debate seems to be going on behind his eyes, and I’m yearning to know what it is.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  He peers down at his vest pocket with its beautiful stitching and pin-stripes and retrieves the watch, weighing it in his hand before he unhooks the T-chain from the buttonhole and dangles it before me. It sparkles like a star in the darkness, almost too precious to touch. “Go on, then,” he snaps.

  I’m surprised by the weight of the watch as it falls into my palm. It is more battered than I’d expected, dents and scrapes marring the copper with a lifetime of stories, maybe more. The scrolled embossing has worn down, but the surface shines as if it’s polished daily. “It’s beautiful.”

  “
It was my grandfather’s watch,” he murmurs. “He was the best person I’ve ever known—a celebrated war hero, the epitome of a gentleman, yet I could tell him anything and he would never think less of me for it. Seven years he’s been gone now.”

  “Seven years?” The same year I lost my parents. We were both going through agony. Now, he is going through it all over again, and I don’t know how to help him.

  “What is it?”

  I look up at him, trying to pry the truth from my lips. Instead, I run my thumb over the initials H. B. B. on the watch cover. “What was his name?”

  It’s obvious that he can see I’m holding back, that he wants to ask more, but he points to the engraving. “Heathcliff Benedict Blake.”

  “That’s some name.”

  “It is, isn’t it? I was fortunate enough to inherit two of them.”

  “Good God! What were your parents thinking?” Oh. I did not say that aloud.

  He shrugs, possibly amused. “No idea.”

  “I take it Blake is your last name?”

  “Correct.”

  “And your first is?”

  “My second would be Heathcliff.”

  “And your first would be…?”

  “Not yet.”

  I shrug. “I’ll have to call you Heath, then.”

  Okay, definitely NOT Heath! Never calling him Heath again, because he flinches back, his body swaying away from me. I yank his jacket and steady his leg, both of us panting hard when he regains purchase on the rail.

  “That was close,” he says, as we peer over the frightful edge.

  “You’re not wrong. Now will you please get down already? I can’t take much more of this.”

  He looks as if he’s about to protest, but nods. “I never meant to scare you. I never thought…”

  “Well, you have,” I say, wiping my eyes.

  “Evangeline, forgive me?”

  “Take my hands.”

  He stares at my outstretched hands, and it’s pure torture as he deliberates my offer. Then his fingers weave tightly through mine. A brightness appears in his eyes, and I wonder if he feels it, too. It’s possibly a ridiculous sentiment to be thinking while atop a bridge with a stranger, but I feel like I’ve known him for weeks, months, years. And for that reason, I don’t dare let him go as he starts to swing his other leg toward me, when lights shine at us from an approaching car. The car beeps repeatedly, and its headlights flash into his eyes at high beam. He shirks back as if blinded, squinting over and over again. Whatever he’s calling out it’s overpowered by my ear-splitting scream as he goes sliding over the bridge and I’m jerked to the side, my chest pulled flush to the concrete barrier as his weight threatens to pull me over.

  I cannot lose him! That’s all I can think of as my hands clamp harder around his. I gulp, looking down over my arms covered in streetlight and the shadows enveloping my friend. Wind pelts into him, his eyes trembling as they implore me to save him. Not that I intend to let go. I’m pulling as hard as I can, but he’s so much larger than I am, the position so awkward.

  “You’ll have to climb me!” I yell.

  He looks as if I’ve struck him. His gaze travels down my arms to where our hands are linked. He shakes his head.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I won’t risk you.”

  “Don’t be stupid! My feet are wedged under this barrier,” I pant. “I’m not moving anywhere, and trust me you’re talking to someone terrified of death.”

  “Then save yourself. There’s no reason you should suffer for my stupidity.”

  “Bah!” It’s annoying that he’s choosing this moment to be chivalrous, because he’s getting unbelievably heavy and my arms are stretched beyond what is humanly reasonable. “Climb! Please! You promised me dinner, remember?”

  His eyes spark with something. Gripping my arm tighter, his other hand releases mine. I feel his weight drop a moment, sending my heart into overdrive, but he quickly swings his body so that he can latch onto my arm a fraction higher. My heart is like gunfire as he repeats the process of his hands climbing my arms. He’s breathing heavily from exertion, possibly fear—I know I’m panting from both—and that cold fog I saw earlier as I’d exhaled is thicker than ever.

  His hand grips my shoulder so hard that I whimper. He looks at me, horrified. His grip loosens. Alarm strikes his features as he slips. I gasp, but he has already grabbed hold of my shoulder in that same excruciating grip as before. “I can’t,” he says.

  “What?” I want to punch him in the shoulder. “You’ve almost made it to the top! You can’t quit! I don’t even know your name!”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “No.”

  He clenches his teeth and swings his body, pulling me further over the bridge and him nearer to safety. I am close to falling for him, as he says, “My name is Nathaniel.”

  Legalities

  A faint whirring sound enters the night, and then it’s competing with the wind, and then it’s louder, and I laugh almost hysterically as he swings his arm around my neck and pulls himself closer, smelling of booze and his zing of cologne that is mixed with him.

  “Thank fate for that,” Nathaniel breathes as we hear a siren. He catches hold of the railing. Our temples bump lightly and he breathes with exhaustion. His gaze shifts behind me, and I glance over my shoulder. Two ambulance officers are running toward us. The female officer grabs me from behind, as the male officer grabs Nathaniel and drags him over the barrier. Nathaniel’s shoes hit the ground for the first time and I wipe at the flood of tears. He braces my arms. “Forgive me.”

  I’m about to reply when the female officer says, “Alright, that’s enough,” and drags me from Nathaniel.

  “We were talking. That’s hardly threatening. You can let her go,” Nathaniel says.

  “It’s okay.” I attempt to move past the female officer, but her arm blocks the way. “I was helping him down from the rail when he slipped and fell.”

  “But you’re the one who called ‘000’, aren’t you?” the male officer asks.

  I nod. “But he seems alright.”

  “You were quoted as saying he was suicidal. Have you considered that he was attempting to take you over the edge with him intentionally?”

  “No, it wasn’t like—”

  “That’s not what happened,” Nathaniel protests. “She was the reason I was getting down from the edge, not over it.”

  The male officer shares a look with his partner. When she nods and grips my elbow, Nathaniel looks alarmed. My heart kicks into panic mode.

  “I’m Greg O’Neil, and this is Rebecca Chan,” the male officer says. “You’ll need to come to the hospital before we can release you. Can you tell us your name, Sir?”

  Nathaniel’s hair falls recklessly around his face. “I really don’t think that’s necessary. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine,” Rebecca says.

  He scoffs. “Would you be fine if you just attended your friend’s funeral and spent the night sitting on the rail from which he jumped, trying to understand what he was thinking?!”

  We all stare at him. Why didn’t he confide in me about the funeral?

  “Have you taken any drugs or alcohol tonight, Sir?” asks Greg.

  “Vodka. Straight up.”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Maybe a third of a bottle? I don’t know the exact quantity, as I seemed to have misplaced my measuring cup,” he says, patting down his jacket. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

  “Now, now. Let’s not get hostile.”

  “This…” Nathaniel splays his fingers across his chest. “This is not hostile. Believe me. You ought to see me in a boardroom.”

  “What business are you in?”

  “Technology and innovation.”

  “Hang on, you look familiar. Haven’t I seen you in a magazine?”

  Nathaniel stills, a cringe at the corners of his mouth. His eyes turn shimmery.

 
; Greg moves in front of Nathaniel, while Rebecca shifts to his side. “Now, if you’d like to come for a ride with us…” she says.

  “If I agree, she comes with me.” Nathaniel nods in my direction.

  “It’s best if you ride alone. Calm down a bit.”

  Nathaniel’s fist clenches. “I will be calm once you stop separating her from me. All I’ve wanted to do was talk to her. That’s what I was trying to do after you pulled us from the bridge.”

  “Sure, you wanted to talk,” Greg says, patting Nathaniel’s shoulder.

  “Get your patronizing hands off me. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Nathaniel Blake!”

  Rebecca gasps.

  Greg waves his finger thoughtfully. “You’re that billionaire playboy, aren’t you? CEO of Blake & Randall Enterprises. And your business partner, Damien Randall, he’s the friend you’re talking about, right?”

  Nathaniel looks rattled by this news, and his gaze darts to mine before he grabs Greg’s jacket. Nathaniel never sees Rebecca jab a syringe into his thigh. He stumbles and looks down at his leg, but the syringe is already gone and the woman is standing a few steps behind him, arms out, ready to catch him if he falls.

  Nathaniel turns his head, searching for me. He stumbles again and his hand drops from Greg’s jacket. I sniff back tears as his eyelids grow heavier. Nathaniel’s head nods drowsily, then lifts again, as if he’s doing everything to fight off the sedative. He blinks at me, his smile bittersweet. “I’m not ready to part with you, angel.”

  Now I have all three of them looking at me. I smile weakly. Something in my heart is confusing the hell out of me. Nathaniel’s tall frame droops. Before I’ve had the chance to reply, the officers are escorting him into the back of the ambulance and he’s strapped onto a stretcher.

  Headlights shine over me as a car slows to check out the scene and passes us by. I’d slowed like that when I’d first seen Nathaniel. I’d even considered driving home and not stopping. But now my world has been irrevocably changed. I could never forget him. I feel like I’m losing him again, as if he’s about to slip from life completely.

  Rebecca approaches, her voice gentle, “No need to look so guilt-ridden. You’ve helped him through a very troubling time, and he’s obviously taken a shine to you, but remember that you’re under no obligation to travel with us.” She gets out her pen and note pad. “Before you go, I’ll need to get your name and number so the police can contact you for a statement.”