Page 5 of Hotter than Wildfire

He’d read some online reviews of the track. There were lots of them. This Eve woman took up an inordinate amount of internet time and space, because no one could figure out who she was.

Her vocals are warm and smooth, perfectly balanced by the acoustic instruments—guitar and muted trumpet. She folds in the notes, one by one, at times forging a melancholy exoticism with extensive quotes from 14th century Mediterranean music and an overlay of Monk. Brilliant.

Gerald had no idea what the fuck that was about. All he knew was who sang it.

Eve. Mystery Woman.

Only not so much.

Because though the jacket blurb said mystery singer Eve had written the song, he had heard another woman humming it a year ago.

She hadn’t even known he was there. She’d been humming some tune Gerald hadn’t recognized but did realize was pretty. Humming and singing as she worked at the computer in her office. She hummed the body of the song, and the refrain was Turning a Blind Eye.

Gerald remembered the scene very clearly because that’s what he did. He noticed things and remembered things. He’d built a fucking empire because he noticed things and remembered things.

So he’d been guaranteed to remember that song. Not only that, but he’d been absolutely blown away by the fact that it had been Ellen humming and singing. Who knew?

Ellen. Uptight, strait-laced, button-down, dependable Ellen, who kept her looks under wraps and was a fabulous accountant. Bookkeeper. Oh yeah, she had a degree in accounting but basically she kept his books, so she was his book-keeper. She kept them very well. Too well.

Staid, earnest, demure Ellen had these throaty, sexy sounds coming out of her mouth. Sounds he couldn’t even begin to imagine her making. Sounds that made him look twice at her as a woman. And that’s when he discovered she’d been hiding her light under a bushel.

Most women worked on themselves like crazy. Inch-thick make-up, plastic bags of silicone pumping up their boobs, high heels, short skirts, hair out to here…half the time when Gerald woke up next to a woman he’d fucked he realized that she wasn’t a looker at all, she just knew how to apply paint.

Man, taking a second or third look at Ellen—serious, workaholic Ellen, whose clothes usually covered her neck-to-toe—he could see that she was a fucking looker—the real deal. If she bothered, she’d be turning heads. Obviously, she didn’t want to turn heads, she wanted to keep books.

When he realized that she was starting to dig into how he made his first money, he knew he’d have to fire her or kill her. Or…marry her.

That thought had shocked him.

It was her voice that did it. Gerald liked his women savvy and sexy and not too bright. He liked his sex rough. Even after realizing how beautiful Ellen really was, he hadn’t wanted to fuck her.

But that woman singing…oh yeah. She was fuckable. There was a sexiness, a swing there that just said I’m fabulous in the sack. So un-Ellen-like he’d actually checked her desktop to see if she had speakers on. But no, that fuckable chick was Ellen.

Ellen, in bed. She might actually be teachable. What she was in the sack wasn’t that important, though, because the world was full of women who loved rich men and he was very very rich.

What was important was having a presentable wife when he went to Washington to negotiate contracts. All those assholes who counted in Washington were big on ‘family values’ even though they themselves had hotties of both sexes on the side.

Yeah—demure CPA wife with a soft voice. Perfect.

So he’d started his campaign to get her into his bed, something that usually took about five minutes. Maybe half an hour, tops.

He’d been absolutely astounded when he realized it wasn’t working. She just wasn’t interested.

What the fuck?

He was rich, good-looking, powerful. He had women crawling up his pants. Was she a lesbo? But he had two men follow her around and she didn’t have women lovers, didn’t have male lovers, didn’t have anything. She worked, went home, watched some TV, read, went to bed early, got up early and started all over again.

Jesus, marrying her would be like marrying a nun. Still, who cared? All he had to do was throw her a fuck now and again, it wouldn’t have to interfere with his sex life. Have her pop a few kids. Then they wouldn’t be able to say anything at the fucking Pentagon about where they were spending their money.

He’d been starting to work it all out in his head when the bitch up and disappeared after talking at a company party with one of his men who’d been shitfaced. Arlen Miller, who’d talked too much about Afghanistan and had paid the price.

And then Ellen was in the wind. Gone for a whole fucking year in which he sweated that she was spilling her guts to the FBI.

You don’t cross Montez. That was a rule. Because if you do, Montez will hit back so hard they’ll be finding pieces of you for the next ten years.

Now he had her. Ellen—bland, pretty Ellen Palmer who didn’t even wear lipstick, for Christ’s sake—was Eve, whose voice was sex on a stick.

Eve’s identity was this big mystery everyone got off on. Who knew who she was, yada yada. No personal info on Spotify, no website, the recordings were in the name of a company that had shell after shell around it. Something Ellen would know how to do in her sleep.