Powerless (Finding Love Book 2) Read online

  “Babe, you look a bit flushed is everything okay?”

  “Seriously Liam…you went from talking about needing to be between my thighs to asking me what’s going on here. That was not the direction I thought you were going to take this call.”

  Liam smirked. “Oh, you had something else in mind then?”

  “You know I did. It’s been too damn long. If we can make these video calls work, then why not make the most of them. And by most of them, I mean I would much rather have a live visual while I get myself off instead of the memories we made before you left.”

  “Jeezus Finley. You’re so fucking perfect. Take your shirt off,” he commanded.

  Finley didn’t hesitate to pull her t-shirt over her head, accomplishing the task in less than a second. She could barely make out the rapid rise and fall of his chest as his breath quickened. His eyes darkened as he took in the expanse of her bra covered cleavage.

  “God you’re beautiful. Even slightly pixelated, you are the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen,” Liam told her. “I wish I could be there to suck on those perfect tits of yours, but since I’m not I want to watch you touch yourself. Take that bra off so I can see what I’m missing.”

  Reaching behind her, she started to unhook the garment when something on the screen caught her attention.

  “Come on Crawford, let’s go. There’s a pitcher with my name on it at the pub,” a dark-skinned man yelled from the now open door behind Liam. “What are you doing over there, watching porn?”

  “Son of a bitch,” Finley growled as she fumbled to pick her discarded shirt up off the floor. She didn’t have time to put it on; instead she used it to cover herself like a blanket as three men approached Liam. He turned to face them, but they didn’t even bother looking at him, their eyes stuck on the screen trying to see what Liam was up to.

  “Fuck. Haven’t you assholes ever hear of knocking?”

  “We did. But you were obviously too busy wanking off that you didn’t hear us. The door was unlocked so we figured we could come in,” a blonde-haired man said with a shrug.

  “Fuck off Griffin. I wasn’t wanking off,” Liam turned back toward the computer, a frown marring his handsome face. “Babe, I am so sorry about this. I didn’t know these jerks were going to come over. Hey fuckers turn around so she can put her shirt back on.”

  “You were obviously about to wank off,” the third man said as they all turned around.

  Finley quickly put her shirt on, mortified by the fact they nearly walked in on a whole lot more. The thought of ever having a dirty video call session with Liam in the future made her stomach churn. She hoped eventually she’d get over that since there would be a lot of time spent apart in the future, but for now she was never going to take off an article of clothing in front of her computer again. By the look on Liam’s face, she could tell he was thinking the same thing. His nostrils flared as he clenched his jaw.

  “Liam, I’m going to go. I’ve got work to do and you’ve got company. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I can send them away. I don’t know when we’ll get a chance to talk like this again.”

  Finley sighed. “That’s okay. I’ve got a lot to do. The texts and emails will suffice until next week. Then maybe we can try this again…the video call part, not the other part.”

  Heat flooded her neck and cheeks.

  “Fine. I’ll let you go for now if I have to,” he said sounding almost like a petulant child. “I’ll try to text you later. Have a good day.”

  “Bye Liam. Bye strange men who interrupted fun time.”

  “God damn, you guys fucking suck,” Liam said as the call disconnected.

  Finley closed her laptop and shook her head, thankful that his friends hadn’t show up five minutes later. For once in her life, she was thankful for the uncooperative hooks of her bra. She wasn’t a prude, but she wasn’t an exhibitionist either and there was no way she wanted Liam’s co-workers to have more of a visual than what they’d gotten. As it was, she’d probably never be able to look any of them in the eye again and she didn’t even know their names.

  * * * * *

  An hour later, Finley sat across from Savannah in the kitchen at Delectable Delights. Concentrating on work had been nearly impossible, but something she figured a cupcake and a jolt of caffeine could definitely fix. The table between them was littered with cupcake wrappers and empty French vanilla creamer cups. Finley had no idea how Savannah could stand putting sweet creamer in her coffee while also eating cupcakes, it made her teeth hurt just thinking about it.

  “It was mortifying Savannah. A couple of minutes later and my breasts would have been out for their viewing pleasure. Hell, it probably wouldn’t have been much longer before everything was out and things got a bit more interesting. We were headed in that direction very quickly.”

  Savannah tried to stifle a laugh behind her hand, but eventually gave up. From the moment Finley told her the story about her doomed attempt at video call sex, Savannah had been unable to keep from laughing. Finley hadn’t expected anything else though. If it had been Savannah and Gabriel that’d gotten busted nearly naked in front of their computers, Finley would have probably laughed so hard she fell out of her chair. At least Savannah hadn’t laughed so hard she snorted yet.

  “I can’t believe he didn’t lock the door. That’s a total rookie move.”

  “Rookie move? So you and Gabriel are professionals at the various forms of technological sex?”

  Savannah laughed. “I mean, we at least know that you lock the damn door before telling anyone to take off their clothes, especially if you can actually see them doing it.”

  “It’s not like we planned it or anything.”

  “The best kind of phone sex is the unplanned kind, but even then you realize that you just have to start always locking the door whenever you’re going to talk to your significant other. You guys will figure it out if you’re going to be spending a significant amount of time apart. It’s pretty much the long-distance couple norm nowadays.”

  Taking a sip of her black coffee, Finley looked at her friend, curious as to how she could possibly know about what was normal for long distance couples. Since they met, Savannah and Gabriel hadn’t spent much time apart, nor would she call living a few blocks away from each other a long distance relationship. Although she was curious, she definitely wasn’t brave enough to ask.

  “Did you at least get a chance to tell him your news before you started getting naked?” Savannah asked.

  Finley shook her head. “No. We kind of bypassed most of the small talk and went straight to the good stuff. He did say he might get to come home sooner than he thought and that next week they’re moving to night shoots. I’ll tell him then.”

  “I know you’re going to keep putting it off, but you really need to tell him about the notes. Even if you’re right and it turns out to be nothing, he needs to know you’re being threatened.”

  “Elijah gets these kinds of notes all the time and Amy used to get even more. It’s probably just some fangirl of Liam’s trying to scare me off.”

  “Okay fine they’re probably harmless, but come on Finley they delivered one to your fucking doorstep. It was one thing when they were coming to Heat. Everyone knows that’s where you work. And yeah it was a bit scarier when there was one on your car, but again that was at Heat and it would be easy to sit there and wait to see what you drive. But now they know where you live,” Savannah pointed out. “And it’s obvious they have no problem approaching your home. What if they aren’t as harmless as you think they are?”

  Sighing, Finley took another sip of her coffee, wishing, not for the first time that her cup was filled with booze instead. It had been a week and a half since she found the first note taped to the door of Heat. It simply said Leave him in huge print that covered the entire center of the page. The second note was in the mailbox at Heat, it also had Leave him printed on the page, but it was over and over and over again filling up the entire page
from top to bottom. She received two more similar notes at Heat, one tucked into her booze delivery and another wrapped around a bouquet of flowers that had been left at the door.

  It was the fifth note that she found on her car, which she had to admit made her nervous. The note was a bit more involved than the others. It said I’m always watching and had a couple of pictures on it; one of her the day before and one of her and Liam before he left. Both pictures looked more like poor cell phone quality images instead of professional quality ones, so they likely weren’t from one of the paparazzi that were still occasionally around.

  The notes were creepy, but Finley had decided to ignore them. She’d seen this kind of thing before with Elijah and Amy. Even her mother received threatening notes back in the day. It was one of the things that came with being famous or dating someone who was famous. There was always going to be someone out there who thought they had the right to say whatever they wanted, whether that was on some online forum or in hand delivered notes. There was always some weirdo out there that thought they’d have a chance at their Hollywood crush and any person in their way was fair game. It was rare though, that those people would ever come out from behind their computer or anonymous notes. She didn’t really think she had anything to worry about, until she found the note taped to the front door of the house she was renting.

  Ashes, Ashes

  Finley falls down

  There was something ominous about the words, but it was the picture underneath them that had really scared her. Someone had digitally put her head onto a bloody and broken body. She couldn’t tell if the body was real or from a movie, since she couldn’t stand to look at it for very long. Although she knew it wasn’t her body, it was still beyond disturbing to see her head attached to something so brutal. For a moment, she’d thought about taking all of the notes to the police, but ultimately decided against it. From experience she knew there was nothing they could do until whoever was sending the notes did something to harm her physically. She would just have to be careful and more aware of her surroundings.

  “It’s been a few days since I’ve received a note. Maybe whoever was behind them has decided to stop bothering me. No matter what, I’m being careful and I promise if they start again or things get too intense, I’ll not only tell Liam, but I’ll go to the cops. I just know there’s nothing anyone can do about the crazies out there. My mom used to get notes all the time, some from women pissed about whatever man she was dating at the time and some from men pissed she wasn’t giving them the time of day. It comes with the territory.”

  “Maybe you could get some security, not for the club, but for you. It couldn’t hurt to have someone watching your back while Liam’s gone,” Savannah suggested.

  “It’s bad enough I’ve still got paparazzi trying to follow me around, I don’t want bodyguards following me around too. I know my life won’t be going back to normal anytime soon and I chose this when I decided to give this thing with Liam a chance, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

  Savannah sighed. “Fine, but you know Gabriel and I are here if you need us. You know that he and Declan will come running if there are any signs of trouble, so please don’t hesitate to call. And before you say anything, no we didn’t sign up for this, but we are your family Fin. Crazy stalkers, paparazzi, it doesn’t matter what it is, we will help you with anything that comes your way, you don’t even have to ask. In fact, we’ll probably jump in to help, even if you don’t want us to because that’s what family does, we interfere.”

  Finley never really had a family before she’d met Savannah. Sure, she’d had Elijah and his parents, but things had been strained with them even before she left because of her mother’s actions. Then when she moved to Seattle, she ignored their attempts at taking care of her. She couldn’t be a part of their lives because of where they were and because despite what her mother had done, Elijah’s mom was still Miranda’s best friend. They would always be connected to Miranda and Finley couldn’t have that in her life.

  “I suppose I deserve you getting into the middle of things since I didn’t exactly sit back and let things go when you and Gabriel were having problems.”

  “That was entirely different, my life wasn’t on the line,” Savannah argued.

  “Well I guess that depends on your definition of life. Sure, it wasn’t life or death, but you weren’t really living back then. Plus, right now my life isn’t on the line. If that changes, I’ll let you know, but we are currently giving some crazy chick way too much thought. She’ll eventually find some other actor to stalk and harass and Liam and I will be free to forget all about these stupid notes.”

  “I hope you’re right Finley. Just please watch your back. I don’t want anything to happen to my best friend,” Savannah said. “It would put a huge damper on my wedding.”

  Finley laughed, throwing her wadded up napkin at her friend. She loved Savannah for allowing them to change the subject. While she wanted to ignore the notes, Finley knew that she wouldn’t be able to completely. But she wasn’t going to let them rule her life either. She had to find the balance and having her friend worry about her was not helping matters.

  “Speaking of the wedding…”

  * * * * *

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay running the place while I’m gone?” Finley asked for the fifth time in less than an hour.

  “Seriously, we’ve got this. You deserve this trip; the club will be fine. You really have nothing to worry about,” Bryce said.

  “I will have my cell with me at all times.”

  “And I won’t call it. You are taking a break from all things Heat. I’ve got this, the teams got this. Please do not give us a second thought while you’re gone.”

  Finley sighed. Leaving for a weekend was difficult enough, but for two weeks, she wasn’t sure she could do it even though they’d spent the last three weeks preparing for it. Bryce could run Heat with his eyes closed. Hell, he was even better at dealing with the day to day crap than she’d ever been, devising ways to be more efficient in less than a week of performing the tasks. Part of her wanted to be mad, but it was why she’d hired him in the first place and why she’d promoted him when she realized she needed to step back.

  There was no doubt Heat was in good hands. It was the control freak in her that didn’t want to admit she wasn’t really needed anymore. She’d been so burnt out that she’d thought about selling the place, but now that she could actually step back and leave it all to someone else, she was hesitant to do so. Even when she wasn’t in love with it, Heat was still her baby. The club had risen from the ashes of her mother’s death, becoming Finley’s sole focus for so long that she didn’t really know what to do with herself now that she could turn her focus elsewhere. Even if that elsewhere was her hot as hell boyfriend.

  “Look, I promise if anything crazy happens I will call you, but that’s it. I will not bother you with anything else. You are to go to L.A., have a fantastic time and forget all about this place while you’re there. It’ll be here waiting for you when you get back, but until then it’s not your problem.”

  “Thank you, Bryce. I’m glad I can count on you…even if it’s harder than I thought it would be,” Finley said taking one last look around her office before grabbing her suitcase and backpack.

  “Have fun Finley. And if you happen to run into Matt Bomer, give him my number.”

  “Bryce, he’s married.”

  “Damn, alright then, give it to Neil Patrick Harris.”

  “He’s married too.”

  “Fine, any hot eligible man you find in L.A., just give him my number. It is seriously slim pickings up here lately. They’re all either taken or straight.”

  Finley laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. Don’t work too hard while I’m gone and feel free to crash upstairs if you need to. It can be a lot easier to do that than drive home at three in the morning.”

  Saying one last goodbye, Finley wheeled her suitcase down the hallway to the
front door where the cab she’d called should be waiting to take her to the airport. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she thought about where she was headed. Nerves had been trying to get the best of her for the last few days. She was flying to her most dreaded place on earth to spend two weeks with a man she’d barely seen in over a month. Sure, they’d texted or emailed nearly every day and had been able to talk on the phone at least once a week, but it wasn’t the same.

  What if they finally saw each other in person again and the feelings weren’t there anymore? What if she ruined everything with her insecurities and uncertainty? Bad memories were certain to surface while she was surrounded by the things she’d hated throughout her childhood. And being in the heart of it all would bring the paparazzi out in full force. Los Angeles was their domain; it was inevitable they would be more aggressive, that they would be in her face more. She just hoped they’d still be unable to put two and two together to figure out who her mother was. If they got their hands on that information it would just make things worse.

  Sighing, she shook her head. She couldn’t let any of that get to her. Things were going great with Liam and she wasn’t going to let her fears or any of the bullshit from her past get the better of her. She was excited to see him, to meet his sister and to see him on his turf. While she’d never really planned on being in a relationship, she was loving the fact that she was. Liam was everything she didn’t know she wanted.

  Pushing open the heavy door, she squinted as the bright sunlight flooded over her. As her eyes adjusted, she looked around for her cab. She found a familiar yellow colored hybrid parked in one of the spots in the first row. Walking toward it, she shielded her eyes from the sun, wishing she’d remembered to grab her sunglasses out of her backpack before she’d left the building. The driver must have seen her approaching, as the trunk popped open, a middle-aged man hopped out of the car.