“Viscous?” he offered, his concern for her growing in a flare of emotion. It wasn’t a good sign that she had confused the words.
Without knowing what he was doing, he took her hand in his, giving it a good comforting squeeze. The point of contact ignited something inside of him. His lion all but ripped through his skin to deepen the contact.
The woman’s other eye shot open, panic twisting her pretty face into a pure fright. “I said ficus instead of viscous?” She tried to move, but Kai held her down softly with his other hand, tutting calmly at her.
“None of that. It’s fine. You have had a bit of a shock. That’s all.” He hoped he was right.
He studied her features. She did look genuinely afraid. Her heartbeat was erratic, and Kai could all but smell her tears coming up.
“Is everyone still looking at me?” She tried to blink away tears, but a few slid from the corner of her eyes.
Kai shook his head. “They’re all gone. It’s just you and me.”
Relief washed over her face, and she took in a shaky breath. “Oh, good. I didn’t like having everyone around me like that. It scared me. They said my head was split open. Can you really see my brains?”
A flash of anger started in his belly. No one had helped her, but they had all stood around like vultures, soaking up her misery. Fucking gawkers. “No, it’s just a bit of a cut. If you’re lucky, you won’t even have a scar.”
She swallowed hard, a few more tears sliding down her beautiful face. “This is so embarrassing.”
Kai could sense her mounting panic, and he knew he had to do something to ease her discomfort. “What’s your name?” Maybe if he kept her talking, her mind wouldn’t focus on her injury.
“Ember,” she answered, her voice thick with emotion. “Ember Brady. You?”
“Kai. It’s nice to meet you, Ember.”
“I would say the same, but I don’t want to lie to you right now. I’m not happy to be lying here on the first day of shooting. It doesn’t look good. I don’t want any drama. I just want to win and get a bakery that is all mine.”
He let her talk. He was too busy going through a whole mess of emotions. How could his mate be someone who was into reality television? Shit, she wasn’t just into it. She was competing on a show.
More than that, if Greg was to be believed, someone had purposefully tried to drop the light fixture on her head. Those weighed about forty pounds.
It could have been deadly.
Kai knew that he had to set aside his judgment of reality television and the fact that he had found his mate to do his job. It was Mason Security’s reputation that was on the line if this kind of thing started happening. Greg was a bit of a drama bug himself; Kai was going to investigate the incident before deciding if it had actually been done on purpose.
“So, Ember,” he started. “This is the first day of shooting. Any idea if anyone has it in for you already?”
She cringed. “I hope not. I mean, Ashleigh and I went to culinary school together. We didn’t get along back then. Oh, and when I arrived today, Greg all but told me I was ugly.”
His reaction took him by surprise. The low growl started in the back of his throat. There was nothing ugly about Ember Brady. She was curvy, beautiful, and smelled like sugar and vanilla. Had Kai described his perfect woman, he would have described Ember. Down to her cute button nose and auburn hair. Even her brown eyes made him dizzy with want.
“You’re not ugly,” he insisted. He would rip into Greg for telling his mate that she was anything less than perfect.
Ha, ha! You called her your mate. You have acknowledged it. You know I’m right.
Ember tried to shrug. “Greg said the wire was cut. Is that true?”
Kai hated Greg for telling Ember that while she was still on the ground, unsure of how severe her injury was. He would be having words with the man once this was all settled. “I haven’t investigated it yet, but that is what he said, yes. Do you think Ashleigh holds enough of a grudge to drop a forty-pound implement on your head?”
This time, when Ember cringed, he knew he had struck a chord. The scent of her fear turned sharper.
“What is it?” he prompted. “You have an idea as to who could have done this.”
Ember bit down on her lip. “When I got the first letter, I thought it was just a mean joke, you know? A silly prank. But this morning, there was another letter on my car. I haven’t read it yet. I didn’t want anything to ruin my good day.” She snorted out a laugh. “I guess that just goes to show, if you receive one threatening letter, better to read the second as soon as you get it. What if the person warned me this would happen, and I ignored it?”
His gut clenched over with cold and apprehension. His jaw ticked with the force of his scowl. “You got threatening letters?” he asked.
“Yeah. One a couple of days ago. It warned me off the show. Said I didn’t deserve the shot to win my own bakery. I ignored it.”
“And the second letter. The one you didn’t read. Where is it?”
“My purse,” she answered. “But I don’t know where that went.”
He held up a black leather bag that had been sent sprawling away onto the concrete floor. “This it? Mind if I try to find that letter?”
“Why?”
Shit. Kai had been so distracted, he hadn’t even introduced himself properly. “I’m in charge of security here,” he explained. “If there is a threat against you, I need to know.”
“Oh, okay. It’s under my wallet.”
Kai pulled out a pair of medical gloves from his back pocket and slid them on before rifling through the purse. He pulled out a pink wallet that had tiny little cupcakes drawn all across it. It would have looked more in place in a tween girl’s school bag, but he didn’t say that. It was kind of endearing that she loved cupcakes so much. He sure did. Especially when they were decadent, chocolatey goodness.
Something we have in common, his lion nudged.
The letter was sealed, but he slowly slid the folded sheet of paper out into his hand. He read it a few times over, each time getting angrier. His lion was about ready to go to war.
One thing was certain: someone had tried to kill his mate.
Chapter Five
Ember
The nice paramedic, a woman about Ember’s age with her blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail, flashed a light in her eyes again. Ember followed the flashlight, as instructed. She had already answered a few questions to prove she knew her name, the date, where she was, and who had written the latest pop anthem.
“You’re good,” the EMT announced with a smile. “You don’t need stitches. Just a bandage and a painkiller for the killer headache you’ll have.”
“Will have?” Ember snorted. “I’m already there.”
Her head was heavy and throbbing but somehow felt like it was filled with cotton candy. At the very least, she didn’t have a concussion. That would have been pretty disastrous. It would have held her back from competing, and there was no way she wasn’t going to get her chance at winning.
Greg was pacing around nervously, clutching his clipboard as Ashleigh watched on, a few shades paler than she had been earlier.