Backstreet Hero Page 11

  He caught himself letting the speedometer creep upward far enough past the speed limit to draw any cop’s eye. He backed off, wondering how he could be so eager to get to Lilith’s and so reluctant at the same time.

  He’d told Draven to have Hill stay until he got there, so it wasn’t as though he had a choice. Besides, he wanted to do a check of her condo once more, make sure nothing had changed since the last time, and he was the only one who could do that.

  Even the thought rang hollow; Lilith was a perceptive, observant woman, and if anything had changed she would notice. Especially now that even she was convinced there was at least some danger to her.

  He rubbed his eyes as he drove, suddenly feeling much more tired than even his last few nights of little sleep warranted. Perhaps he should just let the woman handle it, take a break from all this.

  But he couldn’t. He didn’t know Taylor Hill, and while if Draven said she was good, she was good, he didn’t know that himself.

  The realization that hit him then nearly stunned him. He trusted John Draven with his life. Anyone at Redstone would, knowing there was no one better at keeping himself and those in his charge alive and safe. And yet here he was, doubting Draven’s faultless judgment in this. Why?

  The answer was painfully clear.

  Because it was Lilith. And when it came to Lilith, he didn’t trust anyone but himself to keep her safe.

  “Right,” he muttered to himself. “And who’s going to keep her safe from you?”

  “That,” he said aloud into the silence of the car, “is up to you as much as keeping her alive is.”

  He nearly groaned at the realization he was not only talking to himself but answering himself.

  When he pulled into the parking area at the condo, he spotted the car Hill had driven right away, since it was one of the cars from the pool security had access to. It was parked next to Lilith’s dark gray coupe, which had remained in its assigned spot since all this had started.

  She’d told him that the other spot was her neighbor’s, but since the woman didn’t have a car, it wasn’t used, and that Mrs. Tilly had offered it to her any time she needed it. It was where he usually parked, but now obviously he’d be relegated to the visitors’ section.

  Visitor. Yeah, that’s what he was, all right. Just a temporary presence in her life, and one she’d like to be rid of as soon as possible, no doubt. As she would be, as soon as this was resolved. She’d go back to her busy, productive, pleasant life, and he’d go back to his busy, productive, empty one, and they’d both think of this as nothing but an interruption in those lives.

  Right.

  He’d be thinking of this for the rest of that miserable life. Thinking of how close he’d been to the impossible, how he’d had a taste of being with her, only to learn for good that his world, no matter how it had changed, did not blend well with her world.

  Because it wasn’t really his world that was the problem.

  It was him.

  He glanced down at the newel posts as he reached the top of the stairs. The grooves from the tightly strung wire were visible, but not glaring.

  Kind of like you, he thought wryly. Strung tight but hiding it.

  At least, he hoped he was hiding it. From Lilith, anyway.

  After he knocked it seemed to take forever for the door to open. He told himself to rein it in, it should take a couple of minutes if Hill was doing her job. And when it did open, it was indeed the new Redstone agent.

  Except…she was smiling. Laughing, actually, and it transformed her. No longer was she a plain, ordinary, fade-into-the-background woman. Her eyes fairly sparkled, and for the first time he noticed that they were an unusual shade of hazel flecked with gold. Odd, he thought, he was usually pretty good at details like that.

  “Something funny I missed?” he asked as she stood back to let him in.

  “No,” Hill said. “We were just talking.”

  “About?” he asked before he could stop himself.

  She laughed, and he sensed it was a continuation of the one that had left her face so animated. “Men,” she said pointedly.

  His mouth twisted wryly. Great. Men, or one man in particular?

  As soon as he thought it, he nearly laughed, too. Get over yourself, Alvera. It’s not all about you.

  He stepped inside and immediately spotted Lilith, who was coming out of the kitchen with a coffee mug in her hand. She, too, was smiling, in a way he hadn’t seen since all this had started. As if she, too, had just been laughing and the glee lingered.

  He’d never seen her look like that. Even at the Christmas party where he’d first seen her, she’d been restrained, polished…regal had been the word that had come to his mind then.

  But then, he told himself as he stood there staring at her, unable to help himself, she’d been two years closer to the hell her ex-husband had put her through. Perhaps that was the answer.

  Or perhaps it was just that she and Taylor Hill had hit it off.

  Or perhaps, he told himself with an inward grimace, she just doesn’t like being around you.

  “—asked if you wanted coffee, there’s some left.”

  She was standing in front of him now, a faintly puzzled expression on her face, and he realized she must have already asked him once.

  “No.”

  It sounded abrupt, almost rude, even to his own ears, but it was all he could manage.

  “You can leave now, Hill,” he said, without looking at the woman.

  Lilith blinked. Then she looked at the other woman. “Or you can stay, Taylor. I was enjoying your company.”

  The implication wasn’t lost on Tony, and his jaw tightened.

  “You’re relieved,” he said, more fiercely this time, making sure she realized it was an order, gambling she was too new at the job to want to risk arguing with him. That this was bubbling up out of some silly resentment that Lilith was so relaxed and able to laugh was something he knew on some level, but refused to think about.

  To his surprise, Hill stood her ground. “I’d say that’s up to Lilith. This is her home.”

  The two women exchanged a look that made him exceptionally nervous. And made him wonder again exactly what men—or man—they’d been talking about.

  “It’s all right, Taylor,” Lilith said. “We do have some things to discuss.”

  We do? Tony thought, but said nothing, not wanting anything to delay Hill’s quick departure. Why he wanted her gone, and right now, was another thing he didn’t want to think about.

  Hill hesitated, then nodded. She closed the door quietly behind her as she left.

  “Well, that was sufficiently rude.”

  Stung, he answered before he thought. “What did you expect from somebody like me?”

  She drew back slightly. A furrow appeared between her brows as she studied him. The silence spun out long enough to make him uncomfortable, long enough for him to wonder where the hell his professionalism had vanished to.

  “I expected,” she said finally, “the courtesy anyone from Redstone shows anyone else from Redstone. I expected you to be polite, perhaps even use a little of your famous charm. Not to charge in here and practically throw out a young woman who was only here because you asked her to be.”

  He felt the jab of guilt because he knew those first and last words were true. But somehow the only thing he could focus on was the other thing she’d said in between.

  Famous charm?

  He knew it was absurd to get hung up on that amid everything else. But something about the way she had said it was poking at him, and he didn’t know why.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t realize what she meant. He’d learned charm at a time when he still wasn’t certain he was really going to escape the streets for good. So he hadn’t hesitated to use it, justifying it with the excuse that he had to use whatever tools he had if he was going to truly get out.

  He had gotten out. And then had come Lisa. And what had happened then had changed everything. Including
his use of his famous charm.

  But Lilith didn’t know about Lisa. Even Josh didn’t know, not all the details, anyway. No one did, except St. John. And perhaps Draven; St. John might have told him if for no other reason than he’d be thinking maybe Draven should keep an eye on him, see if it was going to affect his work.

  But he’d shown them it wouldn’t, and now, all these years later, he was sure they’d forgotten all about it.

  It was only he who couldn’t forget that he’d as good as killed Lisa with his own hands.

  Chapter 16

  “Sorry to interrupt your little party,” Tony muttered, apparently just noticing that there were dishes and Chinese takeout cartons on the coffee table.

  “Were we not supposed to eat without your permission?”

  Lilith’s expression was sweet, her tone deadly. She saw that Tony didn’t miss it. But then, it should have been obvious to even the most muddled male mind that he’d crossed a line. And she knew he was very far from stupid, and it didn’t take a genius to realize what that line was.

  “I am not your ex,” he said, seeming to try for a calm, even tone, although he didn’t quite achieve it. As if the gruffness had merely been a rough throat, he gave a halfhearted cough. She wondered why he even tried.

  “No,” Lilith said after a moment. “No, you’re not. You were right, you’re nothing like him.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  He was snapping again, as if he couldn’t help it. She could almost see the effort he made as he tried once more to rein it in.

  “I’m glad for you,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but she knew he didn’t mean it. It was so obviously a forced lie that she drew back in puzzlement. “Glad?”

  “That it’s not him. Obviously that made you…happy.”

  She stared at him. “Happy?”

  “Obviously you still have feelings for him, so of course you’d be relieved it wasn’t—”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Completely,” he muttered, so low she wasn’t sure she was supposed to have heard it.

  “That’s a lot of ‘obvious’ you’re throwing around there, and none of it is obvious to me. Relieved? Yes, I was relieved. Do you think I want to have to deal with him again, in any way?”

  “I—”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked bluntly, cutting him off. “You’ve been acting odd ever since the fund-raiser, and you’ve been behaving worse ever since you got here tonight. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked as if he regretted the word the moment it was out.

  “What? Tell me.”

  “Never mind.”

  “I don’t play that game, Tony. Not anymore.”

  She stood there, toe-to-toe with him, not even close to backing down. It took every bit of the nerve she’d gained in the years since Daniel, to stare down this man who had likely seen and done things that would make her quail.

  “You opened this door, you can’t slam it again and pretend you never did,” she told him, still refusing to back off. “What have you learned? Is it about Chilton?”

  “No. Nothing more than you know.”

  “Then what?”

  To her amazement, he looked away, as if he were dodging her. What on earth could make this man, who as a child had faced days when he would see certain cars turn down what had once been a quiet, residential street and had known a hail of bullets was about to start, be afraid to face her?

  “I’ll have Draven assign Taylor Hill to you,” he said, turning away from her now.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It will be easier,” he said. “She’s a woman.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You liked her, right?” he said, indicating the dishes and half-empty cartons.

  “Yes, I did. She’s a bright, very nice young woman.”

  “So it’s no problem, then.”

  “What is no problem?”

  She was starting to sound exasperated, while he was desperately trying to avoid saying the one thing he most didn’t want to say.

  “Having her take over,” he finally said.

  “Take over?” Comprehension dawned. “You’re quitting?”

  She was astonished; this went against everything she knew of him, of Redstone Security, and of the people Draven selected and trained.

  “You’re Redstone,” she said. “We don’t quit.”

  “I’m not quitting, not really.” It sounded like an excuse even he didn’t believe. “I’ll keep digging, I’ll find out what’s really going on, I just…can’t do this anymore.”

  Oh, God. Lilith’s stomach knotted, and her skin went suddenly clammy and cold.

  She had betrayed herself. Somehow. Some way. He knew. She thought she’d successfully hidden her silly, unruly, impossible thoughts about him, but somehow he knew, somehow he’d guessed. And he was trying to extricate himself from a hideously embarrassing situation as gracefully as possible.

  She told herself to keep quiet, to just accept and let it be, but she was so mortified she couldn’t hold back the words that rose to her lips.

  “I’ve made it impossible for you to go on.”

  He winced, and she groaned inwardly at her own inability to keep her mouth shut. She turned away then, wishing more than anything that she could run, hide from this, from him. But her days of running and hiding were over.

  And then, suddenly, his hands were on her shoulders, turning her back to face him. “It’s not you!”

  The quick, almost fierce words caught her by surprise.

  “It’s…me.”

  She blinked, her gaze drawn unwillingly to his face. His eyes, usually dark, were even darker now, and troubled. On some deep level of her mind she was thinking inanely how exotically beautiful he was, how timeless, how easy it was to picture him in another age, an aristocrat riding the endless miles of his rancho, in charge of all he surveyed.

  “I made a mistake, Lilith. I thought I could do this, that I could ignore how I feel enough to do my job.”

  She went very still. “How you feel?”

  “How I’ve felt,” he said, his voice so tight and grim it was more suited to delivering a death notification, “since the first time I saw you.”

  He released her and turned away, as if unable to meet her eyes after that startling declaration.

  Lilith stood there, frozen. To her knowledge, the first time they’d ever met had been at a Redstone Christmas party a couple of years ago. He’d been there to shadow Quinn Rafferty, a high-profile guest of Josh’s who had received death threats after the release of his novel, which stepped on some famous toes.

  She’d told herself at the time that she remembered him so vividly because it was unusual for a Redstone Security agent to attend this function in a job capacity; they tended to keep their true function out of view. Lilith guessed that many Redstone people knew members of the security team without realizing it. And perhaps not all of them realized why Tony had been there.

  But now she was wondering if perhaps she remembered him so vividly for other reasons entirely.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, knowing it was imperative that she do just that, understand exactly what he’d meant. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say, because the only thing it seemed possible he was saying was…well, impossible.

  “Of course you don’t,” Tony said, his back still turned. “Why would you? You’re everything I’m not.” He laughed, and there wasn’t a touch of humor in it. “Maybe that’s why I practically fell at your feet.”

  Lilith’s breath caught. “Are you saying—?”

  She couldn’t finish the question. Tony whipped around then, so quickly she almost took a step back.

  “I’m saying I wanted to meet you the minute I saw you in that damned red dress. I wanted to find out all about you. I wanted to know about your work. I wanted to know what you liked, d
idn’t like. I wanted to know who your friends were, and why.” His voice broke, went almost unbearably harsh. “I wanted…you.”

  She stared at him, stunned.

  “So,” he said, pulling back visibly after that astonishing out-pouring, “now you can see why you’ll be better off with Hill.”

  “Past tense.”

  He went still. “What?”

  “You said all that in past tense.” She didn’t point out the obvious, that if it were truly in the past, there would be no problem now.

  His mouth twisted into a wry grimace. “Wishful thinking.”

  Lilith tried to take a deeper breath, wondering what it was called when you had to remind yourself to do things your body normally did automatically.

  But there was nothing normal about this, or her reaction to his words. She didn’t know what to feel. Her quick, usually reliable mind seemed to have completely shut down on her. All this time she’d been battling her silly imagination, thinking how humiliated she would be if he had any idea how many times she’d thought of him in a far from professional way, and he hit her with this?

  He just stood there, looking at her, as if trying to read her mind from her expression.

  “Tony, I’m too old for you,” she said, the only thing she could think of when the silence became too much to bear.

  “I know you’re older than I am.”

  “Much older.”

  He frowned. “You can’t be that much older.”

  “I met Josh when he was in high school. I was on staff.”

  That got his attention, as she’d thought it would. “You were really his teacher?”

  “I was a teaching assistant. My first year in college. But I could see he was something very special, even at fifteen.”

  She looked up at him then, smiling almost sadly as she read his expression. “Don’t bother with the math. I’ll tell you. I’m three years older than Josh. Which makes me, what, fifteen years or so older than you?”

  He blinked. “I’m thirty-two.”

  “Are you?” She’d thought him even younger. Not that it helped much.

  “Yes. So it’s only twelve years.”

  “Only?” She managed a laugh that was better than his of moments ago, but not by much.