Backstreet Hero Page 13

  “Josh wouldn’t expect you to drive yourself into the ground.”

  “Yet he would, for me. Or anyone else Redstone.”

  Tony couldn’t argue with that. And since he had another unpleasant surprise for her later, he left her in peace for the moment. He couldn’t help her with what she was doing, apparently searching some huge database that had been on that little USB drive; he was competent enough using a computer, but this kind of process was out of his league. She’d probably laugh at him if she knew he sometimes resorted to plain old pen and paper, with a small notebook he carried in a jacket pocket, but sometimes he felt better being able to be sure sensitive information had been destroyed. A computer file seemed to exist in some form forever.

  He went back into the living room, sat down on the couch where she and Hill had been sharing dinner and that talk about men, or whatever it was that had had them laughing. He couldn’t relax and was soon back on his feet, wandering around the room, checking windows he’d already checked and the front door he’d already made certain was securely dead-bolted.

  He paused as he passed a large bookshelf at one end of the room. It was full, not just with several shelves of books—mysteries, biographies and, he noted with a bemused inward smile, apparently the entire Harry Potter series—but a shelf of DVDs in a similar vein. CDs took up another shelf, everything from country to alternative rock to Beethoven. Eclectic, he thought, wasn’t the word for it. There was much more to Lilith Mercer than that polished exterior might suggest.

  He barely stopped himself from making another tour of the condo, checking all the doors and windows yet again. The only thing that allowed him to rein in the urge was the fact that she was trying to work. Instead he paced the living room, trying to halt his careening mind instead. Here he was, at home with the woman who’d captured his imagination so thoroughly that he’d never forgotten her even though, before Beck’s case had come up, he’d barely ever seen her. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He was here to protect her, keep her safe.

  And that included from him.

  Almost desperately he picked up a book at random; he would have chosen the TV, but didn’t want to disturb her work. He sat down in the chair closest to the window that looked out on the front landing; he didn’t expect a repeat of the wire trick, but he also didn’t take anything for granted. There was an ottoman next to it, and he stretched his legs out and settled in; he didn’t know how long she planned on working, only that she never seemed to stop.

  He started to read, but found himself having to go back and reread a section every few pages. The more he thought about what Lilith had said, the more he thought she was probably right; the brakes and the wire had been rigged at the same time. He had no idea if the cut in the brake line had been purposely small, making for a slow leak that would gradually drain the system, or if the culprit had just been in a hurry. Either way, it was sloppy if the intent was murder.

  Then again, so was the wire. True, a tumble down the full flight of concrete steps could have proved fatal, but just as likely, had her reflexes not been so good, Lilith could have been just badly injured.

  He cringed inwardly at the thought of her broken from such a fall, or from some horrible crash when her brakes finally gave out at just the wrong moment….

  So was that the goal? he wondered. Was it to injure rather than kill? And if so, why? If it had been her ex, he could have understood it; that kind of emotional involvement sometimes required inflicting lasting pain, and shied away from the death that would also mean the absence of someone to hate. He’d seen it before, people who were so focused on the object of their hatred that once it was removed, when they by rights should have been happy, they instead lost their driving force and drifted, rudderless, unsure what to do with themselves now that the hate that had defined them for so long had no object.

  But Stan Chilton didn’t even know Lilith, from all he could determine. There was nothing personal involved; she was nothing more to him than the person brought in to clean up his mess. So why not just kill her outright?

  Except that that wasn’t logical, either. As Draven had said, it was he and Ian and Samantha Gamble who had brought Chilton down. Chilton should be after them.

  So why Lilith? It made no sense to him.

  Which was, he admitted, probably the problem; looking for logic in screwed up minds like Chilton’s was a mistake to begin with. If the man had been merely after money—although with what Redstone paid that was hard to believe—it would have been cut-and-dried. But he’d been nursing a fierce case of envy—envy of Ian’s brilliance and success under the Redstone wing—and that had contorted his existing sense of entitlement into something twisted and evil.

  He grimaced, both at the tangled mess this was, and at the irony that it made street gang violence seem simple. Ugly, yes, but simple; you hit us, we hit back, harder. Stray onto our turf at your own risk. Black and white, it was what it was.

  “Problem?”

  Jerked back to the present by her quiet query, Tony gave up any pretense of reading and slammed the book closed; even magic wasn’t enough of a distraction at the moment. He sat upright, surprised at how long he’d been sitting here unraveling; it was full dark now. A glance at his watch told him it was nearly ten.

  “Same old,” he muttered. He didn’t explain whether it was her situation or just her, and she thankfully didn’t press him.

  She sat down on the edge of the ottoman his feet had just vacated. Close. Too close. “I can’t make any sense out of it, either.”

  That her words could apply to either thing he’d been wrestling with didn’t escape him, but he took the more prudent route. Especially with her sitting so damned close.

  “Somebody told me once that every mind, even a sick one, works out its own logic,” he said.

  She pondered that for a moment. “Draven?” she guessed.

  He shook his head. “Actually, St. John.”

  Her brows rose. “The mystery man?”

  It was an appellation applied frequently to Josh’s enigmatic right-hand man, the man rarely seen by anyone outside—some speculated because he never left his penthouse apartment on the top floor of Redstone Headquarters—and not all that often by Redstone people themselves.

  “I don’t know what his life has been, but I have a feeling it just might make mine look tame.”

  “Hard to believe,” Lilith said.

  “I don’t have the corner on dubious pasts.”

  She gave him an odd little smile he couldn’t quite interpret. “Funny, I never thought of your past as dubious. Heartrending, yes, and painful, but not dubious.”

  He swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. He’d long ago gotten over the fact that almost everyone at Redstone knew where he’d come from, just as they knew the story of how he’d been given a way out by Josh. But until now, he hadn’t really considered the logical fact that some had actually spent time thinking about it.

  That one of them had apparently been Lilith unsettled him.

  He barely managed not to leap up just to put some more space between them. He could smell her, that rich, luscious scent he’d come to associate with her. He’d seen a bottle of perfume in her bathroom, something gardenia, so he supposed that’s what it was. Whatever the name, it was driving him crazy, and he knew that whenever he smelled anything like it, he was forever going to think of her.

  “Doing a pretty good job of that now,” he muttered to himself.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said.

  At least he’d armored himself for that one. Not that the simple words didn’t conjure up a host of vivid images he could have done without. Or at least, could have done without just now; if he were alone, he wouldn’t mind dwelling on each one in turn at length.

  “Fine. Move what you need in there.” He gestured toward the second bedroom.

  She took a step back, her eyes widening. “I beg your pardon?”

  So polite, he thought. Always so polite
. “You’re not sleeping in that bedroom with the balcony.”

  She stared at him as if the only thing she could think of to say was what she had just said, so she wasn’t going to say anything. But he also saw her delicate jaw set, and knew he was going to have a fight on his hands. He wasn’t in the mood.

  So instead of trying to persuade her with convincing arguments, he cut straight to the one he figured would win the quickest.

  “You have two options,” he said evenly. “First, you sleep in the guest room without the balcony.”

  She arched a brow at him. “Or?”

  “Or you sleep in your bedroom, in your bed…with me.”

  He watched the color flood her cheeks. Watched her lips part as if she were having trouble taking a breath.

  And he held his own, trying not to admit to the simple fact that, no matter how insane, no matter how impossible, he wanted more than anything for her to choose the second option.

  Chapter 19

  There were women she knew, Lilith thought, who could take such a statement and handle it coolly, with a blasé sort of acceptance—of course men made offers such as this, it was their due—that she’d always admired but never been able to perfect herself.

  Then again, she doubted any of them had ever had an offer—or ultimatum—like this given to them by a man like Antonio Diego Alvera Bernard.

  She wondered if any woman he really set his sights on had ever, could ever, refuse him.

  She wondered if, had he been serious instead of obviously trying to goad her into doing what he wanted for her own safety, she could have refused him.

  But it was clear that was what he was doing. Despite his earlier, surprising confession, she knew that he was simply using this to provoke her into doing what he thought best.

  It was, she thought, a form of manipulation. He’d said it just to get her to recoil and do as she was told. He couldn’t really—“Don’t,” he said, his voice no longer provoking but quiet, almost imploring, all challenge gone, vanished. “Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you’re telling yourself, don’t. I meant what I said.”

  Her breath caught in her throat and it was a moment before she regained enough of it to speak. All of her umbrage at the transparent manipulation vanished. If he’d meant it…

  “Tony, you can’t—”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t think, or feel, or want. And you don’t have to tell me you’re out of my league, I know that.”

  “I don’t believe in that tripe, and I would never say such—”

  “I know you wouldn’t. You don’t have to say it, it’s obvious. But I just tonight realized that even though I know it, I don’t care.”

  She stared at him, seeing something in his dark eyes that she’d never seen before, never thought to see, not in this man. Not a softness, that word could never apply to him, but just a hint of vulnerability, as if she had some sort of power over him. And that he was expecting her to use it.

  Realization flooded her. He did mean what he’d said. All of it. Including that he thought her out of his league, as he’d put it. She tilted her head slightly as she explored the revelation that had struck her.

  “After I left Daniel,” she said slowly, “it was weeks before I stopped jumping at any sound behind me.”

  He grimaced, and she held up a hand before he could say the terse opinion of her ex-husband she sensed was on the tip of his tongue.

  “It took longer for me to be able to view the approach of any man without suspicion. And longer still before I could make the change from expecting the worst to assuming others meant me no harm.”

  “I would never hurt you.”

  She doubted that, although she knew he never would in the way he meant it, physically, as Daniel had hurt her. Emotionally, she wasn’t so sure. But she also wasn’t sure whose fault that would be, if she were to be so foolish as to give free rein to tangled emotions.

  “I know that. Because I’ve left that past behind. It shaped me, yes. But it doesn’t rule me.” She looked at him steadily. “Can you say that?”

  He blinked. Drew back slightly. “What?”

  “Aren’t you letting your past rule you? You’ve come so far from those mean streets, and yet they’re never that far away in your mind.”

  “I don’t want to forget where I came from.”

  “Of course you don’t. Nor should you. You should be proud that you survived, prouder yet that you got out. It can’t have been easy, even with Josh’s help.”

  “Then your point?” He said it stiffly, as if she’d offended him somehow. But she slogged on, anyway.

  “Do you really want to live like you’re still there?”

  He stood up then. Instinctively she rose as well, unwilling to let him tower over her. This was important, she sensed, or he wouldn’t be reacting like this.

  “You say I’m out of your league,” she repeated quietly, “but the only one keeping you in the league you think you’re in, is you.”

  He stared down at her. She stood her ground. It was a hard-learned lesson that took hard-won nerve, but she didn’t, couldn’t falter, not now, not here, not with this man at this time.

  The hush spun out so long she didn’t know if she could stand it. She’d never been one who felt she had to fill any silent moment with chatter, but this was different. She couldn’t help imagining that if only her hearing were a tiny bit more acute, she’d be able to hear the crackle of electricity between them.

  Finally, in a voice that sounded strung almost as tight as the tension in the room, he said, “Are you choosing option B?”

  She opened her mouth to say “Of course not!” But the words didn’t come. Because she wasn’t sure it was true. Had she, on some level, been saying yes?

  For a moment, just a moment, her heart jumped to her throat, her pulse began to hammer, and an odd combination of heat and chill gripped her.

  But then reality flooded back, taking with it the urge to leap that she’d been so close to.

  “I…I’m flattered, really,” she said, hating the sound of the words even as she said them. But the cold truth still remained. “But I’m still old enough to be your…aunt,” she finished lamely, falling back on the old analogy she’d been clinging to since the day she realized this man was going to be in her pocket for the foreseeable future.

  “I have three aunts, all of them are years older than you and I don’t need or want another.”

  His voice was harsh, and she suddenly realized he’d put his hands on her shoulders. Gently, with none of the bruising grip Daniel had used, but still firmly. She had the oddest feeling that if he weren’t doing that, his hands might be shaking. That image, of this man, so tough, so strong, sent ripples of that chilling heat through her all over again.

  “We’re going to continue this discussion,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper now, “but first…”

  She knew before he moved what he was going to do. Common sense told her to stop him before he started, but the combination of that rising heat, the tingling of every nerve and the lack of air to breathe drowned out her own warning.

  When his mouth came down on hers she nearly gasped at the sweet shock of it. It felt as if she’d been waiting for this for years. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been kissed since Daniel; she had. But never by anyone she’d wanted it from more, and that was a fact she only now admitted, even to herself.

  She had thought she might never truly trust a man again. She had accepted that possibility and gone on, thinking that if she ever came across a man who could accept that limitation, she might even venture into a relationship of sorts, the best she could hope for under the circumstances. And there had been a couple of men who had been willing to try, but in the end had given up, unable to stick it out for the length of time it had taken her to get around to trusting them.

  But she trusted this man. Maybe it was because he was Redstone, maybe it was because Josh had trusted him first and he was so rarely wrong. But whatever the reason, i
n this case the trust had come first. Perhaps that was why, in this moment, all the feelings she’d kept banked and under wraps for so long burst free at the first touch of his lips on hers, heedless of all the reasons why this was probably the least wise thing she could ever do.

  And then thought fled, burned away at the testing flick of his tongue over her lower lip. She heard an odd little moan, realized it had come from her and almost pulled away. As if he’d sensed her retreat, he pulled her closer, deepening the kiss, giving her more of the hot, incredible sensation. Things seemed to spin around her, and she wondered if he truly had somehow sucked all the air out of room.

  When he finally broke away, she nearly let out that moan again, at the loss of his heat, his touch, his taste. When he let go of her shoulders, she thought she might fall. She was almost afraid to open her eyes, afraid to see what would be in his face, afraid to look up and see the Tony Alvera she’d seen in action, the incurable flirt his reputation held he was, afraid she’d see some kind of smug satisfaction in those dark eyes, as if he’d proven she was as susceptible to his charms as any woman.

  But she did; she’d long ago quit avoiding the things she was most afraid of, another hard-learned lesson.

  He was staring at her, that much was true to her imagining. But she could never have envisioned the look of wonder that she saw now on his face; she wouldn’t even have begun to guess he could look that way.

  She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t even sure what it was, this fierce, hot feeling. But that she was even experiencing it at all, in terms that hinted that at some point she might be ready, shocked her.

  She saw him swallow as if his throat was as tight as her own.

  “Aunt?” he whispered. “I think not.”

  Tony stared at the closed bathroom door. She’d retreated to her bedroom as if it were some sort of sanctuary, then to the bathroom to do whatever it was women did to get ready for sleep.

  He’d have thought she was running from him, if he hadn’t known she never ran from anything.

  Sleep was the only thing that was on the agenda tonight, he knew. He’d expected no less. He’d already gotten more than he ever expected, in the way she’d responded to him, the way she’d gone soft and warm, the way she’d kissed him back.