Backstreet Hero Page 6

  By the time they were outside in the spring sunshine he was feeling a little better, and he didn’t think it was entirely due to getting out of the oppressive surroundings. They got to the car and he opened the door for her. She thanked him with another smile, obviously having no problem with having a door opened for her, and as he went around to the driver’s side he was feeling much better.

  He pulled the driver’s door open, turned to get in. And the view he got of the California Institute for Men jolted him back to reality.

  If not for the grace of Josh Redstone, there was a grimly real chance he would have wound up there, or someplace like it. Or worse, like Chaco Ramirez, who’d ended up in Pelican Bay, locked down twenty-three hours a day.

  Instead, he’d been in school—although he wasn’t sure the battle for acceptance there was much easier than the battle to stay alive and well in prison. And then college, and then further training under the wing of Redstone, in anything that had interested him. And some that didn’t; his street brothers would have laughed as he learned about table manners and the right fork, but Josh had insisted.

  He’d come a long way, true.

  But no matter how far he’d come, he still hadn’t reached the point where Lilith Mercer—or Daniel Huntington—had started.

  He never would.

  Chapter 8

  Lilith sat in the Redstone car in silence, marveling a little over what had just happened. She felt a quiet, inner satisfaction that she had experienced only the tiniest of inner lurches when Daniel had walked into that room.

  She knew nothing had shown on the outside, but that had never been a requirement; Daniel could always sense her fear. It told him how far he could go—when he knew someone was afraid of him, any boundaries fell away. But today, there had been nothing.

  She had been, as Tony had so aptly put it, iced.

  But to her surprise, the greater satisfaction came from something else, something that surprised her. She had never thought of herself as vengeful, but she couldn’t deny that she had taken a certain pleasure in seeing suave, sophisticated Daniel Huntington treated like the dog he’d called Tony.

  And even more pleasure that her “pit bull” had turned on him. The words played back in her mind, and she looked away, out the passenger window, not certain she could hide her odd reaction.

  Does he service you like the bitch that you are?

  Daniel had said it, of course, to insult her. It was crude, and coarse, and meant to convince her she wasn’t good enough for his world.

  Funny how, instead, the abusive words had sent thoughts and images roaring through her brain that now made her afraid to turn her face to the man Daniel had been speaking about.

  He’s much, much better at it than you ever were.

  Her answer had been calculated to enrage him. And it had.

  But it had also intensified those vivid images racing through her mind, until she had felt her heart begin to pound in her chest as her pulse picked up.

  Because she had little doubt that the slap aimed at her ex-husband was true. Little doubt because, she told herself, Daniel had been a perfunctory lover when calm, and a painfully rough one when angry.

  It had nothing to do with what kind of lover Tony Alvera was. That was something she’d never know.

  She told herself that, given how many women probably already knew, that was a very good thing. And then she told herself again.

  She steadied herself, forced herself to look at the man in the driver’s seat, wondering why they were still sitting in the prison parking area, why he hadn’t even turned the key.

  Unusually for her, she felt the strain of silence and finally spoke. “So now you know.”

  “Now I know what?”

  “How shockingly bad my judgment can be.”

  “Was, maybe back then.”

  She appreciated the assumption that it had improved.

  “But that mask he wears is pretty good.”

  “I was hoping never to see it again. I had relegated all that to the past.”

  “The past,” he said quietly, “is part of what made us who we are today. You may not think about it, but it’s always there.”

  It wasn’t a stretch to realize he wasn’t just talking about her. And for all the painful experience she’d gone through with Daniel, it had been only a few years. She’d been an adult, and she’d enjoyed a fairly happy and secure childhood. For Tony Alvera, there had been none of that respite; he’d had to start fighting as a child, probably younger than she cared to think about.

  “Did he always talk to you like that?” he asked.

  She was almost grateful for the disruption of her thoughts. The tangle of imagining what this man had been through—and her own out-of-hand imaginings about him—were getting stickier by the minute.

  “No. If he had, I would never have married him, no matter who he was or how happy it made my parents. It was only later on that that kind of thing started. I’ve often tried to figure out if there was something, some incident that set him off, because for the first six years of our marriage, he was…normal.”

  “But you never found anything?”

  “No. Nothing that stood out to me, anyway. On the surface at least, things were…if not happy, at least pleasant. Then the insults started. My family, according to him, were latecomers to wealth, whereas his had been old money. Generations of old money.”

  “Built on what?” Tony asked, surprising her with how quickly he asked the key question.

  “Smuggling,” she said, confirming his guess. “Back in the day it gave them enough to buy their way into academia, politics, and they used the mask of public service to hide their origins. It worked. Now people either don’t know—an ignorance I have to confess to—or choose to forget where the Huntingtons made their fortune.”

  “So now they’re legit.”

  “Oh, I’m sure their fingers are in a few things that would raise eyebrows. The polish is only a veneer. A very thick one after all these years, but underneath, they’re the same cutthroats that used to lure ships onto the rocks so they could steal the cargo, and the drowning crew be damned.”

  “Nice.”

  “And Daniel is the culmination of all those years of polish and wealth.”

  “And he tried to murder you. How can you be so calm about it? About him?”

  She smiled at that. “I wasn’t, not always. It took a long time to reach the assurance that one man was not all men, and my ex-husband was not worth becoming a frightened, timid person for.”

  Something shifted in his steady gaze then. His expression changed. It took her a moment to realize that what she was seeing was undisguised admiration.

  An odd sort of warmth flooded her. She tried to gather her thoughts, to control this strange, unknown response to a simple look.

  Except there was nothing simple about the look Tony Alvera had turned on her. And she was finally forced to admit that part of the satisfaction she’d felt had been because he’d lost his cool, on her behalf. He’d jumped Daniel in her defense. Somehow the fact that he’d lost his cool because Daniel had insulted her made it much more personal.

  But personal was exactly what this couldn’t become, she told herself. Still, she wanted to say something to him. She tried to put into words something she’d been thinking since the moment her ex-husband had walked into that visiting room.

  “Daniel was born to a world of privilege, and that’s the facade he presents to the world, but underneath it all, he’s the worst kind of slime.”

  “That,” Tony said, “goes without saying. I’ve seen street killers with more class. At least they don’t hide what they are.”

  “And that’s the world you were born to,” she said, thoughtfully. “But you worked your way out.”

  “Josh gave me that—” he began, but stopped when she shook her head.

  “You know as well as I do Josh doesn’t believe in handouts. He may have given you the opportunity, the hand up, but you did it yourse
lf. You worked, fought and probably clawed your way out. Now, that’s something to be admired.”

  For a long moment he simply stared at her, looking stunned. She’d known his story—at least, the versions that circulated at Redstone—but never really thought of it beyond the surface. Now, after having been inside that prison and seeing where he could so easily have ended up, she felt an even greater sense of amazement.

  In an odd, unexpected sort of way, she felt proud of him.

  That’s it, she told herself. You’re proud of him. Proud of him like…like a doting aunt would be.

  Because she was old enough to be his aunt, she knew. She wasn’t sure exactly how much older she was, but enough.

  At least you’re not old enough to be his mother, she muttered inwardly.

  She refused to think about why that small fact made her thankful.

  “I blew it,” Tony said at the end of his report, his voice grim as he faced his boss. He’d dropped Lilith off at Redstone Headquarters and come straight back to report.

  John Draven looked at him in that cool, calculating way that made anybody with sense realize he was messing with somebody who could take him down in an instant. And would, if he thought he had to.

  After a moment, Draven simply said, “Why?”

  Tony blinked. “What?”

  “Why did you blow it?”

  Leave it to Draven to cut to the crux of things. “I just did,” Tony muttered.

  “You’re one of the coolest agents we’ve got. You never lose your composure. Even when Lisa was killed, you stayed cool and finished the job.”

  Tony winced inwardly, as he always did at the mention of Lisa. She’d been the first woman he’d ever thought about forever with. And he’d gotten forever, all right. The only forever anyone was ever guaranteed—forever dead.

  “Always a first time,” he muttered. He shifted uncomfortably, as much because of Draven’s scrutiny as from having to admit to his mistake.

  “So why now?”

  The only answer Tony had was something Draven wasn’t going to want to hear, something that would likely get him pulled off the case.

  “Is this something to do with why you lobbied for this assignment in the first place?”

  He should have known Draven would make the connection. Knowing he had no real choice, he answered. Carefully. “I told you. I worked with her on Beck’s case. We got along. I thought she might prefer somebody she knew, at least a little, rather than a stranger poking around in her business.”

  He was sure his demand to be assigned to this had been far more strident than that casual explanation made it seem, just as he was sure that fact was obvious to his boss. But he wasn’t ready to go any further. In part because he didn’t really have an answer to Draven’s question.

  Why now? Why lose it now, when he’d been fine working with her during the entire thing with Beck and Liana? Was it simply because then the focus had been on them, and not on Lilith? He’d felt the same way then, and working with her had only expanded his admiration. She was tireless, and more than once Liana had remarked that Lilith could wear her out. He could see that himself now; she never seemed to slow down.

  Or was it something stupider? Had working with her, talking with her, seeing her concern for Liana and her cop even though she barely knew either of them, weakened the barriers he’d built? Had he somehow lowered his guard, let impossible ideas into his head?

  He jammed those thoughts back into that cage in his mind that seemed to be getting fuller and harder to close these days. And when he spoke again—as he had to, in response to Draven’s silent, patient waiting—it was again the truth.

  “Lilith is a classy, kind, generous lady. He talked to her like she was some twenty-dollar streetwalker. It pissed me off.”

  “I see.” For an instant Tony thought Draven was fighting a smile, but that seemed so impossible he knew he had to be wrong. “I suppose I should be glad you left him alive, then.”

  “It was close,” Tony muttered.

  “Your tux clean?”

  Tony nearly gaped at his boss, nonplussed by the abrupt non sequitur. “What?”

  “Your tux,” Draven repeated with an exaggerated air of patience.

  Tony gambled on yes, because he always had it cleaned after the rare occasion when he was required to wear the thing. He wouldn’t have one at all if Josh hadn’t insisted there would be occasions when he would need it. “Uh…yes.”

  “Good. Because you’ll be taking your…assignment to Josh’s Back to Life prosthetics fund-raiser tonight. Under wraps, of course, so you’ll have to act like an escort, not a bodyguard.”

  Automatically, Tony cataloged the reason for the event. Redstone R&D had been the leader in that field of research ever since Ian Gamble came up with the prosthetic foot that had revolutionized the entire endeavor.

  Then the rest hit him.

  Tux. Escort. Fund-raiser.

  They all added up to formal. He groaned inwardly. It wasn’t that he couldn’t dress up—he had, on several occasions, when the assignment demanded it.

  He’d just never done it as somebody’s escort before.

  Lilith’s escort.

  He fought down the rising tide of heat that was building within him. God, what if she wore that red dress again? What if he had to look at her like that, sticking close to her side like a good bodyguard, all evening?

  He opened his mouth to suggest someone else do it. He just wasn’t sure who. Rand Singleton would be perfect—he could picture Rand, who was even blonder and almost as beautiful, with Lilith—but he and his wife, Kate, were still ensconced in the woods west of Seattle, keeping Redstone Northwest safe and running smoothly.

  “This is a direct request from Josh, so if there’s a problem, Alvera, tell me now. I’ll put Taylor on the case and you can go get your head together, or whatever you need to do.”

  “No,” he said instantly. The last thing he wanted was a brand-new headquarters agent, no matter what her outside experience, responsible for Lilith’s safety. He would simply have to get his head back in the game, and fast.

  “I know you hate these things,” Draven said. “I’m not fond of them myself. But it’s only a few hours. You can stand anything for a few hours.”

  I’d rather be tortured, Tony thought, but wisely kept that thought to himself; somehow he didn’t think it would be well received by a man who wouldn’t take it as a figure of speech. Draven had personal experience with torture, and the scars to prove it.

  Still, Tony thought as he left the airport office of Redstone Security, there was physical pain, and then there was nonphysical. And sometimes the nonphysical kind was worse.

  Problem was, he was very much afraid this could turn into both.

  Chapter 9

  “Josh, really, it’s a public event, with a lot of people. I hardly need a bodyguard under the circumstances.”

  “Sorry, Lil. Not negotiable.”

  Josh’s voice held that note she knew so well, implacable, immovable. The voice that so startled unsuspecting folk who took his regular speech at face value and assumed he was as slow as his lazy drawl. If he were here instead of on the phone, she knew exactly what expression he’d be wearing, only his eyes giving away the steely resolve.

  “Don’t worry,” he said then, a glimmer of humor changing his tone, “he cleans up pretty nice. Better than I do.”

  Lilith chuckled at that; Josh hated putting his tall, lanky body into formal wear, and his usual lament was that he was much happier in jeans and cowboy boots. Even Lilith, who’d never been closer to a cowboy than a movie or TV screen, had to admit that the attire suited him, made her see the almost universal appeal.

  It wasn’t until they’d hung up that the other part of what he’d said really registered.

  Don’t worry, he cleans up pretty nice.

  “Oh, I’m sure he does,” she murmured under her breath.

  He was amazing enough already. With that easy, practiced charm he seemed to tu
rn on so effortlessly, he reminded her a little too much of Daniel. But unlike Daniel, where the veneer was all there was, where the charm dripped from every pore only in public, in Tony it was a striking counterpoint to his edgy, dangerous looks. Even if you didn’t know his background, anyone could sense the edge was sharp and the danger real.

  There was, she knew, a type of woman who was drawn to that particular paradox. She’d never thought herself one of them.

  And you aren’t drawn to Tony Alvera, of all people, she told herself firmly.

  She even believed it. It had simply been a very long time since she’d had a man around with any regularity, and having this one practically in her pocket all the time was unsettling. That was all.

  The problem was hers, she knew. He was simply doing his job, and doing it with the thoroughness and determination that was the Redstone hallmark. If he had the slightest clue she was even having these thoughts, he’d likely laugh in her face.

  No, he wouldn’t do that. That would be Daniel. Tony would never laugh at someone in the family. He was probably used to such things, given the number of those women she’d been speculating about.

  However, he would also likely ask to be pulled from this assignment, and rightfully so.

  And that would solve my problem, wouldn’t it?

  It would. But the image of how that request would sound, of Tony going to Draven, or worse, Josh, and explaining why he couldn’t stay on this assignment, was so hideously humiliating that she couldn’t even think it through.

  Since asking Josh to call the whole thing off had been fruitless so far, she had no choice but to deal.

  And deal she would. She’d stood up to Daniel Huntington, so this should be nothing. She simply had to make certain that the man Josh had glued to her never got the slightest clue that the woman who was merely a job to him was having thoughts that would mortify them both. If she was ten years younger…