by Lora Leigh
“I’d be careful tempting fate by asking that question,” the bodyguard grunted.
Lilly peeked around the tire, bending to see beneath the Hummer to the SUV where the flashlight gleamed on both Isaac and Desmond as they stared at the floor of the garage beneath the Lexus.
“It’s a logical question.” Desmond harumphed irritably.
“It appears to me that the girl was into too much before her return as it was,” Isaac stated. “She should take a break.”
Lilly rolled her eyes at the rueful tone of the bodyguard’s voice.
“There’s a fluid stain on the cement.” Isaac didn’t answer the obvious question. “This isn’t from the Lexus either.”
“From the cycle?” Desmond asked.
“I’ll need to send a sample off,” Isaac stated. “There’s nothing else here, Lord Harrington.” The light continued to sweep across the cement.
“If someone messed with that damned death machine of hers, then this is the only chance they would have had,” Desmond growled.
Lilly’s brows lifted. So her uncle hadn’t been involved in this attempt on her life? Or maybe he was just acting in front of Issac. He could have assigned Issac to keep tabs on her, but that didn’t mean Issac knew he was trying to kill her.
“Just find out what that fluid is from,” Desmond ordered him. “Then see what your investigator can learn about that damned Caine. There’s more to him than we have so far, I can feel it.”
“What more could there be?” Issac asked. “I’ve worked with him. He arranges things, Lord Harrington. Is your business ally attempting a takeover? Don’t want to commit murder? Call Travis Caine. Need to build an army? Call Caine. Want to take over a small country—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, call your bloody Caine. I get it,” Desmond snarled back as Lilly turned and lifted a brow in Travis’s direction.
A small country, huh?
He flashed a smile back at her. A rakish, wicked smile that had her stomach tightening and her clit swelling. He shouldn’t be able to induce such a quick, heated response. There was something just not quite right about that. Something that warned her that she was only going to end up hurting in the end.
Because she loved him.
Good God, just what she needed, to love a man that facilitated the invasions of small countries and the takeovers of cartels. No wonder her uncle was so bloody not excited over this relationship.
She grinned back at him. She was going to end up with a broken heart, there was no doubt, but damn if she wasn’t having more fun now than she had before he showed up.
“Hell, let’s get out of here.” The shuffle of bodies moving could be heard. “I need to reassure Angelica. She’s having a damned fit over this Caine situation. She called Jared tonight and he refused to even discuss his sister, which had only incited her further.”
Lilly jerked her head back, lowered it, and steeled her heart against the pain. What was that trick? She was slowly learning it, or was she simply slowly remembering it? There was a way to keep it from hurting. Especially where Jared was concerned. There was a way to block the pain, a place to put it where she could take it out and deal with it only when she had to. She didn’t have to deal with it now.
“I have to agree with him in a way.” Issac sighed heavily as they moved away. “She’s not the same woman that disappeared six years ago. She changed.”
“What created those changes, though?” Desmond asked. “That’s what I want to know, Isaac, and I want the truth this time. That report was so pat it sickened me. Victoria was no call girl. She was no terrorist’s girlfriend. There’s something that stinks about this entire deal and I want to know what the hell it is. And I want to know quickly.”
Lilly seconded that motion. She wanted to know herself what had created her, why she had become the woman she was.
The door closed behind the two men, and the lock snapped into place.
“Jared took one look at me in the hospital and sneered,” she said softly. “He told Mother, ‘That’s not my sister,’ and he walked away.”
She remembered watching the back of his head as he left the hospital room and crying. She had cried like a little child because her brother didn’t love her.
She wasn’t crying now.
Straightening, she kept her face turned from Travis as they made their way quickly back to the narrow window and then to her room. Sliding past the balcony doors, she came to a quick, hard stop.
“Damn, this night is just getting better and better,” she stated, noticing that Travis hadn’t moved in behind her. To face her mother. The coward. She had a feeling he was still hiding on the damned balcony.
“Dear Lord, you look like your great-uncle Marcus, dressed to go a-thieving.” There was anger filling her tone. Angelica wasn’t trying to be amusing, but Lilly couldn’t help but laugh.
“I don’t remember Great-uncle Marcus.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and tilted her head to the side. “Tell me about him.”
“He was a damned thief,” Angelica snapped, her blue eyes sparking with anger. “He was arrested so many times that the shame was nearly unbearable for the family. He was royalty. We are royalty and you are dishonoring every drop of blood inside your body that binds you to the greatest history on earth.”
“Oh Lord, this lecture again?” Lilly clapped her hand over her mouth, astonished that the words had actually slipped from her lips that time.
Her mother’s face was a bit worse than astonished. Outraged anger filled it, darkening her blue eyes and flushing her porcelain flesh.
“This lecture again?” Angelica repeated. “Never, Lilly, never in your life have you spoken to me in such a way, with such disrespect.”
“And I’m sorry, Mother.” She tucked her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers. “I’ve just been stressed out. I haven’t been feeling well.”
Angelica’s eyes narrowed. “Well enough to dress in black and be slipping in and out of windows. Running around riding a motorcycle like a hoodlum. What would you do if the paparazzi caught wind of this? We do not need your face splashed over the newspapers again.”
“Such as it was when you found me?” Lilly suggested. “I’m terribly sorry my return has been such a hardship for you, Mother.”
“A hardship?” Angelica gasped. “You believe it a hardship? No, the hardship comes in trying to figure out why the life you’ve been given isn’t enough for you. What in heaven’s name makes you think you can throw it all away for a past you seem determined to return to?” Frustrated anger filled her mother’s voice, her expression.
Angelica had always loved her life, the life of an English lady. She was considered a premier hostess; she wasn’t just related to the Queen Mother, she was also a friend. She had luncheons with the woman, for God’s sake.
Of course her mother couldn’t understand.
“It was bad enough your father had to get himself killed, he nearly had you killed as well, and for what, Lilly? For God and country? God might care, but let me let you in on a little fact. Your bloody country couldn’t give a damn one way or the other, and sometimes, God has to blink. The next time you die you may not be nearly so lucky as to have the option to return.”
She hadn’t had the option to return last time.
Lilly caught her breath at the thought, the knowledge. She wasn’t supposed to return. She was never to have returned.
“I don’t want to discuss this, Mother.” She sat down on the bed, lifted one foot and unlaced a boot.
“As stubborn as always,” her mother snapped, stepping closer. “You were always too hardheaded. Always too determined to have your own way, weren’t you? Just call you Lilly.” She sneered. “Lilly, as though you’re no more than a common little tart.”
“Good God.” Lilly rolled her eyes and let her
foot fall to the floor. “Mother, have you lost your mind somewhere? One of the names you gave me is Lilli-an. And don’t you think ‘tart’ is a bit of an outdated word to use?”
“Have I lost my mind somewhere?” her mother burst out. “You’re, you’re sneaking into your room at nearly three in the morning, consorting with criminals, and doing God only knows what.”
“God knows everything I do.” Lilly sighed, wondering if she could possibly continue to hold back the tears. The censure in her mother’s tone broke her heart.
“I want this to stop!” Angelica demanded. “Immediately. You will cease to consort with that terrorist you’ve taken up with. You will cease consorting with anyone that you’ve known in the past six years. You will be Lady Victoria Harrington, Lilly if you insist.” Her mother’s arms straightened, her shoulders stiffened. “You will not embarrass this family further.”
Lilly pulled the first boot off. As she lifted the other to her knee, Travis stepped from the balcony to the bedroom. Leaning against the door frame, he leveled a hard, silent look on her mother.
Angelica Harrington wasn’t easily intimidated. She had stared down two husbands, a son, a mother, and, it was rumored, the Queen Mother at one time.
“I’m tired, Mother,” Lilly said softly as she untied the boot and ignored the silent battle going on between her mother and her lover. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”
She wasn’t going to cry, she assured herself.
“I’ve tried to be understanding, Lilly.” Tears glittered in her mother’s eyes, and Lilly felt her own throat tightening. “I’ve tried desperately to be patient, to find some part of the daughter I lost six years ago.” She shook her head as a tear slipped free. “Perhaps you did die that night with your father.”
Lilly didn’t speak. She stared at the floor as her mother turned and stalked from the bedroom, the door slamming behind her.
Lilly breathed in slowly and deeply before returning her attention to the boot. She unlaced it, pushed it from her foot, then removed the socks she had donned with them.
Standing, she pulled the T-shirt off, then the jeans, leaving herself dressed only in the light lacy white camisole and panties she wore beneath.
She suppressed the chill that tried to race up her spine, and the sense of cold, depressive despair. Her mother had never spoken to her in such a way. She was reputed to be brutal to others, even friends. She had heard her parents argue through her life and her mother had been like sharpened steel slicing through melted butter.
Lilly could feel the wounds herself now, and they sliced to the bone.
“It must be because it’s your mother,” Travis stated as he moved into the room. “Anyone else and your tongue would have sliced them to the bone.”
She turned and stared back at him. “If you can’t respect your mother, you can’t respect yourself,” she said sadly. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”
Why hadn’t she? She used to. Lilly remembered that. The lectures were always lovingly tolerated. She had never snapped at her mother.
Travis shook his head, his hands settling on her shoulders. “She was wrong. Lady Victoria Lillian Harrington didn’t die six years ago.” His head lowered, and the ice that had been forming inside her began to melt. “Six years ago, she was reborn, and knowing the before and after, I have to say I much prefer the version in my arms now.”
His hand smoothed down her hair, his arms held her close. And Lilly realized that in the months since she had awakened with six lost years, no one had held her. No one had hugged her. And no one had said, “Welcome home.”
Chapter 13
she was going to break his heart. Travis had never before seen such tormented emotion on Lilly’s face as when her mother had raged at her.
He’d seen concern in Angelica Harrington’s eyes at other times. He’d seen love on her face. She cared for her daughter, but not to the exclusion of her pride evidently. Or the exclusion of the paparazzi.
Holding Lilly close against him, he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had truly happened that night in England at the fateful party when Lilly had lost everything important to her.
It had been by sheer luck that Noah had been outside that night and had seen the masked figures loading Lord Harrington and his daughter into the Harrington car.
They hadn’t been able to stop the assailants, and by the time Travis and Noah were able to catch up with them, the car had been flying off the cliff, the explosion ripping through the darkness.
The suspects had raced away, and attempting to save Lilly and her father had been more important than chasing after their murderers.
Hypnosis had gotten them nowhere with Lilly in her attempt to remember who killed her father. As her mother said, she was hardheaded, stubborn. She was willful, but she was a damned good woman and a hell of an agent. She was a woman that cared enough about injustice to fight against it.
“When I was younger, we dressed the same,” Lilly whispered against his chest. “My mother would have my dresses made to match hers for our shopping trips, luncheons. The Queen Mother once told me that I was the perfect lady, and that she was proud to know me.”
Travis bent his head over hers and held her tighter. There was such pain in her voice.
“Jared was always very jealous,” she said. “But he loved me. He and Father would take me hunting and riding with them. They allowed me to go on walks with them in the evenings. We were such a close family. Before Father died. Before I died.”
She pulled away from him and moved toward the bathroom. “I need a shower.”
“I have to connect with Nik tonight,” he told her. “Come with me.”
Surprisingly enough, she shook her head. “I need to shower.”
She needed to think, perhaps.
Travis didn’t want to leave her alone. He could see the emotions tearing through her, feel the tension inside her.
“Santos and Rhiannon met with you and Senator Stanton, Nik, and Noah Blake tonight as well as Jordan Malone,” she stated as she moved to the bathroom. “I was rather surprised that a senator would associate with two high-priced pimps.” She walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
Hell, how had she known about that meeting, and who else knew about it? Travis’s jaw tightened. Seconds later he pushed into the room while she adjusted the water in the shower.
Lilly turned to him, suspicion still roiling through her as she watched the set expression on his face.
“Why don’t you simply tell me what I need to know?” she asked, hearing the chill in her own voice.
She watched as he leaned against the counter, his eyes narrowed on her while the water ran full blast in the shower.
It would drown out any listening device, she knew. A murmur of voices might be heard, but not the actual words they were saying.
“What do you need to know?” He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her, his gaze flickering over her body.
Mimicking his stance, she leaned back against the shower, crossed one ankle over the other, then crossed her arms beneath her breasts, deliberately plumping them out for him.
“Are you enemy or ally?” she asked.
His lips thinned. “Don’t ask me that question, Lilly,” he warned her softly.
Lilly shook her head as the tears finally flooded her eyes. “Who can I trust, Travis? Tell me who I can trust and I’ll go ask them my questions.”
She needed someone, oh God, someone she could trust to give her the answers she needed. She felt as though she were breaking apart inside. As though she had lost something so essential that a part of her was missing now and she didn’t know what to do without it.
He wiped his hand over his face as he breathed out roughly. “Lilly, you have to be patient.”
“
Patience is going to get me killed,” she hissed furiously, shuddering at the knowledge that she had no idea how to watch her own back, or who to watch out for. “For God’s sake, Travis, someone has tried to kill me twice now, and that’s not counting six years ago when I disappeared. Someone tried to kill me then, and we both know it.”
His jaw tightened in fury. The knowledge was there in his eyes. She could see it.
“You know what happened the night Father died,” she whispered.
“I told you I knew you. You have that in the report your uncle paid for. We fought together plenty of times, Lilly. You’ve covered my back—”
“I’ve saved your ass.” The tears were clogging her voice now, fighting to be free. “I know I have.”
“And I’ve saved yours,” he agreed. “You already know this.”
“Why?” She just wanted the truth. That was all she wanted, and she knew she hadn’t gotten it yet. All she was hearing were half-truths and lies and she was tired of it. “Why did we save each other’s lives?” Her breathing hitched with the tears. “Tell me, Travis. Please, God, just tell me who I was.”
“You were Lilly. You still are Lilly.” But she was more, and she knew it.
“Are you my enemy or my ally?” she asked him again, feeling the pain, feeling a sense of betrayal tearing through her. “Tell me, Travis, which are you?”
“How much do you remember?”
“Pieces,” she whispered. “The safe house, the storage shed where I had my cycle parked, my weapons stored. I remember what I think are pieces of what had to be missions that don’t make sense yet. The memories are closer, Travis, I can feel them.”
“Why can’t you wait for them to return, Lilly?” he sighed heavily. “It would be so much easier for both of us.”
Her hand lifted, covered her lips. She had no idea how much longer she could hold back the tears, as the pain resounded through her.
“My brother turned his back on me,” she whispered, feeling her lips tremble. “He said I was nothing to him. I was no sister of his.” She shook her head, fighting against that memory. “My mother hasn’t hugged me. My aunts haven’t visited me. The people I knew as friends stare at me as though I’m some apparition that disgusts them.” She rubbed at her arms, breathed in roughly. “I changed my face, Travis. I changed even my eye color. Tell me why.”