She should have left last night, damn it.
She’d been told years ago, warned, not to make ties or friendships that she wouldn’t be able to walk away from if she had to. That hadn’t been all that hard to do in the military or the couple of security jobs she’d taken after leaving the army. But the warmth and caring of the Steele family had made it impossible to remain distant. Especially when all the Steele brothers had also been in the military and included her in that special bond from the day she started working with them.
On top of that, Joanne and Simon Steele made a habit, when they were back from the South of France visiting their sons and their wives, of inviting all the Steele Protectors staff for at least one dinner or barbeque per visit. Hailey had tried saying no once, just the once, only to have Joanne Steele visit her in the office personally the following day to tell her of her disappointment. One thing Hailey knew for certain, none of the Steele brothers liked for their mother to be disappointed. Against her better judgment, Hailey had attended the next dinner, and any of the social functions of Joanne and Simon’s that came after that.
She gave a dismissive shrug now. “Then your search is wrong.”
“It’s never wrong,” Haydn assured her.
Hailey bit back her irritation. She’d changed her name and identity seven years ago, after…it happened and before she joined the military. She still had no idea why the hell they had insisted on using the identity of someone who had previously existed but was now deceased. They said it made it easier, that a birth certificate, NHS number, and a history were already in place. But none of that was of any help whatsoever if someone proved all those things to be a lie. As she knew Haydn had.
She gave a shake of her head. “I can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Lucan probed.
Hailey cursed inwardly as tears stung her eyes. “Why is any of this important?” she demanded as she leaned back against the door. “Why does it matter so much to you what my name is or isn’t on my passport?”
Haydn crossed the room in two long strides. “Because you matter to us.” He was standing so close, the warmth of his breath ruffled the wispy bangs on her forehead. “Talk to us. Let us help you.”
She was tempted. Oh so tempted to tell these two men everything. But she couldn’t.
Firstly because it wasn’t only her own identity she was desperate to protect.
Secondly, she knew if the Steele brothers were made aware of her real history, they would no longer look on her as being the strong and independent woman she had made of herself these past seven years, after reinventing herself following a court case that had taken almost a year. The Steeles would no longer see the Hailey Frost she was now if they knew that. Instead, they would see someone damaged, and pity was the last thing Hailey ever wanted to see in Haydn’s beautiful gray eyes when he looked at her.
She turned away from that piercing gaze. “My name is Hailey Frost, I’m twenty-five years old, I was born in Gloucestershire, England, and my parents were James and Mary Frost.”
“I’ve never interrogated a friend before,” Lucan spoke mildly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to make you the exception.” The softness of his tone did nothing to lessen the threat behind his words.
Hailey felt an icy chill travel the length of her spine as she looked into those merciless obsidian eyes. “Rourke felt perfectly confident in my ability to guard Sophie.” The woman to whom he was now married. “I have given one hundred percent of myself, and my loyalty, to working for Steele Protectors this past year.”
He nodded. “I’m aware of Rourke’s trust in you, and no one said you hadn’t been loyal to us. But you’re hiding something now, and we can’t be sure that something won’t come back and bite a member of our family after you’ve gone.”
She gasped. “I would never…” She gave a shake of her head. “I would never do anything that might hurt any of you or those you love.”
“You sneaking off into the night isn’t going to hurt us?” Haydn accused with a knowing scowl.
She flinched. “I didn’t— I haven’t—”
“But you’re going to.” Haydn placed his hand beneath her chin to lift her face up toward his. Her cheeks were deathly pale, her gaze fixed somewhere over his left shoulder. “Aren’t you?” He squeezed her chin between his finger and thumb.
She swallowed. “I’ve handed in my notice, which means I don’t owe you any further explanations.”
“Answer the fucking question, damn you!” Haydn snapped his frustration with this situation. He knew they couldn’t force Hailey into confiding in them. But he really, really wanted to.
Her eyes glittered her fury. “It’s none of your damned business what I do or don’t do.”
“No?” he challenged.
“No.” She wrenched her chin out of his grasp before stepping away. “I’m going to leave now. I advise that neither of you attempt to follow me. If you do, I’ll be forced to call the police and accuse you of stalking me.”
“If we could all just calm down—”
“I don’t want to calm down,” she snapped in response to Lucan. “What I want is for you to just stay the hell out of my life.” She glared at Haydn. “All of you!” She slammed the door behind her as she left.
“I thought I was bad cop?” Lucan derided softly.
Haydn paced the room with as much agitation as Hailey had earlier. “Beneath all her threats and bluster, she’s scared of something or someone.”
“Yes, she is.” Lucan sobered. “Which is why she intends to keep running. Possibly for the rest of her life.”
Haydn frowned. “What could possibly have happened in her past for her to want to do that? And why the sudden change in her behavior the past four days and evenings?”
Lucan shrugged. “Maybe she had abusive parents. A boyfriend. Or possibly a husband. Maybe she stole something, or killed someone, and she’s wanted by the police.”
Haydn didn’t like the idea of any of those things in connection to Hailey. “You think it might be one of those things that’s now caught up with her?”
“There are many reasons for a person to leave their previous life. It’s a truism that the majority of people who disappear do so voluntarily,” Lucan added huskily.
“Like you did five years ago.”
“Like I did,” Lucan confirmed darkly.
“You had your reasons.”
“Yes.” Lucan sighed. “Which is why I know Hailey does too.”
“Do you really think she could have been married to someone who abused her?” Haydn changed the subject from something he knew was still painful for his brother to talk about. Besides, once Lucan suggested those reasons why Hailey might want to run away, he hadn’t been able to get the thought of someone hitting her out of his mind. It would certainly explain why she’d become a crack shot in the army and was a black belt in several of the martial arts.
“I think it’s a possibility, yes.”
He felt a rising rage at the thought of anyone hurting Hailey. “I’ll kill the bastard!”
“I’ll help you, once we know for certain that’s the situation,” Lucan assured. “But for now, we can only keep searching for why she’s so suddenly decided to leave us.”
Haydn breathed out his frustration. “From the amount of road blocks I’ve encountered during this search, I would have to say that I now believe her change in identity is too professional for it to have been done by Hailey herself.”
“Knowing the level of your computer skills, I have to agree.”
“Which means?”
“Government or military.”
Haydn nodded. “That’s what I thought. But why?”
Lucan shrugged. “Witness protection, maybe?”
“As the guilty or the innocent?”
“Until we know the facts, I prefer to think innocent,” Lucan drawled. “For now, one of us needs to go after her and stay with her to make sure she doesn’t skip London or the country
before we have all the information we need to help her.”
Haydn nodded. “I’ll go.”
Lucan gave a knowing smile. “I thought you might.”
He narrowed his eyes. “We have to keep her safe, Lucan.”
His brother’s smile gentled. “I know that too. She’s become family this last year, and we protect family at all costs.”
Even if that “family” had told them very succinctly to fuck off and that she didn’t want their protection.
Chapter Four
Hailey could feel his presence in her apartment before she had even finished closing and locking the door behind her.
Feel him.
Sense him.
She could almost taste him.
She hadn’t come home immediately after leaving the Steele Protectors offices. Instead, she’d pulled her baseball cap from the back pocket of her jeans and secured her hair up inside it before spending the next two hours moving about London. She’d walked or traveled by cab, bus, or underground, always with her narrowed gaze searching for anyone who might be following her. Once she was assured they weren’t, she had picked up her new passport and other documents from where they had been left for her in a locker at one of the train stations.
None of which would have been necessary if she’d just left London yesterday, as she’d been told to do for her own safety.
“Don’t,” he advised softly after she’d turned to press the switch to turn on the lights in her apartment.
She felt the air move rather than saw him cross the room, and seconds later, the warmth of his body as it pressed against her back. The heat of his breath caressed her exposed nape.
His arms came up to cage her in as he placed his hands on the door either side of her head. “Look at me. Turn around and look at me,” he clarified after she glanced at him over her shoulder.
She slowly turned before pressing herself back against the door so that their bodies didn’t touch. He loomed very large and intimidating in the gloom of her unlit room. “Now what?” she challenged.
“Now I kiss you,” he groaned, removing her baseball cap to allow her hair to cascade down her back as he lowered his head to claim her lips with his own.
Hailey felt the sob rise in her throat at how soft and gently Haydn’s lips explored hers. As if he was afraid of hurting or frightening her.
She tried to resist that tender caress, to hold herself apart from it, physically as well as emotionally.
In the end, she failed as, with a sob, her arms moved as if of their own volition to encircle his neck and her fingers to become entangled in the soft hair at his nape.
It was the first time in eight years she had allowed herself to accept any affection, let alone be kissed.
It felt wonderful. Glorious. A pure meeting of lips. Seeking. Searching. But never demanding.
It was the most intimate, sweetest physical connection Hailey had ever known but hadn’t realized existed.
It didn’t just break down the walls protecting her emotions, it demolished them.
She sobbed again. Then again. Until she couldn’t hold back the floodgates any longer and could only cling to Haydn as she cried in earnest.
One of his arms moved about her waist and pulled her purposefully against the strength of his body and held her tightly to him.
He allowed her to cry for several more minutes before gentle fingertips stroked the tears from her cheeks. “Time to stop now.”
“I don’t want to leave here.” Or you.
“You don’t have to,” he assured. “Whatever this is, I promise we’ll protect you.”
Whatever this is.
It was never-ending fear and helplessness.
No, not helplessness. Hailey had ensured she never had to feel that way again by learning to defend herself, both physically and emotionally.
Those same emotions Haydn had now exposed with a single, achingly tender kiss?
She didn’t even bother asking how he’d entered her apartment this time as she stepped back and away from him. To his credit, he allowed her release, his arms falling back to his sides.
“You need to leave,” she said huskily.
Haydn had been in the apartment long enough for his eyes to have become accustomed to the only light shining in from the full moon outside and those of London at night. Enough to see that Hailey’s face was all gray-and-white shadows: wide brow, dark lashes, hollow cheeks, full lips, sharp jaw. Even her red hair had taken on a silver sheen.
She had never looked more beautiful to him.
He shook his head. “Tell me your real name.” He’d checked for any results before coming here, as well as on the link through to his cell phone since then. Still nothing.
“Hailey Frost.” She turned away from him to cross the room and stand in front of the windows, still without turning on the lights. As if she knew doing so would break the tenuous link that now existed between the two of them.
More tenuous for her than him, Haydn acknowledged self-derisively. That one kiss they shared had been enough for him to want more. More and more, until he’d taken all that she was or ever would be.
“I won’t call you by that name if it isn’t yours,” he spoke softly into the quiet.
“It’s all I can give you,” she stated flatly.
“We both know that’s a lie.”
“What do you want from me?” She turned sharply to face him, the moonlight revealing the tears balanced on her long lashes. “If I told you the truth, I’d have to kill you.” She was obviously attempting to ease some of the tension in the room by coming out with that ridiculous quote.
Haydn continued to look at her with unwavering gray eyes. “Who do you work for?”
“Currently, no one,” she dismissed dryly.
“You aren’t working for Tempest Security either.”
“Well, not yet—”
“Not ever,” he rasped. “I ran a search on them as soon as Lucan told me the name of the company you said you were going to work for. The company exists on paper only. There are no offices, no employees. Nothing beyond a flimsy website and telephone number that’s answered by a woman who informed me she isn’t allowed to give out data on company employees. Or even if they are an employee.”
Hailey frowned. Her employment with the nonexistent Tempest Security was supposed to hide the fact that Hailey Frost had ceased to exist. But it couldn’t do that if Haydn had already dismissed the information as fiction.
“Tell me what changed five days ago?” he pressed.
She startled. “Nothing.”
“You changed.”
She winced. “You and your persistence are becoming a nuisance.”
His teeth looked very white as he grinned. “You have no idea.”
She was starting to. Haydn always gave off such an easygoing vibe, but these past twenty-four hours had shown her how much she’d underestimated him. “You really don’t want to know.”
“I really do.”
“Why?” she demanded emotionally. “Why not just let me go and all of you continue on with your lives?”
“For the record, neither Lucan nor I really believe you’ve done anything that will or could hurt our family.”
“I wouldn’t.” God, it was half the reason she was going and leaving behind the only friends she had, albeit on a professional level.
Which was being totally unfair to the Steele family. They cared about the people they employed. Protected them—
God, how she wished that Haydn and his brothers could protect her.
“We can,” Haydn assured, letting her know she’d spoken those words out loud. “If you’ll just trust us enough to let us do that.”
“Don’t you understand? I can’t trust anyone!” she choked out. “No one,” she added dully. She had trusted everyone once, only to be betrayed by one of the two people who should have been protecting her. “This isn’t just about me and I—I can’t!”
Haydn held back his frustration, knowing from
the desperation of Hailey’s expression that she had finished trying to reason with him. “Will you answer one question for me?”
She eyed him warily. “It depends what that question is.”
“Tell me what happened four, five days ago, now?” He needed to know, if he was forced to let her go, that she was going to be safe.
“A monster was released back into the world.” She reached out to grasp the back of a chair as she swayed slightly.
Released from where, Haydn wondered.
Released back into the world, Hailey had said. Which implied this monster had previously been free to roam the world, before being locked away, and now they were free again.
Which could mean either prison or a mental facility.
Haydn was betting heavily on it being the first.
“Did he hurt you?” He could barely breathe as he waited for her answer. When it finally came, softly but still audible, his knees almost buckled.
“Not yet.”
Thank God. “But he will?”
“I believe that’s his intention, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of his brother—” She shuddered. “I can’t talk about it.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
Haydn could barely control the rage coursing through him at the thought of anyone hurting Hailey. He didn’t give a fuck what her real name was anymore. He just wanted to keep her safe from the monster.
But first he had to know who that monster was.
His computer was programmed to receive daily updates on who had been released from prison, not just in the UK but around the world. It was vital information for ensuring the continuing safety of the Steele family and their employees, when any one of the people they had helped put behind bars was released and might decide to try to extract retribution on the people or person who had helped put them there.
The release list of five days ago had consisted of the usual mix of hardened and petty criminals, none of whom were related to any of the retrievals from kidnappings or missing persons made by Steele Protectors. Most of the prisoners released that day were serving short sentences for those petty crimes. Only five of them had been serving longer sentences. A man convicted of manslaughter. A minor drug lord. Two female arsonists. The last one—
Haydn (Steele Protectors 5) Page 3