Hard to Forget

by Incy Black

  Too late now, though. This wasn’t about him. It was about Lowry. About keeping her safe.

  Sucking in a deep breath, he knuckled one window pane and, when his knock failed to gain attention, thumped more insistently.

  Mouths froze mid-conversation. Heads swung in his direction.

  He pressed his face close to the glass so they could see it was him.

  Seb, his youngest brother, moved strangely fast to let him in.

  He dragged Lowry to his side, stepped into the dining room, and waited in silence while Seb re-secured the door behind them.

  His heart pounding hard enough it was a wonder the crystal chandeliers didn’t shake, Jack reached for Lowry’s hand and intermeshed her fingers tightly with his. “I need help.” Fuck, he’d never thought he’d hear those words fall from his lips.

  Chapter Twelve

  A tall woman, willowy, her face quite, quite beautiful beneath a cap of gray curls, rose from her place at the table and approached them. “You must be Lowry,” she said with a smile, side-stepping Jack. “Welcome to the Hall.” She extended a narrow, pale hand.

  Regal and supremely self-contained as the woman was, the suspicious shine in Jack’s mother’s eyes alarmed Lowry. Oh God, if this was going to be a tearful reunion, Jack would likely pull his gun.

  Forcing her feet to remain exactly where they were, Lowry tugged at his hand insistently. How on earth was she supposed to politely accept the offer of a handshake if he refused to release her?

  He looked at her blankly, then scowled when he glanced down and saw her fingers wrapped in his. As if burned, he dropped her hand and buried his own deep into the pockets of his battered leather jacket.

  She resented that her cheeks should be the ones to tinge pink. Holding hands had so not been her idea. She wished now that she’d resisted when his fingers had brushed, then curled tightly through her own and he’d hung on tight.

  In what she hoped would be interpreted as an I-am-not-in-the-slightest-bit-embarrassed gesture, she notched her chin higher to make eye contact with the men in Jack’s family. And felt her blush immediately deepen—probably to puce. Each of his brothers wore a wide, we-just-caught-you-mooning-over-a-girl grin. His father, too.

  She looked up at Jack. Brows drawn tight, he was death-raying the men with a warning, laser glare.

  Christ, she hoped she wouldn’t have to step in and referee.

  Jack’s mother drew her firmly toward a spare space at the table. Oh God, she didn’t do people. She certainly didn’t do families. She’d never understood them, wistfully envied them, yes, but never understood them. They scared her half to death.

  Especially this family.

  “Don’t bother looking at Jack for help, my dear. His manners were always appalling, though I tried my best to civilize him. Left to him, you’d starve and die on your feet with exhaustion. Sit. Sit. Jack has an excellent memory, I’m sure he remembers his place, though I’ll concede it has been a good number of years.”

  “I’m not sure we can stay,” he warned, ignoring the gentle rebuke.

  Lowry froze.

  “Well, I am,” his mother said firmly. “And, of course you’re staying, at least for the night. This poor child looks exhausted.”

  Lowry grimaced at being described as a “poor child” and her jaw nearly dropped when Jack obeyed without further argument. She shot a glance at his mother and realized she, too, would not have dared argued with that fierce expression. All grace and favor on the outside, this woman hid a core of solid ebony every bit as unbending as Jack’s. She guessed that his mother would forgo making a scene, pretend he hadn’t been absent for nearly a decade, he’d told her—so long as he sat the hell down.

  Two of the younger men high-fived each other. “Told you he’d be back… Eventually.”

  A plate of stew with an accompaniment of perfectly formed new potatoes materialized in front of her. A glass of wine appeared on her left.

  She snuck a nervous glance toward the other end of the table, where the most senior of the men sat. Jack’s father winked at her.

  It was enough to confirm she’d entered a parallel universe, the realms of the surreal.

  Bizarrely, no one seemed particularly fazed by their sudden appearance. Once the initial shock had worn off, his family returned to whatever they’d been chatting about. As if the unannounced return of the prodigal son, with an odd Goth-punk-looking woman at his side—one wanted for murder, at that—was an everyday occurrence. This was the English aristocracy at its politest—and most disturbing.

  She was too distracted by the effort of trying to remain invisible to hesitate when Richard, Jack’s twin, offered to show her to her room. Mumbling her thanks to Lady Ballentyne for the meal, she pushed upright, grateful that, for once, her knees weren’t going to shame her. Steadfastly avoiding all eye contact with anyone other than Jack—who just shrugged unhelpfully—she followed his twin as he guided his wheelchair from the room into a vast, columned foyer.

  Decidedly uncomfortable, she eyed the wide sweep of the grand staircase that rose from the center of the magnificent entrance hall. A hand brushed against her hip. She stared down into a grin, the mirror of Jack’s when he knew he had the advantage.

  “There’s an elevator back here. Jack ordered it installed, though the architectural heritage police gave him merry hell.”

  Hoping against hope that her blushing would subside, she followed Richard as he wheeled his chair across the tessellated black and white marble floor to a wood-paneled door.

  They were midway down a long, wide corridor on the top floor when he dropped his bombshell. “You’re with Jack in his old childhood room. The west wing’s being re-wired, so his usual quarters are out of commission. The bed’s probably narrower than he’s used to these days, but I’m sure you’ll both cope.”

  It was as if she’d been doused with icy water. Her feet took root in the wide Persian runner lining the honey-colored floorboards. Heart pounding, her instincts screamed at her to turn and flee. The scent of lemon floor wax, which only moments before had delighted her, now turned her stomach. “It’s not like that between us…me and Jack…I mean…”

  His laugh alone told her he didn’t believe her. “No need to be coy, Lowry. I still have friends in the Service. They kept me current on what Jack was up to, and things got a whole lot more interesting when you joined his team. The whispers about you two kept me entertained for years. In fact, life became rather dull when you left the Service. And I lost a shed-load of money on the bet I placed.”

  “What bet?”

  “That Jack was smitten. I can’t tell you what a shock it was when I heard he’d not only shot you but insisted on you being court marshaled. My bank account’s still in recovery. What the hell did you do to him, anyway? Sleep with someone else?”

  Patient Peter’s cold, cruel face flashed before her. “In a manner of speaking.” God, was that her voice? She waited for her mouth to moisten, her throat to relax. “But, just so we’re clear, there never was and never will be anything between Jack and I. We’re not even friends…and if you lost money in that disgusting bet, you can take it from me, a shed-load wasn’t nearly enough.”

  She willed herself to keep rock still as Richard turned his chair full circle and slowly wheeled himself back along the corridor toward her. His face was as implacable as Jack’s, and his eyes, the same deep blue and just as mesmerizing, calmly held her glare.

  “My mistake,” he said, without a hint of apology. “The guest room’s just next door…if you’re sure.”

  “I’m positive, but then you already knew that. You just wanted to test me,” she accused softly.

  “Yes, I did. I sounded out Will and Marshall when you, then Jack, made the headlines. We all went through training together. I was curious to know why the notorious Lowry Fisk, wanted for murder, appeared to have my indefatigable brother in a spin—again. I felt the need to double check what I’d been told. It’s not like my brother to look a gift horse
in the mouth, certainly not one as pretty as you, sweetheart.”

  The floor lurched beneath her feet, ice shot through her veins. Tilting from the waist, she braced her hands on either side of him on the armrests of his chair and stared her anger directly into his eyes. “Well, next time you feel the urge to check on something about which you’re not certain, do so at someone else’s expense, not mine.”

  She shifted upright, desperately aware that any moment now, the suspicious sting in her eyes would give way to a flood. She stepped around him, moved further down the corridor, and stopped beside what she hoped was the correct door. Her hand around the spherical brass handle, she paused before twisting. “Is this the guest room?’ She hated that her voice caught on a tremor.

  “Yes. And I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Actually, I think you did. You’re just like him. You’ll do whatever it takes, because the end justifies the means. But what’s really depressing is that no matter how long you’ve been free of the Service, you still adhere to that. And I’m not upset; I’m pissed off.”

  “Who said anything about my having left the Service? But you’re right. I am like him. In as much as I’m fiercely protective of those I love. Hurt him, and I might have to consider shooting you myself…and you are upset.”

  “Upset about what?”

  Terrific, when the Fates decided to have a little fun at her expense, they did so with malice. God alone knew how much of the exchange Jack had overheard, but from the whip-like tone of his voice, it had been more than enough.

  With the floor threatening to give way beneath her feet, she turned and cursed them both. “Go to hell, Ballentyne. Go to hell the both of you.”

  She didn’t slam the door. There was no need. If either of them failed to understand the emphatic click of the key turning in its lock, they didn’t deserve to live. Which they wouldn’t. Not if they tried to follow her.

  …

  Jack exhaled a deep breath, before turning on his brother, his brow arched in question.

  Richard raised both hands in a poor attempt at innocence. “Don’t look at me. How was I supposed to know you’d lost your legendary touch? That there existed a woman who is immune to your good looks and charm, and who would take umbrage at the suggestion she share your bed?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, the resulting creases, he suspected, deeper than those on a busy whore’s bed sheets. Maybe, if he couldn’t see his twin, the violent urge to lunge at him and inflict bodily injury would pass.

  “You have my permission to hit me, bro. Don’t worry; I won’t break. And, God knows, you’ve wanted to beat the crap out of me since our little foray up the facade.” Richard slapped the sides of his aerodynamic wheelchair. “Don’t let this little baby stop you. I didn’t. I got on with my life. It’s just a crying shame you haven’t. Not in any meaningful way.”

  He opened his eyes. Stared hard at his brother—the once strong, vital man with unquenchable energy—now confined to a wheelchair. The wheelchair Jack had put him in. All because of a dumbass challenge from which neither one of them had been prepared to step back.

  A man he couldn’t face. A man he would avoid all he could, until able to get the hell away from the Hall.

  But he wasn’t about to let Richard off the hook for what he’d just done to Lowry. “You could always be counted on to put your foot in it. You called her ‘sweetheart.’ You’re bloody lucky you’re not sprawled on your ass right now. Last time I made that same mistake, she pulled a gun on me.”

  Richard barked a laugh. “Smart lady. And I’m not sure it’s particularly sensitive to tell a man who can’t walk that he just put his foot in it.”

  “No less insensitive than what you just did. If you’ve spoken with Will and Marshall, I presume you know the score. About Lowry. About what happened to her at the warehouse. The animal who raped her called her sweetheart, and probably a whole lot of other sweet nothings that now turn her stomach when she hears them.”

  “So you did overhear everything,” his brother said quietly. “Look, I am really sorry if I caused her further pain, but you would have done the same. And, like I told her, I needed to double check a few things.”

  “Apologize to her, not me,” he growled. “In the meantime, we need to talk about her safety, and I only hope your computer skills are half as good as they’re reputed to be, because two lives are depending on it. Lowry’s and mine.”

  Richard nodded, suddenly deadly serious. “Okay, your room or mine?”

  He glanced at the door through which Lowry had disappeared. And locked. He doubted she’d appreciate him breaking it down to check she was all right. “Neither. We’ll use the alcove at the end of the corridor. I want to keep an eye on her. First, I’ll ask Seb to stand watch on the terrace. I wouldn’t put it past her to try and make a run for it.”

  “She’s on the top floor, Jack.”

  “That didn’t stop us.” He scowled at yet another of his brother’s laughs. “And it sure won’t stop her. Not if she’s scared. And, right now, I suspect she’s bloody terrified. Staying here is going to be a huge leap of faith for her. Make that any harder on her than it needs to be, and I’ll toss you off the roof myself.”

  He threw a final exasperated look at her door, clenched his fists, and turned abruptly on his heel. “I’ll be back in five,” he promised. “Don’t disturb her. Your apology can wait.”

  After he got Seb situated, it took a little over an hour for him to brief Richard and answer questions. And Jake and Gid, who elected to join them in the alcove for the war talk. His mother and father, too, had steadfastly refused to be excluded. All that had been missing, he thought sourly, was a rug and a basket of sandwiches. They could have enjoyed a family picnic.

  He’d gotten through the briefing with the help of the better half of a bottle of whisky, but drew the discussion to an abrupt close when Richard, true to form, delved too deeply into the subject of Lowry and why he, Jack, felt the need to flush away his career, and everything that defined him as a man, over a woman he apparently didn’t even like.

  “You’re letting that mammoth guilt complex of yours get in the way,” his twin told him straight. “Damn near ten years you’ve paid for what happened to me, and now you’re risking what’s left of you for a woman who, from what Will and Marshall tell me, is dangerously unpredictable if pushed to the extreme. She’s more than capable of taking care of herself. In fact, from what I hear, she prefers it.”

  “What’s your point, Richard?”

  “Just, that it’s about time you learned to allow others to take responsibility for their own damned mistakes.”

  “Except Lowry hasn’t made any mistakes.”

  Richard snorted. “Yes she has. A whole heap of them. She should have trusted you from a start. She had a responsibility to convince you that her suspicions about the Service had foundation. Instead, she went maverick and damn near got herself killed. You didn’t rape her, Jack, and she’s damn lucky you did shoot her. So get over it… Although why the hell you had to then go and get her court marshaled, I’ll never understand.”

  Ignoring the sudden hush that followed Richard’s disclosure about what had happened to Lowry, and keen to escape, he dropped a kiss on his mother’s cheek and beat a fast retreat on the plea he needed sleep and that he’d catch up with them all in the morning.

  His brother had it wrong. He didn’t regret shooting Lowry. And he wouldn’t hesitate to do so again if it saved her life. He felt no guilt about recommending her discharge either. The Service had been slowly poisoning her. Of those two things, he was certain.

  It was the rest that bothered him.

  The fierce need to protect her, when he was foolish enough to stare deep in the misty-gray shadows of her eyes in search of the green depths below. The way his fury surged when he caught other men scoping out her body. And, most of all, the fear he hadn’t been able to rout or master. The gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, brain-numbing fear that she’d end up trusting him,
and he’d fail her. The way he had his parents.

  Their unspoken clemency for his part in Richard’s injury, and his subsequent brutish behavior toward the family since it happened, had knocked him on his ass. It had also planted a nag of unwanted questions in his brain. Would Lowry ever forgive him for all he’d done to her? Would she ever again trust him? Doubtful. No man got to escape the crimes of his past, twice. A future, his future, with Lowry at the heart of it, wasn’t something even he was arrogant enough to imagine as a possibility.

  And…standing guard outside her door like a lost, love-sick teenager wasn’t doing him any good. Richard had assured him the alarms would be set, that the dogs—the family wolfhounds—would be left to roam free. His brothers, all fully trained men with Service experience, would patrol and were more than a match for any intruder.

  Resigned that there was little more he could do, he moved onward to his own room. Maybe a shower would ease the tension threatening to rip him apart? Because the whisky sure as hell hadn’t helped.

  The shower, a hot and powerful torrent, did indeed ease his muscles, but not his mind. When sleep still wouldn’t come, he gave up.

  By way of distraction, he stripped and cleaned his gun—twice—while running his plans for keeping Lowry safe through his head, testing all the angles, probing and countering the “what ifs.”

  When finally sleep let him in, he entered with his fingers curled tight around the pistol grip of his Sig tucked beneath his pillow.

  Which is how he damn near shot her for a second time, when she slid between his sheets.

  Eyes fixed to the ceiling. Teeth gritted tight. He gave her a second warning when, by his own edict, he only ever gave one. “I told you once, Lowry, that I’d take what was freely given. You’ve got exactly ten seconds to come to your senses and shift that sweet behind of yours back to where it belongs. Next door!”

  He heard the sheets rustle.

  “I’m sick of being afraid, Jack, sick of the fact he has power over me. Four years of flinching when a man brushes against me. Four years of running when a man shows interest. It’s time to exorcise that bastard and what he did to me. And you’re going to help.”