by Lisa Childs
“For using me?” she said as all her resentment came rushing out. “For tricking me into betraying my family?”
“I just wanted to get close to you to get information about them,” he said.
She rubbed her palms over her belly. “You certainly got close.” The baby shifted beneath her touch.
“I thought you said it wasn’t mine.”
That wasn’t what she’d meant when she’d told him the baby was only hers, but maybe it was better he believed he wasn’t the father. She would never trust Jake not to hurt their child like he’d hurt her.
“He or she is mine,” she repeated. And she would be enough for the baby, if she could stay out of prison.
His dark eyes narrowed and he leaned down, staring into her face. She felt her skin flush with heat again.
“If it is mine, would you tell me?” he asked.
She had told him—in the van—but she didn’t want to remind him of that now.
“If it is mine, you would have told me months ago,” he persisted. “Because that would have been the right thing to do.”
“Like you’d know what the right thing to do is,” she murmured.
“I do know the right thing,” he said. “Bringing fugitives to justice.”
“By whatever means necessary?”
“I never meant to hurt you,” he said.
He had no idea how badly he’d hurt her. She had fallen in love with him and when she’d found out everything had been a lie, her heart had shattered.
She blinked, fighting back the tears that stung her eyes. She didn’t want him to know how much she’d cared, how much she’d loved him. But then she hadn’t loved him; she’d loved the man he’d pretended to be, not the real Jake Howard. Hell, he hadn’t even told her his real name.
She hadn’t found out what his real name was until her dad and brother had asked why the hell she was dating Jake Howard. That Jake Howard...the notoriously ruthless bounty hunter.
But he hadn’t seemed ruthless to her when they’d met. And he didn’t seem ruthless now as he gently cupped her cheek in his palm and tipped her face up to his. “I never meant for things to go as far as they did between us,” he said, and there was sincerity and regret in his dark eyes. “I just couldn’t...”
“Couldn’t what?” she asked.
“Resist you,” he murmured just before he covered her mouth with his.
She reached out to push him away, but as his lips moved over hers, she clutched her fingers in his shirt and tugged him closer. She hadn’t been able to resist him, either—then or now.
* * *
“What the hell happened?” he demanded to know. Tom had shown up at the warehouse, gun in hand, ready to put a bullet in Lillian Davies’s brain, but he had no one to shoot now. Unless he turned on his men...
And he was mad enough to start firing.
But if he did that, he would have to hire more people to track down that slippery bitch. “How the hell could she have escaped?”
“That guy,” one of the men replied, and he gestured at the truck he’d pulled into the garage. “The one who showed up in this...”
“Why the hell isn’t he dead, too?” Was he some kind of pseudo-Rambo? “How did one man and a pregnant woman escape all of you?” Disgust overwhelmed him. Of course, there were two less of them now, two casualties left behind.
But those men wouldn’t be traced back to Tom. These guys weren’t on the payroll like Lillian Davies had been. Some of the other guys were, though.
The ones he had sitting on places where she might show up. Fortunately, he hadn’t put all his confidence in this group of misfits. He pointed to the truck. “Tear it apart. Find out who this guy is and where the hell he is.”
If he was a bounty hunter, like Tom had initially thought, wouldn’t he have brought her back to jail already? Tom had someone inside in the department, someone he’d paid to notify him if she was apprehended.
She hadn’t been yet.
So where the hell had she gone?
His phone vibrated, and he pulled it out of his pocket. “Yeah?”
“She showed up here, at her brother’s place,” his chief of security said.
And Tom breathed a sigh of relief.
“She’s not alone, though,” the man added.
His relief was short-lived. “Take that guy out right away!”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want him dead!” Almost as much as he wanted her dead. This guy was beginning to cause him almost as much trouble as she had.
How the hell had he underestimated Lillian Davies so much? He’d thought she was sweet and naive and the perfect patsy since she came from a family of bumbling criminals. Nobody would believe her over him.
Unless she actually had proof.
“But don’t kill her,” Tom said. “Bring her back to me in the warehouse.”
He still wanted to kill her himself, right after he made damn sure no flash drive existed. His grasp tightened on his gun. He couldn’t wait to pull the trigger and put a bullet in her brain.
Chapter 9
Jake could taste her yet—on his lips, on his tongue. Just as he’d told her, she was impossible to resist. Even now, knowing that she could be a criminal just like the rest of her family, he was still attracted to her.
Was she still attracted to him? She’d kissed him back for a long moment before she’d pushed him away from her. Had she just been playing him, though? Using her silky lips and sweet kisses to get him to agree to hunt for this flash drive.
He really hoped the thing existed. He hoped she could prove her innocence. But he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be wrong about her or right.
If she was exactly the woman she’d seemed to be eight months ago, he had treated her horribly. And if she wasn’t...
A twinge struck his heart. Then he was still disappointed. Disappointed that what they’d had—however brief—hadn’t been real.
“This is it,” she said again as she pointed at the apartment building.
A chill chased down Jake’s back, making the skin tingle between his shoulder blades. Something wasn’t right about this.
He glanced through the windshield. This car had one. It had been parked in the garage next to the stall into which he’d pulled that shot-up van. He hoped this one didn’t get shot up. It was his vintage Chevrolet Nova he had restored a few years ago.
Maybe he shouldn’t have driven it tonight. But while the Davieses were criminals, none of them were particularly dangerous. When her dad and brother had committed their last robbery, they’d been armed with airsoft guns. Because they had conned the bank teller into believing their weapons were real, though, they’d been charged with armed robbery. They were lucky they hadn’t gotten shot with real guns.
The way they’d yelled at Lillian for betraying them when Jake had apprehended them, he’d wanted to shoot them himself then. If Lillian had had any inkling that he was a bounty hunter, she never would have brought him anywhere near her family. Not that she’d known where they were or that she’d been harboring them. Their showing up at her place had been a complete surprise to her in more ways than one. She’d said she didn’t condone anything they’d done.
But she loved them regardless.
But the way they’d turned on her...
Jake doubted they felt the same. So why had she trusted her younger brother with the flash drive?
Why would she trust any of her family?
“You really gave the only proof of your innocence to your younger brother?” he asked. And he didn’t bother hiding his skepticism.
She flinched. “I know you don’t think much of my family.”
“They break the law,” he reminded her. And despite her claims of innocence, she might have broken the law, as well.
“He’s still a Davies.”
“So am I,” she said. Then she rubbed her palms over her belly. “So is this baby...”
His baby?
He needed to know. But he wasn’t certain he could believe anything she told him. If that flash drive existed, though, if she was telling the truth about that, maybe he could trust her again, like he had all those months ago when he’d started falling for her.
“Okay,” he said, gearing himself up to face another member of her family.
None of them had taken his apprehending them well. In addition to her oldest and youngest brothers, there were a couple more in the middle and a couple of uncles and male cousins, too, who had all already been in trouble with the law. Well, except for her younger brother. But if she really had given that flash drive to Donny and he’d done nothing with it to help her, then he was in trouble with Jake.
“Let’s go talk to Donny.” Before he opened the door, he reached for his holster and drew his weapon.
Lillian reached across the console and grabbed his arm. “You won’t need that.” She shivered. “Please, put the gun away.”
He shook his head. He wasn’t sure if he needed it for Donny, but somehow he instinctively knew that he needed it. “After tonight, you can say that?”
She drew in a shuddery breath. “You’re right.” And she closed her fingers around the passenger’s door handle.
“No,” he said. “You should stay in the car.”
“After tonight, you can say that?” she asked, tossing his words back at him.
He had always loved that sassy sense of humor of hers. She’d made him laugh like no one else ever had. Even now, a grin tugged at his lips, but he fought it. He couldn’t let her influence him. But it was already too late. He shouldn’t have kissed her because now he couldn’t wait to kiss her again.
Why did she get to him like no one else ever had? What was it about Lillian Davies that appealed to him on every level? Emotional, physical...
“Okay,” he said. “But you need to stick close to me. Wait until I come around the car.”
She patted her belly again. “You don’t think I can get over the console?”
“I know you can move fast,” he said.
She’d moved too fast earlier that night and had slipped away from him more than once, nearly getting herself and him killed. He had to make sure she didn’t slip away again.
He pushed open his door and turned back to tell her, “Wait for me.”
And as he said that, he noticed the car parked across the street. Two dark shadows sat inside it. And then they were no longer inside as they opened their doors and raised their weapons.
“Get down!” he shouted at her just as the shots rang out. He hoped she’d ducked in time as bullets shattered the back window and whizzed past his head. He hunched down, too, to avoid getting shot.
But the shots weren’t coming just from that car but from behind him, as well, from the apartment she’d pointed out as Donny’s.
Had she set him up?
Was this an ambush to kill off Jake and enable her to escape him? If so, he had a horrible feeling that it just might work.
* * *
Lillian proved just how fast she could get over the console when she jumped across it into the driver’s seat. Then she turned the keys he’d left in the ignition this time and backed out.
Jake rushed around the front bumper and jerked open the passenger’s door just as she’d hoped he would. But he looked at her as if he thought she was the one firing the shots at them. More rang out, pinging off the inside of the vehicle since the back window had already shattered.
With the car in reverse, Lillian jammed on the accelerator, propelling the vehicle out of the apartment parking lot, across the street and into the car from which the men were firing. Those weren’t the only shots ringing out, however, since the front window was cracked. The rest of the glass hadn’t shattered, though. It had just cracked neatly across, and Lillian could see beneath that hairline fracture as she slammed the car into Drive and tore off down the street, the tires squealing against the asphalt.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Jake asked as his shoulder banged into the passenger’s door and his head bumped against the roof.
“I’m trying to get us the hell out of here,” she said. “And to make sure we aren’t followed.” She glanced out the back window at the wreckage of the car she’d hit. The front tire on the driver’s side was leaning toward the road. She’d broken the axle. There was no way the men could follow them in that vehicle. So she eased her foot slightly off the accelerator. But her heart continued to race with the fear she’d felt as those shots had rung out.
Jake was looking behind them, too, down the barrel of the gun he had pointed that way. But the men were too far behind them now to be able to hit, even if they were still trying to fire at them. So he pulled his weapon to his side, but he didn’t holster it.
“Pull over!” he shouted.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Pull over,” he repeated, his voice deep and rumbly with anger.
Shaking in reaction now, she steered the car to the curb. She would gladly turn over the driving to him. He reached across the console and pulled the keys from the ignition before opening his door and walking around the hood.
He had every reason to be angry over getting shot at again and over what had happened to his car. It really was—or had been—a very nice vehicle. Instead of getting out the driver’s door he’d already jerked open, she crawled over the console again and settled into the passenger’s seat.
He said nothing as he started the car and pulled away from the curb. And Lillian had to ask again, “Where are you taking me?”
“I should take you straight to jail,” he replied, and a muscle twitched in his cheek. He was clenching his jaw. It looked rigid, as she studied his profile.
Why was he so damn good-looking?
It wasn’t fair. She wanted to hate him for how he’d used her. She wanted to...
But as angry as she was with him, she was still attracted to him. That kiss had her lips tingling yet. And her pulse had already been racing before the shooting had started because she’d wanted him to kiss her again.
Why was he so angry with her now? He couldn’t think she’d had anything to do with the shooting. But maybe he’d misconstrued why she’d jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car.
“I wasn’t trying to escape,” she told him. “I was trying to get us the hell out of there.”
“Out of your setup?” he asked.
“What?”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t even form words he was so angry or so disgusted. “I can’t believe I fell for it...again.”
“What?” she repeated. And how did he mean again? Had he ever fallen for her?
She’d thought so eight months ago. She’d thought he’d come to care about her as much as she had him, that the feelings as well as the undeniable attraction was mutual. But he’d only been playing her.
“I don’t understand.”
And she didn’t—any of it.
He snorted. “You don’t understand how I keep surviving?”
She wasn’t sure how they had been so lucky that they kept escaping unharmed. But she didn’t want to jinx them by mentioning that. “I don’t understand why you’re so mad...at me.”
“You lured me here to get shot at,” he said. “So yeah, I’m pissed.”
“I didn’t!” she shouted back in protest. “Those men must have followed us.”
“Nobody followed us,” he said.
“You thought that before.”
“I was extra vigilant this time,” he said. “That car was already parked on the street when we arrived. But those weren
’t the only people shooting at us. There were shots coming from your brother’s apartment.”
Shots from his apartment? She tensed as fear swept over her again. But this time she wasn’t afraid for herself. She hadn’t considered every possibility for why that flash drive hadn’t shown up at her lawyer’s. What if something had happened to Donny once she’d given it to him?
“Did you call him when you were in the bathroom?” he asked. “Is that what took you so long in there?”
He’d already guessed what she’d been doing in there, trying to get her big belly through a small vent. He undoubtedly thought she was an even bigger idiot than he probably already had since she’d fallen for his Prince Charming act all those months ago.
“I tried calling Donny,” she admitted. “But he didn’t pick up, just like he hasn’t every time I’ve tried calling since I gave him that flash drive.” Her voice cracked with fear as she thought of how those gunmen must have been inside his apartment. Before, she’d been afraid that he might have betrayed her. Now she was afraid that she’d betrayed him by putting him in mortal danger. Was her brother dead? Was that why he hadn’t returned any of her voice-mail messages?
“Do you think something happened to him?”
“Yes,” Jake replied with no sympathy. “I think he pissed off the wrong people.”
She wasn’t sure now if he was talking about those gunmen or himself.
“Donny wasn’t the one firing at you,” she said. “He doesn’t even own a gun.” But now she wished that he had one—not to have fired at Jake but so that he could have protected himself. “Oh, my God, what have I done?”
Had she gotten her brother killed? The horrific thought had sobs bubbling hysterically out of her. She buried her face in her hands, but she couldn’t muffle them.
The rest of her family hated her because she had gotten involved with Jake. But for Donny...
He was the only one who’d understood that she hadn’t purposely betrayed anyone. He was the only one who’d still been speaking to her. Now he could be gone.
Along with the grief, guilt overwhelmed her for the doubts she’d had. She might not have voiced them like Jake had, but she’d wondered if her brother had done something else with the flash drive other than giving it to her lawyer. She’d worried that he might have seen it as an opportunity to make some money the way the rest of their family did—illegally. Like extortion. Or blackmail.