by Lisa Childs
“Lillian...?”
She closed her eyes, so she couldn’t see him. Because just looking at him aroused her, made her want him so badly that she could forget how painfully he’d broken her heart and her trust. He, obviously, didn’t want her the same way anymore.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Then he snorted derisively at himself. “Of course, I know what’s wrong.”
“Everything,” she murmured. But then her baby kicked, reminding her of the one thing that was right in her life. Having this child, having Jake’s child...
He gently brushed away her tears and touched his lips to her forehead. And his tenderness caused a whole new rush of tears.
He was making it so hard for her to hang on to her anger and resentment of him. He was making it so hard for her to remember that she needed to hate him now—not love him.
“You need some rest,” he said. Then he easily swung her up in his arms as if she weighed no more than she had before—when he used to carry her so effortlessly. But then, when he’d carried her to bed, he’d joined her. Now he carried her into a bedroom and just laid her on the bed.
But he stared down at her. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel his gaze on her. So she looked up at him, and one of her fears bubbled out. “Am I that repulsive to you?”
“What?” His brow furrowed with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
She touched her belly. “I’m huge. So I’m probably a huge turnoff.”
He laughed.
And the laugh struck her like a slap, making more tears spring forth along with a gasp.
He sat on the bed next to her. “Lillian! I thought you were joking.”
She touched her belly again. “This is no joke.”
“I know,” he said. “How do you not know?”
Now she furrowed her brow as confusion overwhelmed her. She was too tired. She couldn’t understand him. But then she’d struggled to understand him eight months ago when she’d found out he was just using her. She’d failed to understand how he could be so ruthless about his job that he’d had no regard for her feelings and her heart.
“Know what?” she asked.
“That you’re beautiful,” he said and a sigh that sounded almost wistful escaped his lips.
She shook her head. “No, not now...” She knew what she looked like, that she had big dark circles rimming her eyes, making her face look like a raccoon’s, while her body with her big belly made her look like a beached whale.
“More now than ever before,” he said. “I never knew what people were talking about when they claimed that pregnant women glow. Now I know. You’re...radiant...”
She laughed now. He had to be joking.
But the look on his face was so intense, so sincere, that she believed him. Of course, she’d believed him before—when he’d told her his fake name and job. But he didn’t restore old cars for a living, and he wasn’t Jacob Williams. Actually, he had restored at least one old car...
But his name—that had been a lie. Wasn’t it?
She wondered now—who was the real Jake?
And dare she believe anything he told her?
“If you really think that, why did you pull away from me?” she asked. “Why aren’t you in this bed with me?” Instead of sitting so far on the edge of it that he looked like he was about to fall onto the floor?
He groaned, and heat brightened his dark eyes. “I want to,” he said. “I want to join you so...badly.”
Her heart flipped and she gasped as that heat rushed through her. She wanted to reach out to him. She wanted to drag him into that bed with her.
But he shook his head. “But we can’t...”
She knew the reasons. So many reasons why it was a bad idea...
But still she asked, “Why not?”
“I don’t want to hurt the baby.”
She shook her head. “The doctor said sex won’t hurt the baby.”
“You asked?” Jake tensed. “Have you been seeing someone?”
Another laugh slipped through her lips, but it sounded high-pitched and a little hysterical. “Yeah, right. Like anyone would want to date me.”
“I told you you’re even more beautiful—”
She shook her head. “I’m also facing trial for a crime I was framed for,” she reminded him. “I’ve been trying to prove my innocence. So I’ve been a little busy.”
“What about before all that?” he asked. “Were you seeing someone then?”
“Since you?” she asked the question he obviously wanted to but hadn’t.
He nodded. “Yeah, since me.”
“No,” she said. But she didn’t want him to think she was still in love with him, even though she was beginning to fear that she was. “After you, I couldn’t trust anyone else.”
He flinched and moved off the bed. He hadn’t fallen. He just stood up and stepped away. “You’re not the only one struggling to trust right now,” he told her.
And she returned his flinch.
“You’ve been arrested,” he said.
“I told you I was framed.”
But he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “You skipped your trial. You’re on the run. Why should I trust you?”
“Because I never lied to you,” she said.
“I don’t know that for sure,” he said. “I don’t know that you’re telling me the truth now about this flash drive full of evidence. It could just be a ploy.”
“A ploy?”
“To get away from me,” he said, “so I don’t bring you to jail.”
“It’s not,” she insisted, although she was no longer convinced that the flash drive existed. She hoped it—and Donny—had not been destroyed. But it had existed. She’d risked her life once already to get it. “I don’t lie.”
“If that’s true, you’re the only Davies who doesn’t, then,” he said.
And he was right. She probably was the only Davies who didn’t lie. So had Donny lied to her when he’d promised he’d bring the flash drive to her lawyer?
Had every man she’d ever loved lied to her?
Tears stung her eyes and her nose. She was too tired to fight them, so she just closed her eyes. And those tears streamed out and trailed down the sides of her face. She heard the catch of his breath. He must have seen those tears. Her lids were so heavy now that she couldn’t lift them again—even when she felt the brush of his lips across her forehead.
And he whispered, “Be here when I get back.”
She was too tired to try to escape from him now. So she only nodded and let herself drift off to sleep. Or maybe she’d already been asleep and this whole ordeal had just been a nightmare. Not just the arrest but Jake not being the man he’d told her he was.
Maybe when she awakened, she would be lying in the arms of Jacob Williams—her head against his chest, his heart beating slow and steady against her ear.
* * *
Tom Kuipers expelled a ragged sigh of relief. “So you managed to follow them?”
“Yes, they took out one vehicle, but they didn’t know we had another parked in the apartment lot. We followed. We have eyes on them now.”
“I want more than eyes on them,” he said. “I want them dead.”
“That hasn’t been easy to manage,” his chief of security, Archie Wells, said. “We don’t know yet who the hell this guy is or what he’s doing.”
“What?” Tom prodded as Archie trailed off. “What’s he doing?”
Archie replied, “He’s leaving the house.”
Tom’s chest swelled with hope. “Alone? Is he alone?”
Archie waited a few seconds as if he was checking before replying, “Yes.”
“Then let him leave,” Tom said. For now...
“I thought you wanted him dead.”
“I want her mo
re,” Tom said. “Since her bodyguard is gone, get her and bring her back to me.”
If he had to, he would torture the truth out of her about that damn flash drive. He had to make sure no evidence existed that proved what he’d done. He could not go to prison; that was not part of his plans.
“What about the guy?” Archie asked.
“Have someone wait for him to come back,” Tom ordered. “And take him out then.”
Tom clicked off the phone and kicked his feet up on his desk. Relief flooded him. Finally, the plan had gotten back on track. It would all be over soon. And he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone ever figuring out the truth.
As long as that damn flash drive didn’t really exist. If it did...
He would have to find it and destroy it, just like he intended to destroy Lillian Davies.
Chapter 11
What the hell was wrong with him?
Jake’s chest felt tight, like something was pressing on his lungs. He struggled to draw a breath. But it wasn’t just his chest that ached; his heart hurt, too. Like someone was squeezing it.
Lillian.
She’d had that effect on him before—eight months ago. But he’d thought he was smarter now. That, given her arrest, he would be more cautious. He had no proof that anything she was saying was the truth.
So how had he let her get to him again?
She had him so distracted that he must not have noticed someone tailing them from her brother’s apartment. He saw that tail now, as he backed out of the garage. This wasn’t a neighborhood where people parked on the street and sat in their vehicles.
That was why he’d chosen it for his safe house. So he could easily spot the people who didn’t belong. The two guys in the white vehicle didn’t belong.
The cargo van looked suspiciously like the shot-up one parked in his garage. Of course, there were a lot of white vans on the road. But two identical ones in the same vicinity that looked like they had probably been leased for the same company. Tom Kuipers’s company?
Whatever else she might be lying about, Lillian wasn’t lying about how dangerous her former employer was. So if she was telling the truth about that, maybe she was telling the truth about everything else.
“Damn,” he murmured.
If she was a liar, he might be able to protect himself. But if she was as honest as he’d once thought she was, he had no protection from her.
But he wasn’t the one in danger right now. She was. He had left her alone and unprotected in the house. But he had no doubt she wouldn’t be alone long. The men wouldn’t be able to easily get inside, but they might be able to coerce her into coming out. They were obviously there for her since no car followed him.
Jake turned the corner and circled around the block. There was an alley behind his house, another way in and out. He had thoroughly researched the location before he’d bought the place, planning for every scenario.
He had not planned for one like this—with a pregnant woman in danger. He had to be careful so that he didn’t put her more at risk. But if those men got inside the house, if they got to her...
The place was a fortress.
The locks were unpickable. The doors were steel and so were the jambs. That way they could not be kicked open. The windows were bulletproof glass, which made them impossible to break. Even the walls of the little bungalow were brick, so they couldn’t take a chainsaw and cut them down. They would have to drive a tank through the walls to get inside the house.
That was the only reason he’d left her—because he’d thought she would be safe. But while he had taken every safety precaution with the house, he couldn’t trust that Lillian wouldn’t open the door herself.
She had already tried to escape him twice. What if she had only been faking falling asleep and she tried to leave again and walked right into the clutches of her killers?
His heart racing with fear for her, he stopped the car in the alley and jerked the keys from the ignition. He needed another key that dangled from the ring in his hand. He needed the key for the lock on the gate to the alley, because the fence around the house was impenetrable, too.
His hand shook as he struggled to insert the key in the lock. He had to hurry. He could hear pounding. Someone was trying to kick in the door.
If she opened it before he got there...
She might be dead before he ever had the chance to save her—if the guys started shooting like they had at her grandmother’s cottage once they’d stepped through the door.
The thought of her being in that kind of danger steadied his hand and he easily turned the key, unlocking the solid metal gate. He pushed it open and rushed into the backyard, his weapon drawn.
Someone must have come around the back of the house looking for another way inside because he came under immediate fire. Bullets struck the fence near his head, pinging off the metal. The shots were close.
Ducking low, he raised his weapon and returned fire. He had only seen two guys in the white van parked on the street from the house. But with the number of shots ringing out, he realized now that there were more.
How the hell had he missed seeing them, too? Were they that good or was he that distracted? Since he’d met her, Lillian had become a distraction for him. Eight months ago, after he’d gotten to know her, he’d even considered not going after her fugitive family. But then they’d shown up and recognized him and he’d had no choice.
He had no choice now. He had to get to the house—even if he got shot trying to get there.
Jake had been in some dangerous situations before, but for the first time, he was worried that this one he might not survive.
And if he didn’t survive, what were Lillian’s chances?
* * *
Falling asleep hadn’t brought Lillian out of a nightmare but into another one. This dream was so real, it was as if the pounding and the gunfire actually echoed around her. She flinched with the retort of each shot.
And she jerked awake with a scream tearing out of her throat. She couldn’t have been asleep for very long. She wasn’t at all rested. But of course that might have been because of the dream.
Then she heard more shots ring out, and she knew she hadn’t been dreaming at all. The nightmare was real.
What the hell was going on?
Jake couldn’t have been gone very long. Was he one of the people shooting? Had he stepped outside his door into another ambush?
She’d had no idea going to her brother’s apartment had been walking into a trap. Had Donny been part of that? If he’d gotten a gun, though, it would have been to protect himself.
Not to kill someone. Not even Jake.
Her family did hate him, though.
But while her family consisted of criminals, none of them were killers.
She gasped as a horrific thought occurred to her. Could Jake be dead? But then why wouldn’t the firing have stopped?
She wanted to cower under the covers and pretend she was just dreaming. But this was real. Jake was in danger. And so was she.
She couldn’t hide and pretend they wouldn’t find her. Obviously, they knew where she was if they’d followed her and Jake here from Donny’s apartment. So she was the one they were coming for.
She scrambled out of the bed and began to search the bedroom. The room was small and sparsely furnished, like the rest of the house. If this was Jake’s home, he didn’t have much stuff in it. No artwork or knickknacks. And nothing personal at all—no photos or books. Maybe this was just the safe house he’d told her it was.
But then wouldn’t Jake have another weapon stashed in it? He would have more than the one he carried in his holster. Wouldn’t he?
Even if Lillian found a gun, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to use it. The lessons Gran had given her had been a long time ago. And she hadn’t been that good at it, either. The recoil h
ad hurt her wrist and nearly made her drop the heavy weapon. So if she found a gun, she wouldn’t be able to outshoot anyone. She would have to outrun them.
Looking down at her big belly, she sighed. While being pregnant was a hindrance, it was also a great motivator. All of her new maternal instincts were screaming at her to protect her baby.
But when the gunfire suddenly died down, she thought only of the baby’s father. And her heart lurched with dread.
Was Jake dead?
No. He was too good a shot himself, probably from his years as a US marshal and now as a bounty hunter. The men hadn’t hurt him at the cottage, in the woods or at Donny’s apartment. How could he die here where he’d assured her they would be safe?
He couldn’t.
He couldn’t die, not when she was beginning to have all these old feelings for him again. Not when she was beginning to fall for the father of her baby all over.
“Jake.” His name escaped her lips on a gasp.
Her pulse pounding, she rushed from the bedroom into the living room. But she stopped at the front door. If she unlocked the dead bolts and opened it, she might step out into the same ambush that Jake had. She didn’t know what to do.
If Jake was gone, she had no one to protect her. If she stepped outside now...
Tears stung her eyes as pain squeezed her heart. Not Jake... He had to be all right. He had to have survived all that gunfire. But if he hadn’t...
She couldn’t stay here forever. Then the locks clicked, and the doorknob began to turn. She couldn’t stay any longer. They were coming for her now. So she turned and ran toward the kitchen. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the locks on the back door.
The front door creaked open just as she turned the last dead bolt on the back one. They had gotten inside. She didn’t have long now, not if she hoped to escape with her life.
She jerked open the back door and stepped onto the deck. And as she did, someone lifted her off her feet. But he didn’t carry her like Jake had—carefully, gently...
He had wrapped his strong arms around her own, so she couldn’t fight him with her fists. She could only scream and kick her legs, struggling to escape.