by Liana Brooks
Alan leaned in to steal a kiss.
Delilah ducked away. “But remember the To Do list. Unlock the door, then seduce the superhero.”
“Ah, see, there’s our problem. Right now I’m a pro tem mayor, not a superhero. And at the very top of my to-do list is seducing a world-class rogue and security operative.”
“Is it?” Delilah gasped with mock surprise, hand covering her delightful lips. “Dear me! Whatever shall I do to protect myself from your wicked blandishments, Mister Adale?”
The thick southern accent she served up made him laugh. “I think Southern belles are supposed to swoon at my dashing and romantic nature and kiss me passionately.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Pretty sure. Read it in a book once.”
“Must not have been a Texas southern belle.” Delilah stood up, all playfulness gone. “Dinner first. You’re still recovering.”
“A kiss would make me better.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Would it stop with one kiss?”
He paused. “It could.”
Delilah didn’t seem convinced.
“We should try it. For the sake of science.”
She rolled her eyes but came back to him. “For science?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“That’s your best pick up line?”
“My best pickup line is, ‘Hello, what’s your name?’ But when I used it on you, you gave me a look that promised a painful death and walked away without a backward glance. I remember it quite clearly.”
Delilah shrugged. “It’d been a long day and I didn’t need another bad boy in my life.”
“But I’m not a bad boy,” Alan assured her as his hand slipped around her waist to pull her closer.
“You’re not a boy at all. I like that in a man.”
Delilah’s lips were soft, gentle, teasing... like a dream dancing just out of reach of memory. He pulled her closer, wanting to catch hold of the magic she brought with her.
Her fingers caressed his cheekbone. A moment later she was straddling him on the couch and he was lost in her touch.
Delilah pulled away. He whimpered in dismay, and then the whimper became a groan of lust as hot lips trailed kisses up his neck.
“We. Need. To. Eat,” she whispered in his ear.
Alan caught her wrist. “Food is overrated.”
“If we don’t eat, how will we have energy for anything else?”
The promise of more was a drug, a seductive lure with poison inside. Alan narrowed his eyes. “Now you’re teasing me.”
“Yup,” Delilah said as she stood up, pulling him with her.
He shook his head, feeling like a fool. At least that was familiar territory. She wrapped him in knots, played him like a yo-yo, and when she smiled all he could think of was winning another kiss. “You are a wicked, wicked woman, Delilah.”
Her eyes sparkled with secret mirth. “Me?” She fluttered her eyelashes innocently. “You seduced me with your suave demeanor and reckless charm.”
“Reckless charm?” He propped himself up on one elbow. “If you were enjoying that as much as I was, why are we stopping for dinner?”
“Because you’re healing at a superhuman rate, and that takes more energy than you think.” She kissed him again, leaving his head spinning. “You’re shaking,” she said softly. “I stopped because I don’t want to see you hurt. Let’s eat dinner. Get you healed. And then we’ll talk about everything.”
***
In the study, Delilah held her carton of Chinese food in front of her like a shield to protect her somewhat tarnished virtue. That butt! Alan stretched again, slacks cupping a grade A rump as he rearranged his player board. This wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Every storybook said she’d kiss her crush, no sparks would fly, and she’d learn her lesson. It would leave her jaded and better able to focus full time on her work. A kiss to tease the hero wasn’t supposed to leave her so hungry for more, that Mongolian beef wasn’t hot enough to burn away the memory of his touch. She sighed.
Alan turned around. “Are you okay? Am I boring you?”
“Um...” Telling him she’d stopped listening ten minutes ago was going to cause all sorts of problems. “They skimped on the chili flakes,” she said, waggling her half-eaten box of dinner. “It’s bland.”
His lips quirked up in an endearing smile. “I’m so sorry. Do I need to get you some hot sauce?”
Was that a pick-up line? Delilah tried to think of a good reply. I’ve got your hot sauce right here. I like it hot and saucy, and I’m not talking sriracha.
“And that concludes the boring portion of our evening.” Alan coughed and tucked his notes away. “You know all this already, don’t you?”
“The board? Yeah, I’ve got the same one at my place. Great minds and all.” She abandoned her dinner on Alan’s desk. “The only major difference is here,” she tapped Alan’s picture off to the side, “here,” she tapped her own in the midlevel-hoodlum-management level, “and here,” she tapped Ivan’s surly mug. “I had you and Arámbula tagged as major criminal players.”
“His wife was. Her family is very old, very dirty, and has lots of money.”
Delilah nodded. “I figured that out. But I’m still not here, and I think you’ve got Ivan too high.”
“Ivan runs contracts for Vtoraya Volna—Second Wave—they’re Russia’s answer to The Company, if The Company ran guns for Serbian terrorists. Ivan’s American born, Russian raised, and good at not being there when the outhouse hits the fan.”
“I noticed that about him.”
“He’s one of their captains. Not likely to go any higher, but he’s not a low level flunky.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Which begs the question, ‘What is Mon Capitaine doing in Chicago?’”
“Your captain?” Alan gave her a quizzical look. “You and Ivan have a thing?”
“We exchange punches on a regular basis.”
“Right. Well, now I’m irrationally jealous of a thug.” Alan shook his head in disbelief. “You ditched dinner with me for Ivan.”
Delilah laughed. “I wasn’t intentionally abandoning you.”
“Uh huh.” Alan cornered her against the desk. “You turned me down or canceled every date. How long have I been chasing you? Over a year now?”
“I had perfectly valid reasons.” She tossed her hair. “I thought you might get hurt.”
“Hurt?” Alan smirked.
Delilah shrugged. “It was a valid concern. If you weren’t a superhero you’d still be at the hospital nursing the world’s worst stomach cramp.”
“So, you’re saying I should have led with the superhero fact?”
“Oh yeah.” She nodded.
“Because you like superheroes?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I like you. Let’s not push any of the other details.” She scrutinized the board once more. “Where does Kalydon come into play? He owns the Wacker building. Is he part of this, or no?”
Alan shrugged. “I don’t know. Up until today I would have said he’s a businessman, older, semi-retired, and all I know from his private life is that he likes hunting. He’s a Good ‘ol Boy with a chip on his shoulder.”
“What changed your mind?”
“He came to my office tonight to make demands. Vague ones. He wants the superheroes out of the city, then said he knows there are two here. He finished by telling me politicians are cheap. I don’t know if he meant we were bribable or replaceable.”
Delilah frowned at her empty take-out container. “Does he know we’re the supers he wants gone?”
“Probably not. He might not even mean us.” Alan grimaced. “Which leads to my other piece of bad news for the evening. The Company is in town on a shopping trip.”
“They go near Travys and I’ll kill them,” Delilah said without hesitation.
He shook his head. “No, they’re trying to get a formula of some kind. Katrina thinks she can make new superheroes. I don’t even know if it’s a real thi
ng though.”
“There’s nothing like that on the market now, but there’s always been rumors. I’ll have my research team look into it.”
Alan shot her an amused smile. “Research team? Who are you, Bruce Wayne?”
“Mmm, more like Batman’s beloved and well-financed daughter.”
“Lucky girl.” He squared his shoulders. “I’m supposed to meet The Company operatives at midnight. Want to tag along?”
Anything The Company could dish out, she could handle, but it didn’t seem like Alan was trying to set her up for a take down. “I have other plans tonight.”
“Would I make your life easier if I wrote down the GPS coordinates for the meeting?”
“It would save me some legwork.”
He smiled. “Then I’ll leave the address somewhere easy for you to find on the way out the door. But, first, is there any chance of a kiss good night?”
Chapter Thirteen
Dear Mom,
Random question of the day... When you first met Dad, how did you know he was The One? Was there a flash of light? Did he take your breath away? How’d you know he was perfect for you, or was it just a lucky guess?
All my love,
Delilah
Delilah balanced the Teodora on one hip as something at her other hip beeped.
“Want help with that?” Alan leaned over her shoulder, arms encircling her as he gently lifted the Teodora out of her grasp. “Now you can answer your phone.”
“Give it back.” She reached for the gemstone with one hand as she pulled out her phone. “I have a really good reason for taking that home with me.”
“Uh huh,” Alan said. “Like you have a really good reason for skipping out on our date again? I thought we were meeting to watch the buy.”
“I was on my way and remembered I needed to pick something up that I left here after the party.”
“A giant emerald?”
She glanced at her phone. A blue light on her phone’s map of Chicago showed Travys in the wrong part of town. “I need to get it out before it hatches and eats everything. They’re ravenous when they first emerge.”
“Hatch?”
“Yes, hatch. It’ll eat the other stones, and most of the fossils, and possibly the building. We can leave it at the zoo if you want, but it’s not safe to leave here.”
“Hatch?”
“What? You thought I actually wanted a twenty-five pound emerald? What would I do with it? Green is not a flattering color on me.” Delilah grabbed Alan’s wrist and dragged the Spirit after her. “I’ve got to go get Travys.” He slipped through her fingers like smoke.
“What’s wrong with Travys?”
She watched the tracking point of his phone. “He’s gone and done something stupid.”
“You’re tracking your intern’s phone? Isn’t that illegal?”
“It’s a family phone.” Locks on the cases around them cracked open. Delilah rubbed her forehead, trying to contain her emotions. “Angela is going to kill me.”
“Family? What, you’re in the mob now?”
Delilah froze halfway down the staircase, where the winter moon threw odd shadows across the darkened museum. “What are you going on about?”
Alan came down the last few steps so he stood on eye-level with her. “You don’t look like you belong to a crime family, but...”
“Family; as in Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister. Travys is sort of my adopted baby brother. Sort of. It’s weird.” She waved his next question away. “Do you know how amoebas roll over and absorb everything they touch? My family is like that. They steam roll and assimilate everything in their path. Travys got caught in it one day, but he’s a good kid and he didn’t have anyone else, so we dragged him into the clan.”
“Why?”
“My sister used to be his math teacher.”
Her boots echoed on the tile floor of the atrium and Delilah realized Alan had stopped. “Hello? You have my egg. You need to keep walking.”
“You know, I never had a family of my own, but when the other kids in foster care talked about loving home environments they never used terminology better suited for a biology class.”
“They probably didn’t have a family like mine,” Delilah said. “Even by our own lax definitions we’re a little weird. Every family is, I imagine.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never had one.”
She pivoted, walking backward so she could watch him. “Did you ever try to look them up?”
He shrugged. “There never seemed to be a reason to.”
The lights flickered around her as the secondary generator cut back in. A siren screamed as she sighed. With a touch of her finger she turned the coms unit on. “Freddie? Meet me at the side entrance. And open the pixie cage.”
Alan’s footsteps echoed on the floor behind her.
Delilah pulled out her whistle as a voice yelled from the third floor for them to stop. Brightly colored lights flitted past and she barely had enough time to grab Alan’s hand as he reached. “Don’t touch. They bite.”
“What are they?”
“Pixies. Don’t ask.” She held the door open and shooed him toward the car. “How’d the buy go? Did you see the seller?”
“It was a preliminary meet up with a voice recording on a tape recorder. The thing had to have been forty years old.”
Delilah whistled again to call the pixies back before climbing into the vehicle. “And the voice on it was warped?”
“Noticeably.” Alan frowned as he pulled his seat belt on. “But I recognized it anyway. Remember Kalydon?”
“The man who said politicians were cheap? Yeah, he sticks out. Freddie?” She tapped the minion on his shoulder as he merged into traffic. “Slow down, or the pixies will never catch up and they’ll freeze to death.”
The car picked up speed.
“Freddie!” The car slowed and Delilah stripped off her gloves. “Did Kalydon say what he was selling?”
“Whatever it is, he wants one million in unmarked bills and a donor from anyone interested.” He shifted the Teodora. “I... just stole this for you, didn’t I?”
“Yup.”
He closed his eyes. “You are so bad for my moral integrity.”
“But a vast improvement to your street cred.” She smiled.
Alan didn’t smile back.
“It’s an egg! Look.” She pulled a flashlight from her bag on the cab floor and shone it into the egg. The deep green ribbons rippled, rolled, and two riparian eyes blinked at them. “My father forgot this one when we were on vacation one year. It wasn’t incubated at the right temperature and it’s only dumb luck the poor little thing didn’t die. If it had hatched in the museum there would be all sorts of problems.”
Alan dropped the Teodora on the seat between them. “Your father tinkers with a lot of genes, does he?”
“Not officially. He’s a professor in ethics. Now.” She squirmed. “He was a little bit wild as a kid.”
“How wild?”
“America’s Most Wanted Super Villain wild?”
Alan seemed to consider this. “I thought the Most Wanted villain in the world was Strike, and last I checked, she was a woman.”
“Is a woman. Yes. My father was a super villain, then he retired. Gave up the life of crime almost completely when he married Mom.”
“I feel like I’m missing a story here.”
Delilah shook her head. “You have no idea how true that is. Freddie, turn left up here.” She turned back to Alan. “Are you coming with me to pick up Travys, or am I dropping you at home? I know you have a city to run in the morning.”
“Are you going to need rescuing?”
“That’s always a possibility.”
***
Alan fastened his seat belt and smiled brightly at Locke—she was Locke right now, from her shiny metal curls to the top hat to the thigh-high boots that kept dragging his attention down to where it was not supposed to be. “I’m not leaving.”
She rolled her eye
s. “Fabulous. Freddie, head after Travys. We don’t have time to waste.”
“Travys works security with Subrosa. He’s probably at a party. You realize that, right?”
Her glare made the wind chill feel warm. “The Company is in town and while Travys isn’t going to be a superhero any time soon, he’s got enough precognitive powers that he might draw unwanted attention. While there’s a threat, he’s supposed to stick to routes I have surveillance on. Right now he’s out of sight, and I’m worried.”
Alan frowned. “I didn’t realize he was anything out of the ordinary.”
“Most people won’t, but that doesn’t mean The Company doesn’t have someone who can pick him out.” Locke shrugged, her copper ringlets tinkling as she moved. “Angela had to protect him. It’s really not complicated. If you stay around us long enough, you’re either one of us or you’re dead. I don’t think we know any other way to live. Travys needs people to take care of him, to make sure he’s eating right, to...” Her voice trailed off. “Are you all right?”
Belatedly he realized his tightening shoulders had rounded until he was hunched up and folded in the corner like he was three again. “I’m fine.”
One eyebrow went up in question. “I can make you tell the truth,” Locke threatened.
“I’m fine. It was a stupid reaction.” He sighed, forcing himself to relax, and looked out the window at the Christmas lights. “When I was little, that’s all I ever wanted: a big family and the postcard-perfect holiday. Candy canes, hot cocoa, sledding down the hill and then running inside to spend time with a huge throng of people who all loved me.”
“You never had that.” Delilah’s voice was flat.
He shrugged. “I was abandoned at the hospital when I was a few hours old. It’s not the start of a story that ends with happily ever after.”
“You never know,” she said as she took off her top hat and wig, once again transforming into Delilah. “Maybe if you’re very good, Santa will bring you a family for Christmas.”
Smirking, Alan turned back to her. “Right. And what is Santa bringing you?”
Delilah shrugged dismissively. “A pony? I don’t know. I don’t want things. Anyone can buy things, or, well... Anyone born into a wealthy family like I was can buy things. What I can’t buy is safety for my family, or an end to my mother’s nightmares. If there was a way to buy that, I would.”