by Eve Devon
Colleague, friend, lover…beautiful liar?
Steel Hawk, Book 2
Adam Steel is in crisis mode. A recent exposé claims a founder of Steel Hawk was actually The Raven, an infamous jewel thief. Amid the ensuing damage control, all eyes are on his ability to develop a prototype to secure and protect the royal Pasha Star diamond.
He’s further blindsided when he learns his assistant, Honeysuckle Hawk, has a sordid past he never knew about. Proving he never really knew her, never should have trusted her, and definitely shouldn’t start falling for her.
With her dirty laundry flapping in the media storm, Honeysuckle’s first instinct is to run. Two things make her stay: Adam’s insistence it’s better to show the world a united front, and her heart’s insistence by his side is where she belongs.
High stakes and long hours ignite passion…until the diamond is stolen and Adam’s own prototype shows Honeysuckle is a thief. Dare he trust her to help him expose the real criminal—before the mastermind wreaks havoc on the royal family?
Warning: Contains an über-hot, alpha-geek who’s good with his hands, a sassy reformed-rebel determined to prove she’s not a flake, romantic castles, gorgeous jewels, sleek and sexy technology, heart-pounding suspense…oh, and nipple tassels!
Heart of Steel
Eve Devon
Dedication
For the friends who come into our lives. Jane and Sarah, thank you for believing in me and for saying yes to Steel Hawk. Thank you for all the late night chats—the early morning chats—the chats that basically made me feel as if we have known each other years, despite coming from three different corners of the world and never having actually met! Thank you for sharing your talent, your creativity, your time, and most importantly, thank you for all the giggles along the way.
Prologue
The Alps, Zarrenburg City Center, Twenty-three Years Ago
Nine-year-old Rufus de Burgh wanted to smash the pitying looks right off the faces of every person in the shop.
Instead, self-control shackled him close to his mother’s side as up and down the aisles, Clara de Burgh placed random items into her trolley, her singsong voice telling all who would listen about the cloaked people who had taken her boy from her.
Rufus looked down at the floor and willed everyone to look away. Giving her an audience only made it worse.
Why couldn’t they see that—these strangers now trying to catch his eye and communicate that there was no need to be embarrassed because they were educated about people like her. Obviously, hooded men hadn’t really got into her home and stolen her baby. How could they have, when he was standing right there by her side?
He wanted to snarl and bark and howl and rage at the lot of them.
They didn’t understand anything.
Paying any attention at all was to give credence that she would feed off for days, and he would have to think of a new trick to get her meds into her and break the cycle.
She was always worse when he had to eke out the remaining tablets until there was money to buy more.
He hated being poor.
Thick and dirty shame made his arms feel heavy as he returned tins of baby food from the trolley back to the shelves. Often he wished someone had taken him away. Taken him away to a better place—somewhere where his future wasn’t confined to being the son of a madwoman.
He pulled on the trolley, hoping to get her to hurry so that the ordeal of being out in public together would be over as soon as possible.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spied someone approaching. Stomach muscles hardened in preparation, because even worse than the pitying stares were the people who mocked and taunted and required seeing off. But the hand that rested briefly on his shoulder was gentle, and with relief he looked up to see a kindly neighbor.
He had his escape.
Not thinking twice, he ran out of the shop to drag in the fresh Zarrenburg air. Over and over he inhaled until the heavy stones pressing on his chest lifted a little.
“Buy my lucky heather,” a voice said into his ear.
Rufus reared backward in horror as the old woman’s face blocked the sunshine and turned the fresh air dangerous—her warty, haggard face with its gummy grin straight out of a Brothers Grimm tale.
“Get away from me,” he muttered, trying to step around her bent form. He rose up on tiptoe to peer over the woman’s shoulder to the shop behind her.
He’d wanted the anonymity of the crowded street on a public holiday, but now guilt was icy cold as it crept down his spine. He should never have left his mother to finish the shopping on her own. What if she spent all they had left on things they couldn’t even eat?
“Come on,” pressed the old woman. “Spare a few pennies for some lucky heather. A gift for your mother?”
“I have no mother,” he lied, his heart hammering heavily in fear as he realized what the old lady was holding in her hand. Lucky heather from a gypsy wasn’t going to help a broken mind—only make it a thousand times worse. “Try someone else.” He made to step away but was blocked by the metal barriers that had been installed in preparation for the prince’s birthday parade.
As he pushed against the barrier, the old lady’s bony hand latched tight to his forearm.
“Don’t touch me,” he spat out, yanking away, upsetting her basket of heather, and staring at the sprigs as they trickled out under the barrier and into the cordoned-off cobbled street.
The gypsy cried out in dismay, muttering something he couldn’t decipher as her gnarled claw of a hand kept a tight hold of him. He watched, helpless, as she felt through the bars of the waist-high barrier with her other hand, awkwardly collecting her precious merchandise.
Rufus wanted to kick out at her. Punish her for stealing into his already crappy existence. The pretty market street that twisted up to the castle was filling up with excited spectators readying themselves for the cavalcade of royal cars. Who would see him if he released some of the aggression that pounded so relentlessly under his skin?
From behind him, he heard his mother calling as she came out of the shop. For all that she liked to pretend he didn’t exist, she couldn’t function day-to-day without him.
With escalating horror, he pinched the old lady’s crepe-like skin between his fingers and tried to peel her hand from his arm. She must go before his mother saw her.
But if anything, the gypsy held tighter, her black eyes staring, her gaze narrowing.
Despite the sunny day, a feeling of menace pushed in at him. How could such a frail woman hold on so tight? What was it she saw when she looked at him that encouraged the viselike grip?
“Rufus?” his mother called.
Dread and despair filled up his lungs.
He didn’t want a scene here in the street, surrounded by all these people.
Turning slowly, he found his mother looking right at them, and with a churning in his belly, he saw recognition spark and fill her blank expression with light.
She closed the distance, never once taking her eyes from the gypsy. “It’s you,” she said in wonder. Dropping her bags of shopping, she took hold of the gypsy by her shoulders. Rufus felt the hand on his arm squeeze to pull him between its owner and his mother as if he were a shield.
“Rufus has found you.” His mother laughed joyously. “I knew he would.” And in a split second, her tone changed completely. “You must tell me where they took my son,” she demanded.
“Mother, I am here,” Rufus said quietly. “I am right in front of you. Look at me.”
“Not you,” she trilled, and
then her gaze moved back to the gypsy, and she beseeched, “Tell me.”
The gypsy shook her head in fear, but his mother must have taken her silence as deliberate.
“You once told me they would keep him at the castle,” she declared with desperate conviction that tore at Rufus. “Take me to him.”
“Mother, stop it. This isn’t the gypsy who told you your fortune, and you are not allowed near the castle, remember?”
But it was no use, he knew. She had taken one look at the gypsy and mistaken coincidence for a special sign. And the stronger she believed the connection to be, the deeper the mania would take hold, sinking in to the hilt, only to rise up in violence if she felt thwarted.
She was crying now, soft, keening sounds as she shook the gypsy and begged to be taken to her child.
The inevitability of the scene crashed over Rufus.
All he wanted was for it all to end. For it all to stop.
His head started to hurt as he looked at all the people watching, staring, judging.
Turning away from them, he twisted around to look at the gypsy. He almost felt sorry for her as her head rattled back and forth under the strength of his mother’s pleading grip.
It was the old lady’s misfortune to be mistaken for the woman who years ago had had her palm crossed with silver in exchange for telling Clara de Burgh her fortune.
A fortune that said she would give birth to a royal baby. But that, far from living a respected life in the castle, she would be ridiculed, shamed and her child taken from her.
Rufus stared at the gypsy.
Could she be that same woman who had condemned his mother to a warped reality that ate away at her and trapped Rufus in this living hell?
He suddenly thought that he would like to kill this gypsy.
He would like to slowly squeeze all the air from her windpipe. Watch unrepentant as the light went out.
Because he had heard the whispers of what his mother had been like before being told her fortune.
She had been beautiful.
Sane.
Normal.
“We will give you money to take us to him,” his mother told the gypsy. Breaking her hold, she pushed her hands into the pockets of her dress. When her shaking hands came out empty, she stared at them in confusion.
Rufus turned back to the gypsy. “Go now,” he warned, and in the blink of an eye, the hand that had been fused to him released, and she disappeared into the crowd.
“Rufus?” His mother looked at him. “Where is my money?”
“You spent it on groceries. We have none left.”
“No.” Crying out with rage, she shoved him hard in the chest. “You must have taken it. You give the woman our money, Rufus,” she screamed at him.
“She is gone. She was playing a trick. She is not who you thought she was.”
“Liar,” she yelled, and the stinging blow as she whipped her hand across his face caught him by surprise and knocked him back against the barrier.
A hideous silence blanketed the air.
Rufus stared at his mother, seething with resentment as he smelled the stench of his own humiliation.
Strangers stepped in and took hold of her. Struggling, they fought to keep her away from her son.
As he steadied himself against the barrier, he felt the vibration from the approaching royal convoy over the cobbles.
The parade was starting.
The first glossy black limousine rounded the bend. The red-and-white Zarrenburg standard attached to the side of the car’s roof winked at him in the breeze as it flashed by.
A cheer rent the air as excitement built. The prince’s car would be the last in the parade.
He turned his head back to his mother.
As if possessed by the devil, her body was bending and straining to free herself from the strangers, but her gaze was now utterly fixated on the cars passing by. The broken threads of her mind were reforming to make another connection. All it took was one second—half of that to make her body limp and surprise the men holding her, the other half to tear out of their hold and hurl herself at the barrier.
Pushing free of the steel, she ran out into the street in front of the cars.
There was a sudden screech of tires as guards surrounded both the lead car and his mother.
The pocket of silence stretched out to encompass the entire crowd.
And then his mother spoke, her voice as clear as a bell on Judgment Day.
“Please,” she implored anyone who would listen, “someone at the castle has my son. I want him back. I have all the money that was given to me. I willingly return it in exchange for him.”
Rufus’s hands tightened against the bars of the barrier, and he stared through the gaps.
This was new.
She had never claimed to have been given money before. Everyone who knew them knew they had nothing.
A guard spoke softly to her, and Rufus knew the guard was about to learn that irrationalities couldn’t be placated with soft words. They simply fueled physical strength.
Clara de Burgh launched herself at the car’s window, and now three guards struggled to catch her fists before they could beat against the bulletproof glass.
“I know you’re in there,” she screamed at the car.
Rufus saw other guards run down the street, presumably to stop the royal car from becoming embroiled. The crowd was about to lose their parade.
But they were being given this instead, and Rufus wanted to disappear into nothing.
“If you cannot return him to me,” his mother’s voice rang out, “then take my other son too. Take my Rufus and give him the life he’s entitled to.”
This too was new. Rufus’s heart plunged through his stomach at the acknowledgment of him as her son.
As more guards moved in to drag her out of the way, a car door opened.
A cousin of the prince stepped out. A minor royal whose name Rufus couldn’t remember.
The man searched the crowd and unerringly found Rufus. Cool eyes rested on him for long moments, and Rufus could barely breathe. Then, without a shred of emotion, the man turned away and spoke quietly to the guards.
Suddenly his mother’s legs were taken out from under her as she was lifted into the air. She thrashed and hissed and spat, and Rufus despised the action but knew it was necessary. She had gone too far this time.
An ambulance rolled quietly into the street, and as she was carried over to it, she screamed, “One day the world will know what we did, Otto. I still have the money. My boys will forgive me, but I will make sure they never forgive the Zarrenburg royals.”
Rufus stared at the man as he got back into the car.
“Rufus?”
Wrenching his gaze away, he turned to see his mother’s outstretched hand. On shaking legs, he squeezed through the gap in the barrier and ran over to her.
She smiled at him and indicated the ambulance behind her. “I think I will be gone for a while this time, Rufus.”
Rufus stared, fighting the moisture gathering in his eyes. She sounded almost lucid.
“You will get your medicine,” he said.
A bleak light entered her eyes, and she nodded. As she was strapped onto the stretcher, her hand shot out to pull him close, and she whispered urgently, “One day you will see your twin brother, Rufus. You must beg him to forgive me.”
The ambulance doors shut, and Rufus was left standing alone.
A strange buzzing filled up every recess in his brain.
A twin brother?
His head hurt as he tried to think.
Impossible.
He knew what was real because he lived it every stinking day.
His mother did not.
She lived in a different world. An imaginary world.
A world that made
no sense to adults or him.
A sly thought spoke to him. Could she be telling the truth?
He would feel it, wouldn’t he? If he had a brother?
Something clicked in his head.
A strange sense of connection to someone.
It frightened him so much he immediately sought to sever the thread.
Connections to people made you mad.
Look at his mother.
No way did he ever want to be like her.
There was no second son. No twin.
Because the very thought that someone like him was out there, getting to live a better life—the life he deserved—was torture.
Chapter One
Steel Hawk Headquarters, San Francisco, Present Day
“Adam.”
The sound of his name dripping from her tongue like that made the tiny hairs in Adam Steel’s ear canal stand up and beg, greedy for more of her smooth and smoky voice.
“Adam.”
He smiled, liking the more insistent edge that had crept in. In his head, Logic packed a suitcase and started looking around for Reason.
But Reason had left way earlier. Pretty much as soon as the siren with the long and wavy ebony hair had sauntered silently into Adam’s line of vision, beckoning him with a hint of a smile on her bee-stung lips and downright delicious intent in her dark-blue eyes.
“You want me, baby?” he growled out, enjoying the way her fingers locked onto his forearm and squeezed with need as he turned his body so that it was pressed up against her. His smile turned wolfish. When he got around to wrapping those long legs of hers around his hips so that he could push slowly into her, that sinful voice of hers was going to turn into one pleasure-heightened, drawn-out moan, making every cell in his body salute.
“Adam. Wake up.”
Adam’s head shot up off his desk.
What in holy hell…
Damn it. He’d fallen asleep again?
As his world snapped back to reality, a thudding trace of the mind-bending version he’d been visiting wrapped itself around him, refusing to let go quite yet.