For a moment Tony thought of Ian, that brilliant, creative mind that had put Redstone on the map in so many new fields that not even Josh could keep track of them all. As had most at Redstone, Tony had marveled from the beginning at the unlikelihood of Ian and Sam’s relationship—the man some teasingly called the absentminded professor and the stunning, leggy blonde.
He’d been even more bemused by the easy way Ian seemed to accept the differences between them, accept Sam’s sometimes dangerous job and the fact that she was one of the best at it. He often joked he was the brains while his wife was the brawn with brains. Tony wasn’t sure he could so blithely accept his woman working in a traditionally masculine role.
At the same time, he utterly and totally respected Samantha Gamble and her skills and would gladly have her at his back in any tough situation. The conflict niggled at him, but he didn’t dwell on it much, preferring to see it as a hangover from days past that he tried not to think about. When he did think about them, it was usually with a rueful jab at himself and the street gang culture of machismo he’d grown up in.
The woman in the office was standing now, studying him less than subtly as she held out a hand. He took it—her grip was solid but not overly so—and automatically assessed her in turn, a habit ingrained in him during his years with Redstone Security.
Taylor Hill was an ordinary-looking woman, with straight, medium brown hair pulled back rather severely at the nape of her neck. She was average height and build, her features regular but not striking. She was neither unattractive nor beautiful, but fell in the unremarkable category.
The perfect person for security work, Tony thought. She could probably blend in anywhere.
“Nice to meet you,” she said politely, and his opinion suddenly changed. That low, husky voice would stand out in any man’s mind. And make him wonder, if she sounded like that now, what she might sound like in more intimate circumstances.
But he had no time for speculating about other women at the moment.
“You, too,” he replied, aware it was a disconnected nicety but unable to help it.
“I was about to send Taylor off on her first assignment,” Draven said in a casually chatty manner completely unlike him. “Nothing like starting out doing a favor for Josh himself.”
That snapped Tony to attention. Was there something else going on at Redstone besides what he’d come here about? “Josh has a problem?”
“One of his people has a problem, so yes, you could say that.”
Tony felt the adrenaline spurt ebb a little. He looked his boss in the eye, a task more easily said than done to almost anyone who had to deal with the steely, tough John Draven.
“Lilith,” he said.
Draven’s brow rose again. “You know?”
“Beck,” he said briefly, knowing that would explain; Logan Beck, the newest—well, now apparently second newest—member of the security team, was engaged to Liana Kiley, Lilith Mercer’s assistant.
He was also Tony’s partner in situations that required a two-man team; they’d worked well together on Logan’s case, and although he generally preferred to work alone—as did Logan—Tony was now amenable to the pairing when necessary.
“I’ll handle it,” Tony said.
Draven lifted a brow. “What?”
“This one’s mine.” At Draven’s expression, Tony turned back to Taylor, who was watching this exchange curiously. “Would you excuse us for a minute, please?”
The woman’s glance flicked to Draven, who, after a split second, gave her a barely perceptible nod. She didn’t miss the signal and left without a word.
“She’s going to be good,” Draven said when Tony didn’t speak right away.
“Yeah,” Tony muttered.
He began to pace the small room. Now that he was here and had his boss’s attention, he had no idea what to say. He should, he realized, have thought about this a little more before he’d burst in.
He should have thought about it a little more, period, he thought. Had he learned nothing from Lisa? Had he forgotten standing in the morgue, looking down at her lifeless body, knowing she was there because of him?
I’m trying to stop something like that from happening again, he told himself as Draven continued to speak of the woman who had just left.
“She did some good work at Redstone in Toronto. She was ready to move up.”
“Yeah.”
Silence seemed to echo in the room while Tony continued to pace and tried to figure out what to say.
“You got back last night?”
“Yeah.”
He left it at that. The Hawk IV that had picked him up in Caracas had actually touched down a little after 1:00 a.m., so technically this morning, but he knew Draven already knew that. And he’d already filed his report in flight, so he knew Draven knew the final result of his investigation into the local kickback problem as well.
“You know,” Draven said at last, “I’m told I talk more than I used to these days, but I’m in no way comfortable carrying on a whole conversation myself. What do you want, Alvera?”
Tony stopped mid-stride and spun around to face his boss. “I want this job.” There, he thought. It was out.
“What job?”
“The one you were going to give her,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the door where Taylor had exited.
Draven frowned. “I don’t think this is anything that requires your…unique skills, Tony.”
“Nothing does, at the moment.”
Not really his decision to make, but he knew it was true. Lucky for him, Draven was in a flexible mood this morning.
“There may not even be a real problem,” his boss said. “It could just be a fluke, coincidence. Accidents and pranks do happen.”
Not to Lilith, Tony thought.
“It’s probably nothing, but Josh wants to be sure,” Draven said. “You know how he is about his people.”
“Yes. I do.”
No one knew better than he did about Josh Redstone. Tony doubted there was another man on the planet who would have done what Josh did after an angry, scared, knife-wielding gangbanger had tried to mug him outside an L.A. hotel. Tony hadn’t even realized he was trying to rob the wunderkind whose Redstone Aviation was beginning to soar, had seen only a man headed toward a limo, which to him had meant money and made the man a target.
He hadn’t expected that the man would fight back, and well enough to have his sixteen-year-old ass on the pavement in less than ten seconds.
And he never would have dreamed that that man, not even ten years older than he himself, would see something in that angry kid, something that, instead of calling the cops as he should have, made him give Tony the chance of a lifetime. The chance at a life.
A life he would always owe to Josh Redstone.
“This is probably nothing a couple of days of simple investigation can’t close,” Draven said, looking at him with growing curiosity, the last thing Tony wanted.
“Then I won’t be tied up long,” he said, more sharply than he liked.
Draven’s mouth quirked slightly. “You really want this?”
“I want this. Sir,” he added, not caring that it was so obviously an afterthought tacked on to ameliorate the gruffness of his prior words.
Draven’s brows lowered even farther. “You don’t look—or sound—too sure about that.”
Leave it to Draven to see past the surface, because truth be told, he wasn’t. In fact, he was reasonably sure he would regret it; it was only the extent of that regret he wasn’t sure of right now. But that didn’t seem to make any difference.
“I mean it,” he insisted.
Draven studied Tony for a long, silent moment. Tony set his jaw and waited, knowing Draven wasn’t a man to be pushed.
“Why?” Draven finally asked.
Tony had prepared for that question, at least. “You know I worked with her a lot, during Beck’s case. We…got along. I’d like to help, and I’m free, with nothing on the hor
izon that would require me more than anyone else on the team.”
Draven listened, looking thoughtful. If he noticed that this prosaic explanation was at odds with the inner tension Tony was feeling—and Tony had little doubt Draven would sense that, there was very little that escaped him—he didn’t comment on the fact.
Just when Tony thought he’d blown it, and that Draven, with that preternatural instinct of his, had somehow guessed the secret Tony Alvera kept hidden from everyone, his boss slowly nodded.
“All right. But if something in your area comes up—”
“I understand,” Tony said, barely aware of interrupting the legendary head of Redstone Security, something few dared to do. Or had the chance to do; as he’d said, Draven wasn’t known for talking a lot.
The size of the relief that flooded Tony at actually getting the assignment set off alarms clanging in the back of his head, but he was too thankful to pay them much heed.
A few minutes later he was back outside the airport hangar that served as operations for Redstone Security. They had always been housed off-site, keeping a low profile away from headquarters for the most part, a strategy that paid off on those rare occasions when a Redstone operative needed to go unrecognized. Plus, the airport location made quick response times easier, when some far-flung part of the Redstone empire needed their attention.
So you’ve got the job, he thought as he got into his car. Now what?
He had no answer. He told himself he should simply proceed as if this were any other job. Redstone Security had a reputation for efficiency, speed and success; all he had to do was live up to that. All he had to do was keep Lilith Mercer safe. No problem.
Never mind that he’d just volunteered to walk into a personal minefield.
He was so going to regret this. But he had to do it. He couldn’t let anyone else take the job. Not this job. Because nobody else had a bigger stake in this than he did. Nobody else in Redstone Security was in his unique position.
Hell, nobody else would believe he was in this position.
Nobody would ever believe that onetime L.A. gang member, repeat juvenile offender, street-tough, tattooed Tony Alvera had been half in love with the elegant, classy, refined, beautiful and near-perfect Lilith Mercer since the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
No, no problem at all.
Chapter 3
Lilith felt absurd, but it was clear to her that Josh wasn’t going to back down. And when Josh Redstone was set on something, it would take more than a mere protest to shift him. Besides, with what she owed him, she would tolerate a lot worse than having someone from security hanging around to placate his fears, however unfounded they might be.
Might, she thought, being the operative word.
Because once she’d read the thoughts in Josh’s steady gray eyes, she’d realized she couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty that there was no one who would want to hurt her.
“Are you angry with me?”
The quiet question from her office doorway interrupted Lilith’s unsettling thoughts. She looked up, into Liana Kiley’s troubled blue eyes.
“No,” she said to the young woman who had rapidly become indispensable to her in the task of finding and assessing the damage done by Stan Chilton, and had in the process become a friend as well. “I’m not angry. It’s all right, Liana.”
“I couldn’t help worrying, and Logan agreed. I know the people who did this—” the redhead made a general gesture toward the research lab “—are in jail, but still…”
Lilith masked her start of surprise. That possibility hadn’t occurred to her. She’d assumed, as had Josh, that if there was indeed some nefarious plot to harm her, only one person could be behind it. Of course, Liana didn’t know about that person. No one did, except Josh, and at his request, security chief John Draven.
If she had to accept that something was really happening, she wished she could believe it was something as sanitary as fallout from the industrial spying case. That would be preferable to the alternative. But the alternative, unhappily, made a lot more sense.
“Thank you for being worried,” Lilith said. “Although I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“Logan thought it was better to be sure. You’re not upset that he said something to Josh?”
“I wish he would have talked to me first, I could have eased his mind—and yours—but I try not to get angry with people who care enough to worry about me.”
Liana smiled in obvious relief. “What’s Josh going to do?”
“Pester me, no doubt,” Lilith said, with fond annoyance. “Or rather, some unlucky person from security who no doubt has much more important things to do than find a plot where there is none will get that job.”
“A bodyguard?”
Lilith laughed. “Oh, please. That’s the last thing I need.”
“They do that, though, don’t they? Security, I mean? Because Logan would be happy to—”
She stopped when Lilith held up a hand. “I do not need a bodyguard.”
A sudden image flashed through her mind, of the aftermath of the last time a Redstone Security agent had taken on bodyguard duties. In her mind she saw Ian Gamble, dressed in a sleek tuxedo that erased any memory of his usual, casually untidy self, just as his intense expression as he waited for his beautiful bride had erased the memory of his usual, endearingly distracted self.
Ian Gamble, genius inventor, who had fallen in love and married Samantha Beckett, top-notch Redstone Security agent.
His bodyguard.
Yet another in the ongoing string of Redstone weddings.
She shook off the image briskly. “I’m sure he’ll simply have someone look into both incidents, discover they were indeed unfortunate accidents and we will all go on about our business. Which is,” she added, “what I intend to do now.”
“Not just yet.”
The deep voice from the doorway spun Liana around and made Lilith’s nerves jump. Liana greeted the man standing there with a happy exclamation. “Tony! When did you get back?”
Lilith just tried to remember how to breathe.
“Hello, my lovely Liana. This morning,” Tony said.
“Have you seen Logan?”
“Your knight in shining armor with the luck of a thousand men to end up with you? No, but I spoke to him, also this morning.”
Liana laughed. “You’re incorrigible. But that’s what I love about you.”
Lilith smiled to herself a little wistfully; the teasing repartee was so carefree. Tony Alvera was an incurable flirt, and Liana obviously knew it. Although even if he had been serious, it wouldn’t have made any difference; the girl was head over heels in love with her ex-cop.
Lilith wondered if Tony Alvera was ever serious when it came to women. She was reasonably sure, from what she’d observed during his work on Logan’s case, that he would never poach on another man’s territory. Or perhaps that only applied to men he respected, as she knew he did Logan Beck. In any case, Liana was as safe from his predatory charms as if she’d been his sister. That, Lilith was certain of.
“But alas,” Tony was saying with mock drama, “as always, I am too late to win the fair lady.”
Lilith at last found her voice, and her poise.
“Children, children,” she said in mock severity, “take the bantering outside, please. I have work to do.”
Liana laughed, patted Tony’s arm in a way that put her previous words clearly into that sisterly category and went back to her own office.
Tony Alvera didn’t move. And at Lilith’s teasing words or tone, something had flickered in his eyes that had caught her attention. Something that reminded her that for all his easy, practiced charm, this was a dangerous man.
Something you shouldn’t forget, she told herself, although she wasn’t sure why it seemed so important at this moment; since they were both Redstone, he would never be dangerous to her.
For a long moment he stood there, just looking at her. He wasn’t a hu
ge man, just under six feet she guessed, but he somehow managed to fill the room anyway. It must be the combination of obvious strength, the striking looks, dark eyes coupled with golden skin and the rather rakish patch of beard below the middle of his lower lip, and the edginess he radiated at almost every moment.
The evidence that the edginess was for real was clear in the barely noticeable patches of slightly lighter skin on his neck and hands, where she knew gang tattoos had once been.
When she’d first met him, when he’d been assigned to help Liana and Logan, she’d found him disconcerting, to say the least. When she’d learned his story, from Josh himself, she’d found him admirable.
Right now, standing solidly in her office staring at her a little too intently—and for some reason apparently not willing to leave as Liana had—he was nothing less than unsettling.
And suddenly the obvious answer hit her.
“Not you,” she said, nearly groaning it.
His face changed. The transfixing look vanished, replaced by the practiced charm she’d seen him use so effectively before. Not the teasingly flirtatious manner he’d had with Liana; that had been oddly innocent and sincere. This was the demeanor he used to beguile people, mostly women, she was certain, into giving him what he wanted.
Whatever that might be.
That was something that hit a chord deep within her, and not in a good way.
“Sorry, Mrs. Mercer. Luck of the draw.”
She was hideously aware that she’d uttered her gut reaction aloud. And since she wasn’t even sure what had prompted that reaction, she didn’t know quite how to explain it to herself, let alone to the man she’d just unintentionally insulted.
But manners dictated she say something, so she opted for simplicity. And truth, which was never an optional choice for her, not anymore. “I’m sorry. I’m just not sold on this whole idea, and it seems absurd to pull you, of all people, in on such a silly little thing.”
Backstreet Hero Page 2