Up In Flames

by Lori Foster

  Everything he told her, no matter how gruesome, only made her curious for more. In so many ways she delighted him, excited him, alternately brought forth his lust and his protectiveness.

  When she started yawning, Mick stood to put their bowls in the dishwasher. “I think it’s time for you to get some rest. After everything I put you through today, you have to be exhausted.”

  He turned to see her rubbing her eyes tiredly. “I’m wiped out.” But she didn’t stand, didn’t make a move to go to bed. She just stared at her hands.

  Mick closed the dishwasher and stood at her side. “You don’t have to be nervous here, Delilah. My house is secure, and Faradon has someone driving by every fifteen minutes. You’re safe.”

  “I know.” Still she didn’t move.

  Mick knelt down beside her. “What can I do?” he asked. He searched her face, and wished like hell he had some answers. “I know I can’t make up for not trusting you, but I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

  She stared at his hand on her knee. “You don’t owe me. What you did...it’s understandable. I just wish you’d talked to me first. Together we might have...”

  “I’m a bastard, I know.” He worked his jaw, then pointed out, “You haven’t yelled at me at all.”

  Her slender shoulder lifted in a halfhearted shrug. “At first I was too devastated to yell. Then too hurt. Now...well, now I understand.”

  “I’d feel better if you’d yell.”

  Her soft mouth curled at his words, which weren’t quite facetious. “There’s no point to it.”

  And Mick had to wonder if that meant she considered him a lost cause, not worth the effort of a good yell.

  Time, he’d have to give her time. “Come on. I think I’m ready for bed, too.”

  Looking at him through her inky lashes, she stood. He couldn’t decipher her mood, and hated the helplessness he felt.

  They went down the hall together, and Mick allowed himself to hold her for just a moment. He kissed her forehead and stepped away. “If you need anything, or want anything, I’m right next door.”

  She nodded. “Good night.”

  Mick stared at that damn closed door for far too long before taking himself off to bed. He doubted he’d get any sleep, and in fact, he wasn’t tired at all. His body hummed with tension, with leftover adrenaline.

  He left his door ajar so he’d hear her if she called out. Lying there in the darkness, he went over all the possibilities, but couldn’t come up with a good reason why Rudy would want her dead.

  It had to be linked to Neddie Moran somehow. It was just too much of a coincidence for her to have known Neddie before he was killed, and for Neddie’s death to have taken place so close to the attempt on her life.

  Mick turned to the bedside table and picked up the phone. Hitting the lighted numbers, he called Faradon.

  “It better be important,” Faradon grumbled. It sounded to Mick like the man was eating, but then Faradon probably ate a lot. He was as big as a bear.

  “Did you find any connection between Neddie Moran and Rudy Glasgow yet?”

  “Nope, not a thing so far. But then it could be Neddie knew one of the other guys, and without their names, we’re lost. The prints’ll probably help. Don’t worry, we’ll keep digging. We’re bound to turn up something soon.”

  Frustrated, Mick had just replaced the receiver into the cradle and settled back when his door squeaked open.

  Delilah’s silhouette was outlined by the faint light coming through his windows. “Mick?”

  Mick’s body thrummed to life as he propped himself up on one elbow. Unless his eyes deceived him, she wore only a T-shirt. He forced the raw hunger from his tone and asked as gently as possible, “You okay, babe?”

  She crept closer, hesitated. “I don’t want to sleep alone.”

  Those softly spoken words had a startling effect on his libido, an even bigger effect on his heart. Mick lifted his sheet, inviting her into his bed.

  She hurried the rest of the way to him and slipped in by his side. For a second, she kept a slight distance between them. Mick didn’t move, didn’t breathe, and then she turned to him and gripped him tight, and all the pent-up tension inside him exploded.

  * * *

  “Christ, I’m sorry, so damn sorry,” he murmured into her hair. His hold was tight and infinitely gentle.

  Del cuddled closer, comforted by his scent, the warmth of his skin.... “You’re not wearing anything?”

  He stilled, then said, “I can put something on if you want.”

  “No.” She loved touching him, and she needed the feel of him right now. All of him. The hair on his chest provided a nice cushion for her cheek, and she nuzzled into him. “Just hold me, okay?”

  He turned to face her, drew her closer into his body so that he surrounded her, protected her. Always. Del felt a fat tear sting the corner of her eye. God, he was always trying to protect her.

  “Does it bother you?” she whispered into the darkness, into the safety of his nearness.

  “Hell, yes.” His large hand opened on the back of her head, his rough fingertips sinking in to cradle her scalp, massage, soothe. “When I think of those bastards looking at you, I want to kill them. I could kill them.”

  Del sniffed and laughed and continued to cry softly. She was so damned confused. “No,” she chided, wanting to hear him, to borrow some of his strength. “I meant does it bother you that they saw you. Your privacy was invaded as much as mine.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “At first I was just blind with...”

  “Rage? Because you thought I had lied to you?”

  He shook his head, then nuzzled her shoulder and squeezed her until she squeaked. “I hate to admit it,” he rumbled against her throat, “but you deserve the truth. Ugly as it might be, regardless of how damn asinine I feel about it.”

  “The truth?”

  “It wasn’t rage I felt first, but this awful drowning hurt.” He pressed his mouth to the skin of her throat, her shoulder. “There aren’t many people in this world who could hurt me. But thinking that you’d used me, that you were laughing at me...it knocked my legs out from under me. It was all I could do to get the hell out of Rudy’s hospital room without ripping him apart.”

  Del turned her face to his. “I’m sorry,” she said very softly, and meant it.

  “Oh God, don’t. Don’t apologize to me!” He sat up and switched on a light, shocking her, making her blink against the glare of it. “You should slap my face, Delilah. Or curse me or...hell, I don’t know what. But don’t apologize.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes welling with emotion, and his expression crumbled.

  “Oh, babe, no, don’t cry.”

  That got her laughing again, a wobbly, pathetic laugh. “Don’t apologize, don’t cry.” She sniffed, and gratefully accepted the tissue he handed to her. She blew hard before continuing. “I’ve thought about it, and I can see why you believed Rudy. We haven’t really known each other that long, not long enough for unconditional trust.”

  She scooted up to sit against the headboard. “Trust doesn’t really come easy to me, either.”

  “Tell me what to do,” Mick said, touching her cheek to remove one lingering tear. “Tell me how to prove to you that I do trust you.”

  She blinked. “Do you?”

  He settled himself beside her, and their shoulders touched. Del had the sheet to her chin, but Mick barely had it covering his lap. Even now, in a vortex of emotions, he stole her breath away. He folded his hands over his abdomen and stared at the far wall.

  “Damn right I trust you,” he said. “I think it was myself I didn’t trust all along. But you...almost from the minute I saw you, I wanted you. You drew me like no one ever had, and that shook me because I wasn’t used to anyone affecting me like that.” He glanced down at her. “It’s scary the way you make me feel.”

  Del lifted his left arm over her shoulder and curled into his side again. “Okay?”
>
  His arm tightened. “Better than okay.”

  “Will you tell me about your childhood?” She felt him stiffen, felt the stillness that came over him, body and mind.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “To try to understand. I’ve gotten the impression it wasn’t great, but that kid’s a part of you.”

  “No.”

  “You can’t run away from your past, Mick. All you can do is deal with it.”

  “I’ve dealt with it,” he muttered.

  Del knew she was pushing, but it was important to her to know all of him, the good and the bad. “Then you shouldn’t have any problem sharing with me.” To force the issue, she added, “Since you trust me.”

  “That has nothing to do with trust.”

  “Of course it does!” Again she twisted to look at him, but he pressed her head back to his shoulder. Del grinned. “You know, even Neddie trusted me enough to confide in me. He told me about his past and things he’d done, things he regretted.”

  This time Mick turned her face up to him. His fingers were hard, firm on her chin. “What things did he tell you?”

  “You first.”

  “Delilah...”

  She only raised a brow, waiting.

  He sighed, gave a slight shake of his head and then kissed her forehead. He settled back, and though his pose was relaxed, she felt the rigid way he held himself. “Family services took me away from my mother twice. The first time it happened, I was about five. She’d gone out partying and hadn’t come back, and a neighbor reported her.”

  Covering her shock and her sympathy, Del asked, “How long was she gone?”

  “All weekend. In those days, other than her disappearing every now and then, it wasn’t so bad. The house stayed kinda picked up and she had a regular job and she still seemed to...like me.”

  Seemed to like me. Del’s heart cried out at the hurt he must have felt. She smoothed her hand over his chest and kept quiet.

  “They gave me back to her easy enough, and I was glad. Sometimes being with her was rough, but it was nothing compared to not knowing what would happen, or being stuck with strangers. My mother promised to take some classes, to get into rehab for her drinking, and voilà—I was back home.”

  “Were things any better then?”

  He laughed. “They got worse, actually. She was embarrassed that her neighbors knew I’d been taken away, so we moved. She got a new boyfriend and started drinking even more, but she was careful to put on a good show for the folks who checked up on her. It was another couple of years before things really went down the toilet.”

  Del cringed at the idea of something worse than a mother neglecting her son for an entire weekend, but again she kept silent, wanting him to talk.

  “My mother had an affinity for drink first, and men second. She moved them in and out of our house, but none of them ever contributed, and most of them didn’t care to see me too often. Until I was about twelve, I tried to just stay out of sight. But then her liver went bad and she got really sick, and the guy who was with her at the time took her to the hospital. She had to stay awhile, and he skipped out, so family services had me again. That was the worst. I mean, at five I probably needed looking after. But at twelve? I’d have been fine on my own, and when they finally let her out of the hospital I knew I had to take over or I’d get taken away from her for good. Not that I’d have missed her much, but...” He shrugged.

  “The familiar,” Del said, “is almost always easier than the unfamiliar.”

  “Yeah.” He smoothed his fingers up and down her bare arm for a few minutes, thinking. “I was bigger than her by then, so she couldn’t close me off in my room anymore or use threats against me. I could outrun her, and smacking me hurt her worse than it did me. So I told her how things were going to be.”

  Del shivered at the harshness of those words, at the awful reality he’d faced at such a young age. “At twelve years old, you took charge?”

  “Damn right. And she listened, and did as I said, because she knew otherwise I could get her arrested.”

  “How?”

  “She had men in the house who were thieves and cons. She’d done a lot of stupid stuff while drunk, including prostituting herself for drinks, gambling with money we didn’t have, accepting stolen goods in exchange for a room—usually to someone busy dodging the law. Our television, and for a while our car, were both stolen.”

  Del wondered if that was why he’d chosen to work Vice, because he’d already seen the other side of it.

  “A lot of the men would make big promises, some even to me. They’d talk about taking care of her, buying things, but they all lied. Family services lied, too, always telling me things would get better. And she was the worst of all—she lied every damn time she said she loved me. After that, she’d always tell me not to say anything to anyone because she’d be taken away and I’d be left all alone.” He laughed, a rough, humorless sound. “I knew it was bullshit all along. Whatever maternal instincts she’d had got drowned in a bottle early on. By the time I was twelve, she’d already pretty much wiped her hands of me, but my new conditions really finished things off.”

  He drew a long breath. “She did as I told her, and she hated me in the bargain.”

  Del hugged him tight. “What, exactly, did you tell her to do, Mick?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “We sold our house, which we were about to lose anyway, since she missed more and more work from drinking and couldn’t make the payments. I didn’t want to end up on the street, and neither did she. I checked around and found an apartment building—the one right next door to where you rent. It was a terrible area even then, but I used the money we made off the house to buy it, and the rent from the other apartments was income. I was in charge, taking applications from renters, collecting the rent, running ads when necessary.”

  “You did all that at twelve?”

  “There weren’t a lot of choices.” He smiled down at her. “But it wasn’t bad. Hell, it was the best it had been for a while. She stayed drunk and ran around with every Tom in town, but she knew better than to screw with the bill money. When I got old enough, I got a job and that helped, too.”

  “When did you meet Angel?”

  His gaze brightened with a smile of genuine warmth. “She moved in when I was sixteen. Her first son, Grayson, was just a little-bitty squirt, and she’d been in a car wreck and was barely able to get around herself. I helped her out, and she started tutoring me in the school subjects I had problems with. Angel was...she was the type of woman I hadn’t seen before. She didn’t lie or make things up. If something needed to be done, she found a way to do it.”

  Del felt more tears gather and quickly swiped them away. “I know she loves you.”

  “Yeah. She does. She thinks of herself as a big sister, or a surrogate mother, I guess.” Mick reached over and tweaked Del’s nose. “Now, you talk about a role model, that’s Dane. Alec, too. They’re both great guys.”

  She caught his hand and held it to her cheek. “They say the same about you.”

  Del kissed his palm, and he asked, “Delilah, will you forgive me?”

  She hesitated to be totally honest with him. She knew that she loved Mick, and she’d rather die than hurt him. But the night was quiet, the light low, and he deserved the truth. “I can forgive you, because I understand.” I love you too much not to. “But I don’t know that I’ll ever feel the same again.”

  He went rigid. “What does that mean, Delilah?”

  She wished he hadn’t turned the light on. She’d have preferred the concealing darkness, which made confessions so much easier. “Since the day I met you, I’ve seen you as bigger than life, a knight in shining armor, fearless.”

  He snorted. “That’s nonsense. Hell, I just told you, you scare the hell out of me.”

  She shook her head; nothing really scared Mick, she knew. And she certainly didn’t have that type of power over him. If she had, he wouldn’t have turned on
her so easily. “I write about heroes every day, but I didn’t know they existed. I didn’t think any man would deliberately risk his life to keep someone else safe. I didn’t know a stranger would risk his life, not for me.”

  He frowned over that.

  “I saw you as...” she shrugged helplessly “...the best of everything.”

  Mick shoved away the sheet and stood. Gloriously naked, he stalked to the window and looked out at the black, balmy night. A large oak blocked what little moonlight there might have been. No leaves stirred; all was silent except for the bumping of her heart.

  The faint light from the bedside lamp threw a glow along one side of his body, causing shadows to dip and swell over his muscles and bones, exaggerating his strength, which she already knew to be considerable. She wanted to touch him everywhere. She wanted to eat him up. And nothing, not even her hurt, could change that.

  “I come from nothing, Delilah.” His voice broke the night, harsh and raw. “For most of my life, I was nothing. Despite how they feel about it, I’m like a stray that Angel dragged home and everyone accepted. I owe Angel and Dane and their whole goddamn family for showing me what family is, for letting me know how a real life could be, and for helping me to get that life. I owe them for who I am now. But if you stripped them away and left me with just myself, with just the bare bones of me, I’d be back at square one. And that sure as hell isn’t a white knight.”

  “No!” She struggled to her knees, clutching the sheet to her throat. “You are who you are, Mick Dawson, a strong, capable man with or without anyone else.”

  He whirled around. “I am not a damn hero.”

  He looked livid, his eyes red, his nostrils flaring. Del stared.

  “Don’t you dare put me on some fucking pedestal,” he growled, “because I’m guaranteed to fall off. I’m human, and I blunder my way through life just like everyone else.”

  When she remained silent, wide-eyed and stunned, he stomped back to the bed, caught her upper arms and lifted her from the mattress, causing her sheet to fall. She worried for his injured shoulder, and his injured soul.