by K L Clare
“I love you, Elle, with every breath until my last,” I said into her hair where I’d buried my face. “Hold me this time, angel.” She had already given herself over to me. Her hands gripped the pillow above her head.
I lifted my head to meet her stunning, tear-filled eyes. We maintained the connection while she wrapped her arms round my torso and her legs round mine. She traced a finger over the scar on my back created by the bullet’s exit.
I kissed her neck where an assassin’s hands had once severely bruised her throat. I had flown into a mad rage and killed that motherfucker with my bare hands.
“I get it now—I get why you pay attention to the physical wounds on my body, baby.”
“It has never been about guilt.”
I nodded, and her eyes cleared.
It was about time, not guilt. The scars on our bodies represented near losses of time.
She kissed the one on my shoulder, and my body trembled with the need to thrust into hers, to take everything from her—to hold her and never lose the time she was giving me.
“You scared me this week, Elle.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so withdrawn.” Her lips curved into a playful smile. “Make love to me . . . and do it hard.”
We grinned, and because I would deny my angel nothing, I drew my cock out and shoved back into her with another powerful thrust.
18
No one was there when I searched the rooms on the ground floor the next morning, so I hit the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers on my own. Elle and I had never left our bedroom again after going upstairs the day before. Mrs. Bates had brought up dinner, and we’d watched old movies until falling asleep.
“What are you looking for, dear?” Mrs. Bates was behind me.
“Another charger for my mobile. The one upstairs isn’t working. Where is your staff?”
“I gave a few days gap. I can get on with things myself for a bit. The countess needs a break from the activity.”
“You asked Jessica to go back to Eastridge.” I should have realized. “Thank you.”
“This is why I’m here, lad, no? To take care of the two of you.” She opened the oven door and removed my breakfast plate. “Our lass has quite a lot of room back home to retreat to when she needs, but that’s not so here at Kensington. It’s up to us to send them away. Eat now and get on with it so you’re not late this evening.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I teased, picking up a fork and a knife.
“That handsome smile . . . always been trouble . . .” she mumbled as she turned back to the range with her wooden spoon to stir the pot of sweet-smelling raspberry jam she was cooking.
Taylor came through the doorway and filled a mug with coffee. “Good morning, sir.”
“You really need to stop that shit, Taylor. You don’t owe me that.”
“I’m a soldier. It’s what I do. If you want me to stop, tell my commander.” He winked and took a drink. “There was quite a queue for petrol at the filling station this morning.” It was his way of telling me that his commander, my wife, was up to something without telling me she was up to something.
I gave him a slight nod. “Good to know.”
“Keep a good eye on her—the both of you.” Mrs. Bates removed the bubbling jam from the open flame and turned to eyeball me, as if to accuse me. “She hasn’t been feeling well, you know.”
She was right. Elle had experienced some headaches and bouts of nausea after we returned from Eastridge. I checked her birth control pills, and she’d been taking them as she should. Because of the type of pill she’d been prescribed to ease her cycles, it was common for her to go months at a time without a period. We knew enough to not assume the contraception was 100 percent effective against pregnancy, so she took a home test to confirm. The results were negative.
“Elle was doing quite well last night. She may have picked up a bug from Lissie or Chelsea. She tells me the girls often carry flu viruses home from their schools.”
* * *
Later, after two meetings and a conference call with an investor in France, Thomas stepped into my office, headed straight for the bar, and poured himself a shot of whisky. “I’ll be out for a few hours this afternoon. You need to stay in and focus on the contract you should have wrapped up yesterday.”
He had shut the door when he came in.
“Stop with the nebulous bullshit and tell me what you’re trying to say.”
“Stay put,” he repeated. “There’s nothing vague about that. Keep your arse in the office, and close some business. My team in New York needs this win with the Elliot account.”
I stood. My palms were itching. “Where is she going, Thomas? What is my wife doing today that has you on edge?”
“You’ve got it wrong. There is no edge. Things are rolling according to plan, and there is nothing you need to know today. Do you trust me, brother?”
No answer came to me. I trusted him, but I couldn’t bring myself to reassure him of it. I turned towards the glass and raked a hand through my hair, staring out at the Thames. It was all I could do to keep myself from pacing.
Goddammit. I’d never had paranoia, but then again, I’d never had Elle.
“You need to say it, Will. I need to hear you say it.”
I kept my back to him. “You know there is no one I trust more than you. But Elle is at the center of this, and I’m not sure I have the strength to hold back. I should call her out and put an end to it.”
Selfish, weak prick.
“Think about what you just said. Has something changed?”
“What she needs has not changed.”
I heard Thomas’s glass hit the bar. “Well then. Wrap up the Elliot contract today.”
“She won’t stop,” I said, watching Tower Bridge lift for a marine tug heading upriver.
“Ellie will find Lissie’s mother, and she will stop.”
“She wants her own children, which is why this matters to her.”
“And you’ll give her that . . . consequences be damned, as you say.”
I spun to meet my brother’s stare. “Would you?”
“Yes.” His response held no hesitation. I noted the way he dropped his eyes to examine his watch.
“I’m no longer at the top of my game, Thomas. The injuries have—”
“You took a bullet for her. No amount of physical strength could be fiercer than that. And I assure you, I’m at the top of mine. No one will ever touch her.”
We were discussing another war with the Order. The thought of a potential reformation fucked with my head, and I had to make it leave me for a time. Elle’s investigation into Lissie’s mother was more pressing in the short term, and something was going down later that afternoon that didn’t feel right. It drove a sharp pain to the center of my chest.
“I’ll sign your deal within the hour. Tell Sean to get me Jim Elliot on your way out.”
19
I jumped into my car and followed Thomas’s sleek Maserati through the city towards the Kensington house. My self-control was lost. My instinct to protect her always won, no matter what it cost me. No price was too high when it came to keeping my wife safe. Keeping her safe was in my blood. It had been beaten into me, and even so, I understood that my actions were now of my own choosing. My father could no longer force me to do what he had chosen for me, but this situation caused me to question the idea that I could change.
Elle was in my blood, and my brain was diseased from it.
Losing her was the only price that existed for me.
Thomas would realize I was following him soon enough. My brother had a brilliant mind, and unlike mine, his intellect and laser-sharp awareness had been freely developed, making him even more dangerous to his enemies. Innate instincts were unpredictable and consequently more perilous. Ethan and I made sure Thomas’s skills were honed naturally. We’d covered for him, redirecting our father’s attention onto ourselves. Thomas was quite cocky, and our father would have beaten the hel
l out him for it. All the same, cocky or not, my brother was the better man.
Thomas coasted through the security gate into the small car park beside the house, but he didn’t leave his car. I watched from a distance as Andrew Evans, the second man on my security team who was also a Met Police authorized firearms officer, sprinted from the service entrance and got into the car with my brother.
I struck the side of my fist against the steering wheel. The plan was clear at that point. The commissioner had given in to Elle’s demand to see Devon Parker, and Evans was Thomas’s inside informant. Good—my brother left Joe Taylor out of his reconnaissance. That was good. He understood Taylor’s allegiance had to remain with Elle.
But that wasn’t enough to calm me.
Another Parker. Another threat. Instinct told me that since Simon had wanted my wife dead, Devon would want the same. My gut was certain about that.
Christ, I was allowing her to walk right into the ruse.
I accelerated and weaved between the lanes of traffic to catch up to Thomas’s car. A horn blasted on my right as I cut back to the left. “Move, motherfuckers,” I shouted. My brother’s car moved swiftly through the traffic several car lengths ahead of me. He sped up.
My mobile rang.
“Go home, brother,” Thomas shouted through the speaker. “Stop what you’re doing before this becomes a bigger fucking mess for us all.”
“He’s a Parker, Thomas, and there’s a history we haven’t fully uncovered. Simon tried to kill her. Devon certainly wants her dead as well, goddammit!”
Another horn blasted on my right after a driver anticipated merging in front of me but was forced to hit his brakes as he realized I was moving too fast.
Ahead of me, Thomas zipped through traffic and headed for a side street close to Westminster Station. He made two left turns and stopped his car abruptly in an empty backstreet. He leaped out of his Maserati and ordered Evans to stay inside.
I sat in my car and gripped the wheel hard with both hands, my white knuckles aching from it. The pain in my chest intensified. Beads of sweat fell from my forehead onto my thighs. I pumped breath through my nose and stared straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with my brother as he stalked towards my car.
“Get out, Will. Get the fuck out of the car now,” he ordered, opening my door.
I shook my head and continued staring forward. “I can’t do this. And I can’t lose her. At every turn, regardless of the path I choose, that possibility stares me in the face.”
That was the reality of the hell that I faced every minute of every day, and I deserved it. I had never deserved her. She was pure light, and I was nothing but darkness and ruin.
He softened his tone and extended his arm. “Christ. Come on, brother, step out for some air.”
We clasped each other’s forearms, and my brother pulled me to my feet.
I still couldn’t look at him. I was . . . broken.
He placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You’re right—we can’t keep doing this. We’re lying to her so that she can lie to us. That’s fucked up. We’ve forgotten who she is.”
I nodded. “She’s tenacious when it comes to what’s hers. She’s protecting our family.”
“Same as you and I would do. She’s determined.” Thomas put both hands against my shoulders and drew my eyes to his. I couldn’t bear it for more than a few seconds. “Go home and wait for her. Tell her everything you just told me.”
“I should, I know, but—”
“No, no more,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “I’ve got this. No harm will come to your wife. You have my word. I’ll text when she’s on her way back to Kensington, and you will go there now. Be her partner, as you’ve said, not an enabler. That’s the real win she needs, I think. Do you really believe she wants to be on her own with this shit?”
“You’re right. Of course she doesn’t want that.” I gripped Thomas’s shoulder, corrected my posture, and met his eyes. “She may even want me to blow it up and take the matter away from her. She’ll be angry with me at first.”
“Maybe. She does have quite a temper sometimes.” He grinned and drew one from me.
“Go on, Thom,” I said. “Be there with her. You make damned sure that she’s not harmed in that room with Devon Parker.”
A Criminal Mind
From: Ellie
To: Isobel
He knows your secrets, Isobel. And now . . . so do I.
My heart banged around in my chest, sending a determined message to my screwed-up brain. There were no words at first because there was no question. Devon Parker was a few years younger, but he looked like his brother, Simon. His voice and his mannerisms were also quite similar.
I stared into his callous navy-blue eyes, and it was clear that he held the key to the locked box of truths that I was seeking.
Devon sneered. He was cryptic. He taunted and wished me dead, pulling viciously against the chain that linked the steel cuffs on his wrists and ran through the iron loop bolted to the center of the interrogation room table.
As sick as it was, I gathered the strength to confront Devon by visualizing Will’s strong hands wrapped around his throat. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing of events to come, because I have no doubt that this man will someday meet my husband, and it will be the day that this last male Parker dies.
I grinned, and he tilted his head like a dog and called me a bizarre little bitch.
“Yes,” I told him. “Because I know my life belongs to me. I will live much longer than you, and I believe you’re sane enough to understand that. So, let’s get on with this, shall we?”
Commissioner Brown pushed a small metal box across the table just short of Devon’s shaking hands, and he said, “If you talk, it’s yours. Refuse, and I’ll give it to your cell mate.”
I don’t know what was inside, not precisely, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. I wanted information, and it did not matter to me how the commissioner extricated it on my behalf.
What mattered was that Devon Parker desperately wanted what was in that little pill tin, so he cooperated. His words were directed to the commissioner from that point. He looked at the photos I placed on the table and pointed at them to identify the people and recount what he knew about them.
“Are you certain . . . what you’re saying is true?” I demanded more than once, but he would only respond to the commissioner.
He didn’t meet my eyes again until the guards led him from the room, then he looked back over his shoulder to sneer one last time. “You’ve got quite some bollocks coming here, bitch.”
I have more information about Lissie now, Isobel, though I’m not sure what to make of it. Knowing is one thing but understanding the motivation behind all the lies is another.
I know you, so I know that when you agreed to help Ethan hide your niece, your decision came from a strong sense of devotion.
But to whom were you devoted?
You were a liar, true, but a loyal person nonetheless.
20
I paced the length of the drawing room after sending away Mrs. Bates and shutting myself in, a lowball of Scotch in one hand and my mobile phone in the other. My nerves were raw. Turning my car and driving away from Scotland Yard, driving away from Elle while she was in the same room with a man who wanted her dead, was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
Never again. Not as long as I have breath in my body.
Words rolled through my head as I blundered through my thoughts to find the right argument that would make her forgive me once more, this time for taking back what I had given. It was a futile exercise, because in the end, words never worked for Elle and me. We communicated on some inexplicable plane of existence located in a deep level of understanding.
The nonverbal depth between us was something I could not describe. The obsession we mutually harbored was the reason we could leave out most of the common words and phrases
couples often said to one another when conveying love or disagreeing, and that was the one thing I understood about us for certain. We were equally consumed.
Thomas’s text message finally came. My wife was on her way back to me.
Another text buzzed my mobile, and I thanked Christ for it.
But there was no God and no son of God to thank. Not really. If God existed, He would not allow a woman so pure to endure the torment and loss Elle had suffered.
Reproach rumbled in my throat.
My wife would never agree with those thoughts. Elle’s conceptually driven mind would instead work hard to show me the worth and magnificence in having a flawed God. She would do as she had done before our wedding. She would ask me to sit quietly with her in the private chapel at Eastridge. She would ask me again if I could feel it, feel God.
I would give her the same answer. I would say that I feel only her.
One day she might convince me, but that day would be when no threats against her remained—a day when she could fearlessly live every second of the beautiful life I’d promised her.
Elle: I miss you. Can you come home?
I replied: Already here. Need you.
After quite a long gap, she sent another message: Almost there.
The drawn-out pause told me she had guessed why I was home, and the two words she sent back revealed a combination of understanding and guilt. When Elle was angry, her emotions were bold and demonstrative. This was not that.
Fear took a back seat to the overwhelming relief that flooded my soul. I put my glass and phone on the table, sat on the edge of the sofa, and gave in to it, dropping my elbows to my thighs and my face into my hands. Unshed tears filled my eyes, and my throat burned as I swallowed them. Christ, I was a fucking wreck.