“So even with all your money and power, you have no answers.”
“Not yet. I will.”
Blood rushes in my ears and my hands go to his shoulders. “No. No, if you are what you seem to be--”
“If I am what I seem to be? What do I seem to be?”
“Good. Right.”
He grabs my hand and holds them between us. “I am right, Amy. Right for you. Right for us.”
“Then you need out of this. You don’t know what you’re involved in.”
“Do you even know, Amy? Do you have any idea what you’re running from?”
“Death, Liam. I’m running from death, which is exactly why I tried to keep you out of it. That’s why I told you not to dig around. So you don’t end up dead too, but what did you do? You dug around. You think no one knows what you’re doing? You think they won’t be watching you for me?”
“I’m not going to end up dead and neither are you.”
“My family’s dead. People have died. You could die. I can’t let that happen.”
“You ran to protect me?”
Ashamed, I look away, fighting the burn in my eyes. “I was too weak to run to protect you.”
“Amy,” Liam prods gently, his finger sliding under my chin, turning my face to his.
The instant my eyes meet his, I confess, “I kept telling myself to leave but you were...we were...I just couldn’t.”
“You are not weak. You’ve been through hell and survived and you’re going to keep surviving. We are not going to die.”
“You don’t--”
“I do. We will get through this.” He unhooks my belt and stands, pulling me to my feet with him. “I won’t have it any other way.” And the conviction in his voice, deep in his eyes, vibrates through me, intense but somehow soothing.
“I want you to be right.”
His lips quirk in that arrogant, confident way of his. “I am.” He sits down and pulls me into his lap, draping me over his legs as I had been in the car. “And we are.”
I inhale his familiar scent with a deep breath, and it is sweet honey pouring into the emptiness that has become my life. Slowly, my body melts into his, my lashes lower. I just don’t have it in me to fight him, let alone distrust him. I don’t want to be alone when I can be with Liam. But as I snuggle closer to him, I cannot help but wonder if my story was a book and someone was reading it, would they call me naive and stupid? The very idea makes me angry, defensive even, and I do not know why when it’s nothing but an invisible critic. But then, everything and everyone who has attacked me has been invisible and I find myself mentally making my own case. I was eighteen when I heard my mother being burned alive, suddenly left without money and resources, barely breathing from the pain of loss myself. Maybe I should have tried harder to find answers, but most days just waking up felt like climbing mountains. Except now. In this man’s arms. Would those who would judge me truly pick hitchhiking, and collapsing in flashbacks while digging uselessly for answers on their own over gambling on this man’s arms?
If they would, then they are not me. I am staying with Liam Stone...live, die, or whatever that means.
***
I’m having the dream again. The one where Liam is with me, holding me, making me feel safe and cared about. There is warmth and happiness when life has taught me to expect ice and pain. I like this dream, and wanting it to last, I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, savoring a sense of being warm and safe I do not remember feeling much in my adult life. Inhaling, I draw in the rustic, spicy male scent that tells me I am with Liam. I am with Liam. My eyes pop open and the night’s events flood my mind. The diner. The car and the driver who took us to the airport. Liam pulling me onto his lap on the plane. The plane. The hum of the engine is still present, just as I am still on Liam’s lap, curled into his body, his head resting on mine, his breathing slow and steady. I’m on top of him and he’s asleep. And because I was with him, I was able to sleep, too.
Trust.
That is the word that comes to me. I trust him. Right or wrong, that is what he makes me feel. He has from the moment I met him. It could be instinct or stupidity. I’ve tried to think of it as the latter and make my own way. I went to sleep willing to live or die with Liam, and I am awake again, and I still feel that way. I have been alone so very long. Too long. And the truth is, there are answers to be found and he has the resources to find them.
He shifts slightly and his grip tightens around me, as if he’s afraid I’ll escape. As if he’s afraid this is a dream also. He nuzzles my neck and I lean into his touch as he murmurs, “You’re awake.”
His voice, soft silk, and deep, male sex appeal, radiates through me, and tells me this is real. He is real. And maybe, just maybe, everything I’ve felt for him, and with him, is too. “Yes,” I whisper, lifting my head and blinking him into view, his dark hair now a dried, finger-rumpled mess that somehow only makes him sexier. I stroke my fingers over the dark stubble on his jaw. “And you’re really here.”
“Mr. Stone?”
We both look up to find the flight attendant in the doorway to the cabin. “Please. I need her in her seat. We’re preparing to land. We need everyone buckled up.”
“Oh yes,” I quickly agree, scooting off of Liam’s lap. Or I try. He holds on to me.
“Not just yet.” He glances at the flight attendant. “Consider it done.”
Her lips purse but she takes his words for the dismissal that they are and departs.
Liam’s fingers lace into my hair and he drags my mouth to his for a long, drugging kiss. The landing gear churns from the belly of the plane and his lips reluctantly leave mine. “Now you can get up.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes,” the flight attendant chides tartly, jerking my gaze to where she has poked her head back into the cabin. “In a seat, please.”
Blood rushes to my cheeks and I scramble off of Liam’s lap, into the seat beside him to buckle up. The flight attendant disappears and Tellar appears in the doorway. “You have to sit down,” the flight attendant scolds from behind him.
Tellar lifts a hand. “I’m sitting. I’m sitting.” He claims the seat in front of me. “Jeez. Women. They really can be nags.”
My head prickles and an image of my brother saying the same thing flickers in my mind. I swallow hard and shove aside the image, but somehow I repeat what I’d said to Chad so long ago. “Men. They really can be pains in the backside.”
Tellar snorts and looks at Liam. “You’re right. She looks sweet, but she’s feisty. I think I should make friends before I get my ass kicked. We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Tellar. Tellar Phelps.”
I don’t even know how to introduce myself. Hi, I’m a dead girl named Lara? I’m the fake girl named Amy? “Tellar is an interesting name,” I say, doing the avoidance thing I do almost as well as I tell the lies I despise so much.
“Interesting is one way of putting it. My father was military. He and my uncles loved the whole ‘Tell her you love her. Tell her she’s beautiful. Tell her--”
“What she wants to hear,” I supply without even meaning to. It just sort of happens and so does the ache in my gut that comes with the idea that he or Liam might be doing just that.
Liam grabs my hand and his is strong and warm. He laces his fingers with mine, drawing my gaze to his, as he says, “I won’t keep the truth from you, no matter how brutal. You have my word.”
But he hadn’t told me everything in Denver and unbidden, a memory smashes into me. I can handle Amy. It had been those cold words that made me sound like a puppet he controlled and had made me feel that what I’d overheard had been more than Liam just snooping around. I try to jerk my hand from Liam’s.
He held onto it, his eyes narrowing. “What just happened?”
“Nothing just happened.” But I don’t want to say more and I don’t want to go where these thoughts are taking me. I want to stay in the land of trust and temptation.
“Something just happene
d,” Liam counters.
The plane jumps and shakes and out of nowhere a wave of nausea overcomes me. I lean forward, almost doubling over and unhook my belt. Liam’s hand comes down on my back. “Amy.”
“I’m okay,” I whisper, unhooking my belt. “I just...I need a minute.” I’m on my feet, darting to my left before he can stop me.
Somehow, I make it to the bathroom without heaving and shove inside the tiny room, shutting the door. The plane shudders again and I struggle with the lock, almost feeling myself turn green, and I give up on the door. Turning, I hang over the tiny toilet, knots balling in my gut. A metal taste forms in my mouth and I gag, but there is nothing to come up. I can’t even remember the last time I ate.
“Amy?” Liam says from the hallway and I squeeze my eyes shut, angry that his caring matters to me. Angry that I’ve convinced myself to trust him without knowing all the facts. I’m just this stupid young girl who isn’t young anymore. I can’t keep using that excuse.
“Amy. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I manage, noting the urgency in his voice and grabbing the sink to blink my ratty, horrible hair into view. I might not know who the girl in the mirror is anymore, but she sure looks like something the dog dragged in.
The door creaks and I turn as Liam appears in the tiny entryway, those intense eyes of his seeing too much. Despite the rain that has drenched us both, unlike me, he doesn’t look like hell. He looks like sex and sin and the temptation I can never say no to. “You’re sick to your stomach,” he says, stating the obvious.
“I...no.” Damn it, I hate the lies and yet they flow from my mouth like water from a faucet. “It passed. I haven’t eaten and...I’m okay.”
He doesn’t so much as blink, nor does he show any signs of budging and giving me a chance to collect myself. He just stands there, and every second he does, he is temptation turning to double temptation. He consumes the tiny space, and me with it, and he doesn’t even have to try. “Is this the first time you’ve been sick?” he finally asks.
I know where this is headed and I’m not ready for this conversation. Not here. Not now. “I got sick. It’s done.”
His lips tighten and I hold my breath, knowing he’s about to push, but unexpectedly, the wheels hit the ground and we tumble into each other, his strong arms wrapping around me, his big body collapsing around me to hold me steady. And I lean into him, wrapping my arms around him, holding on as if I am holding on for dear life. I think maybe I am. I think...maybe he’s my last hope. Or maybe, he’s my final destruction.
Too soon and not soon enough, the plane jerks to a stop and then begins a slower crawl. He frames my head and forces my eyes to his, searching my face. I don’t know what he sees. I don’t try to hide anything. He knows too much. I know too little.
His thumb strokes my jaw. My lip. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Desperately, I burn to simply live in this moment, drown in the tenderness I see in his eyes, but instead I hear his words to Derek in my head again. I can handle Amy. Instantly, I stiffen, flattening my hand on his chest, intending to push him away, but like always, I do not. “Yes, Liam. Yes, we do.” His heart pounds beneath my palm. Races. He is affected by me, by us, and by my reaction to what he has said. On some core level I believe that is because he cares about me and I need him to deserve the trust that comes with that and I add, “I have questions.”
“So do I.”
I lift my chin, making a decision in that moment I know is as right as he always feels. “I won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”
“Because you don’t fully trust me.”
“Because I can’t afford to fully trust anyone.”
He laces his fingers with mine. “I’m going to prove to you that I’m the exception, Amy.” He tugs me close, pressing his hand to the small of my back. “But right now, I just want to remind you how good we feel together. I want you naked and in my bed, where you belong.”
Heat swirls low in my belly and I can almost feel myself melt for this man at his perfect answer that is pure seduction. Almost too perfect in a world where everything has been a lie. I would know. I’m the queen of lies.
Chapter Five
Someone wanted me out of New York.
That is what is in my mind as we exit the plane at JFK Airport and enter a private wing of some sort that I didn’t even know existed. We depart the seating area and enter a main walkway, where Liam and I fall into step side by side. Any comfort I garner from him being next to me is diminished to near zero by Tellar moving ahead of us, and my uncomfortable impression that he’s ready to take a bullet to protect us.
Liam seems to sense as much, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and bringing us thigh to thigh, his big body sheltering mine as if he knows that is what I need right now. And I do feel sheltered by this man, protected. It’s taken me years, but I’ve come to believe that my instincts about people and events are strong. Even as a teenager, I’d sensed there was more going on with my family than I’d understood, and I’ve beaten myself up a million times for doing nothing, though I still I have no idea what I could have possibly done.
Liam urges me forward. I follow Tellar down the escalator with Liam on my heels, and I watch a secluded walkway come into view, scanning for that Godzilla behind a wall waiting to jump out at me. Liam takes my hand as we head toward a private exit and I silently amend that to at us, reminding myself of what I would prefer to forget. Nothing has changed since Denver. Liam is either a danger to me or in danger because of me. I can’t win.
Exiting through a side doorway, I shiver at both the cold October New York night and the reminder that my thin cotton waitress uniform is my only possession in this world. I’ve lost everything again, and though I had very little, I’ve discovered that even something can feel like everything.
“Quickly,” Liam says, ushering me toward yet another black sedan with the backdoor already open, and his urgency sets my adrenaline rushing.
I climb inside the car with Liam fast behind me. Tellar settles behind the wheel in the driver’s seat and it hits me that they are urgent to get me deeper into New York City and I was told to leave by my handler, who is now MIA. My hand goes to my throat. Oh God. What if he died warning me to leave New York?
Tellar starts the car and I shout, “Wait!” and then turn to Liam, “Coming here was a mistake. You’ve been asking questions about me and you were with me in Denver. They could be watching your home. They could know we’re here.”
“Who is they, Amy?” Liam asks, a command to his voice, his expression grave. “Talk to me so I know what I’m dealing with.”
“I told you, I don’t know.” I grab his hand. “Please, Liam. Let’s go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”
His lips thin and his jaw sets hard. “We’re here tonight. I know we’re safe. We’re staying.” He taps Tellar’s seat. “Go.”
Adrenaline and anger surges inside me and I yank my hand from his. “So there it is. Proof my opinion matters only when I agree with you. I’m a prisoner.”
“Proof that we’re sitting ducks under a streetlight, Amy, and that we have no plan beyond this one. We need a plan. I have private parking at my home and the windows are tinted dark both in the car and my home. No one will know. And once we’re at my apartment, I have the best security money can buy.”
“We can’t stay locked up in your apartment forever.”
“And you can’t keep running forever either.”
“I left everything behind and got out of New York for a reason. What part of that do you not understand?”
“And that reason was what? What spooked you that night I met you?”
I open my mouth and snap it shut as his words replay in my mind. I can handle Amy. The coldness of that statement bites back any confessions about my handler’s existence. “Safety,” I reply simply and still honestly. “I left because New York isn’t safe for me.”
Liam’s eyes harden, his jaw tenses and I sense rather than see,
his frustration. “You do know, the more you tell me, the easier it is for me to protect you, don’t you?”
“I was living in New York and I left. That should tell you all you need to know.”
“All that tells me is what I already knew. You need my protection.”
“Why do I keep feeling like that word means captivity?”
He pulls me close, his fingers a tight vise on my arm, his body warm, hard like his voice. “Because that’s what you’ve been in for six long years and I know you want it to end. I want it to end, too.”
“I need my life back, Liam. That’s true, but you taking it over isn’t going to do that for me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, baby. Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to get your life back, which means keeping you alive to enjoy it. Even if you hate me in the process.”
He lets go of me and settles back in his seat, staring straight ahead, his body as stiff and unyielding as his declaration. I stare at him a moment, a million things I want to shout at him racing through my mind while I wish away Tellar. Somehow, I force myself to fall back on the seat and stare forward. The next few seconds of silence ripple with tension and electricity, until I’m about to boil over with emotion.
“You are making me crazy, Liam,” I say, twisting in my seat, pressing my hand to his chest. “If we were alone, I would--”
“You would what?” he challenges, tangling his fingers in my hair and dragging my mouth a breath from his. “Because I can think of a lot of things I would do if we were alone right now.” And before I can catch my breath, his mouth slants over mine and he is kissing me, a deep, passionate, emotional kiss, that is anguish and pain, and everything I haven’t said but I feel. “And alone,” he adds softly when his lips gently lift from mine, “can’t be soon enough for me.”
Nor me, I think, my breath coming out in a pant. My body is on fire, nipples aching, a low throb between my thighs. I want him to kiss me again as much as I fear he will and I’ll forget Tellar is here this time.
Somehow I force myself to lower my head to Liam’s chest, to discover the wild thrum of his heartbeat, the proof he is on the edge of the proverbial cliff with me. With me. I like how that feels. I am not alone when I am with Liam.