“Not when we know what the police didn’t tell us. He planted data on a failed version of the cylinder inside.”
“Which means someone is going to come asking us more questions.”
“Of course they will—so we aren’t giving anyone a reason to believe we have something to hide. Now is the time to come out of the shadows.”
My lashes lower, hurt and anger knifing through me, and I don’t even really know where it’s directed. At Chad. At the past. I just . . . don’t know. “It’s too much in one day.”
“You’re afraid, and you’ve had six years of reasons to be. You’ve had to hide in the past, but you don’t anymore.” He pauses when I don’t react. “Look at me, Amy.” I inhale and let it out, my lashes lifting as he softens his voice. “Let’s start a real life together.”
My fingers loosen on his jacket. “I want that. You know I do, but it’s hard to believe this is over. Running, hiding, looking over my shoulder—those are the only things I’ve known. Forever, it seems.”
“I’m going to make sure you know so much more, baby. You have my word.”
“Car’s here!” Tellar calls.
Liam arches a brow. “Shall we go home?”
“Home,” I repeat, and the word is awkward on my tongue.
“Yes.” He runs his hand down my hair. “Home, baby, but just know this. We can live anywhere you want. We can buy the restaurant that used to be your family home and rebuild it.”
“You don’t want to live in a tiny town like Jasmine Heights, and I don’t want those memories.”
“We can travel and see the pyramids in Egypt and Mexico. We can live in tents, for all I care. The point is that home is where we’re together.”
The idea of freedom and a home I choose with Liam is surreal, considering the years I spent huddled alone in a tiny apartment. “I like your house in Manhattan. I like the city. It became familiar and right to me those six years I was there. I want to stay.”
“Not my house in Manhattan. Our house. Our home.” I nod, and he shakes his head. “Not good enough. Say it. Our house. Our home.”
My heart squeezes with his insistence. “Our house,” I repeat. “Our home.”
He smiles and kisses my forehead, urging me to our seats where we gather our things. Still tentative about our return to the city despite Liam’s assurances that we are safe, I head to the exit, where we grab our coats and Liam shadows me as I follow Tellar down the airplane stairs. Relief washes over me to find that we’re inside a private hangar, allowing me the chance to mentally prepare for our true reentry into the real world. I step onto the pavement, and huddle into my jacket as a cold December gust of wind whips through the open doors of the building, wishing every bitter-cold moment of this day was just over.
I double-step to reach the car waiting for us a few feet away and Liam hurries around me to open the passenger door. When I realize this isn’t a rental but his personal Bentley, the familiarity gives me a sense of security and calm.
Liam arches a questioning brow and it hits me that I’m standing there smiling, when moments before I was as dire as one gets. “The car pleases you?” he asks.
He pleases me, I think. “It suits you.”
Liam pulls me to him, molding my body to his. “You suit me.” He leans in close to add, “I’ll show you just how much when we’re alone.”
The mix of intimacy and erotic promise in those few words has my nerves going from edgy distress to edgy anticipation. And I’m so tingly and ripe for his taking that when he surprises me with a playful smack to my backside, I yelp despite the layers of clothing between me and his palm.
Smiling, my cheeks flushed as I hurry into the car, I dare a quick look to my left, where Tellar is talking to the driver who delivered it, to ensure he hasn’t witnessed our exchange. Liam follows me inside, a low chuckle coming from his insanely sexy mouth. The sound somehow makes that spot he just smacked tingle all the more. Liam barely has time to close the door when Tellar joins us, and since I am now thinking about that swat to my backside and Tellar’s joke on the plane, I decide I need to compose myself, keeping Liam at a distance by shrugging out of my coat. Or rather, that is the plan.
“Let me help,” Liam offers, proving what I should already know. Liam Stone is not one to be detoured from any question, and right now, that question is my distraction from anything but him. It’s working. He doesn’t just remove my coat. His hands linger on my arms, the thin material of my dress proving no shelter from his practiced, seductive touch that sends shivers up and down my spine. More intense, though, is the way the mere caress of his fingers beneath my hair and along my nape have my nipples puckering in response. I can’t seem to even worry that Tellar will notice our flirtation. How can I when everything about the way Liam touches me is delivering the promise that when we’re alone, he’s going to do more than show me how well I “suit” him? He’s telling me he’s going to take me to that place he always takes me, where pleasure is absolute and danger is as much an illusion as my brother’s death. And this time, I want to stay forever.
PART TWO
Safety
LIAM REMOVES HIS COAT WHILE TELLAR shifts the car into drive and I inhale, easing a few inches away from him as I try to recover from his successful seduction. Unsurprisingly, Liam has no intention of allowing me time to regroup, his hand settling possessively on my leg to pull me close again, intimately aligning our limbs. And when his long, gifted fingers stroke my inner thigh, I’m so close to a moan that I grab Liam’s hand and blurt out, “Is Dr. Murphy coming out of hiding as well?”
“Next week,” Liam says, his lips hinting at an amused smile that says he’s on to my distraction. “We didn’t want the timing to match ours and be obvious.”
Tellar snorts, cutting the wheel to turn us onto some sort of private runway. “It’s not like she’s in a rush to return. She and Coco are living it up in Costa Rica.”
Coco being Samantha, the woman who’d helped us get to the safe house without harm and was later hired by Liam to guard my doctor, who’d also helped us. I think she also has a past with Tellar that he downplays. “I assume Sam’s coming back with Dr. Murphy?”
He eyes me in the mirror. “She’ll be with Dr. Murphy another week, and then I hear she’s in talks to take another contract security job here in the city.”
“So she’ll be here with us. That’s good. The two of you seem to have some chemistry.”
“The two of us have a whole lot of conflict,” Tellar corrects.
“What’s the problem?” I tease. “Afraid of a beautiful woman who can kick your ass?”
Liam chuckles, his fingers sliding farther up my leg. I lean into him and whisper a warning. “Behave or I’ll kick your ass.”
“You could try. Sounds fun.”
“Samantha cannot kick my ass,” Tellar retorts irritably to my jibe, unaware of Liam’s and my exchange.
“Spoken like a man who’s had his ass kicked,” Liam says dryly.
“I have to agree.” I laugh, glancing out the window as Tellar maneuvers us onto the busy highway. I am strangely at peace in the midst of honking horns and near collisions, despite the fact that I wasn’t in my home state of Texas. But then, Texas has taken away those I love, and New York has given me Liam, and my reunion with Chad.
I watch the traffic and buildings pass by my window, listening to Liam and Tellar banter back and forth, both relaxed, and I feel myself feeding off their energy. I’m comfortable with these two men in my life and with their unique ways, an idea I’d never have accepted months before. I could have stayed at the safe house in the Hamptons indefinitely and felt safe, and even happy, doing so. Seclusion is what I’ve been used to—a way of life I’ve accepted, even embraced, out of necessity. But it’s not what I truly desire for myself, nor what I want forced on Liam and Tellar.
Now deep inside Manhattan, we pass Macy’s and I smile at the sight of the giant Christmas tree made of lights, spanning the whole front of the store. Exc
itement fills me for a season that I normally associate with heartache and loneliness instead of hope and passion. “Do you have plans for Christmas, Tellar?”
“We usually have a big family get-together,” he replies, “but this year my parents decided we should take a family vacation to Paris, to which I said no thanks.”
“It sounds fabulous,” I comment, remembering the many overseas trips I’d taken with my family with fond sadness. “You aren’t going?”
“I’m staying here with one of my sisters, who just came off a bad breakup. She doesn’t want to risk the rest of my family trying to fix her up with a rich Frenchman. And believe me, my sisters would try. My mother, too.”
“How old is your sister?”
“Thirty.”
“And what does she do for a living?”
“She’s an attorney. Smart as hell and drop-dead gorgeous, but don’t tell her I said that.”
“Typical sibling love,” I conclude, trying to ignore the pinch in my chest that comes with how much that statement reminds me of something Chad would offhandedly remark. “She sounds perfect for Derek.”
“No,” Liam and Tellar say at the same time.
“No matchmaking,” Liam insists.
Intrigued by an idea I hadn’t considered, I laugh, and egg them both on. “What’s this sister’s name, Tellar?”
“Kelly,” Tellar supplies as Liam insists, “We’re not fixing her up with Derek.”
“Of course we aren’t,” I agree, barely containing a smile.
Liam makes a frustrated sound, looking quite pirate-like in the flicker of passing streetlights with his goatee and scowl, and I’m quite enjoying teasing him. I continue questioning Tellar, learning tidbits about his rather colorful family, and with those details, my craving for the vivid, beautifully colored way my parents made me dream I could live surfaces. The way I know Liam and I can live, if we truly can escape my past.
When we approach Liam’s contemporary glass mansion on the Hudson, stopping at the steel gate framed by brick walls, a flutter of nerves hits my stomach at the idea of how many people will look for us here, but watching Tellar enter security codes into the panel reminds me how safe we are. Even the high-rise next door, filled with residents and retail stores, belongs to Liam, so all of its security personnel report to him, too.
With cameras monitoring us, we go through the gates and they close behind us as we travel the cobblestone driveway. From living here for a month and a half before we were forced into hiding, I know that extra alarms, cameras, and motion detectors offer further protection. Another code is required to enter the garage, which lights up as the garage door rises. Once we’re sealed inside the garage, we’re safe until we leave these grounds. And then, well . . .
Liam kisses my hand. “I have a little holiday surprise waiting for you inside.”
If distracting me from worry is his plan, it’s working. The excitement I’d felt at seeing the Macy’s holiday display is returning. “Oh? What kind of a surprise?”
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.”
My lips curve. “Now you have me curious.”
“No need to be curious for long.” He releases my hand and motions to the house. “Go see it.”
“Where will I find it?”
Now his lips curve. “You’ll find it when you get inside.”
I full-out smile. “Okay. You win.” I exit the car, dying to know what awaits me inside. Racing across the garage floor, I feel like a kid on Christmas morning, so eager to get inside that I enter the wrong security code twice before the door buzzes open.
Inside, I smile as I’m greeted with cozy warmth and the spicy masculine scent that is so very Liam. Behind me one of the men turns on the lights, and I rush up the short flight of stucco stairs. When I reach the main entryway, I gasp. A giant tree towers under the magnificent glass chandelier hanging from the triangular ceiling, and at least a dozen boxes sit around it. I’m stunned at this unexpected delight, as Liam told me only weeks before that he hadn’t had a tree since he was a child, and dang it, I feel myself tear up again. I know what he’s telling me with this surprise. Our home. Our traditions. Our new life.
“I’ll see you later, Amy!” Tellar calls, and I hear the garage door shut, telling me that he’s left for his apartment next door. This is the first time that Liam and I have truly been alone since we left for the safe house six weeks ago, and I’m ridiculously nervous and excited.
Footsteps sound and my skin tingles with the awareness of Liam’s approach, my gaze lowering as I anticipate the familiar jolt of his touch. And the instant his hands come down on my shoulders, that sensation magnifies a hundred times.
“What are you thinking?” His voice is a deep, rich velvet that strokes its way to intimate parts of my body, but even more so to my heart.
I turn in his arms, twining my fingers at the back of his neck. “I love it.” I think of the mother he lost, and the alcoholic father who now sits in jail. “Just tell me it’s not painful for you.”
“Christmas was an issue for Alex, not me. He never really recovered from his family being killed in a car accident.”
I don’t miss how he talks about Alex. Never his mother. The pain of losing her seems to be shut in some tight corner of his mind. “You said Alex liked to travel at Christmas?”
He gives a quick nod. “He swore traveling with me during the holidays kept him sane. When he died, I was rarely home at the holidays, usually traveling for a work project.”
Because he was alone, like I was for the past six years.
He motions to the boxes. “I wasn’t sure how you would want to decorate the tree, so I had a little of everything delivered. But tomorrow we can go pick out exactly what you want. We can even exchange the tree if you want—”
I push to my toes and kiss him. “It’s perfect. And special. The way you always seem to make me feel.”
His hand cups my head. “ ‘Special’ doesn’t begin to define what you are to me.” He leans in to kiss me, but when his cell phone rings, we jolt apart. Chilled for no reason, I hug myself, watching Liam’s face as he digs his phone from his pocket and glances at the caller ID.
His lips thin with evident dissatisfaction, and he hits the End button. “It was Derek,” he announces. “No doubt wanting to come over and welcome us home, which isn’t going to happen.” He glances in my direction. “And I’m not giving you the chance to fix him up until I warn him.” The joke falls flat, like the mood in the room, and he shoves his phone back in his pocket.
My stomach twists in knots, and I now know what I sensed in him on the plane. I step to his side, linking my arm with his. “You’ve been trying to reach Chad and you can’t.”
His hands go to my shoulders, and the denial I hope for is nowhere to be found. “It means nothing.”
“Then why are you worried?”
“Because I knew it would upset you.”
“I told you I didn’t want to talk to him.”
“Because you were afraid you couldn’t talk to him. You thought he wouldn’t answer.”
“So you tried to call him, and I was right: he didn’t answer. Did you expect him to, Liam?”
“He gave me every reason to believe he would.”
“And he gave me six years of reasons to believe he wouldn’t.”
His cell phone rings again, and with a quick glance at the caller ID, Liam’s eyes jerk to mine. “It’s Chad.”
He answers the call and presses it to my ear, and I hear my brother ask, “How’s Amy?”
His voice strikes about a million nerves in me. “I buried you today,” I snap, walking around the tree to give Liam my back. “How do you think I am?”
“Amy!”
I hear both shock and guilt. “Yes, Amy,” I confirm, sitting on top of one of the boxes. “You planned this for weeks and didn’t tell us,” I accuse.
“I had to do this,” he insists.
I laugh without humor. “Right. And I’ll see you at
the next family barbecue.”
“I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re watching me,” I reply. “That’s not good enough.”
“This isn’t like last time. We’ll be able to see each other.”
“When?” I demand.
“As soon as the hoopla around me and the cylinder passes.”
My jaw clenches. “That’s a non-answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
“Translation: in another six years.”
“No,” he hisses out. “I hated leaving you alone, Amy. It destroyed me to know you were alone and I couldn’t be there for you.”
Angry words are on my tongue, ready to explode. But life has taught me that today’s faux funeral could too easily be real tomorrow, so I bite them back. “Just . . . just don’t die for real, damn it.”
“I have no intention of dying, and every reason to live. Like you do. When are you getting married?”
“He hasn’t asked,” I say, avoiding a topic that shouldn’t feel uncertain but does.
“Because you told him you wouldn’t until this was over.”
My defenses flare. “Do you blame me?”
“It’s over, Amy. Marry the man.”
“I need a day or two after ‘burying’ my brother to believe this is over,” I snap, irritated that he would think I could just shut off six years of worry, especially when Liam is in this because of me.
“You’ve had six years of this hell. Don’t waste another day, let alone two.”
My tension eases a notch with his acknowledgment of the past. “That applies to you, too. What about you and Gia? What are your plans?”
“To convince myself that I’m worthy of her.” He sighs. “I don’t want to hang up, but we’re about to get on a plane. Don’t ask to where; I can’t tell you. I love you, sis.”
“I love you, too,” I say, and the line goes dead. He’s not dead, though, even though that horrific casket felt like the end in all kinds of ways.
“Well?” Liam asks, kneeling in front of me, his hands settling on my knees.