The Bride And The Mercenary. Harper Allen
of anger, the emotion now flickering just beneath the blanket of pain in his head was envy.
What would it be like to be loved so completely? The man was dead, yes—but even in death he had the love of the woman sitting here in front of him, her cheeks now wet with tears, her slight figure held ramrod-straight.
“No, I’m not him.” Unsteadily he got to his feet, one arm braced against the concrete pillar for support. He reached down to help her up, but she stood unaided, her face averted from his. Slowly she slipped her arms out of his coat. She looked up at him with a shaky smile.
“I thought you were crazy. Now you must think I am.”
“Not crazy.” He shook his head. Thankfully, the pain seemed to be receding. “But you’re going to have to let him go one day. This is no way for you to live.”
“This is no way for you to live, either.” Her smile faltered. “You really don’t know who they are or why they’re trying to kill you?”
“All I know is that they’ll never give up until they do.” He shrugged. “All I know is that the one time I went to the authorities, I nearly didn’t get away alive.”
“My brother runs an investigation and security firm. Sully might be able to help you,” she began, but he cut her off.
“Trust me, it wouldn’t work.” Pain flared again in the area of his scar. “But contacting your brother is probably a good idea, Ainslie. I can’t stay here much longer, but I won’t leave until I know you’re safe.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
She took the quarter he held out to her, and handed him his coat with a wry smile. He watched her cover the hundred feet or so to the phone cubicle, watched her punch in a number, saw the strained expression on her face as she briefly spoke into the receiver. Then she hung up and came back to him, a slight upward tilt to her chin.
“I got him on his cell phone. He’s only a couple of minutes away, and I got the distinct impression he intended to break every speed limit getting here.” She took a deep breath. “The hotel. Apparently the fire department’s there right now, trying to bring the blaze under control. It was fire-bombed, Sully said. He saw the motorcycle I borrowed in the alley beside it, and he…he thought I was still in there.”
Her chin dipped to her chest, and then lifted again. “I would have been killed if it hadn’t been for you. I wish there was some way I could repay you.”
There was one more reason to envy the man she’d mistaken him for. When Malone had walked away from her that last time, he’d probably had no idea it was the last time he’d see her. He shrugged into his coat, carefully replacing the package of ID in an inner pocket. He had only a few seconds more with her. She would remember him for a while, but one day her memory of these hours they’d spent together would fade, and that was how it should be.
He would remember her for the rest of his life, however much time was left to him. He would remember those eyes, remember the way her hair looked like midnight silk, remember the way she’d smiled even when she’d been forced to face the truth about him.
He wanted one more thing to remember.
“There is. You can let me do this.”
Holding her gaze, he took a step toward her, obliterating the distance between them. She had to tip her head to keep her eyes on his, and slowly he slipped his hand around the back of her neck, feeling that silky hair slide coolly against his skin. He lowered his mouth to hers.
Her lips were soft, and slightly parted under his. He could taste a faint saltiness from the tears she’d shed earlier, but beneath that was sweetness—a sweetness so intense that for a moment he felt his heart turn over in pure ecstasy. He’d never tasted crystallized flowers, but this had to be what they would be like, he told himself dizzily. Sweet. So sweet…
From somewhere on another level of the parking garage came the squeal of tires taking a corner too fast. He lifted his mouth from hers, but for a moment his hand remained cupped around the back of her neck.
“That’s got to be the brother.”
She nodded, her eyes wide. “That sounds like Sully, all right.” Her voice was uneven.
“I’d better leave.” Reluctantly he let his hand slip away, and even more reluctantly he turned toward the nearby stairwell. He took half a dozen steps away from her and then turned. “I wish you’d been right.”
She hadn’t moved. She was still staring at him with that dark violet-blue gaze. He knew what he must look like to her—too big, too unshaven, a derelict dressed in ragged cast-offs. She was right. They did belong to different worlds.
But if they hadn’t…
“I wish I could have been the man you hoped I was, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Because if I’d been Malone, I would have come back to you. Not even death would have been enough to stop me.”
He drank in the sight of her for one last time. Then he melted into the shadows as the green Jaguar came peeling around the corner.
HER HAIR WAS STILL WET from the shower she’d taken, but she hadn’t wanted to waste time in blow-drying it. Instead she’d simply slicked it back off her forehead and secured it in a stumpy ponytail. She’d pulled an ancient black turtleneck over her head, dislodging the ponytail in the process, had found a passably clean pair of black jeans, and had shoved her bare feet into sneakers.
The ruined wedding dress, wadded up in a corner of her bedroom, had been a mutely reproachful reminder of what lay ahead of her. Sully, as he’d driven her back to her apartment, had been anything but mute.
“You could have been killed, goddammit! I thought you had been!” He’d still been wearing the dove-gray morning suit he’d donned for the ceremony, and under his tan his skin had been nearly the same color. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“You know what I was thinking, Sully.” Her reply had been toneless. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”
“Damn right it doesn’t make sense. Neither does that insane yarn he spun you.” Sully had taken his eyes from the road and glared at her. “The man was involved, Lee! Surely you must have realized that? Only drug wars get that violent and use the kind of weaponry you described!”
“He saved my life. A scumbag dealer wouldn’t have bothered, Sullivan.” She’d folded her arms and stared out of the window of the Jag. “He’s a man in terrible trouble, and I’ll never know how it turns out for him.”
“Well, you’ve got Bailey to thank for the fact that your trouble isn’t any more terrible than it is,” Sully had grunted. “She saved your reputation today. When Tara told us what you’d done, Bailey went into labor. Not really,” he added quickly at Ainslie’s gasp. “But as far as the wedding guests know, that’s why the ceremony was postponed. Pearson went along with it.”
“Was he very angry, Sully?” Her question had been barely audible, and Sully had raised an eyebrow at her.
“If it was me, I’d be furious, but with McNeil, who can tell? He did seem a little more chilly than usual when I broke the news to him.”
That would be Pearson’s way, Ainslie thought now as she raised the burnished brass knocker on the front door of her fiancé’s—ex-fiancé’s? she wondered hollowly, jilted fiancé’s?—carefully preserved Beacon Hill home. It was opened immediately, and by the last person besides Pearson that she wanted to see.
“I don’t believe your nerve.”
Brian, Pearson’s brother, was still attired for a wedding, as Sully had been, but he’d stripped off his jacket. In one well-manicured hand was a squat crystal tumbler of some amber liquid.
“Believe me, Brian, my nerve is hanging on by a thread,” she said tightly, stepping past him and dropping her shoulder