Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance (88 page)

“That’s bullshit.” He was lying through his teeth, but there was no way in hell he’d admit that to anyone.

“So you don’t have feelings for her?”

“I enjoy her company, sure, but there’s nothing special between us.” He leaned against the workbench and ran a hand through his hair. He wished that were true, and maybe if he said it enough, he’d believe it. “We’re fucking. That’s it. End of story.”  

“Yeah, like newlyweds,” Rand mumbled. He straightened and pointed the wrench at him. “When have you ever brought anyone back here with you? Hold on. Let me answer that. Hmmm. Let’s see. That would be…never.”

“That’s because—”

“That’s because where you’re from, you only invite a woman to move in with you when it’s serious. I know all about your betrothal customs, so don’t try to bullshit me. It’s ingrained in your subconscious. You wouldn’t have brought her here if there wasn’t something pretty fucking special going on.”

Asher was taken aback. He hadn’t thought about that before, but Rand was right. In Cascadia, when a man invited a woman into his home to share his bed, it was often seen as a betrothal. Hell, he hadn’t even done that with Jenny. They’d always gone to her place. “I hardly knew her when I brought her here. How can there be something special going on when you barely know the person?”

The guy shrugged. “How the hell should I know? But facts are facts. Listen. I don’t mean to be an asshole here. It’s your life, but I want to make sure you do the right thing and not—”

“I don’t need you to remind me what happened to Jenny,” Asher said, gripping the edge of the workbench with white knuckles.

“Well, you’re sure not acting like it.”

“Good thing I’m leaving soon, then.”

Rand grabbed another tool and ducked back under the hood. “For how long?”

“I don’t know. Long enough for my trail to go cold over here.”

“That’s good.” Rand straightened and grabbed a rag to wipe his hands. “Because I’ve offered to let her stay in the RV until she can find a place over here. Depending on how long you’re gone this time, Mel could be back by then and Olivia will have found a new job. I’ll have James help move her things from her apartment.”

“James?” Asher jerked his head up and slanted a glance toward the body shop entrance. The guy was too bloody unstable to be spending all that time alone with Olivia.

“Got a problem with that?” Rand asked carefully.

The guy was always defending his cousin, but Asher didn’t care. He didn’t want Olivia alone with him. No fucking way.

“Yeah, I do. The guy’s a fucking mess. I’ll help her move and then I’ll leave. Just keep him away from her.”

Olivia’s apartment was located on the second floor of a three-story building that contained five other units. All of them had outside entrances and were accessed by a single, enclosed stairway in the center. Despite the fact that the man who lived across the hall was gone because he worked nights and the elderly couple below were heavy sleepers, Asher was still on edge.

“I don’t like this,” he said from the open doorway. “We shouldn’t have come.”

He cast a wary glance at the dark stairway they’d just climbed, uneasy that he couldn’t see the road from here. This was the only way out of her apartment, unless you counted jumping off the balcony as a viable exit. If the army blokes drove up, they wouldn’t see them until it was too late and they’d be trapped inside.

Olivia frowned at him as if she’d bitten into a lemon. “What did you expect? That I was going to simply stuff some clothes into a bag and grab a few things, while you waited by the door?”

“Yeah.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I did.”

“I came here to pack up my stuff. All of it. I can’t just abandon my apartment and leave everything. I don’t have a ton, but what I do have, I love.”

He considered invoking Rule Number One so that she’d have to do what he told her, but when he saw the determined glint in her eye, he changed his mind. That was a game. This was the real thing, and he’d like to keep his balls intact.

He looked around the neat but lived-in apartment. In the center of the living room was a comfortable-looking sofa and a square coffee table with a distressed, whiskey-colored leather top. Various pictures hung on the walls—black and white vintage photographs and charcoal drawings in matching black frames. She didn’t appear to have a television. She didn’t have a dining room table, either, just three barstools tucked under the kitchen counter. That must be where she ate.

A few dishes were stacked neatly in the sink, probably the remnants of her last meal before she’d driven her car in to work on the day of the explosion. He noticed there were two identical cups and plates. Had she had company? Maybe she’d had a girlfriend over for dinner. Or the guy across the hall. Or maybe it was two meals’ worth of dishes for only one person.

Was Olivia a loner? When you were always on the run and looking over your shoulder, your lifestyle wasn’t exactly conducive to building friendships.

Her place had a comfortable vibe that he could easily get used to. If things were different and they weren’t caught in the middle of a deadly war, he could imagine curling up on the sofa, his head in her lap as she read a book to him. A science-fiction story about alien battles on faraway planets. Or maybe an epic fantasy with dragons.

“Possessions can be replaced, Liv. You can’t. No wasting time packing things perfectly. Throw what you need into these boxes and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Her expression softened considerably, but the hard set of her jaw still remained. She set her messenger bag on the kitchen counter and strode toward him. “If they are looking for me, wouldn’t it be better if they found an empty apartment? They’d assume I moved out as a result of having no job after the explosion destroyed where I worked. If my things are still here, it’ll look as though I left in a panic, which would confirm their suspicions that I’ve got something to hide.”

Asher pressed his lips into a firm line. She had a point. “Just hurry up, okay?”

She finished taping up the bottom of one cardboard box, handed it to him, and started assembling another.

“It won’t take me long to pack up the bedroom and bathroom, if you want to do the kitchen. Don’t worry about the dishes and glasses—I’ll do those—but everything else is fair game.”

Reluctantly, he let the outside door shut behind him and he got to work. Conry was stationed at the bottom of the stairs outside to alert them if something was wrong. He hoped that was enough.

Olivia was right. It didn’t take her long to pack. After carrying the boxes out to the van, they starting packing up the living room.

Asher wrapped her collection of candles. They smelled like the herbal oil she used in the bath. He wondered if her mother had made them.

“It drives my mother crazy that I don’t put down any roots,” she said, as if she knew what he’d been thinking. “But at least she understands.”

“How often do you see her?”

“Every few months, I guess. But I call her a lot. When I visit, I go at night, so that none of her neighbors know. A few years ago, when I went off the radar and stopped reporting to the army once a year for testing, they questioned all the people on her street and asked if they’d seen me recently. God knows they got nothing out of my mother.”

“Is this your dad and brother?” he asked, picking up a framed photograph from the coffee table.

“Yeah, it was taken on the last camping trip we took. We used to go every summer.”

“You look a lot like your brother,” he said. Vince had a mop of reddish brown hair the same color as Olivia’s and they had the same smile.

“I wonder if I still do. That is, if he’s still alive somewhere.”

Asher placed the photograph in the box and continued packing. “I’ve heard that twins have a special bond.”

“It’s true,” she said. “I used to know what he was going to say before he even started talking. Drove our teachers crazy. So much so that after the third grade, we were always assigned different classrooms.” Her voice got quiet. “Which is why I still think he could be alive somewhere. I’m pretty sure I would know if he wasn’t.”

Asher lifted a picture from the wall, a pencil drawing of a young woman. Her head was turned away and behind her in the distance was a craggy mountain covered with trees.

“Is this one of Vince’s?” he asked, remembering that her brother was a talented artist.

Olivia pointed throughout the room. “He did all of them.”

He felt guilty for thinking she could just walk away from her belongings. These were memories she could never get back. Aside from Conry, there was nothing he owned that had any sentimental value. He was used to traveling light. Going back and forth through the portals forced you to depend on nothing but yourself. “They’re amazing,” he said. “Is this the woman you said he drew a lot?”

“He must’ve done forty or fifty of them. When I left home, I took a few of my favorites and had them framed.”

“How old was he when he drew this?” He held it up for her to see.

“Hmmm. Since that one’s not dated, he was probably fifteen or so. He only started dating his pictures when he got a little older.”

As she worked on the hall closet, he cleared off the table, carefully wrapping her collection of whimsical colored porcelain pigs and placing them in the box. It occurred to him that she’d enjoy shopping in Greenway, an open-air market on his side of the portal. Greenway was home to many local artists and—

He needed to stop thinking that he had a future with Olivia and remember what had happened Jenny. They’d be parting ways tomorrow, which was the right thing to do. He’d get her situated at Rand’s, then go to meet the other Iron Guild warriors at the rendezvous point.

The next framed drawing was hanging by the window. He peered through the blinds and saw Conry sitting patiently at the base of the stairs. The parking lot was still quiet.

He grabbed the picture off the wall and started to reach for more packing material, when something about the drawing caught his attention. He took a closer look. He blinked a few times and took a step backward, but his boot caught the leg of the coffee table. Trying to keep from dropping the picture, he cradled it to his chest as he crashed to the ground, landing on his ass with hard thump. The corner of the black frame hit the coffee table and the glass shattered.

“Asher?” Olivia called from the other room. “Are you okay?”

He could barely breathe.

“I’m the one born with the klutzy gene, not you,” she said, coming down the hall. “Or as my mother likes to say, I was cursed by gypsies.” Suddenly, she was at his side, her hand on his shoulder. “Asher, you’re bleeding. Oh my God, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t speak.

The young woman in the drawing looked exactly like his sister.

“I haven’t seen Zara in many years,” Asher said as Olivia held his hand.

The cut wasn’t deep. It took hardly more than a thought to heal him. “That’s a pretty name,” she said.

“My father used to say he loved us from
A
to
Z
.”

“And you really think it could be her? How is that even possible?”

“If it’s not, then she’s got a twin sister I don’t know about.” Flexing his hand, he thanked her, then carefully examined the rest of the drawings, five in total. “Are these the only ones you have?”

She nodded. “And the one you’re holding is the only one I have of her face. There’s something sad and melancholy about the ones where she has her back to you. That’s why I took them, I think. It seemed as though she was looking for my brother, missing him like I was.”

“Where were you living when he drew these?”

“I think we were in Granite Falls by then. It’s a small town in the Cascade foothills. Vince and I were fifteen when my father retired and we moved there.”

“Fifteen?” he repeated, almost to himself. “And he was taken from home when he was seventeen?”

“Yes.”

Asher said nothing for a long moment as he stared at the drawings, then he pointed to one of them. “Do you recognize these mountains as being the ones near Granite Falls?”

Olivia tried to remember, but when you see something every day for several years of your life, you forget to pay attention to the details. “That would be my guess, but I don’t know for sure. My brother liked to go camping and fishing with his buddies. He was really outdoorsy. Sometimes he’d go out by himself with a sketchpad and our dog. I honestly didn’t pay too much attention to what the mountains looked like. They all seemed the same to me.”

Asher looked like he was about to ask another question when headlights flashed against the living room wall, interrupting him. It made a moving geometric pattern through the blinds. He jumped from the sofa to peer outside.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you see anything?”

He held out a finger. “Hold on. I’m not sure.”

Olivia’s heart thumped in her chest.

“Is the light on in the bedroom?” he growled.

“Um, I think I turned it off. Crap. Maybe I didn’t. Why?”

“If this is the only light, it could easily be the one you’d leave on if you weren’t home, right?”

“I…I guess so.” She didn’t understand what he was getting at. “Want me to go turn it off if it’s on?”

“No, it’s too late now. If you do, then they’ll know for sure that someone’s here.”

She tried to think clearly and not panic. “Where’s Conry?”

“Still there, but he’s standing now. And watching.”

Okay, that’s it.

She slung the messenger bag over her shoulder and grabbed the keys off the kitchen counter, stuffing them into her pocket. They’d already packed up most of the rooms and taken everything down to the truck. She glanced around, doing a quick survey. The furniture in the living room would have to stay. She’d always hated that ratty sofa anyway.

Maybe Asher was just being overly cautious and it would turn out to be one of her neighbors. If so, then they could finish up and make sure she’d left nothing behind.

Conry gave a quick bark.

“Shit,” Asher said, ducking away from the window. “Night Patrol vehicle. Do you see many of them around here?”