Operation Saving Daniel (Entangled Covet) (5 page)

If so, he’d waited too long.

But if she’d stayed, she would have fucked it up somehow. Like she’d fucked up every other relationship she’d had.

She glanced across at Jason, and he stared back. He was almost as good as Daniel at hiding his thoughts. Simple curiosity might have brought him here. But perhaps he was willing to put some effort in and they could be a real family.

“We have to go out,” she said. “Would you like to come back for dinner?”

“I can’t. I’m working tonight.”

Was he brushing her off? “Sunday lunch?”

He nodded. “You’re on.”

Chapter Five

Daniel sank down into the seat behind his workstation in his laboratory deep beneath the Stone International offices. Putting his head in his hands, he groaned.

Well that had gone well.

Not.

He’d gone this morning to see Julia, meaning to appeal to her better nature, ask her to welcome Sophia to the family. He’d been going to play the love card, lie through his fucking teeth, and tell her he loved Sophia. Underneath her brisk exterior, Julia was a softy and he knew she cared about him. It would be easier if she didn’t—because then she might mind her own business.

Now, he knew what this was about. Oh God, the sisters were after him, and they had a plan.

Shit. He was well and truly fucked.

He’d been too good and played his part too successfully, which had made his family suspicious. What had Lissa called him? A goddamn robot.

He almost laughed at the idea. Almost. But really, there was nothing funny here. He wished he were a robot. Inside, he was a seething mass of emotions. With full moon still nearly two weeks away, he expected his control to be better than this. Already the magic was building inside him, waiting to explode out of his skin.

Had he gone too far, pushed himself too fast? But he suspected he’d have to go much further before this was over. He crossed to a cabinet, unlocked it, and examined the contents. Ten vials. Enough to increase his strength tenfold. Maybe he should inject the whole lot, go fight Ethan, and get it over with. Either take his life back or end it. But he still hoped there was another way, because after that, even if he survived, there would be no turning back. He’d be a ruthless killer. A monster beyond redemption.

What would Lissa think of him then? Disgust and hatred, he was guessing.

No, he certainly didn’t feel like a robot. But these days it seemed to be all or nothing. And he couldn’t risk the “all” around his family. Or around anyone for that matter. So he kept everything locked in tight.

Now everything was threatening to fall apart.

Because of Melissa.

To take his mind off her, he switched on the laptop. He wanted to learn more about the man at Julia’s—Jason Jackson. Lissa’s brother. In the years he’d known her growing up, she’d never talked about her family. Julia had let enough slip for him to understand that her home life was far from happy, but he hadn’t been aware she had a brother.

Something about the man put him on edge. The way he’d gripped Daniel’s hand, stared into his eyes as though he was hunting for something.

After typing the name into search box, he flicked through the ensuing pages and found Lissa’s brother easily.

He was ex-army, which explained a lot. He’d enlisted and ended up as a sergeant serving in the SAS, the toughest regiment in the British army. The man was a goddamn hero, with medals and commendations to prove it. He’d left the army after being injured in a bomb blast in Afghanistan and started up a private security firm. Which was doing well.

He resembled Melissa, at least in the hair, and the eyes, though he’d been big, tall, and broad-shouldered. And he looked like a fighter. Like Lissa, who had always fought for anything she felt strongly about. No doubt, that was how she had gotten into her line of charity work. Fighting for the underdog. If he’d realized that all those years ago, he could have played on her sympathies and she might never have left. He just hadn’t been pathetic enough.

He closed his eyes and pictured her perched on the counter, her long dark hair tousled, her lips swollen from his kisses, and his mind filled with the feel of her. The taste of her. The scent of her arousal. As if on cue, his cock jerked in his pants.

If Julia hadn’t arrived, they would have made love. The first time would have been hard and fast. He’d have taken her right there on the kitchen counter, and she would have let him. Afterward, he would have picked her up, carried her to her bed, and made long, slow love to her. He’d be there now, stripping off her clothes—not that she’d been wearing many—and making love to her. Probably he’d kiss her. Everywhere. Starting at her breasts, down her belly, between her thighs. He remembered the taste of her from that long-ago night.

He groaned and his hand moved to his cock. Jesus he needed some relief; it had been so long.

A perfunctory knock came at the door, and it opened without waiting for his answer, revealing Sophia standing there. He moved his hand and his cock wilted.

Bitch.

God, how he hated her.

“You’ve been out,” she said. “Where were you?”

None of your goddamn business.
The words hovered on his tongue. But while Lissa might have the power to break through his control, this woman never would.

“I went to see Julia.”

She’d probably had him followed, so it was best to stick as close as possible to the truth.

“Why?”

He sat back in his chair and relaxed his muscles. It wouldn’t do to appear tense. She could smell fear, or a lie, and probably a whole load of other things, including his arousal. Sophia was old, not as old as Ethan, but he was betting she was over a century.

“I thought it might be a good idea to talk to her about you. Ask her to welcome you to the family.”

“You really think that’s likely to happen?”

“I told her I loved you. She wants me to be happy.”

Sophia came to stand beside him and stroked one finger down his cheek. He fought the urge to flinch. “How sweet. And did you see your other little friend?”

Shit. How had she known Melissa was staying with Julia? He hadn’t. But then he hadn’t taken the time to check out where she was staying.

Sophia always checked everything.

Maybe it was a lesson he should learn, though he hated to learn anything from Sophia. His biggest fear was he would turn into something like her.

But he didn’t like the way she was asking about Lissa. He needed to get someone to guard Lissa, keep her safe until she left London. He should never have led her on this morning. By kissing her, he’d no doubt given her the impression that her “plan” had a chance of working. Somehow, he had to find a way to take that back, push her away, convince her that his relationship with Sophia was real.

“I saw her briefly,” he said, keeping his tone bland. “I asked to speak to Julia alone. Melissa isn’t family.”

Sophia pursed her lips but nodded and moved away. “Inform me if you leave again.”

A red-hot wall of rage rose up in his mind. Inside his beast paced, wild and elemental, howling to be free.

Each month, the struggle to hide how powerful his wolf had become grew more difficult, as though the pressure inside him built until it must explode. And he couldn’t allow that, because if they saw him as a threat, then his whole family could die.

Sophia stepped back and something flickered in her dark eyes. Fear? She rubbed her arms as though she felt something strange in the air.

“What was that?” she asked.

“What was what?”

He kept his voice expressionless, his body relaxed, and she shook her head.

“Nothing. My imagination.”

One day she would discover it wasn’t her imagination. That he was far more powerful than anything she could ever conceive.

Soon.

…

Lissa slipped off her shoes, wriggled down in her seat, and took a restorative sip of chilled white wine as she allowed the subdued elegance of the terrace restaurant in Harrods to soothe her battered body and soul. Five solid hours of haircuts, beauty treatments, and shopping would do that. But much to her own surprise, she’d enjoyed the outing.

She glanced across at Julia, but was distracted by the image of herself in the huge mirror behind her.

Holy crap. Who was that woman?

She’d always worn her hair long, mainly because she couldn’t be bothered with hairdressers and a ponytail had kept it neat and out of the way.

Now, it was cropped short. Really short. Styled close to her head, her hair couldn’t have been longer than an inch anywhere, except maybe the tendrils curling on her cheeks. The cut made her eyes appear huge, an effect enhanced by the black liner smudged under her lower lashes.

“Stop admiring yourself,” Julia said, but there was a smug, self-satisfied expression on her face as though she was responsible for the transformation. Which she was. “So, how do you feel?”

“I feel plucked, shaved, waxed, and filed. My rough edges have been smoothed away.”

“Well, the rough edges you can see, anyway.” Julia cast her a comprehensive glance. “We’ll work on the ones you can’t see next.”

A trickle of unease ran through Lissa. “You leave my rough edges alone,” she said. “I need them.” Her rough edges were what kept her safe, her defense against the world.

“No, we reckon you’ve run for long enough.”

“We?” A light sweat broke out on her forehead.

“Me, Debora, and Marcy.” Julia confirmed her worst fears. “You know, a lot of people have dysfunctional childhoods and don’t end up screwed up.”

“Screwed up? Is that how you see me?”

“A little. But you’re not a hopeless case, and we’re not giving up on you.”

“Crap.” Was the come-and-help-Daniel scenario merely a ruse to get her back here, so they could save her from herself? She didn’t want saving. Did she? She ran a hand through her short hair, pressing her scalp. “This whole thing, this whole plot, the makeover… It’s about me, not Daniel, isn’t it?”

“Of course, it’s about Daniel. You’ve seen him. He needs help.”

Some of her tension eased away. “That’s true.”

“But so do you.”

Lissa forced down her panic. Taking a huge gulp of her wine, she sat back and, one by one, relaxed her tense muscles.

“So does your brother Jason have as many hang-ups as you?” Julia asked.

Thank God—a change of subject. “More,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

“Because I fancy him, of course.” Julia studied her for a minute. “On you that coloring—the black hair and the golden eyes—is sort of cool. But on Jason, it’s totally hot.”

She shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”

“Well, he is your brother and your mind is on other things.”

True. And not only her mind. All through the long day, she’d had flashbacks to those minutes with Daniel before Julia’s timely interruption. She shivered as she remembered the sensation of his strong arms around her, his lips on hers.

Pushing the image aside, she considered what she could tell Julia about Jason. She was embarrassed she knew so little. “I don’t really know him,” she said at last.

“How can you not know him? He’s your brother.”

“We never had much to do with each other when we were kids—he was two years older and that’s a big difference.”

“No it’s not.”

Julia was obviously not going to make this easy. “We weren’t a close family to begin with, and once I got the scholarship we drifted even farther apart.” That wasn’t really a true representation of what had happened. She remembered coming home for one holiday and Jason calling her a stuck-up little bitch, and maybe he’d been right. And that wasn’t a nice thing to have to face about yourself, so she’d avoided him when she could, which was most of the time.

“I was always scared he would turn up at the school and embarrass me.”

“How could he do that?”

She shook her head. “You have no idea. He was wild, always in trouble.”

“He would have given you street cred.”

“The last thing I needed was street cred—believe me I had street cred in spades, I just learned to hide it.”

Julia studied her for a minute. “You were ashamed of your family.”

“Yes.”

She glanced around her at the subdued elegance of her surroundings. It seemed so incongruous to think of her childhood in these surroundings.

“My mother was a drug dealer. My father was a male stripper.”

Julia stared. Hey, she’d made mouthy Julia speechless. That had to be a first.

“You are kidding me?”

“I wish I was. My mother went to prison when I was fifteen.”

“Shit, I remember. You told us there was a bit of trouble at home and your mum had left your dad.”

“Well, it wasn’t voluntarily. She got four years for dealing.” She smiled. “Would that have given me street cred?”

“Okay, maybe I see your point. So what happened?”

Her father had loved her mother almost desperately. The feeling hadn’t been mutual. From an early age, the one overriding emotion Lissa remembered from her mother had been scorn for her father and her brother.

“I’m sorry,” Julia said.

“What for?”

“Your face—you look so tragic. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No, it’s a good thing, really. I’ve always done my best not to think about them. But my mother hated men.”

“Where is she now? Do you see her?”

“No, I don’t.” She grinned. “She got out in two years on good behavior, but she never went back to my father. She moved in with a biker chick she met in prison.”

“What?”

“My mother is a lesbian.” Saying it was like coming out.

“Right…” Julia murmured. “A lesbian. So back to Jason…”

Julia was incorrigible. “I don’t know,” Lissa said. “But I mean to find out on Sunday. You can help me cook lunch.”

“You can cook? That’s new.”

“No I can’t. That’s why you’re helping me. You can stun him with your culinary prowess.”

“What culinary prowess?”

“Oh dear, poor Jason.”