Renegade Alpha (ALPHA 5) (6 page)

Lijah deftly—from long habit?—threw his hat onto the old-fashioned stand in the corner before answering her. “We did some security work for him a few months ago.”

Her eyes widened. “So you know him?”

Lijah gave a derisive smile at her obvious surprise at him knowing the world-renowned photographer. “Yes.”

“These photographs are amazing,” she murmured appreciatively before moving on to the original paintings on the next wall. “You have quite the collection here,” she added admiringly.

“As I said, not what you were expecting,” Lijah drawled self-derisively.

He knew what image he presented to the world. Deliberately so. Peter Morgan had helped him discover seventeen years ago that drawing attention to himself by the way he dressed, literally hiding out in the open, actually meant there was less chance of anyone making the connection between Lijah Smith and who he really was.

Because he didn’t like who he really was, and had no intention of ever going back there.

Callie’s question earlier as to whether or not he had any family that worried about him?

None that he wanted to acknowledge.

Or ever see again.

“You miss your job,” he stated shrewdly as he recognized the excitement sparkling in Callie’s eyes as she continued to study his artwork.

That excitement instantly faded. “Yes,” she acknowledged softly.

“Once we catch this bastard, there’s no reason why you can’t go back. Why not?” he probed as she gave a very definite shake of her head.

“That part of my life is over now.” Callie moved away from the artwork. “I need to find something else I can do, something that doesn’t come with a whole lot of memories I don’t want to be made to think about every day.”

“You think about it every day anyway.”

Yes, she did.

Callie had been told during her brief counseling sessions that all victims of a crime felt this way. That they questioned themselves, over and over again, as to whether there wasn’t something they could have said or done to prevent what had happened to them.

She couldn’t speak for other people, but she ultimately knew there was nothing she could have done to prevent what happened at the gallery that night. She had been tied up and helpless. God knew she had begged and pleaded with Michael to tell those men what they wanted to know. He had died anyway. Once he opened the door and let the other man into the gallery, there had never been the possibility of any other outcome. Because, as Lijah and Seth had pointed out, Michael had seen their faces and knew who they were.

No, there was nothing Callie could have done to change the inevitable outcome of the night that was engraved so graphically in her mind.

Which didn’t mean she didn’t still wish every day she could go back and do exactly that.

“I haven’t had a chance to shower or shave since I got back, and I need to do both.” Lijah ran a hand through the heavy darkness of his hair. “Do you know how to cook?”

“Yes, I know how to cook.” She gave Lijah a knowing smile. She didn’t mind him expecting her to cook. In fact, she would be relieved to have something normal to do after the strain of this past week.

“Freezer’s full.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen area. “Help yourself.”

“Any preferences?”

He arched one dark and mocking brow. “I’m the only person living here. If it’s in the freezer, I eat it.”

Of course he did. Callie was just nervous, possibly because she had gone from a reluctance to even talk to this rude and uncommunicative man to inwardly admiring him. She also found him disturbingly attractive.

And she was now alone in his home with him.

A home that was far from what she might have expected.

Despite the wide-open plan of the ground floor, the space had a warm and welcoming feel to it, probably created by the golds and browns of the floors and furnishings. Even the coldness of those bare brick walls seemed homely when there was so much colorful artwork to look at.

Surprisingly good artwork. Better than good—the paintings were all original, some of them exquisite, as were those Finn Devlin photographs.

Lijah Smith was a puzzle within an enigma.

She understood now the reason his clothes were so creased. He could easily have passed for a down-and-out. And maybe he had? Whatever Lijah had been doing before flying back to England early this morning, she doubted he had been sitting on a yacht drinking champagne and eating caviar.

The inside of this warehouse, the furniture, and the artwork he owned told her that not only was he extremely wealthy but also a connoisseur of art.

Something she would never have associated with the man she’d met earlier today if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.

Besides that sharp intelligence, she wondered what else Lijah was hiding beneath the battered brim of his Stetson.

Lijah wasn’t sure what he felt when he came down the stairs fifteen minutes later and found Callie Morgan had made herself completely at home in his kitchen area. The radio was tuned to a classical station, and she was humming happily to herself as she moved economically from the stove to place food on the kitchen table.

Seeing anyone in his home at all was a novelty.

His friends all worked at Grayson Security, so he saw most of them on a day-to-day basis anyway. And he never brought the women he fucked here. This was his home, his private space, and he didn’t want an array of women trooping through it on their way out the door the morning after.

Callie Morgan was here.

A woman who was an enticing combination of vulnerability and strength.

She had been beaten down six months ago, her free will taken away from her, and her boyfriend shot and killed in front of her.

But whether Callie recognized it or not, she was refusing to stay down.

Lijah was well aware of the courage it had taken for her to travel up to London at all today, let alone approach the men working for Grayson Security. Ex-Special Forces to a man, she would have known they would all be hard, ruthless, and totally uncompromising.

Out of love for her father, she had come anyway.

Not only that, but she had refused to be deterred by Lijah’s initial rudeness.

As for that perfume he’d labeled as inexpensive earlier? Whatever it was, he wanted to buy her a gallon of it and have her bathe in it. That perfume and the warm woman smell that was definitely all Callie had been wrapping themselves about his senses all afternoon. Even more so in the confines of his car on the drive over here.

By the time they reached the warehouse, his dick was so hard, he could have pounded nails into wood with it.

How inappropriate was that?

Callie had come to Grayson Security to ask for help in finding her father, not to have the man giving her that help also wanting to fuck her brains out.

Which was why he had taken care of that little problem while he was in the shower.

Much good it had done him, because he was so fucking hard again from just looking at her, his dick probably had an imprint of the zip of his jeans etched up the throbbing length of it.

“Smells good,” he said gruffly.

Callie had been so concentrated on what she was doing that she hadn’t realized Lijah had come back down the stairs. That catlike tread of his, she acknowledged ruefully.

She drew in a sharp breath, her mouth going dry, her palms damp, and her nipples tightening into hard buds as she looked up at him. His hair was still damp from the shower and brushed ruthlessly back from his face. A clean-shaven face. Without that dark stubble, Lijah’s features were just as aristocratic as she had thought they might be. Wide, intelligent brow, those shrewd indigo eyes, the sharp slash of his high cheekbones, straight nose, sculptured lips, and he had a cleft in the center of his chin above that strong jaw.

A black T-shirt now stretched across his wide shoulders and muscled chest and arms, black denims wrapped around that taut ass, and he was once again wearing the ubiquitous cowboy boots.

He looked as if he had just stepped out of one of those advertisements for a male cologne every woman would want to buy in the hope it would give her man the same appeal as the male model.

Except Callie was beginning to think there couldn’t possibly be another man quite like Lijah.

Was she getting a
crush
on this man?

A
crush?
Oh come on, Callie
,
you aren’t sixteen anymore. Be honest with yourself and call it exactly what it is
.
Lust.

Lijah Smith pushed every one of her lust buttons without even trying.

Buttons she hadn’t even known she had until meeting him.

She had dated a lot during her university years, and she had been seeing Michael for two months before— Before. But she had never experienced this totally physical response—lust—with any of those other men.

Michael always wore suits, was sophisticated, courteous, well-read, enjoyed the theatre and the ballet, and was articulate on all those subjects. The two of them shared passionate kisses good night at the end of an evening out together, but he had never tried to take their relationship to the next level. He was, in fact, the perfect gentleman, and exactly the sort of man any parent would be pleased to see their daughter dating.

Lijah Smith was the direct opposite of Michael in every way, and yet…

And yet he made her pulse race, her palms go damp, and her nipples hard. Her thoughts also turned to hot, entwined, and naked, sweaty bodies every time she looked at him and imagined those naked bodies as being her own and Lijah’s.
 

“Lasagna,” she answered him abruptly. “And garlic bread.” The fridge had been empty—as evidence that Lijah had been away for at least several days?—but she had found lots of ready-made meals in the freezer, and as they didn’t have a lot of time, she had decided to opt for one of them.

“Do you need any help?”

Callie shook her head. “I’m good.” A blush instantly colored her cheeks as she inwardly acknowledged Lijah made her want to behave very, very badly.

He gave her a frowning, slightly questioning glance before nodding as he pulled out one of the chairs at the table and sat, legs sprawled.

Revealing a very large—and telling—bulge at the front of his jeans.

Lijah gave a self-conscious grimace as Callie raised her startled gaze to his. “What can I say, that part of a man’s anatomy functions completely without reference or permission from his brain. I’m convinced that sudden rush of blood to one spot is why men can’t think and fuck at the same time.”

The blush deepened in Callie’s cheeks as she placed their food on the table before sitting opposite him. “Strange reaction to lasagna.” She attempted to laugh off the moment before changing the subject completely. “What time are we leaving for the airport?”

Lijah gave a humorless grin at her response—or dismissal—of his comment. “The plane is being readied for takeoff right now, so we’ll drive out to the private airfield as soon as we’re finished here.”

Her brows rose. “I thought we were flying commercial?”

“I decided against it. Time is a factor here, which means I don’t want to have to change planes several times in order to cover our tracks. I would also prefer that our names don’t show up on any list of passengers flying directly to Washington.” His expression was grim. “I discussed the situation with Dair earlier, and he suggested, as Grayson Security’s plane isn’t available, that I ask his cousin if we can borrow his plane.”

“Dair’s cousin owns his own plane?”

Lijah nodded. “Lucien Wynter. Heard of him?”

Everyone had heard of the reclusive billionaire businessman Lucien Wynter. And the rumors connecting him to London’s criminal underworld. “You know some interesting people.” It also answered her question as to how Lijah intended to get his weapons through security. She had no doubt there was a cursory check even for people traveling on private planes, but probably not as much as there would have been on a commercial flight.

“You have no idea,” Lijah assured her with feeling, and this time he knew it was his gaze that avoided meeting Callie’s curious one as he picked up his fork and began to eat.

Lucien’s story was his own to tell, and he was far from being the most interesting person in Lijah’s life.

Not that he thought his family was interesting. It was just different. And not in a good way. His parents were uptight, formal, and appearances were everything to them. Which was maybe why Lijah did the opposite in regard to his own appearance.

His parents lived in a castle, for fuck’s sake, and opened up the grounds and gardens once a year to “amuse the masses.”

His father was also a complete and utter bastard, and Lijah, as the only son and heir, couldn’t wait to get away from him once he’d reached eighteen. He’d never looked back. Never intended to either. Ever.

“Lijah?”

He could feel the scowl darkening his brow as he looked across at Callie questioningly.

She gave him a quizzical glance. “You seemed far away for a few minutes there.”