by Snow, Nicole
“Does she have the same consideration for you?”
I flinch. My hands hurt from where I’m clutching at the seatbelt.
We've all heard of Captain Obvious. Is Riker Captain Blunt?
How is it that this man only met me half an hour ago, but can already see things like that about me?
How does he have the balls to throw it in my face?
And hell, how does he see me, really see me, when it feels like he looks right through me as though I’m not even there?
Wetting my lips, I look away, out the window again. “She didn’t mean to create this problem.”
“But she did.”
“She’s gotten clean!” I shoot back. Now, I'm getting angry.
My eyes are burning, blurring, and I rub at them with the heel of my palm. “Look, it's not your business, what goes on with her and me. It’s the past. Ancient history. We’ll fix it, we'll make it through, and it’ll go away.”
“Just like that, sweetheart? Interesting. You don’t even have a guarantee that if you testify, the police will get the right criminals. Not with two groups involved.”
My heart sinks for several reasons. Mostly because I let this royal prick break my fall, and before I knew better, I liked it.
“Thanks for the reminder. Is there anything else you want to tell me about how wrong I am?” I fire back. “I get it. I’m in over my head. I don’t know what I’m doing. I'm not all uptight and badass and I've never held a gun. So I should just listen. Swallow your advice. And my options are...what again? Do nothing? Just shut up and let you call all the shots?”
He says nothing. But the air in the car shifts subtly, and after a few icy seconds, he glances at me contemplatively, that hard glass of his gaze no longer quite so impenetrable. “Right now, don’t worry about it,” he murmurs. “You’re under a lot of stress. We'll worry about the details once you’ve had time to calm down and feel safe.”
I arch a brow. The shift in demeanor surprises me.
I think this big rock is actually trying to comfort me.
He turns his gaze back to the road. I lower my eyes, tangling my fingers together in my lap and picking at the hem of my sundress. “Okay. Yeah. I guess I’m not in the best place to be making decisions right now.”
“Likely not. Stress and trauma affect the logic centers of your brain.” The rumble of the car shifts around us as he eases toward the off-ramp. “But I also need us to not discuss this any further until I say.”
I frown. “Why?”
“Because we’re picking my daughter up from school, and as her father, I decide how much she knows.”
His daughter. Right.
I gulp, twisting my fingers harder in my dress. This man makes me prickle all over with nerves, but I’m suddenly ten times more afraid of meeting his daughter.
She’s twelve, I was told during the briefing...and I’m just supposed to pretend to be her new stepmother-in-progress, engaged to this walking brick who barely spares me a glance.
Right. Somehow, bullets no longer seem so bad.
“Fine,” I whisper. “I won’t say anything I shouldn't.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t know what to say.
So I don’t say anything at all.
Not even when we pull up outside a two-story brick school campus, and a petite little bundle of energy comes rocketing into the back seat with her Star Trek backpack in her lap and adorable clip-on communicator earrings. She freezes in the middle of shutting the door, staring at me in the rear-view mirror. I look back, feeling like I’ve just been caught doing something wrong.
“Um,” she says. “Dad? Who's she?”
“Just close the door,” Riker answers flatly. “I’ll explain when we get home, honey.”
* * *
I think I’m going to start hyperventilating.
I’m sitting in Riker’s living room. I guess for now it’s technically my living room, since that’s the story we’re going with.
A cover story that makes me feel like I've been turned inside out.
Quick rundown: we’re in love, whirlwind courtship, and now Riker wants to integrate me into the family so his daughter and I get used to each other before our actual marriage.
His house looks like the perfect place a woman in love would want to come home to.
It's small, cozy, rustic. Nothing like the spacious mansions I’m used to, and everything like what you’d imagine an Average American home would be, with all these fatherly personal touches and little bits of them everywhere. From a shelf lined with dog-eared sci-fi novels to an open door giving me a glimpse into a workshop where a ship in a bottle sits on a desk, waiting to be finished.
This is their place.
And I shouldn’t be here, screwing up their lives.
They’re in the kitchen now. I can’t tell what they’re saying, just a low murmur of voices, but no one sounds upset.
The daughter – her name is Emily, and I hope she won’t get mad at me for calling her that – just sounds curious and thoughtful. She talks a little bit like her father, like she’s got a lot to say but she’s trying to condense it down to as few words as possible.
But there’s a more youthful openness to it, too. While Riker seems more closed off, a glacier of a man, I can't help wondering if he was more like her as a boy.
I shouldn’t be wondering anything.
I’m not part of their lives. It’s just pretend.
There’s no real bond between us, and it’s nothing but a formal arrangement. We're a business transaction. Nothing more.
I don’t know them. I don’t know anything. Like where Emily’s birth mother must be, or why Riker even agreed to this when he clearly doesn’t want to have me here.
I guess it’s his job, and maybe the boss made it an order?
Here I am, being someone else’s burden again.
All I’ve ever wanted was to learn how to stand on my own, but it feels like now that'll never happen. Until the FBI catches the people after my sister, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder.
Heck, maybe always spending my life shuttled from safe house to safe house and false identity to false identity. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Milah if this gets worse. Her life is in the public spotlight, and she can’t just disappear. Though she also has practice navigating this mess of personal security and personal threats from random nutjobs.
It’s also a lot harder to get to her because she’s so famous.
I’m the one who can disappear all too easily, with no one even noticing.
When the voices in the kitchen move closer to the living room, I’m half a second away from standing and bolting and just...hiding away in a dirty dive hotel. Somewhere no one will ever find me.
But even then, I know I’m not thinking realistically. Not like someone self-sufficient, because the only money I have is Daddy’s credit cards. And the second one of those flags, anyone watching can hunt me down.
See? Useless. Hopeless. Burden.
And frozen in place, too, as Emily steps into the living room and then stops, staring at me uncomfortably. She slowly wraps her arms around herself and looks away and down. I'm not sure who feels more awkward.
Riker’s massive shape fills the doorway, watching, brooding. I glance at him helplessly, but there’s no guidance there.
He’s just this silent, protective papa bear. I know it’s usually the mama bears who protect their cubs, but trust me, looking at Riker right now?
You wouldn’t want to cross his kid. Ever.
Not if you want to keep your head intact.
Oddly, that makes it easier to speak. Because someone who cares that much about his daughter can't be a snarly, scary brute every hour of the day.
He’s human, somewhere, under his stony façade.
It’s not his fault I’ve been thrust into his life, either.
So I make another effort, mustering a smile. “Hi there, Emily –”
“Em,” she correc
ts softly.
“Em. I can do that.” I take a deep breath. “If you’re Em, then I’m Liv instead of Olivia. Listen, I’m sorry I’m barging in like this. It’s only temporary and it’s just...your dad and I have to play pretend for a little while. Once the coast is clear, then I’ll be out of your hair and –”
“Lady, it’s okay.” Em gives me another look. A shy one where she's watching me from under her lashes, but the look is long and thoughtful. A sort of considerate maturity that makes her seem older than twelve, even if she’s so small she could pass for nine or ten. “I get it, you know,” she says quietly.
She steps closer, then settles down on the couch in the far corner from me and unzips her backpack to start pulling out books and notebooks and a tablet with matter-of-fact movements. “Daddy already told me. There are bad guys after you, and we’re helping keep you safe. It’s okay. You’ll be all right here.”
There’s something humbling about having my situation explained to me so bluntly by a twelve-year-old who actually goes out of her way to reassure me.
God. I almost feel like I’m the child here, and it's overwhelming.
I can’t focus right now. So I watch her without staring, trying not to intrude as she flips open a massive textbook and starts scribbling in a notebook full of something that isn't English.
I guess I'd call it Greek but then it wouldn’t be sarcastic. I’m pretty sure some of those math symbols are actual, honest-to-God Greek.
It’s so alien it looks like hieroglyphics. Pure cuneiform. Last I remembered, twelve-year-olds stuck to math where the only symbol more complex than one through zero was x.
“Is that...algebra?” I venture.
“Calculus,” she responds primly, and I stare. Then immediately look away. I'm sure she’s used to people staring at her for being so smart, probably treating her like some kind of freak, and I don’t want to be yet another bystander making her uncomfortable.
But I don’t know calculus from camembert, so I fish for something else, then land on her backpack and reach out to lightly trace the tip of one of Spock’s pointy ears.
“Old school Nimoy, huh? Not a fan of the new Quinto?”
Her pencil’s scratch stops, and she glances, measuring me, but I can see the spark of interest in her eyes. “They're both pretty cool. But I like Zachary Quinto because he’s hot and Leonard Nimoy because he’ll always be the real deal.”
I grin. “You're right about that. Though I’ve always been a big Uhura fan, too. I dressed up as her for five Halloweens straight when I was your age.”
Emily perks. “Really?” Then she shoots Riker a peevish look. “Daddy won’t let me because he says the skirt and gogo boots are ‘too much.’”
Riker’s brows lower thunderously. “They are too much.”
“But –”
A firm rap at the front door stops us all in our tracks. A waiting stillness settles over the room, a prickling silence as the three of us exchange worried looks before Riker steps forward and toward the door.
“It’s just Landon,” he says. “I’ve been expecting him.”
He pauses in passing and rests his hand lightly on top of Em’s head, his voice, his gaze gentling so much, rough fingers so careful as they tuck her hair back. “Go upstairs, love. We need some privacy.”
Em quickly gathers her things with a nod, stretches up on her toes while Riker bends down to meet her for a kiss on the cheek, then patters upstairs with a last curious glance at me.
Awkward turtle disaster averted. Maybe.
I curl my fingers against my clammy palms. Now, I'm wondering about the door.
I trust that it’s Landon Strauss, but I can’t miss the fact Riker just sent his daughter upstairs – where it's extra safe.
Riker strides to the door, gripping the handle lightly and leaning swiftly to one side to glimpse the other person past the front curtains, moving with a tension and wariness born of practice.
Satisfied, he nods, then he flicks the lock with his thumb and pulls the door open, relaxing slightly as the tall, dark-haired, tattooed man I’ve seen so often on TV walks inside, wary blue eyes cutting around as if he's checking the place for snipers.
Wow. He's not quite my type, but I can see how he’d inspire a writer like Kenna.
Landon’s gaze lands on me, and he offers a brief, distracted smile that I guess is supposed to be reassuring. “Miss Holly,” he says. “Glad you made it safely into Riker’s hands.”
“And living room,” I offer with a lame little laugh.
Neither of them laughs back.
Lame.
“He'll take good care of you,” Landon says.
Riker sinks down in the deep recliner at the other end of the couch, his body moving with powerful ease, slouching into a sort of lazy, careless grace. Landon remains more tense, still standing as he smacks his knuckles into his fist.
“All right, here’s the plan. We’re keeping this off the books even though Enguard is cooperating with the FBI. Just in case Lion and the Pilgrims have deeper connections than we think, technically, you don’t exist anymore, Olivia. No one knows where you are, and for all Milah knows you got scared and ran away.”
I frown. “Will anyone actually believe that?”
“It’ll work. Just long enough to keep them spinning and slow down any search efforts they may have going,” Landon says. “But even though we’re doing this off the books, just in case we have to make sure everything is on the up-and-up as far as legal witness protection standards. We can’t do anything that may invalidate your testimony at a later date.”
“What about my family?” I ask. “Is Milah safe? And my Dad...his wife...”
Charlotte may be Daddy’s fourth wife and no relation to me, but I still don’t want anything to happen to her.
“Milah’s got herself under control.” Then he grimaces, an expression I’m all too familiar with, and for a moment, it almost feels like he’s part of the family. “In this, at least. She learned a lot about personal security after our last incident with Crown Security.”
“The people who are after you,” Riker cuts in quietly, “they go fast and hard. They operate in the shadows. In silence. Targeting your father openly is nearly impossible. Alec Holly's an international household name. Taking out a Fortune Five Hundred presence like him could do them more harm than good.”
There’s something odd in the way Riker speaks, something almost like...resentment?
Maybe even contempt.
I wonder if maybe he hates me more for being a spoiled little rich girl than he does for disrupting his life with an unwanted job. But even though I’m watching him, he’s not looking at me.
I guess this conversation is supposed to make me feel better, but it just leaves me numb with a block of ice in the pit of my stomach. The man who’s supposed to be keeping me safe won’t even acknowledge I’m in the room. Not beyond a few more words about details.
Yet when he speaks again later, although he’s looking at Landon...I feel like his words are for me.
“There’s nothing to worry about with me.” There’s a confidence in his voice that runs far deeper than anything I’ve ever felt in my life.
I can’t help admiring him. He’s a quiet man who doesn’t mean to brag, but that doesn’t mean he’s not certain of his own power – and of the promise he offers when he says, “Nothing's happening. That, I swear on my life. Anyone who wants Olivia Holly will have to go through me.”
4
Just the Little Things (Riker)
I thought I was ready for this.
And I was dead wrong.
It’s strange to have a woman in the house again. There’s just a different energy in a home when a woman settles into it, especially when over the past four years, Em and I have learned to work around each other like clockwork.
We know which gears to turn to keep our lives running smoothly. Now there’s another cog in the wheel, someone else turning those gears, and I have no idea how to fit h
er in without the entire machinery of our household seizing up.
Especially when I’m constantly reminded who she’s not. It’s a relief, really, and that relief feels like a betrayal, when it shouldn’t.
I don’t need those reminders.
I don’t need someone teasing old shadows of grief and pain.
Fuck, if Olivia were anything like Crystal, then it might feel like having a ghost in the house.
But Olivia’s so very different – from my dead wife, from her plastic-accented sister, from anyone I’ve ever known, and she fills the space so uniquely it’s like she transforms everything she touches.
I don’t know how to handle that.
Not when after all this time, I’ve gotten used to the way I am, and I don’t know how to change myself around someone else.
Especially not someone this young, someone from a world so different from mine; it’s like some asshole threw this delicate, soft-spoken angel out of an ivory tower. Just left her glowing in the middle of all my darkened spaces, lighting up all the uncomfortable things I try like hell not to see.
Or hear, at barely five o’clock in the morning, when I’m dragging out of the shower with my hair dripping in my eyes and my brain about two hours behind my body.
Apparently, Milah’s not the only one with vocal talents because Olivia’s soft voice trills up the stairs in low, sweet lilts that sound almost like subdued opera.
It’s not hard to tell she’s trying to keep herself quiet so she won’t wake anyone, but despite the things that have happened to her there’s a brightness around her she can’t keep contained.
I don’t want to admire that about her, when she’s just a problem I have to deal with until the danger she brings is as far away from my daughter as possible.
But I do.
I shouldn’t be thinking about this shit.
I’m half-asleep and I don’t know where my mind is going. Then I hear it.
The second a sudden, alarming squeal rises from downstairs, I’m wide awake and bolting down the steps, nearly vaulting the banister rail into the living room with the towel around my waist flapping. I bolt into the kitchen, heart hammering, ready to pry Olivia from the hands of a masked intruder.
