Dark Alpha (ALPHA 2)

by Carole Mortimer

  “That would depend on whether or not you decide to go to the newspapers—”

  “You really think I would ever want anyone else to know what an idiot I’ve been where you’re concerned?” She gave a self-disgusted shake of her head. “Even I can’t believe that I was stupid enough to ever think that beneath that cold and ruthless exterior, there was a decent human being just trying to get out. Was I ever wrong about that! You’re cold through and through, Lucien. A complete and utter bastard,” she stated flatly.

  He gave a humorless smile. “Not a complete one, Nicky, or I would have waited to have this conversation until after I’d taken you to bed!” he taunted.

  “I would never have gone to bed with you when you’re in this mood!”

  “Now really isn’t a good time to challenge me, Nicky,” his voice was steely soft.

  Nicky looked at him guardedly for several long and tense seconds before lifting her chin determinedly. “I want to leave. Now.”

  Lucien thought of continuing to refuse, of keeping her here until she told him the truth, as he had said he would.

  But what was the point in that? Nicky was as adamant in her denials as he was in his accusations. They would achieve nothing more tonight, except to become more and more angry with each other. And God knew where that might lead.

  Besides which, Dair, or one of his men, would be keeping a very close eye on Nicky until they knew the truth about her.

  He nodded abruptly. “I’ll drive you home—”

  “I don’t think so, thank you,” she dismissed hardly. “It would make me feel physically ill to have to spend that amount of time in your company right now, let alone breathe the same air you do.”

  Lucien’s eyes narrowed at the disgust he could hear in Nicky’s voice. “You didn’t seem so particular about exchanging bodily fluids with me last night.”

  Her eyes glowed darkly in the paleness of her face. “And if I don’t leave in the next few seconds I think I’m actually going to be physically sick.”

  He shrugged unconcernedly, not sure he was capable of spending any more time with her either right now. Not without doing something he was sure to regret. “Then I’ll have Dair drive you home—”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere near him tonight, either,” Nicky couldn’t seem to stop her voice from shaking. She was more than halfway in love with this man, and it hurt that he believed her capable of the things he had just accused her of. “I just want out of this building, and far away from you. I can get a cab once I’m outside.” Maybe she would be able to breathe properly again too, once she was away from Lucien.

  She would also be able to give in to the tears that had been threatening these past few minutes. She certainly wasn’t going to give Lucien the satisfaction of crying in front of him. Or letting him see that her heart was breaking.

  “It’s dark outside, and it isn’t easy to find a cab this time of night in the business district; your choices are either Dair or myself driving you home,” Lucien answered her tautly.

  Nicky looked at him searchingly, knowing by the hard determination in his eyes that Lucien wasn’t going to give an inch on this particular subject. “Dair,” she chose flatly, looking anywhere but at Lucien as he made the necessary call on his cell phone, but knowing, feeling his gaze on her the whole time he spoke to his cousin.

  It was hard now to remember how much she had been looking forward to this evening, to being with Lucien again. To the two of them just spending a normal evening together like other couples. Well, as normal as it could be with a man as dynamic and mercurial as Lucien.

  Not only was that never going to happen now, but she also had to consider whether or not she could even remain living in London; if Dair had already discovered that her name wasn’t Nicky McKenzie, then there was every possibility the other man would also ‘discover’ her real name, and that her father had not only stolen ten million pounds from the most dangerous man in London, but that he had later been murdered because he refused to tell Jack Montgomery what he had done with it.

  Nicky had never discovered what her father had done with that money, either; she would hardly be living in fear for her life if she had. If she had known where the money was, then she would either have returned it by now, or she and Neil would be living the high-life in some exotic location.

  Neither of which had happened.

  The thought of possibly having to leave London again, of giving up her job, of having to say goodbye to Chrissie and Fleur—without them actually knowing that’s what she was doing—and then having to start all over again somewhere else, as someone else, made Nicky feel hollow inside.

  She had no doubts she would never see Lucien again after this evening, no matter what she decided.

  “Dair will meet the two of us downstairs,” Lucien interrupted her flow of thought.

  “I can go down in the elevator on my own—”

  “I’m coming down with you.” He eyed her challengingly.

  “Of course you are,” Nicky sighed. “You’ll want to make absolutely sure I’ve left the premises.”

  That hadn’t been Lucien’s reasoning at all. In fact, now that he’d had his say, allowing his temper to cool, and it was time for Nicky to leave, he found that he wasn’t happy about her going with that look of pain and disappointment in her expressive eyes. Disappointment in him.

  Because of the things he had accused her of?

  Uncertainty, a totally alien emotion for Lucien, began to set in.

  What if he had been wrong about her?

  What if there was a perfectly logical explanation as to why Dair had found evidence her name wasn’t really Nicky McKenzie? As Dair had cautioned him earlier, hundreds of people disappeared every day, for their own reasons, and most of them weren’t criminal.

  The two of them should know that better than anybody.

  Yes, Nicky had refused to even admit to changing her name, but that didn’t mean her reasons for doing so had anything to do with blackmailing Lucien. Especially when she had been Nicky McKenzie for several years now, long before she had even met him.

  He breathed in deeply. “Nicky, if you’re in some sort of trouble—”

  “You’re the last person I would ever ask for help!”

  “I—”

  “Could we just go now?” she demanded agitatedly. “You can keep the food I brought with me; I think it would choke me if I tried to eat any of it.”

  That knot of uncertainty wound even tighter in Lucien’s chest. “Stop being so fucking proud, Nicky.” He scowled darkly. “If you are in trouble, then I can help you—”

  “I think you’ve helped me quite enough for one evening, don’t you?” she dismissed, and then thought for a moment “Although, there actually is something you could do for me...” she added softly.

  Lucien tensed as if for a blow. “Yes?”

  She nodded. “You should learn to trust more, and try and let a few more people into your life. And stop eating dinner alone in restaurants you’ve paid to have emptied before you arrive.” She grimaced.

  Lucien raised surprised brows. “That’s it? That’s what you want me to do for you?”

  “Not for me, for you,” she corrected with feeling. “Not everyone is your enemy until proven otherwise, Lucien. And whatever someone’s name may or may not be, it doesn’t stop their actions and emotions from being exactly what they appear to be.”

  And Lucien knew that Nicky’s physical emotions last night, at least, had ‘appeared to be’ as insatiable, and out of control, as his own.

  Hell, could he have been wrong about her?

  Nicky obviously wasn’t about to confide in him, so there was no way he could know that for sure until Dair had finished his investigation—

  Oh yes, Lucien could just see himself turning up on Nicky’s doorstep one evening and explaining that it was alright for him to see her again now, because Dair had cleared her through security; she was likely to rip him to pieces, verbally if not physically.
<
br />   And if he was wrong about her, that’s exactly what he would deserve.

  “Nicky—” He broke off as his cell phone vibrated in his jeans pocket, the signal to let him know that Dair was waiting for them downstairs. “Time to go.” He grimaced as he stood back to let Nicky precede him out of the kitchen.

  Nicky was relieved to finally be moving. Reaction was starting to set in—or more likely shock—and if she didn’t get away from here, and Lucien, very soon, then she was afraid she was going to do something to embarrass herself.

  The adrenaline, from her initial gut-clenching fear, when Lucien had revealed that he knew Nicky McKenzie wasn’t her name, followed by anger at Lucien’s outrageous accusations, had now all drained away.

  Spending time with someone of Lucien’s wealth, and security resources, had always been a big risk for her to take. But Nicky had considered it a risk worth taking when she knew she was falling in love with him. When every moment she spent with him was filled with an electric charge, or as if she had drunk several glasses of champagne, and the bubbles were fizzing and popping inside her.

  Obviously to Lucien—by the very fact that she was now being escorted from the building, as if she were someone not to be trusted around him—she had just been another female body for him to enjoy.

  She felt the humiliation of that even more than she did his accusations of blackmail.

  Live with it, she told herself, you’ve lived through worse.

  Had she?

  It didn’t feel like it right now.

  She had never felt so hollow inside, as if all of her emotions had been sucked out, except for that humiliation.

  She didn’t even look at Dair once they had reached the underground garage and he opened the passenger door of a black Hummer for her to get in.

  “Nicky!” Lucien called out to her sharply as she would have climbed inside the vehicle without so much as looking at or speaking to him again.

  It took every last bit of strength Nicky had to turn and face him, her chin held defensively as she couldn’t quite lift her own gaze high enough to meet his—accusing?—one.

  “You know where to find me if you change your mind about my offer of help?”

  She did look at Lucien now, pityingly. “This is definitely goodbye, Lucien,” she stated flatly before turning to finish climbing into the black vehicle, with its customary tinted windows.

  She kept her face turned away as Dair closed the door behind her before going around to the driver’s side and climbing in beside her. She continued to look the other way as they left the underground car park; if she had looked at Lucien again, even once, she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to stop the tears from falling. To stop herself from knowing her heart was breaking. And she wasn’t going to give Dair the satisfaction of knowing any of that.

  The silence in the car grew and stretched to an unbearable level as the vehicle ate up the distance to her apartment. No doubt as company for Nicky’s ever-increasing misery. Along with the rain that had begun to fall steadily outside.

  “Once Lucien calms down—”

  “I’m really not in the mood to listen to anything you have to say,” Nicky cut him off stiffly.

  “I only wanted to explain that Lucien’s temper—”

  “What is this?” Nicky turned to eye Dair scathingly. “Your idea of ‘good cop, bad cop’? He rips me to shreds, and then you come along and offer me a shoulder to cry on, so that I confess all?”

  Deep grooves appeared in harshly hewn cheeks as Dair cracked a smile. “I don’t think I’m really cut out to be the ‘good cop’, do you?”

  He was right, Lucien was far more likely to be the ‘good cop’; that mesmerizing thing he had going for him was far more likely to encourage someone to ‘talk’. Dair looked as if he would rather use a blunt instrument than charm.

  “And for future reference,” the man at her side continued evenly, “it’s far too easy nowadays for someone like me to hack into databases and the like for anyone to use a dead person’s name for a change of identity.”

  “I’ll remember that—if I should ever decide to change my name!” Nicky maintained stubbornly.

  “Right,” Dair drawled mockingly. “I can guarantee that, whatever Lucien said to piss you off earlier, he already regrets it.”

  Nicky gave a snort. “Somehow I doubt that very much!”

  He quirked one dark eyebrow. “Like to bet on it?”

  “What—? No!” She gave him an irritated frown, having no intention of being lulled into relaxing around this man; the obviously expensive tailored suit Dair wore did absolutely nothing to disguise the muscles bulging beneath, and there was also that scar on his temple, which gave him a decidedly dangerous appearance.

  “Pity,” he drawled.

  “And why is that?” she humored him dryly.

  “Because he’s driving the car behind us.” Dair gave a glance in his mirror at the same time as he pulled over to the side of the road and began to slow the vehicle down.

  “What—?” Nicky turned sharply to give a frantic glance out of the back window. “How do you know its Lucien?”

  “He just flashed his headlights for me to stop.” Dair shrugged as he brought the four-by-four to a halt beside the pavement.

  “I don’t want you to stop—”

  “You don’t pay my company fee, Miss McKenzie,” he came back hardly.

  Nicky’s heart thumped in her chest as the car behind them also came to a stop, easily recognizing Lucien as he got out from behind the wheel.

  “Wait here,” Dair instructed tersely before opening the door to get out and walk back to talk to Lucien.

  Wait here? Was he insane?

  Or did Dair think she was the insane one?

  Because Nicky had absolutely no intentions of just sitting here, waiting to be handed back over to Lucien, so that he could start his interrogation of her all over again. She wasn’t fool enough to think she would be able to withstand being questioned by Lucien a second time, when it had almost broken her the first time.

  She kept her eyes on the two men talking together as she slipped off her high-heeled shoes, then carefully and quietly opened the passenger door, sliding nimbly down onto the pavement, staying in a crouched position as she moved over to the nearest building. Her feet making no sound on the pavement as she kept to the shadows of the building until she was able to duck into an alleyway.

  Which was when she began to run as if her life depended upon it.

  Which perhaps it did.

  The life she had known as Nicky McKenzie these past four years at least...

  Chapter 13

  “Five more minutes and I was going back out to begin another search of the streets for you.”

  The scream caught, and then became locked in Nicky’s throat, as a lamp was switched on in her apartment and she could see Lucien in the arc of that lamplight, sitting calmly across the room in one of the two armchairs she owned.

  “How did you get in here?” she demanded as she quickly looked about the apartment to make sure that no one else—Dair Grayson—was lurking in the shadows, before her accusing gaze moved back to Lucien. “Never mind,” she dismissed impatiently. “It’s more important that you find your way out again than to know how you got in,” she dismissed hardly as she glared across the room at him.

  “We need to talk, Nicky—”

  “No, you need to leave,” she corrected determinedly. She had said goodbye once to this man already, she wasn’t sure she had the emotional strength to say goodbye to him again.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Oh I think you can,” she insisted.

  “I told you, we need to talk.” He continued to look at her unblinkingly.

  “Lucien, you can’t just break into someone’s home and then expect them to want to sit down and have a cozy chat with you!” Nicky eyed him exasperatedly.

  It had been over an hour since she made her escape. Once she had crossed enough streets, and ducked
into enough alleyways, she had started to run and then just kept on running, uncaring of the discomfort to her bare feet. Or the strange looks she was receiving from the few people braving streets that were still wet from the earlier downpour. All Nicky had been interested in was putting as much distance between herself and Lucien as possible.

  Finally she had felt safe enough to stop running and try to get her bearings, which was when she had realized she’d instinctively been running in the direction of her apartment.

  Perhaps not the best place for her to go, but her choices had been limited. To go to Neil. Or Chrissie and Fleur.

  Nicky didn’t want to worry Neil just yet, not until she was absolutely sure she needed to; he had his own group of friends and was nicely settled into university life, and she really didn’t relish having to tell him that he may have to give that all up so that the two of them could run again.

  Going to Chrissie and Fleur hadn’t been possible either, once Nicky remembered they had gone away for the weekend to visit Chrissie’s parents in Yorkshire.

  But Nicky knew she couldn’t continue to stay out in the streets wearing only her sexy red gown. Her disheveled appearance was attracting attention she didn’t need or want.

  Besides which, she was cold in just her thin dress, and her feet were sore and wet. They also had several painful abrasions and scratches, and her stockings were just a series of unattractive ladders.

  Not the ideal way in which to present herself to the reception of a hotel either, which she couldn’t afford in any case.

  But she badly needed to go somewhere she could sit quietly, if only to lick her wounds and try to think logically, and to decide what her options really were. If she had any, other than running again and having to become yet another person.

  She had checked her apartment building out before attempting to come inside, of course. Made sure there were no familiar cars—Lucien’s—parked outside, and no one lurking in the bushes near the doorway. The light was shining over the entrance door as usual, along with the ones on the stairways up to the different floors.