Hard to Protect (Black Ops Heroes)

by Black, Incy

  He ignored her paling to the color of the white marble countertop and turned to his mother. “And you, Helena, what’s your problem? I don’t recall my choice of profession ever compromising your career.”

  “Careful, William,” his mother warned softly. “I wouldn’t want you to cut yourself with your own tongue.”

  She pulled the rubber strap she’d looped high around Angel’s bicep tight. “And my problem is that when I give my word to a guest in my home—a guest who, when she arrived, was half dead on her feet and just barely this side of hysterical—that she will not be disturbed, I do not expect my son to abuse that trust.”

  She swabbed the inside of Angel’s elbow with a tiny, square alcohol wipe and reached for the syringe resting on a small, blue plastic tray.

  He glanced at Angel. Pale as milk, she had her bottom lip nipped tight between her teeth. Fuck. Too late, but he remembered how she’d ranted at Rhys about regularly drawing her blood—and it hurting—the first sign of anger she showed. Bastard probably provoked her half the time, just to feed his obsessive interest in adrenaline. Small wonder Angel locked herself behind ice. She’d learned, not unlike Pavlov’s dog, to behave only in a way that was safe and pain free.

  He reached for her free hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Breathe, Sunshine.”

  “Step outside, Will,” Helena ordered softly. “You might not hesitate to put your hands inside a person’s body to stem the blood flow from a bullet wound, but we both know what happens when you watch an itty-bitty needle slide into skin.”

  His mother set a small test tube full of Angel’s blood on the blue tray and reached for another empty one.

  The kitchen blurred; his lungs flattened. He was only dimly aware that his mother was still talking, as distant and distorted as her voice sounded.

  “So embarrassing, having to explain to an ambulance crew what my seventeen-year-old, six-foot-four and fearless son was doing on the floor unconscious with a concussion. And all because you’d arrogantly decided it was your responsibility to supervise my girls having their blood drawn once a month.”

  He heard Angel trying to muffle a snort—unsuccessfully—and then call to him softly. “Hey, Captain Invincible… I appreciate your need to hang on tight, but do you think you could leave at least a few of my hand bones intact?”

  His lightheadedness lifted. He loosened his grip around her hand and laced his fingers with hers instead. Angel had thawed—thank God.

  He was still grinning when Helena set down the last of the five full test tubes. Crossing to the far counter, her Louboutin heels click-clacking across the Travertine tile, she returned with a red Sharpie, a roll of sticky-backed white labels, and a container, holes just the right size to hold the test tubes bored into the solid-formed plastic.

  “How do you want these labeled up?” she asked stiffly.

  “Have you got any Lilys currently working for you?”

  “Three. Also a Lillian, two Lyllas, and a Lilianna. In fact, most of the flower names and their variants are taken, with the exception of Iris. I don’t have an Iris.”

  There was something definitely still off about his mother’s tone. “Okay, use Iris. Did the girls complain about the impromptu blood tests so we could hide Angel’s among their samples?

  “No.”

  “I’ll pay you back the ten grand extra Angel’s enhanced work-up is going to cost.”

  “You’re right, you will.”

  He decided it might be prudent to give his mother a wide berth for a day or two.

  The test tubes labeled, Helena dropped them into the specialized container and clipped the lid in place. Then, with a smile for Angel, she nudged the small plate containing two pastries. “Eat. About the only thing my half-idiot son has got right is the fact that we don’t need you keeling over.”

  Half-idiot? Well, excuse him.

  “And, now to return to that little dig of yours, William. The one about my choice of profession compromising your career.”

  He braced. Angel’s hand slipped clear of his. He was on his own for this.

  “Not that we haven’t been over this a million times, William, but do I regret my choice of career? No. Am I ashamed of it? No, why should I be? It put food on the table and pretty damn fine clothes on the backs of my children. It also paid for them to have the finest educations money could buy.”

  Now, when he was already feeling like a shit, now, his mother topped up his mug with fresh coffee, the rich aroma of the exclusive freshly ground beans, reminding him of the affluent, privileged childhood he’d enjoyed.

  “Do I regret that my choice of career could one day cost you that commander’s post that you so covet, again, as we’ve discussed ad infinitum?” Helena asked quietly, setting aside the coffee cafeteria. “Yes, I do. But, if you’re waiting for an apology, know now that you won’t be getting one. Instead, ask yourself this. What mother in her right mind sleeps easy knowing that the very next knock of her front door could herald news that her much-loved and only son is dead? And yet when, William, have I ever asked you to reconsider your choice to serve as an undercover agent? You want the top job? Man the hell up and fight for it. Prove you’re the best candidate for the role, and don’t you dare use me as an excuse should you fail.”

  The doorbell chimed. The courier for Angel’s blood. He slid from the high bar stool.

  “I’ll get it,” his mother snapped, snatching up the plastic container. “This is still my house.”

  He sat back down. Helena’s heels again click-clacked across the tiles, only this time sounding like the spit of bullets, the sound muffling as she hit the run of carpet in the hall.

  “Fuck,” he breathed. “She only calls me William when she’s truly pissed, and she’s used it three times this morning already.”

  “You hurt her, Will,” Angel said, her forefinger dabbing the light icing sugar coating of one pastry. She raised it to her mouth.

  He drove his fingers into his hair, and then hunched on the counter top, the weight of his shoulders braced on his elbows. “I know. I let the pressure get to me, and my temper slipped.”

  Tilting his head a little to the left, he captured her line of sight. “Much as it did last night. I’m sorry.”

  Angel leaned back as far as sitting on a stool would allow, her hands curled around the lip of the counter top to stop herself from falling backward. “Apology not accepted.”

  “What?” He’d accompanied his apology with one of his most winning smiles.

  Her eyes glinted irritation. “You trade on your popularity, Will. Always quick with the smiles, and even faster with the charm, to blunt the edge of the hard and ruthless in you. Great attributes for an ambitious agent with his eye on the top job, iron fist in a velvet glove and all that, but in a son…” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Saying sorry does not get you a free pass to behave like a dick.”

  He wanted to snap back that her post-coital reaction last night had hardly been all sweetness and light… And if she thought he missed her deft deflection from them back to his mother, she was deluded. Lips pressed tight together, he stared at the ceiling, his temper back to simmering. “You want more.”

  Angel leaned forward. “No, Will. I need more if I’m to understand. Words would be a good start. I’m a psychotherapist, not a bloody mind reader.”

  He grinned, and then remembering what she’d said about him being too quick with the smiles, quickly wiped it. Seriously, what’s the worst that could happen if he gave her more? He was already in the doghouse, probably relegated to the metaphorical sofa for life unless he acquiesced.

  And as much as he’d tried to resist it, there was no denying he seemed to have developed dangerous feelings for Angel, way beyond the purely physical. Like needing to hold her because that’s when he felt most a peace. Like the way his heart kicked when he won one of her smiles. And the way he missed her even though they might only be a room apart. Not to mention the burning in his gut at the thought that someone might
hurt her, take her from him.

  Feelings he’d have to confront sooner or later—once he had the threats against her under better control. Then, he’d cut her loose if she couldn’t accept he just didn’t have permanency in him. But for now…yeah, he’d take a blind leap of faith and give her a little context…something of himself.

  He sucked in a breath deep enough it was a miracle he didn’t turn inside out. “I thought she was unbreakable. Biggest misjudgment of my life.”

  “Who, Will? Who can’t you forgive?”

  A cold sweat slicked his skin, if his rib cage squeezed any more lightly, his lungs and heart would explode. With the exception of Zac, who seemed to enjoy pushing his buttons with his constant references to Diana, his closest friends, Jack, Nick Marshall, Fray, even his mother, rarely brought up the subject of his dead fiancée, believing he couldn’t handle the pain. Wrong—what he couldn’t handle was his fury.

  They didn’t know Diana had cheated on him. He’d never told them, told anyone.

  They didn’t know about the rage that burned his gut when he thought back to how Diana had betrayed him. And then there was the guilt. That bore down on him every goddamn day, like a lead blanket slung across his shoulders—at the vicious words he’d thrown at her in anger and hurt. Had Diana sensed that he’d never quite forgiven her betrayal? Is that why she’d killed herself?

  He tried warning off Angel with a glare of not to dig deeper—which, of course, she held defiantly.

  “Diana,” he muttered, his pulse picking up speed.

  Angel lifted her mug and took a sip of what had to be lukewarm coffee. “Go on.”

  He could blank her. He’d done so in the past. But he’d seen the worst of Angel down in those tunnels, and it hadn’t diminished her one damn bit in his eyes. Would Angel return the favor? Best to find out now because after last night—not the way it had ended, the stunning that had preceded their row—he wanted her safe, back in his bed for however long it took to get her out of his system.

  “Diana cheated. I can’t forgive her for it… Or myself for the things I said to her when I found out,” he put out there tightly. “But most of all, I can’t get past why, when I was giving her a second chance, she still killed herself.”

  The flames searing his stomach flared out of control. “I hate her for it. I bloody hate her. For giving up. On herself, and on me. So…conclusively. She didn’t even give me a chance to put right whatever the hell was wrong.”

  Except for the ever steady, rhythmic tick of the large station clock counting down time lost, quiet filled the kitchen.

  Angel broke the silence. Not with words of comfort. She said, “There, that didn’t hurt as much as you thought it would, did it? Nor did the world stop spinning or the sky fall.”

  He blinked. His mouth may have hung open before he snapped it shut. Then, “Aren’t you supposed to offer soft platitudes? That I could not possibly have second-guessed what Diana would do? That I’m not to blame for her dying, and it’s time I moved on?”

  Angel sighed. “And I’d patronize you like that why, Will? I bet you’ve argued those same points with yourself a million times. All I can do is hold up a mirror for you to look into and ask whether you like and respect the man you see reflected back at you.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I’d ask you, why not?” she said pragmatically, without a hint of the soft pity he’d have loathed.

  The words left his mouth without permission. “I’ve got her journal—Diana’s. Too often I’ll sit with it in my hands for hours. Turning it over and over, feeling its weight, fanning the outer edge of the pages with my thumb… Afraid, if I open it and read her most private truths, I’ll find out just how badly I failed her.”

  “Assuming you had anything at all to do with her death.”

  “She bloody killed herself, Angel,” he snapped. “While under my care.”

  “And you can’t accept that. Why not?”

  Trapped in her gaze, he told her what he shared with no one else. “A nagging voice in here—” He tapped his temple. “Bitching at me with questions. Why would Diana kill herself? If she was desperate, why didn’t she go to Zac? She was as close to him as I am. Why hang herself when there was enough booze in the apartment and pills would have been so much less ugly? And why from the high slide in a playground for a child to find? Diana wasn’t cruel. She’d have thought about how she’d be found and by whom. The investigation into her death was thorough and faultless, but it didn’t make sense then, and nothing’s made sense since.”

  “So that’s why you have a file in your loft containing copies of both the official investigation into Diana’s death, and the coroner’s report ruling it as one of misadventure,” Angel murmured.

  “I thought I told you not to go nosing about. Did you snoop into her journal, too?”

  Angel, her eyes wide but so not innocent shrugged. “No, but I probably would have done so if I’d found it.”

  “Jesus—” He pushed from his stool and crossed to the other side of the kitchen. He took a moment before turning to face her. “I’m not promising to read that bloody journal.”

  “Have I asked you to?”

  No, she hadn’t. But she’d be disappointed in him if he didn’t.

  “Clever, and very, very sneaky,” he told her, his tone wry.

  She picked up a pastry and bit it in half, a satisfied job-done expression lighting her face.

  Lucky bloody icing sugar getting to cling to her cheeky lips like that, because that’s what he suddenly wanted to do. “Care to give me a few pointers on how I go about making things right with Helena without screwing it up?”

  She swallowed and delicately brushed a crumb from the corner of her mouth with her baby finger.

  Unlucky crumb, he sympathized. Christ, watching Angel demolish a pain au chocolat was pure porn.

  “Well, you could start with an apology. You’re good with those.”

  “I can do that.” He grinned, as she nibbled her way down the length of what remained of the pastry. “What else?”

  “Now for the hard part. Try opening up and sharing with her how you feel, about your job and hers, and pour in a whole lot of that love you so clearly feel for her.”

  He walked back to where she was sitting. “May I have that other pastry?”

  “Certainly not. Get your own. And, final piece of advice, don’t prolong Helena’s hurt. This last remaining pastry and I will be just fine here on our twosome.”

  Twosome soon to be lonesome the way she was scoffing back the sweetness. “On it.” He sighed, heading for the exit.

  He was halfway down the corridor when he U-turned and returned to the kitchen threshold. “Angel?”

  Her head swung round, her eyes wide. Icing sugar dusted her, nose to chin, her cheeks were puffed out. Christ, she stuck a whole pastry in her mouth.

  “There’s a lot of misunderstanding and hurt flying about, Sunshine. Don’t think you’re off the hook. We are going to talk about last night. When I get back from sorting all the shit that needs sorting. Consider yourself warned.”

  He figured the tiny choking noises that followed him down the corridor weren’t serious.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was after midnight. He was risking his balls sliding into bed beside a sleeping Angel—not that his cock seemed to recognize the danger given its enthusiastic salute—but they needed to talk business. About the arrangements he was putting in place to protect her.

  And, God help him, they needed to talk about them—him and her, if only to lay down some ground rules. He’d not later face any accusations that he’d promised Angel more than he had in him to give her…or any woman.

  He’d made the mistake of falling in love once. Diana repaid him by cheating. Then, because he’d believed her “I love yous,” he’d foolishly risked further hurt by giving her a second chance.

  A chance she’d denied him when she’d then up and quit on him by killing herself, the depth of p
ain her loss inflicted on him, worse than he could ever have imagined.

  He’d not risk that again.

  Sliding an arm underneath her, he juggled Angel into the position he liked best. Her tucked close to his side, head on his chest, her leg bent and draping his hips… Or, maybe not that right now. Hard as he was, he didn’t need the distraction and temptation of the soft silky skin of her inner thigh pressing against his cock.

  Not when she had yet to become familiar with the fact that when wired—as he was now, after spending the last thirteen hours straight trying to extricate her from the metaphoric explosive vest draping her, through no real choice of her own—his body was most insistent in its demands for release.

  “For God’s sake,” she muttered irritably, her voice thick with drowsiness as he rearranged her.

  But she didn’t resist, which he read as a good sign. Much like her leaving her mass of hair loose to tumble wildly these last few weeks, rather than confining it in that horrid, complicated French plait thing she’d once favored. Angel, he suspected, was slowly testing out what it was like to live a little freer.

  He jostled her. “You awake, sweetheart?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  More a growl than a hum of pleasure, but he’d take it. “Things go okay with Helena today?”

  “Hmmmm… We enjoyed bitching you out.”

  Bloody terrific. Just what he needed to know before he took a run at her about their future. “And the conclusion was?”

  “You’re definitely half-idiot.”

  Charming. “Why?”

  “The list of faults was long,” she grumbled. “But you burying things you don’t like, rather than talking them through, came out on top. Though it must be said, right now, your tendency to sneak into my bed and wake me up is vying for pole position.”

  He smiled. He liked her smart-arsed sense of humor. If things went their way, his way, he’d get to see more of it—for a time. Just until they’d burned out the physical need neither of them seemed capable of resisting—yet.

  He very much looked forward to gratifying the physical—her contemplating further her criticism that he buried things, less so. Tenacious as she was, Angel would dig. He have to watch for that. “I need to update you on what I’m doing to keep you safe.”