Hot Pursuit

by Julie Ann Walker

  She tried her best to ignore it and instead focus on the situation at hand. “What do you see back there, Angel?” she asked. Then thought, Oh, screw it. It wasn’t in her nature to back down from confrontation. “And also, Christian, why are you trying to fry my eyebrows off my face with your laser-beam eyes?”

  “You’re squirming. Again,” he muttered through a clenched jaw.

  “So?” Then she felt the ungentle prod of his erection. “Oh.” She bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “Sorry.”

  But she wasn’t really sorry. After that kiss, and certainly after he’d given her that disgusted look and promised it would never happen again, her ego could use the boost. Plus, it might be enough to stop her from kissing the holy Moses out of him.

  You know, just to prove she could.

  “We might have company,” Angel said. “There’s been a vehicle behind us for a while. Too far back to make out the color or model, but…”

  He let the sentence dangle when they came to the Y in the road. Emily glanced right. Nothing but pasture, rolling hills, and the great, gray ribbon of the A39 in the far distance. To the left was more of the undulating Cornish countryside. But further along she could see where the open farmland snuggled up to the deep green of a forest.

  “I suggest we wait here for a bit,” Angel said. “See what we see.”

  And so that’s exactly what they did. They waited. In silence. Until Emily couldn’t hear anything except Christian’s deep breathing. Until she couldn’t see anything but the arm he’d wrapped loosely around her waist. Until she couldn’t feel anything but the heat of him all along her back.

  Until she thought she’d go flippin’ crazy.

  When she opened her mouth to say—she wasn’t sure what, anything to distract herself from everything that was Christian—Angel pointed at the rearview mirror. “There. See that?”

  They all leaned toward the rearview mirror, but the vehicle behind them had already headed downhill, sinking out of sight.

  “Could be nothing,” Ace suggested.

  “Could be the authorities,” Angel disagreed.

  “Could be those asshats from the airport,” was Rusty’s addition.

  Emily hated to be left out, so she added, “Could be the authorities looking for the asshats from the airport.”

  But after another minute of silence, another minute of waiting, it appeared whoever had been behind them had turned off onto another road. The vehicle’s running lights never reappeared in the rearview mirror.

  A hard puff of air blasted from Ace’s lips. “Holy Noah with his balls out. I will be so happy when we ditch this island. I’ve had just about all the fun in England I can stand.”

  “Hear, hear,” Emily concurred.

  Apparently satisfied that their tail wasn’t, in fact, a tail, Angel turned the farm truck left, heading for the woods that loomed in the distance. As the line of trees drew nearer, Emily was left with an odd sense of misgiving. Or perhaps it was a premonition.

  Something important would go down at the manor house. She didn’t know what it would be.

  Then again, maybe her imagination was running away with her. Hadn’t she envisioned herself in a yellow ball gown not five minutes ago?

  Chapter 7

  The unnamed road leading through the wood to the manor house was just as Christian remembered: gravel, full of potholes, and as country as a thatched roof. Small rocks lined the edges. Beyond them was a forest of towering trees. And beneath the trees were the first purple blooms of bluebells.

  Soon the forest floor would be covered with the delicate harbingers of spring. But in late March, only the most intrepid and impatient flowers pushed through the black, leaf-strewn soil to make their presence known.

  A feeling of familiarity was soon replaced by something else. Something a tad wistful and melancholy. It was what happened to remorse after a number of years. It turned into a soft, sooty kind of sadness.

  Emily proved she was a witch or a mind reader, or both, because she glanced over her shoulder and said, “So, we hid out in your uncle’s summer cottage for five days, and now we’re about to hide out in a manor house that your parents apparently took you to as a kid. Yet, in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never talked about family. Not your folks. Certainly not an uncle. And in all the time we’ve been in England, you haven’t tried to contact any of them.”

  A couple of seconds ticked by. When Emily pursed her lips, Christian felt a muscle twitch under his left eye. “Pardon? Was there a question in there?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The question is, what gives? Where are your folks? Where is this mysterious uncle? And why haven’t you gone to see any of them since you’ve been back here?”

  Before he could answer, Angel hit a pothole. The truck lurched sideways, forcing Emily to loop an arm around Christian’s shoulders or else risk being tossed headfirst across the laps of the other three men in the vehicle. Suddenly her face was disturbingly close, her nose a mere inch from Christian’s.

  He could see the gold flecks in her irises, the slight irregularity in the roundness of the small beauty mark high on her cheek. His mind immediately went somewhere it shouldn’t. When he exhaled, damn if his breath didn’t shudder out of him.

  “My parents are dead,” he whispered, and wondered if she really did suck in a lungful of air when his breath feathered over her lips or if he was simply imagining it. “And I haven’t gone ’round to see my uncle because we’ve not spoken in over twenty-five years.”

  Emily shook her head, her eyes suddenly sad, saying without words, I’m so sorry. Aloud, she said, “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  He shrugged, still slightly breathless at how near she was. If he leaned forward the tiniest bit he could… No. No! Had he learned nothing from the airport’s car park? He’d have to be blind, deaf, and dumber than a turnip not to realize she hadn’t kissed him back.

  “I can be too nosy sometimes,” she said, keeping her voice low, making the conversation feel intimate even though there was no way everyone in the truck wasn’t listening in.

  The quirk of his mouth said, Sometimes? How about all the time.

  “Fine.” She chuckled. “I’m too nosy all the time. Which means you won’t be surprised that not five seconds after admitting it, I’m asking you what happened twenty-five years ago to make you lose touch with your uncle.”

  He could have prevaricated. He didn’t fancy talking about his past. But given his recent revelations—you know, the bit about him being arse over teakettle for her?—and despite her out-and-out rejection of him back at the airport, he wanted her to know him.

  “My dad died,” he whispered. “Afterward, Uncle David didn’t fancy having anything to do with me or my mum.”

  She cocked her head, a frown drawing her eyebrows together. “That’s kind of an asshole move, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. Considering it was my mum’s fault Dad died in the first place.”

  He watched the emotions flicker through Emily’s eyes. There was shock. Sadness. Followed by something that made him grit his teeth because it looked dangerously close to pity.

  He could take loads when it came to Emily. Her teasing. Her taunting. Ruddy hell, even the fact their kiss had proved she really didn’t fancy him. At least not that way. But one thing he couldn’t take was her pity. Or anyone else’s, come to think of it. Because only wretched, pathetic things were to be pitied, and he hadn’t pulled himself out of the gutter by his bootstraps to allow anyone ever to see him as a wretched, pathetic thing again.

  When he didn’t carry on or explain, she lifted her brow, a question in her eyes. And?

  And what? his pursed lips answered her.

  She dropped the silent eye-conversation and decided to go with the real deal. “You can’t seriously think to leave us hanging on that hook. You have to give us more.”r />
  Us. That was suddenly the sticking point.

  No matter how intimate their conversation might feel, the truth was it wasn’t intimate at all. Christian wanted Emily to know him, not every Tom, Dick, and Harry within earshot. Or Rusty, Ace, and Angel, as the case may be.

  “I haven’t got to do anything except for die and pay taxes,” he told her.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Stop trying to Christian Watson your way out of this thing.”

  “Am I meant to know what that means?”

  “You know.” She made a rolling motion with her hand. “You change the subject, or clam up, or turn the tables and start grilling me so I forget what I asked you.”

  Before he could respond, Angel yanked the truck a hard right and took them over the rocks lining the road with teeth-clacking speed.

  “What the—” Emily grabbed the dashboard with one hand and a fistful of Christian’s hair with the other.

  “Hell!” Ace finished for her.

  “Company,” was all Angel said as he maneuvered the old farm truck around trees like a rally car driver on an obstacle course.

  He drove them down into a small depression, soggy leaves squishing under the tires. Christian’s cods took a beating, thanks to the rough ride and Emily’s ass. Then Angel stomped on the brake. The farm truck skidded to a stop, and the Israeli immediately switched off the engine.

  All was quiet except for the tick-tick of the cooling motor and the drip-drop of the water that fell from the wet trees to land atop the truck’s roof.

  “Leave the roots if you will, darling.” Christian grabbed Emily’s wrist. He could feel the rapid thrum of her heartbeat beneath the soft heat of her skin.

  “Huh?” She blinked at him. “Oh!” She released his hair, then ran her fingers through it. He didn’t know if she was trying to get it back into place, or if she was trying to soothe the sting of her fisted fingers. All he knew was that he wanted her to carry on touching him for…well…forever.

  Sod it all.

  “The people you thought were behind us before?” Ace asked, craning his head, trying to see above the shallow ravine to the road beyond.

  “No.” Angel shook his head. “This car is coming from the direction of the manor house.”

  Christian’s chin jerked. He saw Emily’s do the same. “How could you tell?” he asked. “We were ’round a bend.”

  “I saw a piece of gravel hit a tree up ahead. Likely kicked up by a tire.”

  Emily made a face. “You saw that? My God, who are you?”

  Angel turned to her, one corner of his mouth quirked. It was the Angel equivalent of an ear-to-ear smile. “I’m Batman.”

  Emily’s pretty mouth slung open, and she turned to blink at Christian in astonishment. “Did he just make a joke?” She squinted at Angel. “I didn’t know he knew how to make jokes.”

  “I didn’t know he watched movies,” Ace added.

  Rusty got in his two pence. “Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he reads comic books.”

  That had them all turning to squint at Angel.

  “What?” Angel demanded. “Why are you all staring at me like I have two heads?”

  “We’re trying to imagine you with a Marvel in hand,” Ace said.

  “I think Batman is a DC Comics character,” Rusty corrected.

  “I watch movies,” Angel insisted. Christian was surprised to see a look of pique flash across the Israeli’s face before he once more donned his impenetrable mask. “What? Do you think I crawled out from under a rock?”

  “Maybe not a rock…” Ace let the sentence dangle.

  Since Angel’s history was a big, black hole, and since he’d been taking solo missions since signing on with BKI, the Chicago compound was often rife with speculation. The most commonly asked questions were: Who is he really? Where is he really? What the hell is he up to really?

  Angel shook his head. Then he jerked his chin toward the window. “Look there.”

  They all rubbernecked a peek over the lip of the depression and saw a late-model sedan fly by them on the gravel road. A woman with snow-white hair pulled back in a severe bun was at the wheel. By the certain way she roared down the winding road—Christian might go so far as to say the reckless way—there was no doubt she was familiar with her surroundings.

  The caretaker has left the building!

  “How much farther to the manor house?” Angel asked.

  “One mile, give or take,” Christian told him.

  “Then this is as good a place as any to leave the truck.”

  “What?” Emily looked around. “Why leave it here?”

  Given how bravely she’d faced down the Wankstain Brothers, it was difficult for Christian to remember that she wasn’t an operator. She had all the grit of one. All the fire in her eyes and steel in her spine. But she didn’t have the training the rest of them did, or the knowledge that had come through endless missions in countless different countries.

  “This is a stolen vehicle,” he explained, reaching for the door handle, “and if it’s been reported stolen, we daren’t have it anywhere near us. Also, even if it hasn’t been reported stolen, we still don’t want there to be any evidence of our presence at the manor house. Who knows if the local constable does patrols out this way? Best to leave the truck here. Out of sight.”

  “Right.” Emily nodded, sliding off Christian’s lap to follow the others who were already piling out of the truck.

  Christian remained where he was for a couple of seconds. For one thing, his right leg was asleep. For another, he needed a tad bit of time to battle the odd sense of bereftness that Emily’s sudden departure caused.

  When he finally exited the pickup truck and grabbed his rucksack from the bed, it was to find Emily frowning and gnawing her lower lip. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She looked around at the dripping forest, then back at the gravel road. “This truck could sit out here for weeks before it’s found.”

  His frown asked, Yeah, so?

  Her pursed lips said without words, So whoever owns it no doubt needs it.

  See? She tried to act all tough and take-no-guff. But she couldn’t hide her soft underbelly. Emily cared. Even about people she didn’t know and would likely never meet.

  He glanced around. Everyone was busy shrugging into their packs. Everyone except Angel, that is.

  The former Mossad agent was wiping down the inside of the truck again. He seemed to do that by rote, which was odd considering the man didn’t even have fingerprints. They’d been burned off him at the same time he’d undergone extensive plastic surgery and had his vocal cords scoured.

  When Christian turned back to Emily, it was to find her still eyeing the truck, still gnawing that delectable lower lip and driving him to distraction. He desperately wanted to tell her they could move the farm truck to a more visible area. But that wouldn’t be thinking with his brain. That would be thinking with the decidedly less intelligent organ beating behind his breastbone.

  Laying a reassuring hand on her arm, he could feel the delicateness of her bones even through the puffy fabric of her damp coat. It reminded him how Head Honcho Wankstain had manhandled her and made him entertain a brief fantasy of cutting the bastard’s bollocks off. “When we make it back to Chicago tomorrow night,” he said, “you can call in an anonymous tip. How does that sound?”

  Her expression went from I hate everything about this to sunshine and rainbows. In fact, the smile she sent him was huge and toothy and so damn hypnotic he had to look away.

  “Everyone ready?” Angel slammed the driver’s side door with his elbow. When he was met with a series of nods, he grabbed his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder. “All right then.” He headed in the direction of the manor house.

  Ace and Rusty fell into step behind him, leaving Christian and Emily to bring up the rear.

/>   “Ladies first.” Christian waved a hand.

  “Age before beauty,” she countered, that mischievous glint he loved so well winking at him from her dark eyes.

  “I’m hardly that much older than you.” He turned to trail after the others because he knew better than to fight her.

  Emily could be frustratingly stubborn when it came to him. A few times he’d wondered if perhaps, just perhaps, and despite her protestations to the contrary, it was because she had a bit of a thing for him. But that kiss had proved otherwise. She might as well have had a combination lock on her lips for all the encouragement she’d given him.

  Heat flew to his face at the memory, and he thanked his lucky stars she’d taken pity on him and hadn’t brought it up since. In fact, she seemed perfectly pleased to pretend it had never happened.

  Good. Great. Brilliant.

  He was pleased too. He was. She’d let him down in the gentlest way possible, and even if it’d caused a rather large fissure to snake across his heart, at least the bloody organ wasn’t broken.

  He could keep Emily in his life as a coworker, might he even be so bold as to say…a friend? And that would be enough.

  He swore to himself it would be enough.

  “How would you know how old I am?” she asked, dragging his mind back to the conversation. “You been reading my file?”

  He knew he’d hit a nerve because her South Side accent had thickened. It was her defense mechanism. When someone or something got too close, she turned up the volume on her blue-collar Bridgeport ’hood girl.

  “Indeed not.” He shook his head, determined to fall back into their familiar routine of taunting and slagging…or teasing as the Yanks liked to call it. Because even if that wasn’t all he wanted from her, at least it was something. “But the fact that it would bother you if I did piques my interest. For a woman who claims to have no secrets, you sure are prickly as a hedgehog about certain aspects of your past.”

  “There you go, trying to Christian Watson your way out of answering the question by pulling a conversational about-face.”