Defying Asher (Knight Security 1)

by Carole Mortimer

  “Time out, gentlemen.” Jack rolled his eyes at Lissa.

  She was laughing softly as Asher came back into the room, the grimness of his expression probably an indication Claudia had indeed questioned him before she left.

  “We’re leaving now,” he told her abruptly.

  Lissa’s humor changed to irritation. “I came to visit my father.”

  “Which you’ve done.” He nodded tersely. “Now we’re leaving.”

  “No.” She dug her heels in. She might have defended Asher’s arrogance to her mother earlier, but that didn’t mean she actually intended to let him tell her what she could and couldn’t do. Unfortunately, she was wearing wedged-heeled trainers this afternoon, and not the stiletto-heeled boots Asher viewed so warily after she had stabbed his foot with one of them. Otherwise, she might have felt tempted to repeat the action.

  Asher’s eyes narrowed. “I think Arnold being stabbed on the premises earlier is enough to show it isn’t safe for you to remain here. The attacker may come back. Mr. Forsythe?” He turned to her father for support.

  “He does have a point, baby—”

  “No, no, he really doesn’t, and I deeply resent his attempt to force me into doing what he wants me to do by involving you.” Lissa glared at Asher for several long seconds before turning to Gabriel. She had to clench her hands into fists so that no one could see how much they were shaking with anger. “I think it might be a good idea if you were to remove Asher from my security detail.”

  Ash felt as if Lissa had just punched him in the gut. Her request certainly hurt enough for it to feel as if she had physically struck him.

  Maybe he had come on a bit strong just now, ordering her about that way. But he wasn’t about to apologize for it. He really wasn’t happy with Lissa putting herself—with an emphasis on herself—at risk by staying here. She had wanted to make sure her father was okay, and she had done that. Now it was time for her to leave.

  Ash’s shoulders tensed. “I’ve spoken to Jonas. Lily is in a West End play right now, so they’re both living in their apartment in London to cut down on the travel time. Their house in the country is empty.”

  Lissa hadn’t made the connection until now. Hadn’t realized it was the actress Lily Knight who was the sister of the Knight brothers. Lissa had never actually seen the other woman act, but she knew Seduction, the play the other woman was appearing in at the moment, had received rave reviews from the critics.

  “And this is of interest to me because…?” Lissa lifted one auburn brow.

  “You would be safer out of London.”

  “I have a business to run.”

  “And, from what I observed this morning, your assistant is perfectly capable of taking over for a few days. If you won’t agree to my accompanying you—”

  “I’m not agreeable to anyone accompanying me—because I’m not going anywhere!”

  “Lissa, honey—”

  “I said no, Daddy.” Her use of her childhood name for him was enough to silence Jack’s protest.

  Ash wasn’t so easily cowed. “If no one else is willing to say it, then I will: your refusal to listen to reason is going to get you killed.” Jesus, why was it that with this woman, it was always one step forward and two bloody steps back?

  The two of them had made love earlier, and now Lissa was kicking him out of her life. Again. In the same way she had a year ago after they had spent that memorable night together. Ash had let her get away with it that time, but he was in too deep now to accept this dismissal without putting up a fight.

  In too deep?

  What the fuck did that mean?

  Well, for one thing, it meant he wasn’t going to back off just because Lissa had decided he should. Sometime in the near future, they were also going to talk about the reason she had walked out on him a year ago. Because Ash still had no fucking idea what that had all been about.

  Lissa frowned. “What’s your opinion, Inspector?”

  The older man shrugged. “Obviously I can’t tell you what to do.” He gave Ash a pointed stare. “But on this occasion I am inclined to agree with Mr. Knight and your father. The attacks are escalating. Becoming more personal each time. Removing yourself as a possible target would be the prudent thing to do.”

  “I’m also not agreeable to removing Ash from your security detail,” Gabriel interjected firmly. “I have absolutely no doubts that right now, he’s the best person to protect you.”

  Lissa gave the eldest Knight brother a discomforted glance, knowing he was referring to the relationship between her and Asher. It was her own fault, of course, for allowing her mother to annoy her so much she had informed everyone in the room she and Asher had a much closer relationship than that of a bodyguard and the client he was protecting. Added to which, it was obvious every man in the room agreed with Asher’s decision to remove her from London until this was over. Obviously, she was fighting a losing battle trying to go against all of them.

  She breathed out noisily. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Asher raised surprised brows.

  She gave a jerky nod. “Okay.”

  “You’ll go to Jonas’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Accompanied by me?”

  Her mouth tightened. “Yes.”

  “Hell, woman, why couldn’t you just have agreed to do that in the first place!” He glared his irritation. “Why do you have to argue with me about everything?”

  She gave him a mocking smile. “Probably because you’re far too fond of throwing your weight around and expecting everyone to ask ‘how high’ when you say jump.”

  Yes, he was. And, on this occasion, Ash wasn’t about to apologize either. Not if it meant he kept Lissa alive.

  Ash glanced at Lissa as she sat beside him in the SUV on the drive to Lily and Jonas’s country home. They had collected some of Lissa’s things and Sherlock from her apartment. The cat was sulking in a traveling basket in the back of the vehicle right now, having made his displeasure clear by fierce growls and lashing out with his claws. Ash had four lovely scratches down his arm to prove it.

  Zander had gone to his own apartment and Ash’s to grab the bags they always had packed for emergencies. All the Knight Security personnel had them. The other man was now following close behind them in the second SUV. “The two of us are going to talk when we get there.”

  She glanced at him warily. “About?”

  “I said when we get there,” Ash repeated evenly, having no intention of being drawn into another argument with her while he was driving.

  She turned in her seat as far as the safety belt across her chest would allow. “Look, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I… This situation has gone beyond stressful.”

  “Maybe if you stopped fighting everyone and everything, you would find it less so,” Ash snapped. “And which part of your conversation are you apologizing for? The bit where you talked to and about me as if we hadn’t been in bed together a few hours ago? Or the part where you instructed my brother to remove me from your protection detail? Which was never going to happen, by the way. My brother may run the office of Knight Security, but the business is owned by all four of us. Bottom line, I’ll go and be where I damn well please.”

  Lissa wasn’t fooled for a moment by the mildness of Asher’s tone, knew that beneath the calmness of tone, he was still furiously angry.

  As he had a right to be?

  Well…yes. The two of them were far more than bodyguard and client. Except neither of them seemed to know what they were.

  Maybe that was what Asher wanted to talk to her about once they reached his sister and brother-in-law’s house?

  Was she ready to have a conversation like that with Asher? With any man? She had trusted Adam with her emotions five years ago, and look how well that had turned out. She had been half in love with Asher that night a year ago, and that had been even more of a disaster. Now she lived her life by the rule that if she didn’t allow her emotions to become involved, then no
man would ever have the power to hurt her again.

  Or she them.

  Asher’s anger now told her that she had hurt him earlier by her dismissal of him and whatever was going on between the two of them. Asking his brother to replace him as her bodyguard had obviously been the last straw as far as Asher was concerned.

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I don’t believe I left anyone in that hospital room in any doubt as to our…friendship.”

  “Only because you wanted to hit out at your mother.”

  Guilt warmed her cheeks. “I asked your brother to replace you on my protection detail because…because…”

  “Yes?”

  “Because at the time, I was angry.”

  “You do that a lot, don’t you? Hit out and push people away so they never make the mistake of thinking they actually matter to you,” he added as Lissa looked at him for an explanation.

  Almost exactly what she had been thinking of herself. Almost. “Certain people matter to me,” she defended.

  “Yeah?”

  Lissa bristled at the skepticism she heard in his tone. “They may not be ideal parents, but I love them. Both of them. I love Stazzi too. Her parents and Alexandre also matter to me. They’ve always been more like my family than my own parents ever were.”

  He glanced at her between narrowed lids. “What about men? Did any of them matter to you?”

  The warmth deepened in her cheeks. “There really haven’t been that many.” Adam five years ago. Now Asher.

  “Did any of the few matter to you?” he persisted.

  Asher had, from the very first night they met at the restaurant a year ago. The phone call from the other woman the following morning was the only thing that had stopped her from seeing him again. And again. And again. In fact, she suspected she would never have wanted to leave his side again.

  Had it been because of the phone call? Or had she used that as an excuse to walk away? Hadn’t it been easier to tell herself Asher was as untrustworthy as Adam, than it was to admit her emotions were already involved?

  Here, this, was the truth Lissa had been denying to herself all this time.

  She had fallen in love with Asher when she met him a year ago.

  And she had never fallen out of love with him.

  The realization had terrified her then.

  It terrified her still.

  How could it be any other way when she was a product of the years of her parents’ dysfunctional relationship, where emotions were guarded or nonexistent. She had tried to overcome that once. With Adam. Until he let her down in the worst way possible. Since then, she had avoided any and all emotional entanglements. Including trying to push Asher away when he got too close.

  “I was engaged once— Asher!” she gasped as the SUV veered across the white lines in the middle of the country road before Asher quickly brought it back under his control. But instead of continuing to drive, he flicked the indicator switch and slowed the vehicle down before braking to a stop in what looked to be a bus stop.

  Asher put the SUV in Park, then turned off the engine and unfastened his seat belt before turning in his seat to look at her fully. “You were getting married?”

  “Years ago, yes. I… He… We were planning the wedding when I discovered he was being unfaithful to me. Seems to be a habit men have where I’m concerned,” she added challengingly.

  A frown appeared between his eyes at the realization that last remark was obviously directed at him. “When was I unfaithful to you?”

  “Last year.”

  He looked completely dumbfounded. “How the hell could I be unfaithful to you? We spent one night together, and the only time I left you was when I went to the bathroom to take a shower.”

  “Strictly speaking, it was your girlfriend you were two-timing. With me.” She winced. “After Adam let me down so badly, there was no way I was going to hurt someone else by becoming the other woman in anyone’s love triangle.”

  Ash dropped his head back on the headrest to stare up at the ceiling of the SUV. He had absolutely no idea what Lissa was talking about. Who Lissa was talking about. He hadn’t been involved with anyone else when the two of them met a year ago, and he wasn’t involved with anyone else now. He hadn’t been involved with anyone, period. He didn’t do involved.

  Until this hellcat came back into his life and started screwing with his head and his emotions. Now he was most definitely involved. Up to Lissa’s beautiful neck.

  What Ash had to try to remember was that Lissa’s lack of trust in him wasn’t personal. That it stemmed from a vulnerability she had lived with all her life, added to by her fiancé being unfaithful to her. Her fiancé. Why did the thought of Lissa in love with the other man make him feel like hitting someone?

  “Okay.” He sat up and replaced his seat belt before turning the key in the ignition. “I’m not having this conversation on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. But, for the record, whatever you thought or think you know about me, I’ve never two-timed any woman, with you or without you.”

  “But—”

  “There are no buts, ands, or maybes on this subject, Lissa,” he insisted. “It didn’t happen. Ever. And when we get to Jonas’s place you’re going to tell me exactly why you thought, and still think, it did. You—” He broke off as his cell phone rang in its cradle, the caller ID identifying it as being Gabriel. “I have to take this.” He grabbed the cell and pressed it against his ear. “Ash.”

  “We have a problem.” Gabriel wasted no time on the niceties of actually saying hello.

  Neither did Ash. “What sort of problem?”

  “I finally managed to persuade Declan—unofficially—to release a copy of the hospital security discs to me.” He sighed. “Thing is, they don’t show anyone else but Jacob and Arnold entering or leaving the bathroom during the period of the attack.”

  “How the hell could someone have even known Arnold would go to the bathroom, let alone be waiting for him? Jacob would have checked in there before allowing Arnold to go in.” All Knight Security operatives were highly trained, some from years in the military, others civilians with more than a working knowledge of one or several of the martial arts.

  “I said no one entered or left the bathroom after the attack,” Gabriel repeated.

  Ash stilled. “But that has to mean…”

  Gabriel confirmed what Ash was thinking. “That we’ve been looking in all the wrong places, when we should have been looking much closer to home. The only explanation is that Arnold knocked Jacob out from behind and then stabbed himself.”

  “Jesus…”

  “I need you to come back to town ASAP, Ash. Is Zander still with you?”

  Ash glanced in the rearview mirror where the second SUV was parked behind them. “Yes.”

  “Leave Lissa there with him. I’m taking half a dozen men over to Claudia Reynolds’s apartment now, meet us there.”

  “What about the police?”

  “What about them?”

  “Declan is not going to be happy if you don’t tell him what we’re going to do.”

  “For the moment all we’re doing is visiting a client,” Gabriel spoke briskly.

  Ash could find no argument with that logic.

  Although he had a feeling Lissa would fight tooth and nail not to be left anywhere with Zander, and insist on accompanying him to her mother’s apartment.

  Chapter 13

  “Stop being such a bad loser.”

  Ash continued to scowl as he kept his eyes and attention on the busy flow of traffic heading into London. “I can’t lose something I didn’t even try to win.” As predicted, as soon as he told Lissa they suspected Arnold of being responsible for Harvey Stein’s death, shooting Jack Forsythe, attacking Jacob, and then stabbing himself to cover up the crimes, she had flatly refused to go anywhere but back to London with him.

  “No, you didn’t, did you?” She sounded puzzled by that omission.

  He shrugged. �
��There was no point in wasting my time and energy on the conversation when I already knew the outcome.” He was a trained negotiator, but negotiating skills didn’t work on a woman as stubbornly determined as Lissa.

  Which was probably why Ash never won any of their disagreements.

  Not that he tried very hard. Lissa’s independence of spirit was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place.

  Besides which, this situation with Malcolm Arnold was too close to Lissa for Ash even to know where to start dissuading her from returning to London with him. Gabriel wasn’t going to like her being there, but like Ash, his big brother would just have to live with it.

  Lissa gave a shake of her head. “I still can’t believe Malcolm could be responsible for doing any of those things. What possible reason could he have for sending those threatening e-mails and texts to Claudia in the first place? The two of them have been lovers for months now.”

  “The threats to Claudia could have been a smoke screen. To make it look as if Claudia was the one in danger, and so all the attention was focused on her, allowing him to pick off the people around her.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he would do it.”

  “Maybe he’s insecure in their relationship?”

  “With good reason.” Lissa nodded. “Claudia’s affairs rarely last longer than a few months.”

  “And they’ve been together how long?”

  “About six months.”

  “Arnold is probably aware, having worked for Claudia before their affair began, that his sell-by date is fast approaching. Who the hell knows how his mind is working. Maybe he thinks if he eliminates everyone close to Claudia, then she’s left with no one but him to turn to? He is up in her apartment right now, no doubt being fussed over.”

  Lissa shot Ash a skeptical glance. “Claudia doesn’t do fussing. Over anyone. For any reason.”

  Ash could tell she spoke from personal experience. At least he’d had twenty-three years of his parents’ unconditional love. Lissa hadn’t been so lucky. Something else they were going to talk about once this situation was over. “We won’t know the answer to any of these questions until we’ve had a chance to speak to Arnold.”