“I wasn’t sleeping,” he denied, mad as hell he’d just been woken up from the best dream he’d had in months. His dreams were the only place his Anya still existed. “I was ignoring you, you obnoxious ass! So, what’s the big emergency?” he growled, glaring at Rowen.
“I was saying, maybe Rhen should go back to the girl’s place. She’s got to have the title and registration for that car there. Then we’d have the model and plate number of their vehicle.”
“Maybe Cale should go with him,” he suggested, jumping at the opportunity to down-size the crew.
“Sounds good to me,” Cale volunteered, glaring daggers into Haden’s back.
“We’ll split after we stop for the next fill,” Rowen decided, glancing back at Cale and Rhen.
“Gladly,” Cale grumbled, still rubbing his jaw.
Haden sighed heavily, leaning against the headrest. His chest ached as he forced himself to push thoughts of Anya out of his head, his mind desperately needing to find a road less traveled. He already knew where this one led and he didn’t care to go down it again.
Chapter Ten
Liam pulled into the truck stop and climbed out of the Camaro to fill it up. He ducked his head in through the window and asked, “Can I get you something when I’m in there?”
Olivia hadn’t spoken since the blow up with Mitch. She didn’t know what to say. She felt bad for him, for Liam, and her conscience was eating at her. She should have told Mitch the truth—about her, about Liam. “No thanks, I’ll get it myself. I need to stretch my legs.”
She could feel Liam’s eyes on her as she walked toward the station—on her back, on her ass… She glanced over her shoulder, catching him in the act, just as a car pulled up to the gas pump across from him. The base from their stereo resonated off the glass windows of the building. Loud, drunken laughter poured from the convertible as three men stumbled out.
“Hey, grab another case while you’re in there,” the driver yelled after his buddies from the pump.
Olivia hurried inside, wanting to get in before the two back-slapping, elbow-jabbing fools beat her to the door. She spotted the restroom sign and headed down the narrow hallway. Locking the door behind her, she paused to check her reflection in the mirror.
She hardly recognized the woman staring back at her. Her hair had pulled loose from the twist. Unruly strands hung in disarray around her exhaustion-filled face. Dark circles shadowed her less than vibrant green eyes. Sighing, she pulled her hair loose from its binder and shook it out, trying to tease a little life back into the limp mess.
After a few minutes of useless primping, she pulled her hair back up, splashed a little cold water on her face, used the facilities, and walked out of the bathroom. She should have looked before stepping into the hallway, because the two guys she’d rushed inside to avoid were stumbling down the hall, heading right toward her.
Olivia tensed. The hall was too narrow for her to pass by, so she held back a step, hoping they’d just walk into the men’s room. No such luck.
“Hey there, sweetheart,” the larger of the two drawled, breaking away from his buddy to approach her.
She stepped back, shooting him a “back off” glare.
“You want to come party with us, sugar?” the second guy slurred, shoulder-checking the wall as he tried to follow his friend. “We’ll show you a really good time.”
“No thanks,” Olivia replied icily, standing her ground. “Let me through.” She turned to the side, attempting to push past the two men.
“Hey, where are you going in such a hurry?” the first one asked, grabbing ahold of her arm. His grip was strong, biting.
“Let go of me!” she snapped, trying to wrench her arm free. When that didn’t work, she drove her knee into the man’s groin.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, hunching forward to catch his breath. But instead of loosening his grip, it tightened. Panic flooded her veins in a rush of heated adrenaline.
“Whoa, Pete, looks like you got yourself a feisty one there,” the second guy laughed, enjoying the show, which seemed to piss off his friend even more. His face hardened in fury and he shoved Olivia against the wall.
The back of her head connected with sheetrock, and the teeth-rattling slam left her a little dazed for a moment. The man leaned into her, pinning her against the wall with the flab of his gut.
Soured by the scent of beer and sweat, Olivia fought back a wave of nausea. “Let me go!” she hissed, bucking against his weight, trying to dislodge the guy, who easily had seventy pounds on her.
“Come on, Pete, maybe you should let her go,” his friend suggested, no doubt realizing things were getting out of hand.
“Shut up!” he barked. “Why don’t you go take a piss or something?” Her attacker turned back to Olivia and grabbed her jaw in a punishing grip. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s kiss and make up,” he slurred, pressing his beer-stale mouth against her lips.
Her scream was muffled by the man’s suffocating mouth. She heard Liam before she saw him. A furious snarl echoed down the hall, followed by a loud thud as Liam’s elbow slammed against the side of the man’s head. She was knocked off balance as he wrenched the asshole off her.
“Go wait in the car, Olivia,” Liam growled. His amethyst eyes locked on her, and she scrambled back several feet toward the exit. She wasn’t sure why she stopped and glanced back, perhaps it was the terrified squawk of her assailant. She looked over her shoulder to see Liam holding the man in the air, suspended nearly a foot above the ground.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see the second guy pulling a knife out of his boot. “Liam, look out!” she cried as the guy made an uncoordinated launch toward him. With the lithe grace of a choreographed fighter, Liam drove his fist into her attacker’s face, knocking him out cold. He tossed him to the ground and spun around a second before the guy’s friend could drive the knife home.
Liam grabbed the man’s blade hand and twisted his arm behind his back at an unnatural angle. She heard the snap all the way down the hall and her stomach lurched. The knife clattered to the ground, and Liam kicked it away. The man cried out and dropped to his knees. No longer the badass, he groveled. “I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry we hassled your girl.” He looked over at his unconscious friend and cried, “Oh God, don’t hurt me!”
Liam bent down, grabbed the guy by the scruff of his collar, and dragged him down the hall toward her. He stopped in front of her, jacked the guy a little higher, and growled, “Apologize to the lady.”
The fierceness in his dark amethyst glare sent a chill racing up Olivia’s spine. She’d always known Liam wasn’t a “typical” guardian angel, he’d told her he was a warrior—a fighter—and seeing him like this she could believe it. Gone was his gentle, calm collectiveness. This angel before her was menacing, powerful, and ruthless.
“I’m sorry,” the man stammered.
Olivia stared at him in stunned silence. What could she say? “That’s okay?” Because it wasn’t. She couldn’t even imagine what would have happened if Liam hadn’t come to her rescue when he did. Her heart slammed inside her chest, her mouth went dry, and the taste of that bastard still coated her tongue.
Abruptly, Liam released the man, shoving him several feet toward his buddy. He stepped closer, his focus now locked on Olivia as he brought his hands up to cup her face.
How ironic that the very hands that had effortlessly dislocated a man’s shoulder two minutes ago were now touching her with an aching gentleness. The back of his fingers brushed down the side of her throat, her pulse hammered against his touch. He gently took her chin and lifted her face up to meet his eyes. Sparks of amethyst marbled his dark violet gaze. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice laden with concern.
Olivia nodded her head, unable to speak past the lump in her throat. Only a mere step separated them. If she moved just six inches closer, she would be in his arms. Tears spilled down her cheeks, and a flash of pain crossed Liam’s face.
“Come here,” he said gruffly, pulling her into the safety of his embrace.
Olivia gratefully folded herself into his arms and was immediately surrounded with warmth. It had been three long years since she’d felt this safe, this protected—this loved. Three years that felt like forever…
“Let’s go,” he said, guiding her away from the men. Leading her back to the car, he opened the passenger door and glanced over the hood of the Camaro to the guy sitting in the convertible, still waiting for his buddies to return.
“You’re going to be waiting for a while,” Liam told the driver curtly. “While you’re out boozin’ it up, you should probably take a little road trip to the hospital. Tell your friends the next time they pull that shit on someone, they may not live to tell about it.”
The driver of the convertible looked over at Liam in utter surprise. His expression quickly changed from shocked to confrontational arrogance as he opened the car door and stepped out.
Liam walked around to the driver’s door and shot the guy a look that stopped him mid-step. “Don’t push your luck,” Liam warned. “I’m in no mood.”
She watched the man’s confidence waver. He changed directions and headed toward the truck stop. Liam climbed into the car and put both hands on the steering wheel. Taking a moment to get control of himself, he let out a deep breath.
After a few minutes, he turned to her and asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, not quite able to meet his eyes. “I’m just a bit shaken up, that’s all. Everything just happened so fast. I was walking down the hall and the next thing I knew, those guys were all over me.”
“You have no idea how badly I want to go back in there,” he growled, his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel tightening.
“I know. I’m lucky I have you, Liam. What if I’d been some other girl? I hate to think about what could have happened.”
“You don’t have to think about those things, Olivia. And you don’t have to worry, you’ll always have me.” He reached over and tucked a long chunk of her bangs behind her ear.
Before he could pull his hand away, she leaned into his touch, wishing the center console wasn’t separating them. She wanted to be in his arms so badly. She wanted his lips on hers, erasing the taste of beer and the memory of that man’s assaulting kiss.
Desperately, she wanted to replace it with Liam’s, letting him drown out every trace of her attacker. The request was on the tip of her tongue. She opened her mouth to ask him to kiss her—to wash it all away, but before she could speak, Liam whispered, “We’d better get going.”
Olivia bit the inside of her lip to keep from protesting. It saddened her to know there had been a time when she wouldn’t have had to ask. He’d have known exactly what comfort she needed and he would have given it to her—without hesitation.
He turned the key in the ignition, and the Camaro roared to life. Olivia sighed in frustration and leaned back in her seat. Her gut twisted with regret—ached with longing. Liam wasn’t an idiot. He could feel her emotions, her desires, which only meant that back there at the station, he’d intentionally denied her his touch.
She turned to look at him. He was “concentrating” on the road. “How long are we going to keep doing this, Liam?”
“I’m not sure. If I push it, we’ll be there in a few hours—”
“Stop it. You know that’s not what I mean.”
This time when he took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her, she could have sworn she saw flecks of jade marbling his violet eyes.
“I think the more important question here is how long are you going to be engaged to marry another man? Perhaps in that answer, you’ll find the answer to your own question. You told Mitch you had no choice in this, but that’s not true—you do. I took you because I had to get some distance between you and Rowen’s legion. I respect your free will, Olivia, and your decisions. When this is over, I’ll return you to him in the same condition I took you.”
“And what if I don’t want to go back?” she challenged.
His brow arched with surprise, but he didn’t respond.
“Liam, all I’ve ever wanted was to be with you. I’m just sad that this is what it took to bring you back. Your timing could have been a bit better. Did you have to wait until the very last second?” She gave him a small smile.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Uh-huh, I thought you said you never lied,” she accused lightly.
“I am sorry about what happened. I’m not sorry that you didn’t marry Mitch.”
A bubble of half-hearted laughter escaped her. She didn’t know why. It certainly wasn’t funny—nothing about this was humorous. “Well, at least you’re honest,” she said with a mixture of teasing sarcasm.
He looked at her completely serious. His intensity was sobering. “Always…”
She looked away. It was easier than holding his gaze. Her hands fidgeted restlessly in her lap as she worked up the courage to ask him something she’d been wondering since he tossed her over his shoulder and stormed out of the church.
“Since we’re being totally honest with each other, then, I need to ask you something.” She waited for him to nod his consent before continuing. “If I had married Mitch, would you have left me?” In her heart she thought she already knew the truth, but she needed to hear it from him.
“No,” he replied, without a second’s hesitation.
And damn if she didn’t love him all the more for it. “Mitch told me if I didn’t come back, he was going to leave me.”
“He’s manipulating you. He had no intention of leaving you. He’s afraid he’s going to lose you, Olivia. That’s the difference between him and me.” Liam paused a moment before continuing, and the regret in his voice nearly broke her heart. “I can’t lose what I don’t have.”
A dagger in the chest would have hurt less than those words. He hadn’t said them to hurt her. He simply spoke what he believed to be true. The problem was his words couldn’t have been farther from the truth. “You have more of me than you’ll ever know,” she said quietly. “You have to realize that. If you feel what I feel, then you know where my heart really lies. Mitch knows it, too, I suppose.”
“I didn’t come here to take you away from him, Olivia.”
“I know,” she said, reaching over to interlock her fingers with his. “You can’t take from him what was never his.”
Chapter Eleven
“I wonder what happened here,” Rowen commented, pulling into the gas station. He parked the Buick next to a pump and climbed out. The flashing lights of the police car and ambulance blocked the entrance door.
“Aw hell…” Cale grumbled. “I gotta take a piss like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Looks like the warrior happened,” Haden chuckled, his voice laden with wry amusement.
Cale didn’t share his sense of humor. Human attacks from the angelic were nearly unheard of, not that the Homo sapien peasants didn’t deserve it, but it was against Universal Law for an angel to engage in violence against a mortal—they were too fragile—too weak. It just wouldn’t look good for the Big Man Upstairs if his angels were kicking the shit out of humans. If Haden was right, and Liam had indeed done this, then it should serve as a warning to them all that this angel wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. Only this cocky, arrogant prick sitting shotgun was too stupid to see that.
He watched from the back seat as the officer stood beside the ambulance, talking to a man making large gestures with his arms, his raised voice carrying across the parking lot. Cale rolled down his window to hear what the guy was yelling about as the ambulance crew loaded another man into the back of the rig.
“You don’t know if he did that,” Rhen countered. “An angel wouldn’t do this. These are mortals.”
“A warrior would,” Rowen said, dipping his head down to reply through the back window. “Especially if he was protecting the girl.”
&nbs
p; Another man stumbled out of the building with his arm in a sling. He stood next to the guy standing beside the officer and began interjecting. The officer shot the man a shut-the-hell-up glower.
“That guy’s obviously drunk,” Cale said. “I bet the asshole on the stretcher is, too. I’m gonna go check it out.” He climbed out the back door, and Rhen followed. Maybe he wanted to stretch his legs, or maybe he didn’t want to get stuck in the car alone with “douche bag of the year.” Either way, it didn’t really matter.
“So, you say you’ve never met his guy before, and he just attacked you and your friend, right out of the blue, for no reason?” the officer asked, eyeing the shoulder-slung man skeptically.
“That’s what I said!” he slurred. “He just attacked us!”
“Did you happen to see the car he was driving?” the officer asked, looking up from his note pad. He didn’t look terribly committed to the investigation. Perhaps the asshole’s credibility was shaken by the fact that the dude was so toasted, he could hardly stand.
“A black Camaro,” the uninjured man answered, looking and sounding the more sober of the two.
“I don’t ‘spose you happened to see the license plate?” the officer drawled, scribbling in his notebook.
“No. He was parked on the other side of the pump.”
Cale looked at Rhen. With his preternaturally acute sense of smell, he could whiff the alcohol on that guy’s breath from twenty feet away. “This guy was asking for it,” Cale muttered under his breath. “Hell, I’ve only been around the bastard for sixty seconds and I already want to punch him in the face.”
“Too bad no one got the plate number. It would have saved us a lot of time and trouble if they had,” Rhen grumbled.
“At least we know what he’s driving now, and we didn’t have to kill any defenseless old men to find out. Imagine that…” Cale muttered, ripe with snark.
“You really hate him, huh?”
“Haden? Yeah, I do. Something’s not right about him. Don’t you feel it? I don’t trust that bastard.”
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