He is. You know it.
She was uncomfortable with how clearly he’d managed to see her, to read her. But then, she knew him. And that went both ways. And she’d gotten used to him not pushing her, not challenging her. To being silent and letting her talk.
But he wasn’t silent now and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
She shifted on the couch, aware that she was doing a ‘Rhys’ and not answering a question she didn’t like.
There was a moment’s tense silence.
Then Rhys said, “You don’t need to worry about making a mistake or earning your place. You never did. If they hadn’t wanted you, they wouldn’t have adopted you to start with.”
Her throat felt sore and there was an ache in her chest, and she didn’t want to look at him, hating how vulnerable he was making her feel. Then came the sound of movement, something heavy thumping down on the coffee table, and he was suddenly sitting down on the couch next to her, his arms around her, pulling her in close to the hard warmth of his chest.
“My mother didn’t want me,” she heard herself say. “I mean, she had the choice between heroin and me, and she chose heroin.”
“It wasn’t you.”
“I know that.” And she did. Intellectually. “I was only five and God, what could a five year old do to a grown woman? Except complicate her life, I guess.” The warmth of him against her, of his arms around her, eased something inside her that she hadn’t realized was tense. “Mom and Dad made such a big deal when I came to live with them. They told me how special I was and how much they were looking forward to me being part of their family. And I just wanted to make sure that never changed.” She’d never talked about this with him before, not about her adoption, because, well, it had been a happy time. Plus, he’d never been adopted himself. He’d been at the mercy of the foster system until he’d aged out, so it felt wrong to complain about something as small as her own feelings of uncertainty.
Rhys’s arms tightened around her. “You were always special, Vivi.” His voice was quiet and full of that same certainty as when he’d initially challenged her. “You don't have to do anything to earn it, but be yourself.”
Oh dammit. Why did he have to keep saying stuff that made her want to cry? She turned her head against his chest, inhaling the warm scent of him, relaxing against him in a way she’d never let herself before. As if he was more than a friend. As if he was everything. “Says the man I basically forced into being friends with me,” she said thickly, only partly kidding.
“Do you really think you could force me into anything I didn’t want to do?” Rhys made an odd, rumbling sound. “Sweet girl, I was your friend because I wanted to be. Because I liked you.”
She lifted her head, looking up into his eyes, and there it was, glinting deep and hidden in the depths of his gaze, like buried treasure. Amusement. And that sound, the one she hadn’t recognized…It had been a laugh.
It hit her then, like a blow from something hard and very, very final, like a bullet from an unseen gun, and this time not embedding itself in the pavement by her feet, but catching her full in the chest.
He’d felt like everything to her, because he was everything to her.
He was the missing piece. And not from some jigsaw puzzle of her life, but from her. Her heart, her soul.
She couldn’t speak, her eyes filling up with inexplicable tears and he noticed, his dark brows coming together in a frown. “Are you okay?”
And she wanted to tell him that no, she wasn’t okay. That she’d just realized she was in love with him, that very probably she’d always been in love with him, and had been too stupid to realize it. But she didn’t. Because it felt wrong to burst out with something so emotional and over the top, especially while being in danger from some freak looking to take down him down. Maybe when they were back home there would be time and space for her to talk to him about it.
So she just blinked away the tears and smiled. “Of course,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as thick as she feared it did. “I’m fine.”
His gaze narrowed; clearly he didn’t believe her. But all he said was, “I have to go check my messages, okay?” He gently touched her cheek. “And I’ll put another call through to your dad. Let him know you’re okay.”
Vivi swallowed down the feelings sitting like a hard lump in her throat and reaching up, brought his head down for a kiss. Hot, deep, passionate. Letting him know without words what that meant to her. What he meant to her.
And when he lifted his head, that narrowed gaze of his searched her face as if he knew something was going on. But he didn’t say anything. He only gave her one, hard look, then got to his feet and turned for the door, picking up his shirt as he went.
Rhys pulled on his shirt as he went over to the stables, only bothering to do up a couple of the buttons to keep the thing on, then he got out his car keys and unlocked his car.
Something was definitely going on with Vivi and he wanted to know what it was. He’d almost decided to stay, ask her why her eyes had suddenly filled with tears as she’d looked at him, but he really had to go and check those messages, see what the lay of the land was back in Austin. And the quicker he got that over and done with, the quicker he’d be back with her anyway, so leaving had seemed the better decision.
But as he started the car and reversed out of the stables, spinning the wheel around and driving down the driveway to the dusty road, he couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever he'd seen when she’d looked at him, it had been very important.
Then again, if it had been, surely she would have said something to him?
He scowled at the road. Fuck, he shouldn’t be thinking about her right now, though. He really needed to be thinking about Jason and what he needed to do next. If no information about the asshole’s whereabouts was forthcoming, he was going to have to make a decision, because no matter how much he was enjoying it, he couldn’t sit out in the desert with Vivi indefinitely.
Well, maybe he could, but it was certain she couldn’t.
She needed to get home and now he knew why she was really so insistent on it.
Hell, he understood that desperate need to feel accepted and to feel, at heart, not quite worthy of that acceptance. No one had ever accepted him the way Vivi had, at least no other family. But then he’d been older when he’d gone into the foster system and at ten, he’d already decided he didn’t want another family. He didn’t want anyone. He’d lost his brother and his mother, and there had been no room in his life for anyone or anything but anger.
Anyone except Vivi.
Pleasing other people had never been part of his makeup, but he tried to please Vivi because he cared about her and because she so obviously cared for him. So yeah, he could see what she was doing with her folks. And he knew where that came from too, because he’d had a similar background.
It made him angry. Not so much at her parents since he’d met them and they were good people who meant well, but at the whole situation. At her junkie mother who’d given her up because the call of the drugs had been too strong. At the system that had shipped her around the way he’d been shipped around. And yeah, okay, maybe a little at her parents for not recognizing and alleviating her anxiety. And even just a bit with Vivi herself, at her own stubborn nature that kept making her feel like she had something to live up to.
Because she didn’t have to live up to anything and she didn’t have to earn anything. She was bright and generous and beautiful, and special all on her own. And once he’d finished dealing with this shit, he’d get back to the house and spend the whole goddamn night showing her that.
His phone beeped from the seat beside him, indicating it was in signal range again, so he pulled off to the side of the road then picked it up. There were a few texts from Rush confirming that he hadn’t been able to track anything down, and a couple from West, oddly enough. The guy was a colleague and they joined up from time to time when it came to tracking down extra difficult bail skippers, but th
ey weren’t friends per se. He hadn’t wanted to get too close to other people, especially not the people at Duchess Bail Bonds, because they didn’t know his background and he didn’t want them to know.
Only Duchess knew and he was happy to keep it like that.
So he frowned at the texts West had sent him. Because the first one had been a work related question, but then there were a few follow-up messages of the ‘why aren’t you answering’ variety. As if the guy was concerned that Rhys hadn’t replied. Which was weird, because since when did West give a shit?
At that moment a car came down the road past him and reflexively Rhys looked up, checking it out. He recognized it as his contact from Terlingua. Obviously come to drop off the supplies Rhys had asked him to deliver earlier. And not before fucking time. Those condoms were a goddamn must, despite Vivi’s claim about her injection. Children were not exactly high on his must-do list and he liked to be sure the chance of anything happening was zero.
Not to mention the fact that they’d run out of coffee.
Right, time to finish up with his email, text another old contact, then head back to the house. Except, as he did so, he became conscious of an uncomfortable feeling sitting in his gut, like he’d missed something.
Putting the phone down, he stared out through the windshield into the gathering dusk, frowning. Trying to place the odd, niggling discomfort. He never ignored his gut since it had helped him avoid several sticky situations in the past, so he sat there trying to pinpoint what the problem was.
And slowly it dawned on him.
When his contact had driven by, he hadn’t been wearing the Longhorns cap Rhys had never seen him without. Not once.
By itself that wouldn’t have meant a thing and it was a detail another man would have dismissed, because there were a hundred reasons for a man not to wear a cap while he was driving a car in the twilight. But Rhys wasn’t another man. He’d had years where watching for tiny details had saved him or had ended someone else. He never discounted anything and especially not when an asshole as lethal as Jason was after him.
Shit. That wasn’t his contact from Terlingua, was it? That was Jason.
At the same time, another thought hit him with all the force of a bullet train hitting a truck on the tracks at full speed.
Vivi. She was there. Alone.
Tossing the phone onto the passenger seat, he turned the key and put his foot flat to the floor, pulling the car around in a spray of gravel and dust before roaring straight back toward the cabin as fast as he could go.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He’d been too busy thinking about condoms. About coffee. About Vivi. He’d been too distracted to notice what should have set alarm bells off immediately. And now…
And now…
He shoved the thought out of his head, because he couldn’t afford it. Emotion killed good decision-making processes and made you vulnerable, and he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable either, not when the fucker who’d been after him in Austin had somehow followed him out here.
Of course it could be nothing. It could be that his contact had just decided not to wear his cap tonight. But Rhys didn’t think it was, and neither did the icy sensation in his gut. Yawning wide, threatening to swallow him whole.
But he couldn’t give into it. Couldn’t let it affect him. He had to be detached, cold. He had to not feel a thing.
Rhys stopped the car right before the entrance to the driveway, not wanting the sound of the engine to raise an alert, then he flung open the door and got out. His Sig was inside the cabin, fuck it, but there was a Glock in the trunk that would do in a pinch. Shit, it would have to.
Popping the trunk, he grabbed the gun then ran, fast and silently up the driveway to the cabin. The lights were on, the curtains wide, and he moved to a position where he could look through the windows of the living area to get a bead on the situation inside.
His heartbeat was loud in his head and far too fast, and he felt sick.
He felt like he had the night Scotty had been hurt, the sense of doom pressing down on him, crushing him.
Fuck, he had to get it together, not let it get in the way.
But this is Vivi. What if she gets hurt? What if she’s already hurt? What if you didn’t get there in time?
Rhys shoved the thoughts away, breathing deep and silent, zeroing his focus in on the windows. And at first he couldn’t see anything, the cabin appearing empty.
Then as he watched, Vivi slowly came into view, backing up, her hands in front of her, held out. Relief flooded through him, so intense he couldn’t move for a long second. She was alive and she looked okay, thank fuck for that.
He indulged the feeling for a moment, then he got rid of it, bringing his cold focus to the scene through the windows. He couldn’t see Vivi’s face but he could tell that something was definitely threatening her.
The cold wound through him, despite his best efforts.
But he needed to lock that shit down and deal with the goddamn situation, figure out who the hell was in the cabin with Vivi.
Silently, he circled the building, trying to see through the windows to get eyes on who was with her. Given the angle she was facing, the guy must have positioned himself in the bathroom doorway, the bastard. Smart, because there were no sight lines from outside and he knew, because that's where he would have stood.
Yeah, definitely it was Jason. The asshole had always been a total professional.
Rhys took a breath, positioning himself away from the big windows and around the other side of the cabin, where there was one, long narrow window. Its view was restricted but he could still see Vivi and there was less chance of him being spotted through it.
Through the window, Vivi’s hands were still up and they were shaking, he could see the fine tremor in them. He could see her face, too, and it made the sick feeling inside get worse, because there was fear stark in it. But she seemed calm, her mouth moving like she was talking to someone.
Something pressed hard against his breastbone, a hot, intense feeling that was part pride, part respect, part longing. She wasn’t panicking, even though she was scared. She was remaining calm and talking, because she must know Rhys would be back for her. That he would be coming to save her.
Jason must know, too, because he would have seen Rhys's car parked on the side of the road.
Rhys inhaled silently.
He needed a plan and he needed one now, but his options were severely limited. Basically he either went in there guns blazing, or he tried to see if he could get a lock on the prick inside there with Vivi.
He was just running through various scenarios in his head, none of which were good ones, when suddenly Vivi reached for the hem of the T-shirt she wore. Then she pulled it up and over her head.
His brain blanked in that moment.
He didn’t wait. He headed straight for the door.
Vivi had never had a gun pointed at her before - at least not when she was face to face with it - and it wasn’t pleasant, not at all. In fact it was downright terrifying.
Pretty much as terrifying as having a man who definitely wasn’t Rhys bang open the door to the cabin while she’d been lying on the couch thinking happy thoughts about what she was going to do to Rhys when he got back.
She’d thought it was Rhys initially and had sprung up from the couch, ready to whip the T-shirt she wore over her head and greet him in nothing but her skin. And it had taken her at least a full ten seconds to realize that the massive guy standing in front of her, with a shaven head and lots of tattoos, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, wasn't Rhys.
Once her brain had caught up, adrenaline had flooded her system. She was standing there virtually naked in front of a complete stranger. A complete stranger who had a gun pointed straight at her.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he’d said. “You two have led me quite a chase. Mind if I take it easy here for a bit?”
Of course she’d minded, but her voice had somehow stopped working and she wasn�
�t able to speak. All she was able to do was stand there as the guy moved around her, keeping that weapon pointed at her as he’d given the place a quick once-over, then positioned himself — weirdly — in the bathroom doorway.
She’d been conscious of being scared, of terror running cold through her veins, but she’d also felt oddly disconnected from it. As if she was floating above it somehow.
Shock, of course. But then that was better than collapsing into a flood of tears on the ground, so she’d taken it.
“You’re after Rhys, aren’t you?” she’d heard herself say as if from a long way off, privately marveling at the calm question.
“Smart cookie,” the man had said. “Then again, that must be pretty obvious since I’m clearly not a mailman or here to deliver pizza.”
The fact that he hadn’t shot her immediately was reassuring, and she’d felt something inside her calm a touch.
Perhaps she could keep him talking until Rhys got back. Because Rhys would come back. He hadn’t gone far and he must have seen the guy’s car.
Which meant he must be on his way.
Vivi hadn’t dared to glance out the windows in case she drew attention to where Rhys might already be crouching in the dusk somewhere outside. And as she did, she’d realized why the guy was standing where he was. Because he was out of sight from the windows. So Rhys couldn’t see him and perhaps shoot him through the glass.
Which meant this must be the Jason guy Rhys had told her about, his hitman colleague. Who’d once had a brother. The brother Rhys had killed…
Oh, God.
“So what are you doing with me?” she’d asked, desperately trying to keep the conversation going even though she already knew the answers, her hands out as if she could stop a bullet with them alone. “And why are you coming after him? What has he ever done to you?”
The man had smiled and it hadn’t been pleasant. “Come on, sweetheart. Think about it. You know about his previous career.”
“Revenge then?”
“He told you about my brother, I see.”
The Hitman Next Door: A Texas Bounty Novel Page 16
