‘Your mother is making her way up from the audience now,’ Roger’s voice said, encouraging her to step forwards and focus.
When she got a brief glimpse of the packed auditorium as her mother appeared through the curtain at the side of the stage Miranda experienced a flutter of nerves. In need of reassurance, she glanced over her shoulder at Tyler and as their gazes met she thought she could feel it again: the silent understanding she’d been wrong about before.
The nod he gave her was almost imperceptible.
I’m right here,
the unexpected warmth in his eyes said.
I’ve got you.
She flashed a small smile in reply and for the first time in longer than she cared to admit she didn’t feel so alone. It was nice to think someone was there just for her.
Any concern she felt about the truth in the second part of his silent message she could examine later.
THIRTEEN
He’d been right about one thing.
Miranda was one hell of an actress.
No one on the outside saw how much effort she put into hiding her emotions. Burying them didn’t come naturally to her the way it used to for him. But when it came to the way she looked at him—as if he were some kind of tasty treat she wanted to savour—she needed to knock it off. Add their undeniable sexual chemistry to the flash of vulnerability he saw in her eyes before she faced the public and the draw he felt to her was so overpowering Tyler had to remind himself they weren’t alone.
He’d have to be careful when they were. The closer she dragged him to the edge, the more likely he was to lose what was left of his footing.
The next time she glanced his way he pointed at the curtain to let her know he would be out front. She nodded in reply before arching a brow at her mother when the woman reached out to brush her hair away from the badge she’d pinned to her chest.
‘Seriously?’
‘I’m not permitted to make motherly gestures now?’
‘Not if it takes us back to the days when you used to dress me like a Jackie Kennedy doll.’
Content she had something to distract her from any fear she felt of unseen dangers in the auditorium, Tyler moved into position. Standing where he had one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees’ coverage from the front of the stage, he checked everyone else on the combined detail was where they were supposed to be before running his gaze over the crowd.
‘...and with your help we can finish what we started...’
As the mayor’s speech whipped the crowd into a frenzy the cheers became louder, making it difficult for Tyler to hear if anything came through in his earpiece. The ever-present tension in his body coiled tighter as he raised his hand and used his forefinger to push it tighter into place.
‘We’ve come too far to give up now!’ the mayor shouted into the microphone. ‘Are you with me?’
The crowd yelled, ‘Yes!’
‘Are you with me?’
‘Yes!’
There were too many banners and placards waving wildly in the air to allow him to check every face. It made Tyler antsy, the fingers of his gun hand flexing at his side.
‘Then let’s
do it!
’
‘Kravitz! Kravitz! Kravitz! Kravitz!’
In the midst of the chanting there was what sounded like popping gunfire. Immediately pushing back his jacket to place a thumb on his service weapon, Tyler snapped his gaze in the direction he thought it came from. There wasn’t any screaming; the crowd wasn’t panicking—somewhere in his mind he knew they were both indications nothing had happened. But while his body created so much adrenaline it made his heart struggle to pump it through his veins his brain ignored the message.
In the end it took the sight of a woman scolding her son as she confiscated a bunch of balloons for him to avoid calling in the threat and drawing his weapon.
Lowering his arm, he ground his teeth together, self-recrimination searing his throat when he glanced at the stage. Miranda was standing in plain sight, smiling and waving with her parents. As her gaze sought him out the need to go to her and haul her into his arms was crippling.
He didn’t want her up there. He wanted her somewhere he knew she was safe. The thing that stopped him from jumping onstage and carrying her away wasn’t his job or who her father was; it was the certainty that place of safety wasn’t with him.
By the time they were driving back to the mansion through a not-so-safe-after-dark neighbourhood he was strung out and close to breaking point.
‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ he gritted. But it was a lie. If he didn’t find an outlet for some of his tension soon...
When a figure walking down the sidewalk caught his eye Tyler’s brain ran through a scrolling roll of faces and hit jackpot. Checking for traffic, he turned the wheel and swung the Escalade around.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
He didn’t reply as the figure turned a corner. Instead he followed it, drew to a halt and unbuckled his seat belt. ‘Lock the doors and stay inside.’
‘What are you—?’
‘Keys are in the ignition.’ He got out and slammed the door. As the man lit up by the headlights turned and looked over his shoulder he called out, ‘Hey, Jimmy, remember me?’
The second he rabbited Tyler gave chase. One wrong turn later the idiot was trapped in a dead-end alley.
‘Haven’t you learnt you can’t run from me?’ He slammed him face-first into a wall before patting him down. ‘Out doing a little business—what do we have here?’ He took a step back and looked down at the clear plastic pouch in his hand. ‘Looks like I have you on possession...’
‘That’s not mine. It belongs to a friend.’
‘Do I look like I just got hit by the stupid stick?’
When the idiot made a predictable attempt to escape it was all the incentive Tyler needed to cut his dark side loose. Reaching for a wrist, he twisted the arm, spun him around and slammed him back into the wall. When he leaned closer his voice was purposefully menacing.
‘You know what I want.’
‘I heard you was off the case.’
‘You heard wrong.’
‘You can’t rough me up. I’ll file a complaint.’
‘Go ahead,’ Tyler told him as he twisted the arm hard enough to dislocate a shoulder and used his other hand on the guy’s head to press his cheek to the wall. ‘In the meantime here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna take a message to Demietrov for me. I’ll keep the sentences nice and short so you can remember them. You tell him I’m coming for him. He won’t know where. He won’t know when. Tell him to keep looking over his shoulder.’
‘You’re Dirty Harry now?’
‘No.’ His mouth curled into a threatening smile. ‘I’m his worst nightmare. You don’t deliver the message I’ll be yours, too. I’ll spread the word you’re my new best friend.’ He felt his hand press harder against the man’s skull and ignored the cry of pain while he fought the need to crush bone. ‘No witnesses here. It’ll be your word against mine and I think we both know you’re the weakest link.’
‘She’s a witness,’ Jimmy croaked.
FOURTEEN
Miranda’s breath caught when Tyler’s gaze snapped towards her. Fear trickled down her spine, creating goosebumps on her skin and chilling her bones. The violent edge to the scene, the savage need for blood pervading the air—they were valid reasons to fear the man she barely recognized.
Somewhere deep in her soul she could hear a voice calling out to him, ‘What are you doing? This isn’t
you.
’
But how could she know that for sure?
He released his captive.
‘Go.’
As the man ran towards her Miranda took an instinctive step back. By the time she looked at Tyler again she could sense the hostility aimed at her. Tendrils of rage flowed through the air with the oppressive weight of a brewing storm. ‘I told you to stay in the car with the doors locked. What part of that didn’t you understand?’
‘I...uh...’ She cleared her throat and tried to find her voice. ‘I was never that good at taking orders.’
‘I suggest you start.’ He stepped forwards and past her, his muscles carrying him with the same fluidity of movement she would have associated with a panther.
Her first impression of him as a predator crouched to spring on its prey had been right. She just hadn’t realized how lethal he could be until she saw him in action.
She hesitated before following him, torn between the need to know what had happened and an almost childlike desire to hide. Her gaze darted to the shadows between overflowing Dumpsters, her imagination filling them with everything from rats to Freddie Krueger.
Better the devil—even if it was plainly obvious she didn’t know him that well.
‘Tyler.’ She had to run to catch up. ‘Tyler,
wait.
’
He stopped so abruptly she almost tripped face-first into his back.
‘That’s the second time you’ve done that.’ She frowned at his chest when he turned around. ‘A little warning would be good.’
Chancing an upwards glance at his shadowed face she discovered he was looking at her through dark hooded eyes.
‘What just happened?’
‘Did you lock the Escalade?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are the keys?’
She reached into the scooped neckline of her blouse to retrieve them from her bra, jangled them in front of his face and snatched them away before he lifted his arm.
Tyler waggled his fingers at her. ‘Hand them over.’
‘I don’t think so.’ She tucked them back into her bra. ‘You want them you’re going to have to come get them.’
‘You think I won’t?’
‘I think I’ll scream at the top of my lungs if you
try.
’ As far as she was concerned he wasn’t getting them back until he gave her an explanation. She folded her arms over her breasts to protect her bargaining tool. ‘I’m assuming that man wasn’t a friend of yours.’
‘Good guess.’ The corner of his mouth lifted in a move resembling a sneer. ‘I haven’t made many friends on the periphery of the Russian mob recently.’
Miranda’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s a joke, right?’ A small burst of nervous laughter left her lips. ‘Next thing you’ll be saying you like your Martinis shaken, not stirred.’
‘I’m not a spy.’
‘We’ve already established you weren’t a bodyguard until recently. So what are you?’
He shook his head and turned away, glancing at her from the corner of his eye as she unfolded her arms and fell into step beside him. ‘I’m a street cop—narcotics. The bodyguard thing is a temporary gig.’
‘But you’re still working on a case, aren’t you?’
‘Stopping the flow of drugs in any city with a market for them is like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. I can’t afford to take time off.’
‘Then why are you babysitting me?’
‘I’ve asked that question several times.’
‘But if you’ve never been a bodyguard?’
‘I took the close protection course a few years ago,’ he told her as they turned a corner. ‘Back in the days when I had a career plan I was gonna spend time in every department and work my way up.’
Naturally she wanted to know what had happened to knock him off course but first things first. ‘How long have you been with Narcotics?’
‘Three years—transferred from Vice.’
‘How long have you been a police officer?’
‘Coming up on twelve years.’
She blinked in surprise. He must be older than he looked. ‘What age are you?’
‘Thirty-two—ask a lot of questions when you’re scared, don’t you?’
‘I’m not scared,’ she lied. ‘I’m...’ Her head nodded a little from side to side as she sought the right words. When none was forthcoming she opted for a smidgeon of truth. ‘Okay, I was scared. I’ve never seen anyone... I mean, not in real life...obviously on TV and in movies but—’
‘View’s not so great away from the ivory tower, is it?’ he said dryly. ‘Down here on street level things can get dirty. I know of at least two cold-case homicides in this area in the last couple of years.’
She glared at his tense profile. ‘Are you trying to scare me again?’
The question made him stop and turn towards her. ‘What you just saw wasn’t enough for you?’
Even in the restricted light Miranda could see his gaze burned with anger. Having faced it before—and with the recent addition of visible proof—she realized how much constraint he exercised when she pushed him. What she found more difficult to understand was how he made her feel and how swiftly it returned to the same unwavering constant over and over again.
She was drawn to him—had been from the start—and even after seeing him at his most dangerous it hadn’t changed.
‘That didn’t look like you,’ she replied.
The man she’d seen in the alley wasn’t the one who had been watching over her.
‘You think you know me after less than a week?’ He jerked his brows. ‘Is this the part where you tell me danger does it for you—that you’re into bad boys and want to be taken on a wild ride?’
Yes, but there was wild and then there was suicidal.
He took an ominous step forwards. ‘That’s what you were looking for from that dance floor. It’s why you responded the way you did when I kissed you. Do you know what happens to women who go looking for trouble? I do. But maybe what you need is a little taste of what you’re getting into.’
Miranda’s breath snagged in her throat as he took another step forwards, her eyes widening as she took a reciprocal step back. ‘Tyler,
don’t.
’
‘Too late, princess.’
The man obviously had a thing with pinning people to walls because the next thing she knew Miranda had her back to one, the cold dampness of the bricks through the thin material of her blouse making her jump forwards. The move literally played her directly into his hands. Grasping her wrists, he lifted her arms above her head and pushed her back into the wall with his body.
Hard, he was hard everywhere, muscular and tight, his grip on her wrists unyielding as he trapped them in one large hand to free up the other. Miranda struggled against him, the movement merely adding to her problems when her traitorous body responded with a gush of heat to her core. He angled his head, his lips hovering above hers, tempting, teasing, the muscles in his torso so tense they rippled with each harsh breath.
‘You think you can stop me now?’ When he spoke his mouth whispered across hers. The hand he’d freed smoothed into the dip of her waist on the side of her body before lowering to her hip and squeezing tight enough to make her feel the imprint of each finger. Moving lower, he fisted a handful of skirt material and slowly dragged it upwards. ‘Go ahead and try.’
It was pure hell not to give in to temptation and kiss him. If there was trust between them she wouldn’t resist; might even have encouraged him not to stop. But no matter how desperately she clung to the belief he wouldn’t hurt her, Miranda couldn’t deny her desire was woven with a thread of fear. Her heart pounded painfully against her breastbone, her body shaking from the inside out. He was both stronger and bigger than her—there was no way she could fight him off. She’d never been made so aware of the weakness of her body before.
As the skirt slid higher he forced a leg between her knees and nudged them apart. ‘I could take you in this position whether you want me to or not.’
She drew in a ragged breath as she stopped struggling and swore he wouldn’t make her cry. ‘This isn’t you.’
‘You don’t know that,’ he said harshly. ‘You could have been sidling up to a monster with that little game of dress up you played. I could have brought you here because I know it’s a place where people ignore screams after dark.’ His voice lowered. ‘I could be inside you right now—taking what I need without caring if you get any pleasure out of it. And when I’m done I could leave your broken body for someone else to find.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’ The crackle of emotion in her voice was impossible to disguise. Swallowing the sob she didn’t want him to hear, she forced her gaze upwards to the fire escape on the wall opposite them, willing her mind to detach from her body so he couldn’t touch a part of her that might never heal.
When her vision blurred she blinked rapidly but was unable to stop the tears that spilled over her lower lashes to blaze a heated trail down her cheeks.
‘Isn’t this what you wanted all along—you and me, together?’ he asked in his coarse, cold voice. ‘You’ve been begging for it from the start.’
‘Not like this,’ she choked.
Whether it was the honesty, the pain in her voice, how badly her body was shaking or that he could taste the tears trickling into her mouth, she didn’t know. But suddenly his hand stilled, his fingers loosened and a deathly silence descended. It couldn’t have lasted for more than a handful of seconds but felt like an eternity. Then, without warning, he released her and staggered back as if he’d been repelled by an invisible force.
When she looked at him Miranda didn’t need better light to see the mixture of fury, self-loathing and guilt on his face; she could feel it swirling in a maelstrom around him. He moved sharply, pacing a restless circle while viciously spitting a litany of self-recrimination that was downright nasty. She winced as she straightened her skirt with shaking hands. The self-hatred was more than obvious and with blinding clarity she got an inkling of what he might have been doing.
It was more than a brutal warning of the consequences her actions could have with the wrong man—it was an attempt to get her to hate him as much as he hated himself.
When he stopped pacing he shook his head. ‘You need a new bodyguard. I’m obviously not cut out for this.’
Gathering strength, she took a tentative step forwards and dampened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I don’t want a new bodyguard. I want you.’
‘How can you
say that
after what I just did to you?’
He snarled like a cornered animal but with new insight Miranda saw him as less of a predator and more of an angry bear with a thorn in his paw.
She took another step. ‘You wouldn’t have hurt me.’
‘You don’t
know
that!’ His mouth twisted when he saw her hesitate. ‘You gonna try lying to me and telling me you didn’t have a moment of doubt?’
‘I can’t do that,’ she confessed. ‘But I can remember the man you were before you turned the car around.’
His chest heaved as he tried to gain control. ‘What do I have to do to make you realize you’d be better keeping your distance from me?’
‘I don’t know. But this wasn’t it.’
‘I’m not like the other guys you’ve spent time with. There’s nothing polished or refined about me.’
If he was trying to discourage her from reaching out to him, then he wasn’t doing a very good job. The compulsion she’d felt to offer comfort combined with her need for physical contact, drawing her to him with a sense of what felt like inevitability. She took another step forwards and another until she was standing directly in front of him.
‘Right now I need you to hold me for a minute,’ she said softly. ‘Do you think you can do that?’
‘You should be running for the hills,’ he replied in a gruffer voice. ‘Not asking me to get closer.’
‘I need a little shoulder action.’ When she attempted a smile the fear of rejection she’d hidden since her teens made it waver. ‘If you can think of anyone else I can ask for that when everyone who surrounds me isn’t supposed to touch me—’
He reached out and hauled her into his arms.
Miranda gasped at the contact and let out a small sob of relief. Wrapping her arms around his lean waist, she buried her face in his chest and took several breaths of Tyler scented air. She could feel the tension in his body, streams of electricity buzzing beneath his skin. But she’d been right to ask him to hold her. A violent shudder ran through him, his arms tightening as if he couldn’t hold her close enough. After a while he rested his chin on her head and she felt his throat convulse.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said roughly, the impression it wasn’t something he said very often making her heart twist.
‘I know.’ She turned a little and rested her cheek against his tie. ‘It’s okay. I forgive you.’
‘You shouldn’t. I can’t forgive me.’
‘Maybe you should start.’ She took another breath before jumping in with both feet. ‘What happened to make you so angry, Tyler?’
‘How do you know you didn’t just get a glimpse of the real me?’
‘Because you’re holding me right now and giving me what I need.’ She snuggled closer to prove the point before confessing, ‘And because I don’t want to believe it was...’
When he moved his head she felt the whisper of his breath against her hair. ‘You can’t save me, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m beyond saving.’
Leaning back to look up at his face, she discovered he was frowning; his gaze lowered so she couldn’t look into his eyes. The arms holding her loosened as he took a half step back. Unwilling to let him retreat when they’d taken such a major leap forwards, Miranda freed up a hand and raised it to stroke her fingertips along his jaw, her thumb gliding to the edge of his mouth.
Heat resonated from him, seeping into her skin and removing the chill from her bones.
Watching her thumb as it traced his lower lip, she whispered, ‘Kiss me.’