Shades of Darkness (Redemption Series) (13 page)

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.”

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.”

“You’re paranoid,” Rhen said dismissively, flicking his wrist as if he were shooing away a fly. “He’s tight with Gahn, so I’d cool it with the bad blood if I were you. Come on, let’s go,” he said, walking back to the car. “We ain’t gonna learn nothin’ else here.”

“I still gotta piss,” Cale grumbled, following him back to the car.

“Well?” Haden asked as they approached. Rhen folded his arms and leaned against the driver’s door, dipping his head to answer.

“He’s driving a black Camaro,” Rhen said. “It’s a bust on the plate number. You still want us to go back to Evercrest?” he asked Rowen.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of black Camaros on the road. Why don’t you and Cale take off. We’ll hook back up once he stops running with her, and then we’ll finish this.”

“Ok. We’ll be in touch.”

Rowen pulled away, leaving Rhen and Cale standing in the parking lot. They watched as the ambulance and police car pulled out behind them, each turning different directions.

“Come on,” Cale said, zeroing in on the guy who’d been talking to the police officer and was now walking toward a sweet cherry red convertible. “Let’s go get ourselves a ride.”

***

It was dark by the time they entered city limits, but the night lights still glowed brightly, lighting up the sky as if it were day. The traffic was bumper to bumper thick and the impatient blast of horns could be heard along with the occasional shout of profanity. Olivia watched in stunned silence as they passed people milling along the sidewalks, scantily clad women stood in the shadows of street corners. Flashing signs advertised casino shows and live entertainment everywhere she looked.

“So this is Vegas,” Olivia commented. “You sure you want to stop here, huh?”

“Yeah, there’s always a lot of commotion here. It’ll be a good place to hide you.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointedly, “and here I thought this was all a ploy so you could get me drunk and haul me off to a little white chapel to be married by a bad Elvis impersonator.”

Liam laughed, and the melodic cadence was music to her ears. She loved the sound of it. Who was she kidding, she loved everything about him.

“I’ll tell you right now, I’m a cheap drunk,” she teased, arching her brows flirtatiously.

Again, that rich chortle warmed her heart and she nearly melted in her seat. She’d spent the last several hours taking to heart what Liam said after they left the station. She could no longer keep lying to herself, or to Mitch. She couldn’t marry him, and she didn’t love him enough to pretend. It wasn’t fair to any of them to keep dragging this out.