Elite Ops: Black Jack Part 4

"Lilly," Angelica finally said softly then, staring back at her as though she saw more than even Lilly could guess at. "That's what your grandmother called you, you know."

No, she hadn't known that. Her grandmother had died when Lilly was no more than a child.

As though by silent accord they turned and began moving down the sidewalk again. There was a silence between them now that wasn't exactly comfortable.

"I don't remember her calling me Lilly," she said, trying to calm her racing heart and to ease the tension.

"You were very young," her mother said. "It doesn't surprise me that when you disappeared you chose that name to use. Your grandmother always claimed you were more a Lilly than a Victoria. But your father insisted on Victoria."

She had been Victoria six years before. She had been the belle of every ball. She had been powerful in her own right. She had had lunch with the Queen more than once, she'd known the Prime Minister, she had danced with many members of Parliament. She had conspired- The memory slammed shut, just that quickly. It was there, then gone as though it had never been. Frustration ate at her. The memories were there, just out of reach, haunting her, daring her to do what, she wasn't certain.

"You know, there's the nicest little antiques store just ahead." Her mother changed the subject with forced brightness as they pa.s.sed a small cafe whose tempting scents wafted out to her. "I thought it would be nice to see what they have. I found several flatware pieces there the last time I visited. It was quite unique."

Coffee. She would kill for a cup of hot coffee.

She would kill . . .

For the barest second the sight and scent of blood filled her senses, and it wasn't the first time. She didn't freeze this time. She barely paused at the memory, and, like the first time, it disappeared just as quickly as it had come.

She didn't stumble, she continued walking, balancing perfectly on the high heels even as she thought that if she had to run, it would take precious seconds to shed the impractical footwear.

"Desmond usually comes on these little forays with me." Her mother continued chatting.

"It's too bad he had that meeting this afternoon in D.C. He could have accompanied us."

Lilly had breathed a sigh of relief when Desmond had announced he couldn't take the trip with them. For some reason, she no longer felt as though she could trust the uncle she had once cherished. That feeling left her off balance as if she couldn't trust anyone anymore.

It was locked in her memories. All the answers she needed were locked behind the veil of shadows that had wiped out the past six years of her life.

What had happened the night her father's car had gone over that cliff with her in it? Had they argued? Had they been in danger? Why had they left the party that night without telling anyone or making their excuses?

None of the explanations she had been given when she awoke in the hospital nearly four months ago made sense. She had lost more than just memories. Lilly felt as though she had lost herself as well.

She had lost her life, her father. Her mother and uncle felt like strangers, and where was the brother who had always tried to protect her? When he had come to see her in the hospital, he had disowned her as a lying, scheming tramp attempting to steal his sister's ident.i.ty.

And perhaps that hurt most of all. She had idolized Jared. To have him turn on her had broken her heart in ways she feared would never heal.

"You're too quiet, Lilly. How do you hope to ever acclimate if you refuse to try?" Her mother's voice was hard now, censorious. "I still think you needed time to heal further. The clinic in France . . ."

"Mother, really." Lilly smiled gently, consolingly. "I'm acclimating fine. I'm just getting my bearings, I promise."

"And you would tell me if it were otherwise?" her mother questioned, concern softening the hardness in her tone.

"I promise I will," Lilly lied.

"The dress becomes you."

Lilly froze at the sound of the voice at her ear, slightly husky, rich and dark, like the finest black velvet rubbing against the senses.

She knew that voice. It sank inside her, caressed against memories that chafed beneath the shadows and eased a sense of fear that had been riding inside her for the past months.

She hadn't realized how frightened she had been until that clenched, tight part of her soul seemed to relax marginally.

"I think I prefer the jeans, boots, and thigh holsters you wore in Afghanistan better, though."

She felt his cheek against her hair as her heart began to race, to pound erratically with fierce antic.i.p.ation. Her body suddenly became too sensitive, too warm, as a distantly remembered heat began to flare inside her.

"Et." The halting sound delayed her attempt to turn around. "Stay still, no need to turn around yet." There was an edge of darkness in his voice as he gripped her hip with one hand and held her in place.

There were too many sensations racing through her body now, too much heat and too many pinpoints of emotion that she couldn't make sense of.

"Who are you?" she hissed as she gazed around desperately, wondering where her mother had gone off to, wondering what she would think of the man standing much too close to her daughter.

"You don't remember me?" There was an odd note in his tone, one she couldn't decipher quickly. "As much trouble as we've instigated together? I think I'm offended, Belle."

A sense of vertigo a.s.saulted her at the chiding tone.

"Evidently I don't." She fought to still her racing heart, to ease the harshness of her breathing.

"I heard you'd been wounded. Evidently the rumors of lost memories is true." The comforting tone to his voice did nothing to still the alternating emotions that were suddenly tearing through her. "Trust me, baby, you know me."

She believed it. She knew it. She could feel that knowledge heating her body.

"Then I can look at you." She kept her voice low, as he did, her gaze continually scouring the interior of the shadowed store for anyone that could be watching or listening.

"Not yet. Turn around and I won't be able to help myself. Your mother would find you in a very compromising position. She doesn't seem the type to look the other way if she caught her daughter being seduced in a back corner of an antiques store."

Her mother would be absolutely mortified. Furious.

"Do you remember Friendly's Sports Bar?" he asked then.

She shook her head slowly, though a ghost of a memory surfaced. A large dim room, a jukebox playing, the crack of pool b.a.l.l.s and spirited laughter.

"The corner of Franklin and Walnut Street," he told her.

"We've met there before?" She heard the uncertainty in her voice, the neediness, the hunger for information. Finally a prayer had been answered. Someone who knew who she was rather than who she had been.

"Several times," he a.s.sured her. "Tell me, Belle, how severe is the amnesia?"

She couldn't decipher the underlying emotion in his voice. Part concern, part something else that had her wondering not just who this man was, but what he was to her.

"The past six years are gone," she answered truthfully, though she wasn't certain why she had. This man had her guard up, yet a part of her was reaching out to him, desperate to trust him. "Did you know me well?"

His hands tightened at her hips. "I'll let you decide that. Meet me tonight at the tavern, alone. No mother, no driver. You could ride that racy little motorcycle you looked so good on.

The one you keep in storage here in Hagerstown."

She rode a motorcycle? Since when did she ride a motorcycle?

She shook her head almost instinctively, rejecting the idea that she would, that she could ride, even as she remembered the wind in her hair and the power pulsing between her thighs.

"I'll be there at eleven." His fingers caressed her hips. "Will you be there, Lilly?"

"I'll be there." The decision was made so quickly, so instinctively, that she almost called the words back.

"Good girl." Were those his lips brushing against the sh.e.l.l of her ear?

Lilly shivered at the exquisite sensation of warmth, almost a kiss, as she took in a hard, shocked breath.

"I've missed you, Lilly." Was that a note of regret in his voice?

Lilly fought the overwhelming urge to turn and confront him, to demand the answers she was certain he had. There was no doubt he had known her during those lost years. There was no doubt he may have possibly known her intimately.

"Who am I?" The words slipped past her lips, the emotion in her voice undisguised, the fear that she fought to keep hidden revealing itself in the husky, plaintive tone of her voice.

Behind her, the warm male body bracketing hers was still for a long moment before she felt the silent sigh ripple across his chest.

"We'll discuss that tonight." There was a promise in his voice and, a part of her feared, a warning.

A warning about what? The truth perhaps?

The truth could be a double-edged sword, her uncle had warned her several times when she questioned if he had had the past six years of her life investigated once he learned she was alive. Surely he had, yet he refused to give her a straight answer.

The evasiveness had been driving her insane. Perhaps, this time, someone would give her a straight answer.

"And if I don't show up?"

His hands eased away from her slowly as the sound of her mother's voice discussing the merits of a particular porcelain plate filtered through the dim room.

"Then I guess you don't show up," he murmured. "Perhaps, Lilly, there're things about yourself that you don't really want to know."

As she tried to understand that comment he slipped away from her, the warmth of his body no more than a dream as she turned quickly to try and catch a glimpse of the man who had held her so intimately.

Was he the one following her? Was he the one that filled her fantasies as well as her nightmares?

However, all she saw was his back as he slipped out the door and moved quickly past the long, narrow window of the shop.

Lilly began to race after him. Waiting until tonight for answers suddenly seemed less than feasible. She wanted those answers now.

"Lilly, Mrs. Longstrom has the most gorgeous lace tablecloth in the back room." Her mother's voice stopped her as she took the first step. "You simply have to come back here and see it. I believe it would be perfect for the breakfast room at the manor."

Lilly turned quickly back to her mother, a question forming on her lips, a demand to know if her mother had seen the man speaking to her. If she knew him.

In the moment that the words would have slipped past her lips, she snapped her teeth quickly together. Her mother hadn't seen him, or she would have already posed the same questions to Lilly.

Angelica suddenly paused, her gaze sharpening as though she sensed or saw something in Lilly's face that concerned her or perhaps angered her.

"I believe it's time we go." Angelica moved quickly across the room despite the height of the heels she wore with her alabaster slacks and matching sleeveless blouse.

Lilly protested as her mother's fingers curled gently around her arm and urged her toward the door. "Really, Mother, we don't need to leave."

She had to get her bearings, had to make sense of what was suddenly happening. What she was feeling.

She should never have had such a reaction to a man she couldn't see, only hear. A man who seemed more familiar to her than her own body.

She followed her mother from the antiques shop, back to the busy tree-lined street. Pausing, Angelica Harrington made a quick call to the chauffeur, gave him their location, then turned to her daughter with a worried frown.

"I tried to do too much at once," Angelica said, the apology in her voice p.r.i.c.king at Lilly's conscience. "I should have allowed you to rest a little longer."

"You're going to have to get used to this, Mother," Lilly informed her firmly as she let her gaze survey the busy street with narrowed eyes behind her dark sungla.s.ses. "Just as I have to get used to myself."

Lilly didn't catch her mother's look of consternation. The older woman watched her daughter as one might watch an alien, waiting, watching for any signs of danger. But together with the wariness there was also pain.

A mother's dream had come true. The daughter she had thought she had lost forever had returned home. Her child lived and breathed. She was given the chance few parents who had lost children were given. A chance to say all the things she hadn't taken the time to say before.

A chance to kiss her daughter good night. A chance to see her smile. Hear her laughter.

Perhaps.

Travis wondered if Lilly had learned to laugh again. He knew the few times he had managed to pull laughter from her it was like seeing sunshine for the first time.

He wondered if her mother saw sunshine when she saw her daughter's smile, or heard her laughter. He wondered if she'd seen that smile or that laughter since her daughter had been home. G.o.d knew, Lilly deserved at least a few moments of happiness before the world went crazy on her again. And before her mother possibly lost her daughter all over.

One thing was certain, beneath the impatience and flashes of irritation Angelica Harrington's heart was also breaking as she watched the young woman she had been told was her daughter.

There was no doubt Lilly was definitely Victoria Lillian Harrington. DNA proved it, her dental records proved it, but there were no fingerprints to back it up. Her fingerprints had been removed the day she signed on with the Elite Ops. With her return the blame had been lain on the fiery car crash.

Standing well out of her line of vision, he watched her closely, a smile tugging at his lips as she slid her sungla.s.ses on and continued to watch the street with what he knew were eagle-sharp eyes.

She'd caught him following her several times throughout the afternoon. Each time she had stopped, arrowed in on him, and watched him with a familiarity he knew did nothing but confuse her.

He'd seen that confusion. He'd felt it. He'd nearly tasted it as he stood behind her and breathed in her scent.

She was fighting to make sense of the world she was in and the memories she had lost, but she was still game to fight for the answers.

She would be there tonight. There wasn't a doubt in Travis's mind that she wouldn't find the bar in time to meet with him. He wondered if she would make it there alone, or if her shadow, the bodyguard her uncle had hired, would manage to follow her.

Lilly Belle, code-named Night Hawk, would never have allowed herself to be tracked to a meeting. She would have ensured she arrived alone, and if she didn't, then she would ensure the one following her regretted it.

That was his Lilly. She could be merciless, but in being so, he'd watched, year by year, another piece of her soul erode.

Those wounds were still there, in her eyes, along with her confusion, her wariness.

"What do you think?"

Travis glanced over his shoulder at the towering former Russian who stood carefully back from the edge of the building.

Nik Steele watched Lilly and her mother, his icy blue eyes lasered in on them intently.