Atlas had his hand on the curve of Lily’s back.The spotlight was dead on them.She’d always hated the spotlight.And being trapped in a barrage of reporters was truly a scene straight from her nightmares.
There had been another moment in her life far too much like this one.When she’d left the hospital after her poisoning, after seven days of clinging to life, of fighting, only to finally walk out into the world again…
A frenzied swarm of reporters had been waiting for her.Their questions had blasted at her.
“Lily Gallo!Lily Gallo!What’s it like to know your mother nearly killed you?”
“Lily!Is it true that your mother is a serial killer?”
“Can you ever forgive your mother?”
The voices from the past blurred with the shouted questions of the present.You weren’t supposed to have to ever relive the same hell twice, but this certainly felt like the same nightmare to her in that instant.
Her heart raced, her breaths came too fast, and—enough.She didn’t have to answer their questions.This wasn’t her press party.Atlas had been the target.Atlas had also been the one to get his limo parked out front when hecouldhave gotten the limo brought to the rear of the hospital.The man had donated a wing to the hospital, she knew he could have gotten the administrators to help him make a quiet exit.But, no, he’d wanted this scene.He liked the spotlight.She hated it.
He’d also deliberately sought the attention of the reporters because Atlas had wanted to issue a public challenge to his attacker.A very bold and dangerous move.
This was his show, not hers, so she shot forward and ducked into the car.Ducked, dove, whatever.She got inside, and, rather surprisingly to her, once she leapt in, Atlas followed.
“About damn time,” Desmond groused.He slammed the door shut.
She’d thought Desmond might get in the rear of the limo with them, but, as if the driver had just been waiting for Atlas to get inside that vehicle…
The limo immediately pulled away.
“You turned to ice in front of the reporters.Did the scene bring back too many memories?”
She perched on the leather seat.A mini-bar waited in the back of the limo.Soft lighting trailed from the limo’s floor and near the ceiling.At least a dozen people could easily have reclined in the rear of the limo.
But it wasn’t a dozen people.It was just her.Just Atlas.
He lounged in the seat right beside her.Taking up way too much space.His leg brushed against hers, and the move should have annoyed her, but, oddly enough, it didn’t.He felt strangely warm.His crisp, masculine scent teased her nose.And, as before, she felt drawn to him.
Why?
Was it because of the darkness she carried?Was she just responding to someone who might be…
Just like me?
Oh, great.Her mother would be laughing herself silly.Saying that Lily was truly after a soulmate that she would never find.
Atlas spoke slowly, thoughtfully, his deep voice rumbling and seeming to sink into her very skin, “After you were poisoned, you came out of the hospital, terrified, far too thin, with heavy shadows beneath your eyes and skin pale as a ghost.The reporters filmed every second of that hell for you.”His arm stretched out on the top of the seat.“What were you then, nineteen?Twenty?”
Her breath shuddered out.She suspected he knew the answer, but she still replied, “I was eighteen.”Just old enough that the reporters had thought they didn’t need to go as easily on her.Her story was too sensational for easy.“I’m surprised you are aware of what happened that day.”
“I looked for the videos.I watched them.I watched you.”
“AfterI tried to get interviews with you?”Again, he was being thorough.
“Sure.”A casual answer.But…one that she feared held the hint of a lie.But, why would he have watched the videos about her before she’d ever approached him?
She looked back through the window on the right.The reporters were still filming them.Some just with their personal phones.Others with their camera crews because Atlas was big business.People like Atlas weren’t supposed to be taken by killers.
Then again, people like Atlas weren’t supposed to threaten killers in front of a hungry press, either.“Was that wise, do you think?”Lily tucked a lock of hair behind her left ear.
“Finding old videos of you?Watching them on loop?Probably not.However, those videos told me a lot about you.Like when you tuck hair behind your left ear, you feel threatened.You make that move when you’re trying to buy yourself a beat of time.”
Lily stilled.“I didn’t realize you were a behavioral expert.”
