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He studied her face as she peered through the window while giving Donald directions. She was a saint, and he was scum. Alice had always been a good girl who walked the straight and narrow. In contrast, he’d dangled on the edge of sanity, living like a sinner with no tomorrow. When he’d been drinking and taking recreational drugs during his experimental phase, she’d been working her pretty little ass off to get into university. She’d deserved that scholarship more than him. She’d never disappointed her mom or dad. She didn’t know what it was to hit your foster dad so hard his cheekbone crunched under your fist. The sodomizing son of a rapist fucker had only tried it once.
Black. His past was a canvas smeared with layers of onyx and ash. The portrait of his life was a scary, fucking thing. If there was a shred of goodness in him, he’d let her go like she’d asked. He’d let her have a good man who’d love her gently and never make her scream, but he couldn’t. He’d lived and worked for this moment, to take his proper place in her life, and if all he could be was the bad medicine she needed, he’d grab it with both hands.
The car slowed to a stop. At last, the agonizing voices were gone. He sat up and looked through the window. They’d parked in front of a modestly sized, redbrick house. Alice got out and waited.
“You guys can go,” Ivan said.
Ben flicked an eyebrow. His own bodyguard didn’t trust him.
“I’m fine, fuck it,” Ivan gritted out.
Ben turned away, the back of his head his only answer.
Ivan chuckled. “Whatever.”
“When are we back on duty?” Donald asked.
“Tomorrow morning.” Ivan glanced at Alice who stood too far to hear what he was saying and couldn’t know what was going through his mind. “Pick us up here at seven-thirty.” He had every intention of spending the night at Ms. Jones’.
Folding his body double, Ivan got out of the car. The picture he faced was of a small woman with soft curves and good light against the backdrop of a narrow house with lace curtains in the lit windows. The evening was dark and menacing around her, the feeble brick structure too meager to protect her from what lurked outside. The sight of her standing there, a figure clad in a red raincoat against the backdrop of the night, did things to him he didn’t understand. His protective instinct went into overdrive. Emotions pulled at his heartstrings, the strongest of those being fear—the fear of losing her. She looked utterly vulnerable with her arms wrapped around herself and a doubtful little smile tugging at her lips. Thoughts of Boris’s threat and Nicolas’s warning drove him to the point of snapping, but as always, Alice calmed him. If those dead bastards tried to use her against him or if anything happened to her… He couldn’t even think it. He wouldn’t survive. Anything else, but not that.
Her smile widened a fraction as she tilted her head. “Coming?”
He shoved his hands into his front pockets and climbed onto the pavement when Donald pulled off. She turned down a path that cut through a tiny, neat garden. With her daddy’s kind of money, he’d expected her to live in a mansion, something big and pretentious like the house she’d grown up in, not this humble duplex in a middle-class suburb.
She unlocked the door and let him into a small entrance. Removing his jacket, he looked around. The interior was impeccable, everything clean and in its place. It was snug. The decoration was a mixture of English countryside and exotic Indonesian tastefully combined, not that he knew much about trinkets and how to arrange them. Whatever she’d done, it worked. It made him want to settle on the couch with her in his arms and do something ordinary like watch a movie.
She hung their jackets on the coat stand and rubbed her hands on her thighs. “Hungry?”
His Princess was nervous. Satisfaction and amusement filled him. How endearing that his presence unsettled her. It meant she felt something, even if it was only nervous excitement. As long as she was giving, he’d take whatever he could get.
“No, but thanks.”
She touched her glasses. “I haven’t had dinner, yet. You can keep me company in the kitchen.”
He invaded her house like it was his place to do, looking into every room they passed on their way to the kitchen. If she minded, she didn’t say so.
“Take a seat.” She motioned at a chair by a small table. “I don’t have wine. Tea?”
“Yes.”
She seemed happy with his answer, pleased that she had something to keep her hands busy. He watched her move between the kettle and the cupboard, putting out cups and a teapot on a tray. She took down a tin and arranged cookies on a plate. When the business of brewing the tea was finished, she put the tray on the table and took the seat opposite him.
