Banging the Superhero (7 page)

He walked to the window to look outside. "Any thoughts on who that person might be?"

"I run a multi-million dollar corporation. Anyone could hold a grudge against me."

He laughed as he turned around. The things she said when she used her haughty, "I'm in charge" voice tickled his sense of humor. "Not real pleasant to work for, are you?"

She lifted her chin. "I'm polite to every person I encounter."

"I bet." He tapped the window with his hand. "This seems so personal to me.

They went out and found a person who uses machines to kill to not only end your life but to terrify you. Sounds like this person is pretty angry."

"You often get
feelings
of this type?"

She doubted him, which infuriated him. Although her behavior didn't come as a surprise. There wasn't a moment in Alice's presence that she didn't question him in some way or another.

"I do this type of thing often."

At that statement, she raised an eyebrow. "Find murder-minded madmen?"

"
Oh,
I like your alliteration."

Now it was her turn to laugh. Her face alit with delight, and she looked easier now, softer. "I speak on live television. I have to come up with cheerful, funny things on the spot all the time."

"All right, but back to the point, this is not the first crazy person I've had to sort out. It happens more than you might imagine. Draco had to rescue his wife from a lunatic who had her in a cage."

"So what you're saying is that you've done this so frequently you can now get a sense of how these things work."

"Don't you ever just know that a recipe you're working on needs more salt? You can't explain why, you just
know
it."

She walked to a stool by the counter and sat down. "Okay. Let's say I actually understood what you just said, then I'm going to admit that what you said about it being personal makes some sense to me."

Now they were getting somewhere. "How so?"

"I haven't spoken about this in years."

Even if they had made headway, it appeared Alice wasn't going to make this easy on him. "Consider me your personal shrink. I won't utter a word. Superhero-client privilege. It won't leave this room."

"Who's going to drive me to school?"

Ace jumped an inch in the air at Lael's sudden entrance. Damn. His brother was perfecting his stealth. Exhaling on a laugh, he turned. "I guess I'm going to take you."

Alice shot to her feet. "You can't leave."

The woman's skittish?
"You're safe here. I told you."

"How can you be sure?"

Ace shook his head. "I'm sure."

"One hundred percent sure?" She advanced on him. "Won't you feel badly if you come home and you find the fax machine detached from the wall and strangled me?"

"Now there's something I never thought I'd hear in my entire life."

"Just because it's ridiculous doesn't make it any less possible. Not in light of recent events, anyway."

He sighed. What was he going to do with her? She looked truly despondent standing in front of him with her long, brown hair disheveled, her skin make-up free, and yet she looked hotter than she'd ever looked on television. Swallowing, he tried to push that last thought away. It did him no good thinking about her that way.

Except to give him a major boner like he'd had the night before after he'd stupidly squeezed her round, supple ass.

She cleared her throat, seemingly unaware of the nature of his thoughts. "Can't you keep me safe in the car? And come to think of it, why can't he fly himself there? Are his superpowers different than yours?"

"Oh, I can fly." Lael lifted his chin. "But my brothers don't want me telling people what I can do just yet. They say it's safer if everyone thinks I'm just a normal dude."

Alice smiled at Ace, showing off the one dimple in her left cheek. "I bet the dude was
your
addition to that statement."

Ace scratched his head. "Do I say dude a lot?" He didn't think he did . . . .

Lael laughed. "Sometimes."

"That's not fair. You say it." He pointed at Lael.

"I picked it up from you."

"Whatever. We'll all go together in the car. You'll"—he moved from pointing at Lail to pointing at Alice—"stay with me, and I'll fight back any machines that attack you."

"Believe it or not, I have no intention of running out onto the street freaking out while random machines attempt to end my life."

He hoped not because much as he had grown overly fond of staring at her ass, he had no interest in chasing her if she did that.

"Go get dressed and meet me in the garage. It's there." He pointed toward a side door off the kitchen.

She snickered. "Are we going in the bat-mobile?"

"Hardy-har-har."

Lael cracked up. "Only after we go through the bat cave to get there."

"The next one of you who makes a lame Batman joke is going to be doing the dishes for a week."

"Oh yeah?" Alice's eyes glowed with amusement. "I'm paying you. You don't get to tell me to do the dishes."

Lael wasn't finished yet either. "I have homework."

Seriously, when had it become funny to call him Batman?

* * * * *

Ace waved to Lael as he dropped him off on the corner by the school. Sitting in the car, he watched his younger brother round the corner like a teenager with no cares in the world.

Alice, who had been quiet for the ten-minute drive to Lael's school—probably because she'd been blindfolded for most of it—finally spoke when he took the bandana off her eyes. "How did his mother get blown up?"

Ace released a loud breath and glared at Alice. How much did he want to trust her with their personal stories? He drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel for a few seconds, then finally put the car in park. Maybe if he shared with her what she wanted to know, she would finally tell him what he needed to hear to keep her safe.

"We have the same father. He abandoned all of us. Draco and I didn't know Lael existed."

"Mine died when I was three."

He nodded. The sharing was already taking place. That was a good thing.

He continued. "Draco got hired on a case. Since then, the system has changed, but back then the financial department only had to prove the person could pay the bill and then it was no questions asked."

She smiled at him and leaned back in her seat. "I can pay your bill."

"Wasn't worried about it."

Alice chuckled. "Go on."

He would, just as soon as he finished grinning back at her. Alice had an infectious way with her happiness. She could light up the universe if she smiled all the time.

"Anyway, Draco and Wendy—that's my sister-in-law, she was Draco's Handler at the time—flew out to see a woman who had a runaway teenager. She thought he'd been kidnapped by aliens."

Ace hadn't been there but he could imagine the scene as well as if he had been.

"Wendy's senses told her this woman was off. The house was modest. Draco is the most expensive Superhero on the payroll."

"More expensive than you?"

"By a long shot. I'm the second most expensive, but Draco is top dog."

Her eyes twinkled. "Then maybe I should be with Draco."

"Sorry, he's on his honeymoon. And besides, only I can talk to machines." The idea of her leaving him for Draco's professional protection didn't sit well. A knot formed in his stomach and his hands tingled. Damn, he was going to have to work out some of his pent up aggression again. It was too soon to be feeling this keyed up, and it didn't bode well for how the rest of the day was going to go.

"I was kidding."

He stared hard at Alice. Her face was serious, her eyebrows pointed downward, and her mouth rested in a thin line. She really was upset. Somehow, the fact that she'd been making a joke and not serious about wanting to go with Draco eased his tension.

Not a lot but a smidgen, at least.

"It turned out her investigation was being funded by a charity organization that was really a front for a group that was out to get Draco and Wendy. They blew up the house while Draco and Wendy were there. He got Wendy out. Lael's mother didn't make it. Later on, Draco found Lael and it didn't take him long to realize we were family."

"Kid looks just like you."

Ace nodded. "I know."

The sunlight hit Alice's eyes. "He ran away."

"Because she was nuts. Because he was different and didn't understand why that was. Because he was scared."

"Besides the dreams, he seems pretty put together."

Ace shrugged. "None of us can really control what we dream about."

She cleared her throat and looked out the window. "I think you might have been onto something earlier, about it being personal, this attack on me."

"You said that before. Do you want to explain a little further?"
Please
.

"I had dreams as a child, very disturbing dreams about machines killing me."

Ace had not been expecting that. He tried to keep his expression neutral. "That's kind of a funny dream for a child to have. No monsters under the bed?"

"No." Her laugh sounded humorless. "My mother's second cousin lost his arm in a factory accident at work. He got caught in a press. It was a terrible experience. He would walk around in shirts where half of the shirt would hang down because there was no arm in it." She swallowed. "I was little. I had no compassion, just fear."

"How old were you?"

She turned to stare him square in the eyes. "I was three."

Ace's mind whirled. Her recount was too close to be a coincidence, too odd that she's dreamed this scenario as a little girl, and now it was happening to her. "When did the dreams stop?"

"Around my seventh birthday, my mother took me to a doctor. He sat me down and told me how machines couldn't hurt me. I don't remember the gist of the whole thing, but somehow it worked." She shuddered. "Maybe because it was finally someone other than my mother telling me about it."

"And the doctor? What happened to him?"

"He died about twenty years ago from a heart attack. I remember because we had to drive twenty minutes farther down the road to another pediatrician and the new doctor's office smelled like lemon disinfectant. It used to make me sneeze."

Ace nodded. "That's why you clean with those "green" disinfectants. I've seen it on your show."

"Wow." Her smile was wide. "You really are a fan."

"Um . . . ." He half-sighed, half-chuckled. Damn, he felt really
uncool
at the moment. "I think it's clear here, Alice, that someone who knew about those dreams is behind this."

She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning against the headrest. "I was afraid you were going to say that."

"You had to have realized that when this began." She was too smart to have been so dense about this.

She nodded and opened her eyes. For a moment, they glistened with unshed tears. She appeared to struggle for composure, and he reached out to stroke the side of her cheek. Her skin was so soft, like cotton under his fingertips. She smiled and closed her eyes again. One large tear fell and before he could stop himself he unhooked her seatbelt and tugged her over the center console and into his arms.

She clung to his shirt as she silently sobbed. "I never cry."

He nodded as he kissed the top of her head. "I know."

"How do you know?"

"You're too tough a woman to resort to hysterics. Even somebody as dense as me can see that."

She laughed even as she sobbed. "I've cried more in the last two days than I have in years."

"I won't tell."

"Oh, Ace." She pulled back, regarded him, her big brown eyes huge. "My family is so fucked up."

Wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, he kissed the top of her nose.

"We need to go see your Mom, don't we?"

"Unfortunately. But it's going to take time to get there. Maybe we should call instead. It's hours on a plane."

"Where does she live?"

She sniffed and wiped her nose. "Florida."

"We'll be there in no time." He handed her the blindfold. "Put this on. I'll take the car back home and then we'll fly there."

"You have a plane?"

"Powers, Inc. has one. But I have something better than that. I have me."

Besides, it would give him a reason to hold her close for a little while longer without her getting uncomfortable about being vulnerable. Just a little more time until he had to give her up and pretend he hadn't held the object of his personal fantasy in his arms. Just a little more time until he solved her problem and she forgot him forever.

Chapter Six

Alice hadn't been home in six years. Well, she didn't really consider her mother's house
home
, she amended the thought as they touched down on the ground. She hadn't been raised in this particular place. Her mother had moved to Florida about a decade ago, which meant Alice had been living on her own for six years when the woman who'd raised her moved here.

Sarasota was beautiful, and she could understand why any number of people would love to live there. But not her mother. Alice doubted the woman, in her entire existence, had ever enjoyed the beach. It was possible her mother didn't own a bathing suit even.

In fact, Dora Styles treated the whole house as if she had simply uprooted her life in West Virginia and dropped it into Sarasota. The same garden elves that had decorated her front yard still stood guard on this one. She was sure the Christmas lights that hung from the gutters had been ripped from her childhood home and restrung here. Even the welcome mat with the cat licking its paw had to be twenty years old. It was bizarre to Alice. As if someone had taken her entire childhood and dropped it down on the west coast of Florida.

"This is it?"

Yes, this was it. "That's right. My mother lives here."

But not Alice because Alice had never even been asked to visit, let alone invited to move in. Maybe it was unreasonable to think she should have been. She had, after all, been on her own for a long time and seemingly independent. Alice, however, had always known that the slight on her mother's part was intentional.