Free Black Jack by Lora Leigh Page B

accept it, and help me protect her, or you can continue to stand in my way
    and bury her for real next time.” Travis turned on his heel and headed into the living area of
    the house. “Let me know what you decide. Before it’s too late.”
    He didn’t turn back to the other man as he delivered his parting shot. Nik opened the door
    that led into the short hallway and then into the house that was as pristine, just as fucking
    modern and icy cold, as the reception room.
    As cold as Travis’s fucking life had become.
    Lilly parked her cycle at the curved cement and stone steps that led up to the mansion her
    family had taken for the spring and summer months. She had beat her uncle home. No
    surprise there.
    The low heels of her boots were silent as she climbed the stairs, and the lack of sound
    seemed odd. Shoes made noise. Even sneakers made a slight noise when walking. But hers
    didn’t, and it wasn’t the shoes. It was her.
    It was the way she walked, the way she moved. She could move silently, or if she thought
    about it, as she made herself do now, she could allow the slight click of the heels.
    Had Travis trained her how to walk with such stealth as well?
    The door opened, and the butler stood aside as Lilly stepped into the warm, golden wood
    tones of the entryway.
    Shedding her leather jacket, she handed it to the butler, then lifted her head as her mother
    walked into the foyer. She carried some papers she had been reviewing, probably her latest
    financial statements. Her mother had come into her first marriage independently wealthy and
    she was amazingly adroit at managing her own finances.
    Lady Angelica Harrington. She was also a distant cousin as well as a confidante and friend
    to the Queen. She moved in circles so influential it boggled the mind. Her social life was her
    career—the parties, teas, luncheons, and charity events.
    Her son, Lilly’s brother, Jared James Harrington, was a solicitor with a law firm that the
    Queen often relied upon. He had been introduced to his wife by the Queen and had married
    with her blessing. He had become just as cold and unemotional as her mother sometimes
    seemed to be.
    “Oh my God! What on earth are you wearing?” Lady Harrington’s tone wasn’t scandalized,
    it was purely horrified.
    “Leather,” Lilly answered gently, wishing she could find a way to take that fear from her
    mother’s eyes. “Did you think that because you didn’t inform me about my past, it wouldn’t
    come back to haunt you? Or me?”
    She pulled her gloves from her hands and slapped them on the shiny, dark cherry bureau
    that sat in the foyer as she held her mother’s gaze.
    Angelica lifted her hand slowly to her throat, her pale blue gaze flickering with indecision
    as she watched her daughter now. She wasn’t quite certain how to handle this version of Lilly.
    Her poor mother, Lilly thought. She likely had dreamed of having her daughter back, but
    Lilly doubted she had imagined the woman who had returned. Even Lilly didn’t know the
    woman who had returned.
    Lilly pushed her fingers through her hair, feeling the long strands drifting through her
    fingers and over her shoulders as a familiar wildness rose inside her. She knew this feeling,
    she had known it for a long time. The same feeling she had fought before her supposed death
    six years before.
    “Who am I?” She stared back at her mother, suddenly fearful, almost terrified that despite
    the urge to solve the mystery of those missing years, perhaps she really didn’t want to know.
    “My daughter,” Angelica whispered, her voice filled with sorrow. “The daughter I never
    want to lose again.”
    Lilly wanted to hit something. With her fist. Her fingers curled with the need to ram it into
    a wall, a door, a bed, a punching bag . . . A memory flashed in her mind. A sweat-stained
    punching bag swinging before her, her fists pounding into it, her heart racing, perspiration
    pouring down her body . . .
    Just as quickly, it was