Wild Riders was a secret. No one outside their organization knew they even existed. Hell, their own government didn’t even know. And it had to stay that way, which meant he’d have to lie to Lily.
Again. Just like ten years ago, when he told her didn’t care about her, didn’t love her, didn’t want her in his life.
And just like ten years ago, she was going to hate him.
Lily waited for Mac to say something, anything. Tell her he had a reasonable, logical explanation for breaking into the museum and stealing the artifact. Or, rather, the virus. This was so confusing.
“Well?”
He stared at her for a few seconds, then shook his head and left her standing in the bathroom.
Oh no. He was not going to get away with blowing her off again. She stalked out after him.
“You know, stealing someone’s wallet or a few bucks here and there was bad enough when you were younger,” she said, stepping around to the other side of the bike. He grabbed a clean shirt out of the saddlebag and put his jacket back on, then started lifting other things out. “I had hoped you had grown out of that petty thievery. What are you into now, Mac?
Luxury cars? Fine art? Knocking off a bank here and there?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he tossed a lump of something on the ground, then gathered pieces of wood and started a fire in the campsite’s pit. After that, he grabbed a roll and unraveled it.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up at her from his position on the ground.
“You were always a smart girl, Lily. What does it look like I’m doing?”
She scanned the area, finally making the connection.
Campsite. Tent. Oh hell no. “I am not staying here with you tonight.”
“Yeah, you are, since I’m not taking you anywhere else.
You didn’t give me much choice after showing up…”
She waited for him to finish the sentence. Of course, he didn’t. “And screwing up your theft of the artifact? Or the virus? Tell me about the vial. How did you know it was inside the artifact? What do you plan to do with it? How much are you making on this deal? Do you have any idea what terrorist organizations will do with something like that?”
He left the tent pieces and stood, approaching her. Just having him stand near her was unnerving. A few minutes ago she’d held his c**k in her hand—hot and hard, his mouth and hands on her, reminding her of the all the reasons she’d fallen in love with him before. Sexy, uninhibited and thrilling, he’d promised adventure and a trip to the dark side, a place she’d never been. But this wasn’t ten years ago. Now was reality, not a teenager’s fantasy.
If she hadn’t gathered her wits about her and stopped him, she could have easily fallen into the same trap again and had sex with him. Maybe she hadn’t learned a thing in ten years.
His eyes were warm, but his voice was cold. “I did steal the virus. But I can’t tell you why or what I’m going to do with it, other than I’m not selling it and it’s not going to fall into the hands of terrorists.”
She was so confused. What she really needed was to talk to her boss and her client. Did the museum even know what was inside that artifact? Oh, why didn’t she just call the police when she saw Mac pull up at the museum? She was in deep shit now.
She knew Mac’s history, and if she had a choice, she’d choose her agency to turn the vial over to, not Mac. Not a once petty, now probably professional thief.
“A virus like that could be worth a fortune.” She shuddered to think what someone could do with it. Countries looking to create chemical warfare. Terrorist organizations.
The possibilities were endless.
“I can’t tell you what I’m going to do with the virus.
But trust me, it’s nothing bad,” he said.
“And I’m supposed to believe you.”
He shrugged. “You have no reason to, but yeah, I’d like you to.”
The look hadn’t changed at all—street toughness mixed with charm. God, it was so sexy, had always served to dissolve her hesitations. It had worked so well back then. It didn’t now, and that actually hurt. He had stolen something dangerous and destructive. Despite their connections to each other and to the past, she couldn’t allow it. She grabbed her bag from the ground and pulled out her cell phone. Thank God she’d looped the long strap of her purse around her neck and shoulder or she’d have lost her purse in the scuffle in addition to her gun.
“I’m sorry, Mac, but I have to call this in. There’s no way I can allow this virus to get out, no matter what you’d like me to believe.”
She started punching numbers to call the agency, but Mac moved like a stroke of lightning. He was on her in seconds, jerked the phone out of her hand, threw it on the ground and stomped it to pieces. She stared dumbstruck at the crumbled remains of her phone, not sure if she wanted to cry or kill him. Judging by the trembling anger bubbling up inside her, probably both. She forced a calm she didn’t feel, refusing to break down in front of him.
“I’m sorry too, babe, but I can’t let you make that call.
If you were calling your boss or the cops, that would spell bad news for me.”
Gathering her wits about her, she said, “You should have thought about that before you broke into the museum.”
“Tell me who your client is.”
“I was hired by the museum to check night security.
Which obviously sucked since you managed to get in.”
Unbelievably, he grinned. She shook her head. He was proud of his prowess as a thief. Frustration ate at her, making her pace back and forth in hopes of releasing some of the furious tension boiling inside. Long term passion and feelings for Mac or not, she was a law abiding citizen, a former cop.
She followed the rules. And Mac had never followed them.
She’d found that exciting about him once, to her detriment. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.
“I’m not doing anything wrong, Lily.”
“Give me a reason to believe you.” This was why she had paused when she saw him at the museum, why she had delayed making that call. Instinct, maybe, but she’d somehow known it was him, couldn’t bear turning him over to the police.
Now she was kicking herself and needed some kind of proof, needed him to tell her anything at all that would make her believe in him.