Catching Lily - Live Wire

CHAPTER ONE-2

He also realized that he had barely felt the bite of the winter air since he pulled the young woman into his arms and kissed her, and that was something. He had never liked the cold and been dreaming for years to retire someplace with mild if not hot weather. A palm or a coconut tree wouldn’t be amiss either. He would enjoy the song of the waves and the cooling breeze of the sea while basking into the sun.

The evolution of the last events had put a dent in his dreams and pushed him back in his plans, but he was stubborn enough to make it happen. He had enough confidence in his skills and ambition. Besides, he didn’t think he had it in him to go through another winter, and to his bitter disappointment, the present one seemed far from being willing to take a bow and leave.

“Here it is,” Lily’s voice chimed in, waving her slender fingers toward a small door with a dark window.

The man’s surprise showed on his face, and he blinked. He would have just walked past that door if she hadn’t shown it to him.

He looked up and read the sign The Drunken Goose over the door. He grinned, shaking his head in disbelief and wondering about the person who had thought of giving that name to a coffee shop.

“Are you sure this is a coffee shop?” he turned his eyes to the young woman he had followed without qualms.

As a rule, he was wary of unknown people, and especially of women. He trusted few, and among those, fewer females. In spite of his distrustful nature, he had felt that no danger came from the young woman, his eyes assessed hungrily right then.

Lily just shrugged his words away. “It’s a pub, but we can buy coffee inside,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone of voice and opened the door.

The man nodded but realized soon that he shouldn’t have bothered at all. The woman hadn’t sought his approval. She had already turned from him and gone inside the pub.

She had stepped over the out-of-fashion threshold, confident that he would come into the pub as well. She didn’t even waste a glance back to make sure that he followed her suit.

He strode after her at once, although a brief grimace tugged at the corners of his mouth. Coming from outside, the semi-obscurity of the room blinded him for a few moments, enough to make him feel jittery.

The day enjoyed little sun anyway, but then, he had anticipated that that would be the case for winter in Toronto. Still, the pale sun rays reflected in the banks of snow in the streets, and the bright white had made his eyes sensitive to the difference in light.

He reasoned that the pub was the best place to organize an ambush and narrowed his eyes to adjust them to the difference in light quickly so that he could react if he needed to.

Tense, his muscles in tight knots, he surveyed the surrounding area but relaxed after a few seconds. The stiffness in his shoulders eased off, and Lily’s eyebrows arched up at the subtle change in his body.

“Let’s find a table,” the man growled.

He sensed that the woman could read the fluctuations in his mood, and he didn’t feel comfortable with that. He had always avoided people who possessed such heightened empathy. They spelled danger in his line of work. However, he didn’t have a choice now. The man couldn’t find a rational explanation, but he needed her with him.

He looked around. There were plenty of tables available as the front room was empty. It was too late for breakfast and just a bit too early for the lunch crowd if the place attracted any crowd, which he doubted.

The voices of two people came from a room in the back. Screened by the wall separating the two rooms, their words sounded like gibberish.

The man grabbed Lily’s hand, and following his instinct, he led her to a corner table, up a short flight of steps. From up there, he had a good vantage point and would be able to observe every move. The position was satisfactory. No one would take him by surprise.

Lily followed him, a pensive expression on her face. She chewed her lower lip, questions rolling in her mind one after another. Her long slender fingers flexed in the man’s hand, but he didn’t let go of her, and that made her giddy although she didn’t understand why.

Something didn’t seem quite right with the copper-haired guy. However, she knew that nothing would happen to her there. Her premonitions rarely let her down. Moreover, the pub might have looked virtually empty at that hour. That didn’t mean they were alone in there.

Lily sensed that the man was troubled, but he didn’t cause trouble.

He chose a table that would have served his purposes and set her bags in a chair. Then he helped her out of her winter coat. He hooked the coat on the peg behind her seat and held the chair for her.

His manners pleased and surprised Lily, and she smiled at him.

The man hooked his jacket next to hers, but closer to him. He could reach the pockets if he needed. He sat in the chair on her right, and his alert eyes swept the room.

Lily followed his gaze and asked without looking at him, “Is everything all right? Who do you expect to jump out of the shadows? Are we going to be under attack? Something’s bothering you. I can feel it,” she said, her tone filled with ill-concealed amusement. The cadence of her questions was meant to claw at the armor the man displayed with every sweep of his eyes and every contained gesture.

The man turned to her and stared at her without blinking. Her questions had annoyed him, and the laughter in her voice didn’t sit well with him either. Lily felt his hard eyes on her, so she looked back at him and held his gaze with smiling eyes.

“I’m Mark,” he said suddenly, although his hard expression didn’t change.

“That’s good to know,” she nodded. “You took a weight off my heart. I don’t usually let strangers kiss me, you know,” she continued on a conversational tone of voice, although laughter bubbled in her gaze.

“That sounds like a good policy,” Mark nodded, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “As I don’t usually kiss unknown women either, would you mind letting me know your name?” he inquired, tilting his head to the right and watching her intently.

She leaned back and folded her hands on the edge of the scarred unpolished wooden table. She seemed to think his request over, gazing steadily in his eyes. Mark lifted his left eyebrow, and impatience simmered in his eyes.

“You didn’t look like you were in a hurry to know my name earlier,” she remarked with studied indifference. “When you grabbed and kissed me, I mean,” she thought to specify.

“That was an out-of-the-ordinary situation,” Mark muttered, a frown tucked between his eyebrows. He didn’t feel like explaining to her what had led to those kisses.

“How come?” she questioned him, not showing any anxiety at the change in his mood.

She sensed that her interrogation bothered Mark, but she felt entitled to know what had happened in the street and what had prompted his behavior. She sensed that the man was on the verge of losing his temper, but she didn’t give a fig about that. He might not like having his actions questioned that way, but then, his moods didn’t bother her, and if push came to shove, she was more than willing to do her own shoving.

His attitude hadn’t annoyed her when he feasted on her mouth even though it should have. But then, his lips had been quite compelling and skilled enough to make her forget about any caution and even long-time principles.

Nevertheless, between the end of the last kiss and the moment they got into the pub, her common sense had returned, and now she thought that she had the right to ask a few questions of her own before going any further.

Mark’s cold eyes swept over her features for a few seconds, but then he nodded.

“I will tell you as much as I can. However, I don’t see what the problem is if you tell me your name beforehand,” he pointed out, mirroring her posture.

Her lips twitched with hidden amusement, and the shadow of a smile lit her blue eyes.

“I’m Lily,” she introduced herself with a slight nod of her head, in a parody of an old-time’s greeting.

“You do look like a lily in a way,” he approved of her name. Noticing the puzzled questions in her gaze, he hurried to explain. “I’m not talking about the coloring, although your skin is fairly fair. I’m talking about your posture and moves, and... You get my point,” he concluded his explanation with a scowl and an angry wave of his fingers. He never felt comfortable talking about such things.

A soft smile climbed onto Lily’s lips, and she shook her head with amusement. “It is not necessary to overtax yourself,” she assured him. “However, I would love to understand what happened there in the street,” she stressed out, tapping her index finger onto the table to make him understand that she was talking business and wouldn’t accept anything less.

Mark opened his mouth to do just that when his eyes fell on a waitress coming directly to their table. She didn’t seem in a rush, yet he didn’t feel like starting to talk right then.

He inclined his head slightly to signal Lily that they were about to have some company, and Lily turned her eyes toward the approaching waitress, who seemed busier with chewing something than with finding out what her new clients needed.

For a moment, Lily’s shoulders tensed. She didn’t welcome the unwanted interruption, afraid that Mark would take advantage of that and forget about what he was supposed to tell her. But then, she relaxed and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. It wasn’t as if she could force him to talk if he didn’t want to, so she had just to wait and find out if that was the case.

“Do you need a menu?” the waitress inquired with an impressive lack of interest. She didn’t even stop her chewing so that she could ask that question.

Lily frowned for a second, but then she found the waitress’s skill quite interesting, and her brows shot up her forehead. The woman had enunciated her words very clear, even though she had blown and popped the chewing-gum right in the middle of her question. That didn’t seem to impede her speech at all.

Mark didn’t show any outward reaction to the waitress’s lack of enthusiasm. He merely looked at her with cold eyes.

“I think we do. I wouldn’t dare to ask about what you would recommend to us,” he replied with clipped words. Then, he turned to Lily, an obvious sign that he had finished talking to the waitress and expected nothing else but her return with a menu.

The waitress felt slighted and narrowed her eyes to slits. Then, she stomped away, shortly returning with a menu, which she didn’t really throw it onto the table, although her move hit quite close to that.

Mark pushed an unwilling, and frosty, Thank you through tight lips and opened the menu on the corner of the table so that both Lily and he could read its content.

While the waitress shuffled her feet lazily across the floor, returning from where she had crawled out, he whispered to Lily, “Are you sure you want to drink or eat something here?”

“Don’t worry, she’s just the exception to the rule. This place is well run, and the chef knows his job. He’s the owner too, and he and I are well acquainted, you know. So, don’t worry. Just give me a sec,” she said and stood up before he could stop her.

“Where are you going? You aren’t leaving me alone here,” he hurried to jump out of his seat as well, prepared to follow her.

He couldn’t explain his anxiety. It wasn’t as if he needed her any longer, and he was a loner. Still, he didn’t want to lose sight of the willowy woman, with dark, red hair and witchy dark blue eyes.

“Don’t be silly,” she patted his arm. “I’ll be back soon. Just readying some people who could help us,” she assured him. “Believe me, it would be a pity to leave here without having the real experience of the place,” Lily smiled at him and turned around, her boots clattering on the wooden floor.