Fire and Ice - Anne Stuart [86]
For Reno the decision had been simple enough. Cleaning up the mess left by the destruction of the compound and the organization was a major undertaking, and there was no way both of them could head to L.A. Taka’s wife was pregnant, and the safety of his sister-in-law was a matter of family honor. Reno was the only one who could possibly go.
That didn’t mean he was happy about it. He needed time and distance for Jilly Lovitz to fade into an uncomfortable memory, and it was taking more of both than he would have liked.
He couldn’t even screw her out of his system. He’d gone out prowling a couple of times, looking for fast, satisfying sex with one of his old girlfriends, and ended up coming home alone. He couldn’t even jerk off—he kept seeing Jilly, feeling Jilly. It was no wonder he was a hypersensitive bundle of nerves, snapping at everyone.
And really, flying to L.A. was probably just a case of overreacting. There was no one left alive who could possibly want to hurt her, and both he and Taka would be more obvious targets. Taka’s intel had to be faulty, even if he got it directly from Peter Madsen.
According to Peter’s sources, someone had been watching the Lovitz mansion, following Jilly the few times she left the house. Which brought up any number of questions. Were they after Jilly’s father, whose financial dealings were definitely shady? Ralph Lovitz was a financier, a fancy term for an upper-class robber baron. Were they after Jilly’s bat-brained mother, who’d almost gotten both her daughters killed a couple of years ago when she joined a doomsday cult? The Lovitzes could have acquired any number of enemies, even with their hedonistic L.A. lifestyle. Or were they after Jilly—and who on earth could want to hurt her? She’d only been a peripheral complication with Hitomi and his grandfather, and everyone involved in that was dead, the family disbanded. Maybe it was an old boyfriend, except that she hadn’t had boyfriends. All he’d had to do was kiss her to know that she’d had a ridiculously small amount of experience.
Another question loomed. Why wasn’t she leaving her parents’ mansion in the Hollywood Hills? Shouldn’t she be back at school by now, getting on with her life? She wasn’t the kind of woman to mope around; he’d made it clear that he had nothing for her, and she’d left without argument. She was a practical young woman—she’d be completely over him. Hell, she was probably doing a better job of it than he was.
Not that he was having a problem. Hell, no. He’d known from the very beginning that she was trouble, and he’d done his best to keep her at arm’s length. So his resolve had faltered a couple of times, and he’d managed to enjoy himself a little too much. So what? It was over, ancient history.
But if someone was actually watching her, trailing her, then he needed to make certain she wasn’t in any danger. Reason stood that there was no one left alive who should want to hurt her.
But he was going to have to make sure.
He couldn’t sleep on the flight across the Pacific, as nervous as a cat. The other members of first class weren’t particularly happy to be sharing that rarified air with a flame-headed, tattooed punk, but they were too polite to object, and he stretched out in the little pod that they called a first-class bed, trying to tell himself this was a wasted trip. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in two weeks, not since the compound had blown and Ojiisan had died, and an airplane wasn’t going to remedy that. All he had to do was make certain she was safe and head straight back. She would never even know he was there.
Ojiisan owned a great deal of real estate in Southern California—his grandfather always believed in diversifying—and Reno could have chosen his lodging among hotels, condos and even several empty houses in the more expensive sections of the city. Instead, he went for an airport hotel and a rented sedan. In Los