Fire and Ice (Ice 5)

He lifted his head, but she still wouldn’t look at him. “You know, it’s your fault we’re here. If you hadn’t gone racing off like that, I wouldn’t have had to follow. We’d both be safe back in that hotel room. Or at least you would—I would have been trying to figure out what was going on.”

Silence. “It’s nice being able to hear myself think for a change, without interruptions. The question I’m trying to figure out is what they’ve done with my grandfather, and whether or not he knows how far things have gone. Hell, whether or not he’s still alive. But I know he is—he’s been my only family, aside from Taka, for most of my life. I’d know if something had happened to him. I’d feel it inside.” That sounded a little too sentimental, but it didn’t matter since she was ignoring him.

“You know, if I have to choose between keeping you alive and saving my grandfather that I’ll go for my grandfather. You’ll be on your own. I expect if Hitomi decides to torture you, you can always talk him to death. Unless Azuki gets out of the hospital and decides to go for revenge. He knows he can’t kill me, but he won’t think twice about blowing your head off. Sorry, didn’t mean to remind you.”

That was exactly what he’d meant to do, but she still didn’t react. She leaned forward to rest her face on her drawn-up knees and she looked very young. Very sexy.

Snap out of it, Reno! he told himself. You’ve just managed to rid her of any romantic notions. Don’t blow it by thinking with your dick again.

The funny thing was, it wasn’t his dick that was giving him trouble. Yeah, for some crazy reason he still wanted to screw her when he should be concentrating on other things. But even more, he wanted her lying on the narrow cot with him, her body crammed up against his, her arms around him, her face against his shoulder, her heart beating against his.

Hell, it was worth a try. “There’s room on the cot if you want to be more comfortable.”

He got another derisive snort out of her, a small triumph. As long as she was fighting back, he was doing fine. Now he just had to figure a way to get out of there and find his grandfather. Before Hitomi realized that getting rid of all of them would be the smartest and easiest thing to do.

He knew what was stopping Hitomi-san. There were enough members of the kobun who had, if not enough loyalty, at least respect and admiration for his grandfather, and they wouldn’t let Hitomi dishonor him. But that would only slow Hitomi’s hand for so long. And the respect shown Ojiisan wouldn’t necessarily translate to his hot-headed grandson and a gaijin interloper.

He could wait for Taka to come back. Nothing had ever been able to stop Taka when he set his mind to it, and Reno had no doubt that he’d eventually show up and save the day. It would be the smartest thing he could do; making a move on his own would endanger Jilly and force him to interact with her. If he just stayed stretched out on the cot, forgetting what had happened on there just a short while ago, he’d end up as free as a bird.

He glanced over at her, wondering if she was crying. She wasn’t. Her face had an almost eerie calm, an expression that was making him very uneasy. He wasn’t foolish enough to think she was taking his instant repudiation well. He was just hoping the silent treatment was her only way of making him pay.

But he had the gloomy feeling that she had something far worse in mind.

17

The floor was surprisingly comfortable. In fact, she might even have preferred a bed of nails, but none appeared to be handy. She could always beat her head against the wall until she was bloody and unconscious, but she’d developed a certain fondness for the silk clothing that rat bastard had brought her, and she didn’t want to ruin them. She was going to take them back to L.A. with her, have them professionally cleaned, and wear them without a second thought.

He’d known. The whole goddamn time he’d known that she had a crush on him. How could Summer have told him? For that matter, how could Summer have known? It had been embarrassing enough to admit it to herself—she was hardly going to confess her adolescent fantasy to her wise older sister. All she’d done was drop in the occasional question now and then—that shouldn’t have been enough to tip Summer off. And she had taken the photos off the disk in Summer’s digital camera last time she came to visit. Most of them were of Japan and California and her beautiful husband. But there were a few, just a few, of Reno. And what was the harm in uploading them into her computer, as well?

Why would they tell him? It wasn’t like she was going to be anywhere around him. And it was going to be over and done with as soon as she found a decent-enough lover to carry through with the job. All right, maybe she’d come running to Japan with the subconscious hope of seeing Reno once more, after that initial look two years ago. But really, it was just a remnant of her odd, old/young life.

So she’d walked right into it, with Reno knowing all the time that she had a sophomoric passion for him. He must have been laughing at her wasted attempts at pretending he annoyed her.

No, that wasn’t true. He really did annoy her. He was a smart-aleck pain in the butt, with the emotional availability of a soap dish. And if she had supernatural powers, she’d vaporize him as he lay stretched out on the cot, his long legs dangling over the edge.

So her ridiculous crush on him was gone, wasn’t it? Had vanished the first time he knocked her out. Or it was definitely gone when he pushed her out of the car on the snowy mountain. Maybe not till he tricked her into the capsule hotel and put his hands on her with insulting ease.

Or maybe she’d held out until she’d actually had sex with him. That was enough to get her over him, wasn’t it? His ice-cold rejection the next morning?

And yet she’d made love with him on that very cot, only a matter of hours ago, all the while knowing he was a son of a bitch.

Okay, but now she really hated him. No hesitation, no caveats, no doubts. There was no coming back from his final, insulting rejection.

She closed her eyes, envisioning a solid chunk of the ceiling suddenly coming loose and landing square on the cot, squashing him like a bug. It was a lovely thought. Or maybe running him down with a car, so that he stood there, watching her coming and knowing that there was no way he could escape her murderous wrath.

No, she just needed to let go. She’d been used, shamed, insulted, abandoned. And, all right, so she’d had a crush on him. That was over and done with, and wasn’t coming back. She knew him too well, knew the way his mind worked. His casual cruelty was a dead giveaway. He had no reason to be so vicious—he could have gotten rid of her just as efficiently without hurting her. And suddenly she knew why.

She pushed herself to her feet, using the wall to brace herself. Reno would have heard her move, but he remained stretched out on the cot with deceptive laziness. He turned his head as she approached, his cool expression wary.

“Are you planning to beat me to death with a purse?” he asked, looking up at her.

It was tempting, but she’d abandoned her makeshift weapon. “Why are you afraid of me?” she said, her voice perfectly calm.

“I’m not afraid of anything or anyone.”

“Of course you are. Every ti

me you get close to me you turn around and say something vicious. What do you think I’m going to do, cling so tightly that you can’t get free? Do you hate all the women you sleep with?”