Читать книгу The Lost Princes: Darius, Cassius and Monte - Raye Morgan - Страница 12

DAVID had made a couple of calls, but now he was talking to his brother again. Monte had some information on the requests he’d made earlier. Ayme’s background checked out perfectly. She did have an adoptive sister named Sam who had a few teenage arrests for petty crimes and who had died in a car accident just days ago. But that wasn’t all. The girls’ parents had died in the same accident.

“That’s odd,” David said almost to himself, reacting to the horror of what Ayme must have gone through. “I wonder why she would have held that back from me?”

“Never trust a woman, David. You aren’t falling for her, are you?”

“Hell, no. Give me some credit, okay?”

“Sure, I’m only kidding. I have no doubt about your ability to hang tough. But on to other matters, there is nothing new on the impostor pretending to spread your love about the land. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

“Thanks.”

“In the meantime, there’s news. Our Uncle Thaddeus has died.”

“Oh, no.” David felt real remorse. He was the last of the old guard. “That’s a shame. I was looking forward to meeting him someday, and hopefully hearing stories about our parents and the old days.”

“Yes, so was I. It is not to be. But his funeral is another matter. We must go to it.”

David frowned “Are you serious?”

“Yes. As luck would have it, the ceremony will be held in Piasa during the clan reunion gathering. It will be a huge affair. He’s considered the patriarch of the Ambrian expat community. Everyone who means anything to Ambria will be there. It’s our chance to begin to step forward and take the reins of the restoration movement. Whoever takes charge at the right time is going to rule the future.” He paused, letting the importance sink in.

“Darius, you must come. I need you by my side.”

“Of course. If you need me, I’ll be there.”

Monte gave him the details. “The town will turn Ambrian for a few days, it seems.”

“Our covers will be blown.”

“Yes.”

David smiled. “Thank God.”

“Yes.”

They both laughed.

“Don’t forget. Italy. Be there or be square.”

“You got it.”

He rang off, bemused and filled with conflicting emotions. He was looking forward to Italy. It was bound to be an exciting, important lesson about his own past, as well as a chance to lay the foundations for a new future. But as he turned back toward the hotel, it was Ayme and the information he’d heard about her parents that filled his thoughts.

He went back up to the room and opened the door quietly. Ayme and Cici were both sound asleep. There was only one light on in the room, in the far corner, and he left things that way, pulling off his sweater and unbuttoning his shirt but leaving it and his jeans on as he came to the bed he was going to share with Ayme.

Looking down, his gaze skimmed over her pretty face, her lovely bare shoulder, the outline of her leg beneath the sheet. She appealed to him, no doubt about it. He waited as the surge of desire swept through him. That he expected. But what surprised him was another feeling that came along with it, a tightening in his chest, a warmth, an unfamiliar urgency. It took a moment to understand what it was, and when it came to him, he closed his eyes and swore softly.

Everything in him wanted to protect her. Every instinct wanted to make sure no one could hurt her.

Where had that come from? He didn’t think he’d ever felt that before. He’d spent so much of his life protecting himself, he hadn’t had the capacity to worry about others. In other words, he was a selfish, self-centered jerk. And he could accept that. So where had this new soft-headed urge to nurture come from?

Maybe it was just because of the baby. Maybe he was blurring the lines between them in a visceral way he couldn’t control. He knew he needed to watch that. It could put him in unnecessary trouble. He didn’t want to go doing anything stupid.

More likely the facts that he’d just learned about Ayme’s parents’ fate had something to do with it. And maybe it was just that he was so damn tired. Could be. He knew he needed sleep. And there was a bed right in front of him. Too bad it was already occupied.

She’d been so shocked by the thought of them sleeping together this way, he sort of hated to spring it on her with no warning, no time for her to prepare. But he wasn’t a predator. He was just a sleepy guy right now. And the bed was just too tempting to pass up. With a sigh, he began to prepare for getting some sleep.

Giving a half turn, Ayme gasped.

There was a man in her bed!

Luckily, it was David. This was just what she’d been afraid of. Could she really allow this? Didn’t she have to make a stand or something?

But maybe not. He still had his jeans on, but his chest was bare. Still, he was fast asleep and completely nonthreatening. She relaxed and went up on one elbow to look at him in a way she hadn’t been able to do before.

She’d been telling the truth when she’d said she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She’d done some dating in college, but it never seemed to come to much. Most men she’d met had either disappointed or annoyed her in some way. The type of man she attracted never turned out to be the sort of man she thought she wanted in her life.

So far David hadn’t annoyed her. But he wasn’t trying to hit on her, either. Her mouth quirked as she realized that if his disinterest went on too long, that in itself might get to be annoying.

“You’re never satisfied,” she accused herself, laughing at the paradox. “Picky, picky, picky.”

No doubt about it, he was about the most handsome man she’d ever been this close to. She liked the way his lustrous coffee-colored hair fell over his forehead in a sophisticated wave that could only have come from a high-end salon. Then she laughed at herself for even thinking that way. This was no time to dilute her Dallas roots.

“Hey,” she whispered to herself. “He’s got a good haircut.”

But the rest of him was purely natural and didn’t depend on any artifice at all. His features were clear and even, his brows smooth, his nose Roman, his chin hard and newly covered with a coat of stubble that only enhanced his manliness. He looked strong and tough, but he also looked like a good guy.

And then there was the rest of him. He had a build to make any woman’s heart beat a little faster—something between a Greek statue and an Olympic swimmer. His skin was smooth and golden and the tiny hairs that ran down from his beautiful navel gleamed in the lamplight. His jeans were the expensive kind and his shirt was crisp and smooth, despite all it had been through in the day. His hands were beautiful, strong but gentle. She leaned a little closer, taking in his clean, male scent and the heat that rose from his body, feeling a sudden yearning she didn’t really understand. It was tempting to lean down and touch her lips to his skin. She leaned a little closer, fantasizing about doing just that, about touching that belly button with her tongue, about running her hand along those gorgeous muscles.

Then she looked back up into his face and found his blue eyes wide open and staring right at her.

“Oh!” she gasped, ready to jump back away from him, but his hand shot out and stopped her.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he whispered. “Cici is stirring.”

She stayed right where she was, just inches from his face.

“So,” he said softly, his eyes brimming with laughter. “I guess I caught you checking me out.”

She gasped again and turned bright red on the spot.

“I was doing no such thing,” she whispered rather loudly, her eyes huge with outrage.

“Oh, yes, you were.” He was almost grinning now. “I saw you.”

“No, I was just…” Her voice faded. She couldn’t think of anything good to pretend she’d been doing.

“Hey, it’s only human to be interested,” he said softly, still teasing her. “Come on, admit it. You were interested.”

“I’m not admitting anything,” she whispered back. “You’re not all that wonderful, you know. I mean, you may be tempting, but I can resist you.”

Somehow that didn’t come out quite the way she’d meant it and she was blushing again. His iron grip on her wrist meant she was trapped staying close. So close, in fact, that she could feel his breath on her cheek. It felt lovely and exciting and her mouth was dry. The laughter in his eyes was gone. Instead something new smoldered in his gaze, something that scared her just a bit. She couldn’t stay here against him like this. She pulled back harder and this time he let her go.

She swung her legs off the bed and sat up, looking back at him. “I…I think I’ll get up for now,” she said. “I think you should get some sleep and…and…”

He pulled up and leaned on one elbow, watching her. “I think sleep is going to be hard to find for a while,” he said dryly as Cici began to whimper. “We might as well both get up.”

She rose and went to the baby and by the time she’d pulled her up and turned back, he was up and putting on his sweater.

“I’ll go down and get some food,” he said. “I’m sure you’re hungry by now. Fish and chips okay for you?”

“More fish?” She wrinkled her nose.

“It’s good for you.” He hesitated. “I could probably find an American hamburger somewhere, if that’s what you want.”

“No, actually I like fish and chips just fine. As long as the fish isn’t kippers.”

He grinned. “Don’t worry. They don’t make them that way too often.”

He left the room and she sighed, feeling a delicious sort of tension leave with him. He’d said it didn’t mean a thing, but she was beginning to think he’d been fooling himself. For her, it was meaning more and more all the time.

The fish and chips were okay and so was the pint of ale he brought back with them. But now it was time to tend to Cici and hope to convince her to go back to sleep so that they could get some rest, as well. After a half hour of pacing back and forth with a baby softly sobbing against her shoulder, Ayme had a proclamation to make.

“I’ve decided I’m not going to have any children,” she said with a flourish.

“Oh.” David looked up from the evening paper he’d picked up with the fish. “Well, it might be best to hold off until you get married.”

She glared at him. “I’m not going to do that, either.”

He smiled. “Right.”

“I’m serious about this,” she insisted. “Babies take over your life. It’s unbelievable how much work they are.”

“It’s true.” He had some sympathy for her state of mind. He’d been there himself. “They do monopolize all your time. But that doesn’t last forever.”

“It certainly seems to last forever on the day you’re doing it.”

He leaned back. “That’s just for the moment. Before you know it, they’re heading out the door with their friends and don’t need you at all anymore.”

She gave him a long-suffering look. “How long do you have to wait for that lovely day?”

“It takes a while.”

“I’d be marking off the days on my calendar.”

He grinned. “It can be hard, but think of the rewards.”

“What rewards?”

Cici stirred in her arms, stretching and making a kitten sound. He watched as Ayme’s fierce look melted.

“You see?” he said softly.

She smiled up at him ruefully. “Yeah, but is it all really worth it?”

He shook his head. How the hell had he become the family practices guru here? Still, she seemed to need some sort of reassurance and he supposed he could do that at least.

“Once you have one of your own,” he told her, “I think you’ll figure that out for yourself.”

He rose and took Cici from her, and as he did, he thought of what Monte had told him. He’d thought from the beginning that there was a sense of sorrow lingering in her gaze, something deeper than she was admitting to. Why hadn’t she told him about her parents? She must have a reason. Or maybe, as Monte hinted, it was a sign that he shouldn’t trust her.

But what the heck—he didn’t trust anybody, did he?

“Ayme, you’ve said you don’t know much about your birth parents and you don’t know much about Ambria. What exactly do you know?”

She scrunched up her nose as she thought about it. “Just a few things I’ve picked up casually over the years.”

“You should know more.”

She looked at him and made a face. “How much do you know?”

“I don’t know as much as I should, either. I should have learned more.”

“So we’re both babes in the woods, so to speak.”

He nodded, though there was obviously a vast gulf between what he knew and what she did. “Why weren’t you more curious?”

She didn’t answer that one, but she had something else on her mind.

“You were adopted just like I was,” she noted. “Didn’t you ever feel like you had to…I don’t know. To prove to your parents that they should be glad to have picked you?”

He stared at her. “Never,” he said.

She shrugged. “Well, I did. I was always trying so hard to make them proud of me.”

He could see that. He could picture her as a little girl in her starched dresses with patent leather mary janes on her little feet.

Cici had finally fallen asleep and he laid her down in her little car seat bed before he turned toward Ayme again.

“And were they?” he asked softly, his gaze taking in every detail of her pretty face. “Proud of you, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. I was the perfect child. I made straight As and won awards and swam on the swim team and got scholarships. I…I think I did everything I possibly could.” A picture swam into her head. She’d entered the school district Scholars’ Challenge, even though she was the youngest competitor and she was sure she had no chance. Jerry, a boy that she liked, had tried out and hadn’t made it. He mocked her, teased her, made her miserable for days, saying she’d only made it on a fluke, that she was going to be the laughing stock of the school.

By the time the night of the competition rolled around, she didn’t like him much anymore, but he had succeeded in destroying her confidence. She went on stage shaking, her knees knocking together, and at first, she didn’t think she could hear the questions. She panicked. Jerry was right. She wasn’t good enough. She looked to the side of the stage, ready to make a run for it.

Then she looked out into the crowd. There was her mother, looking so sweet, and her father, holding a sign that said Ayme Rocks. They were clapping and laughing and throwing kisses her way. They believed in her. There was a lump in her throat, but she turned and suddenly she knew the answer to the question, even though she thought she hadn’t heard it right. She was awarded ten points. She wasn’t going to run after all. A feeling of great calm came over her. She would do this for her parents.

She won the trophy for her school. Her parents were on either side of her as they came up the walk at home. Suddenly, her mother stepped ahead. She threw open the doors to the house, and there inside were friends and neighbors tooting horns and throwing confetti—a surprise celebration of her win. It was only later that she realized the celebration had been planned before her parents knew she would win. They were going to celebrate her anyway.

Thinking of that night now, tears rose and filled her eyes and she bit her lip, forcing them back.

“I think I made them very happy. Didn’t I?”

Her eyes were brimming as she looked up into his face as though trying to find affirmation in his eyes.

He couldn’t answer that for her, but he took her hands in his and held them while he looked down at her and wished he knew what to say to help her find comfort.

She took in a shuddering breath, then said forcefully, holding his hands very tightly, “Yes. I know I did.” She closed her eyes, made a small hiccupping sound and started to cry.

He pulled her into his arms, holding her, rocking her, murmuring sweet comforting things that didn’t really have any meaning. She calmed herself quickly and began to pull back away from him as though she were embarrassed. He let her go reluctantly. She felt very good in his arms.

“Sorry,” she murmured, half smiling through her tears. “I don’t know what made me fall apart like that. It’s not like me to do that.”

“You’re tired,” he said, and she nodded.

He waited, giving her time, wondering when she was going to tell him her parents had died in the accident, but she calmed down and began to talk about a dog she had found when she was young.

“And what about Sam?” he asked at last, to get her back on track.

Now that she had unburdened herself this far, he felt as though she might as well get as much out in the open as she could bear. A catharsis of sorts.

And she seemed to want to talk right now. There was a little couch in the room and they sat down side by side and she went on.

“See, that’s the flip side of it,” she said. “The dark side, I guess. The better I did, the worse Sam seemed to do.” She tried to smile but her face didn’t seem to be working right at the moment. “The more I seemed to shine, the more Sam rejected that path. She became the rebel, the one who didn’t succeed, on purpose. She got tattoos against our father’s orders and got her nose pierced and ran around with losers.”

“That sounds pretty typical. I’ve seen it before.”

“I guess so.” She shrugged. “Funny, but I can see it so much more clearly now than I ever did then. I knew she resented me.” She looked up quickly and managed half a smile. “Don’t get me wrong. We shared a lot of good times, too. But the undercurrent was always resentment. I used to think if she would just try a little harder…But of course, she felt like I’d already taken all the love slots in the family. There was no room for her to be a success. I’d already filled that role. She had to find something else to be.”

“That must have been hard on your parents.”

“Oh, yes. But in some ways, they didn’t help matters. They weren’t shy about telling Sam what they thought of her.”

“And comparing her to you?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Which didn’t help our relationship as you can imagine.”

“Of course.”

“So Sam left home as soon as she could. By the time she showed up with Cici, she’d been mostly gone for years, off with some boyfriend or another and only coming back when she needed something. She broke our parents hearts time and time again. And then, suddenly, there she was with a baby in her arms. Of course, part of us was thrilled. A new member of the family. But at the same time, my parents were horrified. Where was Cici’s father? Had there been a wedding? I’m sure you can guess the answer to that one.”

“I think I can.”

“She was penitent at first. I think she’d been under a lot of stress trying to deal with a baby on her own. But once she got some good sleep and some good food, she quickly became defiant again. And when Mom tried to get her to make some realistic plans she had a tantrum.”

“That was helpful.”

“Yes. It was later that night that she told me who Cici’s father was. She came to my room to ask me to take care of Cici. She claimed she’d tried motherhood and it didn’t agree with her. So she was taking off.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“What did you say?”

She turned to him. “What do you think I said? I got hysterical.” She threw up her hands. “I couldn’t take her baby. I…I refused and I yelled a lot. I told her either our parents would have to raise her…or we’d have to put her up for adoption.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, yes. I said horrible things.” She looked at the sleeping baby. Was she looking at the situation any differently now? “Things I didn’t mean. But I was trying to get her to face reality. She had the responsibility. She couldn’t just shrug it off.”

“And yet, somehow that is the way it worked out.”

She nodded.

“She took the keys to my mother’s car and drove off into the rainy night.”

“And your parents went after her?”

“Yes. And they found her quickly enough.”

“And?”

She flashed him a stiff smile. “There was an accident. And Cici became my problem.”

He watched her, puzzled. Why not take that next step and tell him her parents had died in that accident, too? What was holding her back? It was a horrible thing and she was probably still reeling from the shock of it. But surely it would be better to open up about it, work through it, put it in some sort of context with her life. Until she did that, he was afraid she would have that look of tragedy deep in her eyes. And what he wanted most for her—wanted with a deep, aching need—was happiness.