Читать книгу The Lost Princes: Darius, Cassius and Monte - Raye Morgan - Страница 9

THIS was nuts.

David swore softly, trying to get a handle on this crazy reaction he was having. She was just a woman. He’d been with more women than he wanted to think about. He didn’t get nervous around females anymore. He’d gotten over that years ago. He’d made successful passes at some international beauties in his day, film stars, rock singers, even a female bull fighter, without a qualm. So why was his heart thumping in his chest as he approached Ayme to check out her back?

She stood there so demurely, holding the sheet tightly to her chest so that it gaped in back, exposing everything down to the tailbone, but not much else. The entire back was there, interrupted only by the slender scrap of lace that was the band of her bra, but that might as well have been invisible. He didn’t even notice it. He reached out to push her hair back off her neck, his fingers trailing across her warm skin, and the flesh beneath his hand seemed to glow.

“Okay, I’ll do this as fast as I can,” he said, then cleared his throat to try to stop the ridiculous quavering he could hear in his voice. “I’m just going to run my hand across your back a few times.”

“Get it all,” she said, head tilted up bravely. “I can take it.” She drew in her breath as his fingers began to move.

“But don’t linger,” she warned softly.

Don’t linger.

For some reason, those words echoed over and over in his head as he worked. Her skin was buttery smooth, summer-day hot, totally tempting, and every inch seemed to resonate to his touch. But he swore to himself that he wasn’t going to notice anything, no matter how crazy it made him. He wasn’t going to notice how good she smelled or how sweetly her curves seemed to fill his hand.

So why was his breath coming so fast? Why was his body tightening like a vise? This was insane. He was responding to her like he hadn’t responded to a woman in ages. And all he was doing was checking for foreign objects on her back.

And being subtly seduced by her gorgeous body. He closed his eyes as he made a last pass down as low as he dared let himself go, and then drew back, saying, “We’d better check your underclothes, too,” and heard his voice break in the middle of it.

He swore angrily, feeling his face turn as red as he’d ever felt it turn, but she didn’t look back. She reached under the sheet and pulled off her bra and panties in two quick moves and checked them herself.

“They seem clear to me,” she said without turning to look at him. “You can check too if you’d like.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said gruffly.

This was unbelievable. He felt sixteen again. How had he ended up here? There was a tension in the room that was almost electric. Was he the only one who felt it, or did she feel it, too? It was probably best not to go there. He turned to leave the room without looking at her again.

“Wait,” she said. “Do you think I’m clear?”

Reluctantly, he made a half turn back but didn’t meet her gaze. “I didn’t find any sign of anything, so I guess you are.”

“Good. I’m glad. So now you don’t suspect me any longer?”

He turned all the way and looked right into her dark eyes. “I suspect everyone, Ayme. Don’t take it personally.”

She made a small movement meant to be a shrug but almost more of a twitch. “I’m trying not to. But it’s not easy.”

His gaze was caught in hers and he couldn’t seem to pull it away. There had been a quiver in her voice, a thread of emotion he couldn’t quite identify, and it had touched him somehow. Looking at her, he felt suddenly confused, not sure how to respond to her.

“Go ahead and get dressed,” he said gruffly as soon as he managed to turn away from her. Not looking her way again, he went through the doorway. “We’ll get going in just a minute.”

She didn’t answer and he went into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of cold water and gulped it down, then took in a deep breath and tried to rationalize away what he’d just done.

It wasn’t what it seemed, of course. How could it be? He didn’t do things like that. His over-the-top reaction to her body was just a symptom of everything else going on around them—the muted fear, the preparations for running, the memories of his own tragic past. Just natural heightened apprehension. Hardly unusual. Nothing to be alarmed about.

She was just a girl.

Relieved and resolute, he went back into his more normal confident action state and returned to the bedroom with a spring in his step. Luckily, she appeared dressed and ready to go and when he looked into her face, there was nothing special there—no regrets, no resentment, no special emotions making him uncomfortable.

“Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.” He slung his overnight bag over his shoulder and reached for the baby. “I’ll get Cici. You bring your bags, okay?”

He led the way to the back steps, avoiding the elevator. It was a long, long climb down, but eventually they hit the ground floor, made their way to the parking garage and found his little racy sports car. He made Ayme and the baby wait against a far wall while he prepared for departure.

He’d done everything right. He’d switched out the license plates on the car. He’d checked under the hood and along the undercarriage for explosives. But even so, he winced as he started the engine with the remote, relieved when nothing went “boom.”

Another day, another risky move, he thought to himself as he helped Ayme into the car and began packing baby supplies away in all the nooks and crannies. One of these times the click from the starter just might be the last thing he ever heard.

Now the next dilemma—should he head for a big city where they could get lost in the crowd, or for the countryside where no one would ever think to look? For once he chose the country.

But that was still a long way away. First, he headed into a direction directly opposed to where he actually wanted to go. After an hour of driving, he pulled into a protected area and hustled Ayme and Cici out of the car with all their belongings. Then he hailed a cab and they went in a totally different direction, stopping at a garage where he had arranged for another of his cars to be stored. This car was a complete contrast to his usual transportation, small and boxy and not eye-catching at all.

Ayme carefully maintained a pleasant expression. She didn’t want to be a whiner. But she couldn’t resist, as they squeezed into the small, cramped car, saying “I like the sports car better.”

“So do I, believe me,” he told her. “This is my incognito car.”

“I can see why. You could probably join the Rose Parade unnoticed in this thing.”

Glancing sideways, he threw her a quick smile that had actual warmth and humor in it, and she tingled a bit in response. It was nice to know he could do that. She’d been worried that he might be all scowls and furled brows with very little room for fun. But it looked like there was hope. It might not be all sex appeal with him.

She smiled to herself, enjoying her own little joke. She would love to tease him but she didn’t quite dare, not yet. If he was right, they were running from danger here. Not a time for light-hearted humor.

Danger. She frowned out the window at the passing buildings. She wished she knew a little more about this “danger” element. Who was this dangerous person and why was he after David?

For just a moment, her mind went back to what had happened in the bedroom just before they left David’s apartment. The way her pulse had surged in response to a few hot looks from the man was all the danger she could deal with right now. Clear and present danger. That’s what he represented to a girl like she was.

Woman, she corrected herself silently. You’re a woman, darn it. So act like one!

“You might as well relax,” he said, glancing her way again. “It’ll be a few hours before we get to our destination.”

“I’m relaxed,” she claimed. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep while Cici is taking her nap?”

It was a sensible suggestion, but she wasn’t in a sensible mood. Despite her bone-aching weariness, she was too full of adrenaline to sleep now.

“But I’ll miss the sightseeing,” she told him. “I want to see the countryside.”

He glanced out at the gaunt, charred-looking buildings they were passing. “We’re not going through a lot of countryside right now. More like an industrial wasteland.”

She nodded, her eyes big as she peered out at everything, trying to take it all in. “I noticed that.”

“Our route is circuitous and it’s not going to take us through many of the nicest parts of England I’m afraid. I’m trying to keep it low key and stay away from places where I might see someone I know.”

“It’s smokestack city so far,” she noted wistfully. “Oh, well. Maybe I will try to sleep a little.”

“The views will be better in an hour or so,” he promised.

“Okay.” She snuggled down into the seat, closed her eyes and went out like a light.

He noted that with a sense of relief. As long as she slept, she couldn’t ask questions.

He really had mixed feelings about Ayme. Why had he brought her along, anyway? He’d almost left her behind and it probably would have been the reasonable thing to do. But he felt a strange sense of responsibility toward her and of course he wanted to make sure that she was protected.

On the other hand, she probably wasn’t going to thank him in the end for dragging her along on this wild-goose chase. She would be better off in a nice hotel in a touristy part of town where she could while away her time shopping or sightseeing or whatever. At the same time, he would have been free to slip in and out of various cities and countries without having to adjust for a baby. After a day hauling a child all over the landscape, she might be ready to accept a solution such as that.

It was a tempting proposition, but there was a major flaw in his thinking and it came to him pretty quickly. Someone out there in the world was fathering babies under his name. This was not helpful to the world situation or even to his own peace of mind. He had to find out who it was and he had to get it stopped. Until he’d managed that, it might be best to keep tabs on the young woman who’d dumped this particular problem in his lap.

Well, that was hardly fair. The problem had been there all the time. He just hadn’t been aware of it until she’d arrived on his doorstep carrying the evidence.

But when you came right down to it, all that might be an excuse to keep her around, just because he liked looking at her. He glanced down at her. She was super adorable when she slept.

He had never been one to be bowled over by a pretty face. After all, there were so many pretty faces and he’d had his share of romantic adventures back when he was indulging in that sort of thing. He wasn’t going to let a little fatal attraction get in the way of his plans.

He was hardheaded and pragmatic, as he had to be if he and his brother were going to succeed in getting their country back. Romance wouldn’t work in times like these, and even a casual flirtation could cloud a man’s mind and get in the way of the goal. What he and his brother planned to do was going to be hard, perilous and very possibly fatal.

Relationships were out. Period.

He wondered, and not for the first time, what Monte would think of what he was doing. He wanted to call him but this wasn’t the place—nor the time. He had to be somewhere secure. Later—once they found a place near the coast to stay for the night, he would find a way to contact his brother.

She slept for two hours and then woke, stretching like a kitten and looking up at him as though she were surprised to see him.

“Hi,” she said. “You’re still here.”

“Where would I go?” he asked, half amused.

She shrugged. “Since my life became a bad dream, I expect dreamlike things to happen all the time. Maybe a Mad Hatter at the wheel, or at the very least, an angry hedgehog.”

“It’s a dormouse,” he muttered, making way for another car to merge onto the roadway in front of him.

“All right, an angry dormouse.” She smiled, amused that he would know the finer points of the Alice in Wonderland story. “So you’re neither?”

“Nope. But I have been accused of White Rabbit tendencies in the past.” He gave her a sideways grin. “Always late for that important date.”

“Ah.” She nodded wisely. “Annoying trait, that.”

“Yes. They say habitual lateness is a form of selfishness, but I think it’s something else entirely.”

“Like what?” She was curious since she was always late for everything herself and would like to find a good new excuse for it.

But he never got to the point of telling her. Cici intervened with a long, loud demand for attention from the backseat.

“Wow, she’s hungry,” Ayme noted, going up on her knees to tend to her over the back of the seat. She pulled a bottle of formula out of the baby bag, regretting that she couldn’t warm it. But Cici wasn’t picky at the moment. She sucked on the liquid as though someone had been starving her.

“Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger, little girl,” Ayme cooed at her. “There’s a lot of that hunger thing going around.”

“Subtle hint,” he commented.

“I can get less subtle if it bothers you,” she said, flicking a smile his way. “Do we have any food with us at all?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Oh.” His answer was disappointing, but pretty much what she’d expected. “Are we planning to rectify that anytime soon?” she asked, trying to be diplomatic about it.

He grunted. “I guess we could stop when we see something promising.”

“Good. You don’t want me to start wailing away like Cici does. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

She spent the next ten minutes feeding the baby, then pulled her up awkwardly and tried to burp her. David noted the lack of grace in her efforts, but he didn’t say anything. She would learn, he figured. Either that, or she would find Cici’s father and head back to Texas, free of burdens and swearing off children for all time. It seemed to be one of those either-or deals.

“We need a real car seat for her,” he said as Ayme settled her back into the backseat. “If we get stopped by the police, this makeshift bed won’t cut it. We’ll probably both get carted away for child endangerment.”

She plunked herself back into her seat and fastened the seat belt, then tensed, waiting for the inevitable complaints from the back. After a moment she began to relax. To her surprise, Cici wasn’t crying. What a relief!

“When I was young,” she told David, “my father would put me in a wash basket and strap me to the seat and carry me all over the Texas Panhandle on his daily route.”

“Those were the days when you could do things like that.” He nodded with regret. “Those days are gone.”

“Pity.”

He almost smiled thinking of her as a young sprout, peering over the edge of the basket at the world.

“What did he do on his route. Salesman?”

“No, he was a supervisor for the Department of Agriculture. He checked out crops and stuff. Gave advice.” She smiled, remembering.

“It was fun going along with him. My mother worked as a school secretary in those days, so my father was basically babysitting me and my sister.” She laughed softly. Memories.

“Sam’s basket was strapped right next to mine. As we got older, we got to play with a lot of great farm animals. Those were the best days.” She sighed. “I always liked animals more than people, anyway.”

“Hey.”

“When I was a child, silly. Things have changed now.”

The funny thing was he wasn’t so sure all that much had changed with her. From the little bit she’d told him of her life, he had a pretty good idea of how hard she worked and how little she played. Someone ought to show her how to have a little fun.

Someone. Not him, of course, but someone.

They stopped at a small general store and he went in, leaving her in the car entertaining the baby. Minutes later he came out with a car seat in tow.

“This ought to do it,” he said, and in no time at all they were back on the road, Cici officially ensconced in the proper equipment.

“She seems to like it fine,” Ayme noted. “She’s already falling back to sleep.”

He handed her a couple of sandwiches he’d picked up in the store and she looked at them suspiciously.

“This isn’t going to be one of those strange British things, is it?” she asked. “Vegemite or Marmite or whatever?”

He grinned. “Those are Australian and British, respectively. I’m Dutch. We eat kippers!”

“What’s a kippers?”

“Kippers are canned herring, usually smoked.”

“Fish?” She pulled back the paper. “Oh, no! What is that smell?”

“It’s a great smell,” he retorted. “A nice, sea-faring nation smell. Lots of protein. Eat up. You’ll love it.”

She was ravenously hungry, so she did eat up, but she complained the whole time. He ate his own kipper sandwich with relish.

“Good stuff,” he remarked as he finished up. For some reason the fact that she was complaining so much about the food had put him in a marvelous mood. “That’ll hold us until we get in later tonight.”

She rolled her eyes, but more as a way to tease him than for real. Now that she’d had something to eat, she was sleepy again, but that made her feel guilty.

“Would you like me to drive?” she said. “You must be dead on your feet. You need some sleep.”

He shook his head. “Do you have a license?” he noted.

“No,” she said sadly. “Only for Texas.”

“That won’t work.”

She sighed. “Sorry.”

But in another few minutes, she was asleep again.

Just looking at her made him smile. He bit it off and tried to scowl instead. He wasn’t going to let her get to him. He wasn’t that easy. Was he?

When he couldn’t resist glancing at her again he realized that maybe he was. But what the hell, it didn’t mean a thing. It was just that she was so open and natural and so completely different from the women he was used to. For years now, he’d been hanging out with a pretty sophisticated crowd. And that was on purpose. He’d found out early that you could find out a lot if you hung with the right people and learned to listen. He had a very large hole in his life. He needed some very specialized information to fill it in.

Twenty-five years before, he’d been woken in the middle of a terrifying night, bundled up and raced out of the burning castle he’d lived in all six years of his young life. He knew now that his parents were being murdered at about the same time. It was likely that many of his brothers and sisters were killed as well. But one old man whose face still haunted his dreams had come to his room and saved his life that night.

Taken by people who were strangers to him from his island nation and smuggled into the Netherlands, he arrived the next day, a shaken and somewhat traumatized refugee, at the noisy, cheerful home of the Dykstra family. He was told this would be his new home, his new family, and that he must never speak of Ambria, never let anyone know anything about his past. The people who brought him there then melted away into the scenery and were never seen again—at least not by him. And there he was, suddenly a Dykstra, suddenly Dutch. And not allowed to ask any questions, ever.

The Dykstras were good to him. His new parents were actually quite affectionate, but there were so many children in the family, it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. Still, everyone had to pitch in and he did learn to take care of the younger ones. He also learned how to listen and quietly glean information. From the very beginning his purpose in life was to find out what had happened to his family and to find a way to connect with any of them who might still be alive. As he got older, he began to meet the right people and gain the trust of the powerful in many areas, and little by little, he began to piece things together.

At first the socializing had just been a natural inclination. But over time he began to realize that these people did move in circles close to the wealthy and the influential, elements that might prove helpful in his quest to find out what had happened to his family—and his country. Over the years various things half-heard or half-understood sent him on wild-goose chases across the continent, but finally, six months ago, he’d hit pay dirt.

He’d been playing a friendly set of tennis with Nico, the son of a French diplomat, when the young man had stopped his serve, and, ball in hand, had stared at him for a long moment.

“You know,” he said, shaking his head, “I met someone at a dinner in Paris last week who could be your twin. It was a fancy banquet for the new foreign minister. He looked just like you.”

“Who? The foreign minister?”

“No, idiot.” Nico laughed. “This fellow I met. I can’t remember his name, but I think he was with the British delegation. You don’t have a brother in government?”

By now, David’s heart was pounding in his chest as though he’d just run a four-minute mile. He knew this might be the break he’d been searching for. But he had to remain cool and pretend this was nothing but light banter. He took a swing into empty air with his racquet and tried to appear nonchalant.

“Not that I know of. All my brothers are happily ensconced in the business world, and spend most of their time in Amsterdam.” He grinned across the net. “And none of them look much like me.”

He was referring to his foster brothers, but the fact that he wasn’t a real Dykstra was not common knowledge and he was happy to keep it that way.

“The ugly duckling of the family, are you?” teased Nico.

“That’s me.”

Nico served and it was all David could do to pay enough attention to return it in a long drive to the corner. Nico’s response went into the net and that gave David a chance for another couple of questions, but Nico really didn’t seem to know any more than what he’d said.

Still, it was a start, and the information breathed new life into his hopes and dreams of finding his family. He got to work researching, trying to find a list of the names of everyone who had attended that banquet. Once he had that, he began searching for pictures on the Internet. Finally, he thought he just might have his man.

Mark Stephols was his name. There were a couple of other possibilities, but the more he stared at the pictures of Mark, the more certain he became. Now, how to approach him and find out for sure?

He could find out where Mark was likely to be at certain public events, but he couldn’t just walk up and say “Hi. Are you my brother?” And if he actually was, the last thing he could risk was standing side by side with the man, where everyone could immediately note the resemblance between them and begin to ask questions. So as he waited for the right chance, he began to color his hair a bit darker and grow a mustache. There was no point in making identification too easy.

His highly placed social intimates came in handy, and very soon he obtained an invitation to a reception where Mark Stephols could be approached. Despite the hair dye, despite the mustache, the moment the introduction was made—“Mr. Stephols, may I introduce Mr. David Dyskstra of Dyskstra Shipping?”—their gazes met and the connection was made. There was instant—though silent—acknowledgment between the two of them that they had to be related.

They shook hands and Monte leaned close to whisper, “Meet me in the rose garden.”

A few minutes later they came face-to-face without any witnesses and stared at each other as though they each weren’t sure they were seeing what they thought they were seeing.

David started to speak and Monte put a finger to his lips. “The walls have ears,” he said softly.

David grinned. He was fairly vibrating with excitement. “How about the shrubbery?”

“That’s possible, too, of course. Don’t trust anything or anyone.”

“Let’s walk, then.”

“Good idea.”

They strolled along the edge of a small lake for a few minutes, exchanging pleasantries, until they were far enough from the house and from everyone else, to feel somewhat safe. They looked at one another, then both jockied comments back and forth for another few minutes, neither knowing just what to say, neither wanting to give the game away, just in case what looked true wasn’t.

Finally, Monte said out of the blue, “Do you remember the words to the old folk song our mother would sing when putting us to sleep for the night?”

David stopped where he was and concentrated, trying to remember. Did he? What had that been again?

And then he closed his eyes and began to murmur softly, as though channeling from another time, another place. In his head, he heard his mother’s voice. From his mouth came the childhood bedtime song in Ambrian. When he finished and opened his eyes again, he turned to his brother. Mark had been still, but tears were coursing down his tanned cheeks. Reaching out, he took David’s hand and held it tightly.

“At last,” he whispered. “At last.”