This Magic Moment

by Susan Squires

  “You mean she’s not at The Breakers at all?” Kee asked, surprised.

  “Oh, my God.” Brina put her hand to her mouth.

  “She’s been fretful lately,” Jane observed thoughtfully, coming to the breakfast bar as she wiped her hands.

  “Guess I’m not the only one who couldn’t stand being cooped up here.” Lanyon wasn’t smug, though. He looked depressed, as though Tammy was already lost to them. God, Michael hoped that wasn’t true.

  “Michael, Find her,” Brina commanded. “Wherever she’s gone, we’ve got to get her back before the Clan gets her. Oh, how could I not have realized she was gone?”

  “I don’t think you need to do that, do you, Michael?” Kemble pushed through the kitchen and stood toe-to-toe with Michael. Kemble was only an inch shorter at six-four, and while Michael knew a lot more dirty tricks, he had no desire to get into a fight with his brother-in-law.

  “No. I know where she is.”

  The room went absolutely silent.

  “You gonna tell us where that is?” Tris asked, coming up to stand beside his brother. Between them, they were pretty intimidating, if Michael was the type to be intimidated.

  “Nope. I promised Tammy.”

  “What?” several of the family exclaimed at once. More pandemonium.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “You helped her go?”

  “What are you thinking, man?”

  “She could be in danger!”

  Brina rose, trembling, from Brian’s side at the table and put up a hand. “Let Michael talk.” Brian watched him, reserving judgment. Thank you, Brian and Brina, for that modicum of faith. Jane was just watching too. Leave it to Jane to know there was more here than met the eye.

  “Well, as to why I helped her, she, uh, thinks she’s found her Destiny.”

  There was a silent moment to digest that.

  “It’s true,” Drew agreed, but her expression was so troubled that Michael blinked. You never knew with Drew. Had she seen something more? “I saw her Destiny in visions.” Drew had seen Tammy on a beach with the boy. But that wouldn’t give the family any clues. There were a hundred beaches up and down the California coast. He didn’t think they’d guess Catalina.

  “That’s great,” Kee said. “Why doesn’t she just invite him over for dinner or something?”

  Michael squinted. In for a penny, in for a pound. You knew this was going to happen. “She wasn’t sure, you see, and she thought there would be a lot of, uh, focus on them.”

  Kee sighed. “I understand that.” She glanced to Dev. They’d kept their love secret too.

  “You know how we are,” Lan agreed. “Poor Tammy.”

  “Why did you do it?” Brina asked, the pain in her voice evident.

  “Because Drew saw her with him in a vision. It was going to happen anyway.” The floodgates opened. “And don’t think I’d let her out where the Clan could get her without protection. She had a whole plan for escape, and she’d hired Luc Marrec to protect her.” There were gasps of “Marrec!” Brina glowered. No love lost for Brian’s bastard son there. Michael rushed on. “And Drew saw Marrec watching over them. So it was all going to happen. I…I thought the best I could do was to be sure he brought a capable crew along with him.”

  “Of mercenaries, no doubt,” Kemble said disdainfully.

  “You’re damned right. Mercs who were battle hardened. Look,” he said, trying not to plead. “She was determined. She said the attraction was so strong she’d go crazy if she tried to break the bond. She already sensed where he was, even though they’d never…well, you know. None of us have ever had it that bad. And look what happened when we tried to keep Lan bottled up here. If she didn’t get out with protection from Marrec, she’d probably get out on her own. And then where would we be?”

  Tris looked like he was going to take a swing at Michael, and Kemble seemed ready to jump in and make the shot of whoop-ass a double.

  Jane’s calm voice from behind her husband and his brother broke the tension. “I expect you’re right, Michael.”

  “Why would she think she couldn’t bring him here?” Brina asked herself more than any of her family. “I mean, we would have given her space if she asked.”

  Kee rolled her eyes. Lan said, “Yeah, that worked so well when I tried it.”

  “Still,” Brina said stubbornly. “Out there on her own…in danger every minute. Why would she choose that instead of her family?”

  “I know why she couldn’t bring him here,” Drew said. “Not until she was sure he was really the One. Maybe not even then.”

  All eyes turned to Drew. The look on her face was one of pain, dread.

  “I recognized him,” she managed. “It took me a while. The visions were only in profile. He didn’t look the same. I….” She looked as though she were about to cry. “Sorry,” she said to Michael. She’d never told him she recognized the boy. That was ominous. They shared everything. She looked up, directly at Michael, as if she couldn’t bear to see the looks on the faces of her family. “He’s the boy we saw in Las Vegas with Morgan.”

  “He’s Clan!” Brina’s shock turned to a worried frown.

  “Oh, my God!” Maggie couldn’t seem to help herself. Tris just glowered as he put his arm around his wife.

  Michael felt his stomach drop. He’d let her go outside with someone from the Clan?

  “How could she?” Kee exclaimed.

  Jane made her way past the three men still standing toe-to-toe in front of the bar and took center stage. Not usual for Jane. “You of all people should know, Keelan Tremaine, that we can’t choose our Destiny. I’m sure you wouldn’t have chosen a man who you’d lived with as a brother since you were nine, since that’s a cultural taboo.” She looked around at the family. “We know nothing about this young man. So we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about him. That did not work out well for the Capulets and the Montagues.”

  Everyone in the kitchen looked stunned. It was so un-Jane-like to put herself forward.

  “I agree c-completely, Jane.”

  The attention of everyone in the room turned to Brian. It was the first time he had sounded like the patriarch of the family in some time. Tris and Kemble backed away from Michael, unconsciously ceding authority to their father. Michael was relieved in several ways.

  “But what do we do, dear?” Brina asked her husband. “Michael, you must tell us where she is. We have to protect her.”

  “Unless we let her c-come to us, my dear, we may lose her in ways more subtle but no less p-permanent.” Brian patted his wife’s hand. “She wants to know this young man. Which means she wants to ascertain if he is malicious or only misguided before she allows him into the compound. I suspect that she is the one trying to protect us.”

  Michael hadn’t thought of that.

  “Farfetched,” Lan snorted.

  “No,” Michael said slowly, “it isn’t. She said she wanted to be sure of him. But she was already very certain he was the One. She could feel where he was.” He looked around. “She must have meant she had to be certain she could trust him.”

  “Well, then, we have to go get them both,” Brina insisted. “Tell us where they are.”

  Here’s where it got difficult. He took a breath and mustered his courage to refuse.

  And his phone vibrated in his jeans pocket. Who would be calling at this hour? Maybe Interpol needed a criminal located, or a police department was looking for a missing child. Those who accepted his abilities (without benefit of explanation) had begun to use his services frequently. Or maybe…. He checked the number. Unknown. Burner phone?

  “Yes?” He palmed the phone and held it to his ear as the family’s background discussion subsided. They all knew he wouldn’t take just any call right now.

  “Your petite oiseaux is coming home with her treasure in tow.”

  Relief flooded Michael. “When do you arrive?”

  “That depends on whether you send the helicopter sitting on that pad o
n your estate, or whether we must take the ferry in the morning.”

  “Meet me at the heliport,” Michael said. “How soon can you get there?”

  “The so-intrepid Tammy is sailing back to the dock with her charge. It will be a couple of hours before we can make it up to the airport.”

  “I’ll be there waiting.” Michael clicked off. “Tammy’s coming home and Marrec says she’s bringing the boy with her.” He put the phone back in his jeans’ pocket. “I’ll fly over and get her. They’re on Catalina.”

  “Anyone watching will see the copter go,” Tris said.

  “I kinda don’t want to wait for the ferry in the morning.”

  “By all means, go, Michael,” Brian said. “I suppose you’ll have to go alone to have room for Luc and Tammy and the boy.”

  Michael nodded at his father-in-law, grateful that he didn’t have to explain why everyone who would want to come couldn’t.

  “Fly low and stay under the radar,” Kemble ordered.

  Michael turned on his heel. “I’ll be back late.”

  Behind him, he heard the discussion continue:

  “She must believe he’s okay or she wouldn’t bring him here.”

  “We know nothing about him.”

  “And we all know she doesn’t have great judgment right now since she’s in the first throes of finding her Destiny.”

  This was one conversation Michael was glad to leave behind. The family could handle a single Clan guy as long as they could keep him from contacting reinforcements. The Tremaine men were pretty damned formidable, himself included. The question was, had Tammy given in to sex with him? If so, she’d gotten a power, perhaps at the expense of her soul.

  *

  So her family knew Thomas was Clan. The wind generated by the rotors whipped Tammy’s hair around her. She pulled it over her shoulder with one hand as she bent low under the slowing blades. Even Michael had examined Thomas disapprovingly when she introduced them. “Why didn’t you tell me he was Clan?” he’d shouted over the chop of the blades.

  “Because you wouldn’t have helped me,” she yelled back. There was no answer to that, she knew, so she climbed into the copter.

  How did he know? She sighed. Drew. Drew must have seen him in visions and recognized him. How stupid of Tammy not to realize that possibility. Michael said practically nothing all the way home. That boded ill for the reception she and Thomas were about to get at The Breakers.

  Tammy grabbed Thomas’s hand. She was getting to love that electric jolt. She hoped he was too. Behind her, Michael flipped switches at the pilot’s seat and unbuckled his seatbelt. Mr. Marrec climbed out. Tammy turned to see her family stream out of the house. The helipad was screened from the road above by huge oleander hedges but far enough from the house that it would take them a minute to get here.

  She glanced to Thomas. He looked scared but determined.

  “They’ll be okay after they get to know you,” she promised him. “It will be fine.” She wasn’t so sure about that.

  “They know I have followed their enemy. So I am the enemy too in their eyes.”

  “So we’ll just tell them you aren’t. You’re my choice, Thomas. They must respect that.”

  “They will have ideas about who they want for you, Tammy. I am not like those ideas. I have no experience, no talents. I have no way to provide for you…” Now he was working himself up into a panic.

  “You don’t have to provide for me.”

  “But that is what men do. Men protect and provide for their women.”

  The rotors wound down and Michael climbed out of the helicopter. Marrec loomed above her, looking grim as always with that horrible scar crossing his face, but also wary, remote. He too had something to lose here. He’d only done this because he wanted the family to accept him. How strange for such a hard man to want something like that. Now, he’d been responsible for bringing their enemy into their midst.

  Thomas froze, looking like he was about to bolt as the family bore down on them. She gripped his hand harder to get his attention. Dazed, he turned to her. They had only seconds. “I need you, Thomas. They’ll accept that. We just have to weather the storm that comes first. Okay?” She wished she were as certain as she sounded.

  His eyes focused on her. He set his jaw and nodded once. “For you, Tammy.”

  She managed a smile. “For us.” Because that was what it was from now on. Whether they managed happiness or tore each other apart, whether the family accepted them or not, they were joined. They were each other’s Destiny.

  Then the family was on them, all eleven of them. Only little Elizabeth and Jesse were absent, their bedtime long past. Mr. Edwards and several of his crew stood watchfully in the background, their firearms holstered but noticeable nevertheless. The comet hung above the huge old hacienda, menacing and bright. Everyone stopped as though there were a chasm between them and the new arrivals.

  Then her mom shoved to the fore and took Tammy in her arms. Tammy couldn’t help but notice that her mom deftly disentangled her from Thomas in the process.

  “Why did you think you had to go away?” her mother asked, anguish in her voice as she hugged her daughter. “You could have been killed.”

  “I think you know why, Mom,” Tammy said.

  “Well, never mind that now.” Mom turned, putting herself between her daughter and Thomas as she led Tammy back to the house. The women of the family clustered round. “Have you eaten?”

  Tammy glanced over her shoulder to see her brothers converging on Thomas. Kemble gestured toward the house. “You’d better come inside,” he said gruffly. Thomas trudged toward it like a prisoner going to his execution. Kemble sent a distrustful glance behind him to Mr. Marrec who brought up the rear with Michael.

  Oh, this is just great. She couldn’t let Thomas face her brothers by himself. She pushed through her sisters and ran to the knot of men.

  “I’m not letting you do this alone, Thomas. I’m coming with you.”

  “Oh, no you’re not,” Kemble said through gritted teeth. “You’d try to color the facts.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she declared, knowing that was just what she wanted to do.

  Lan shook his head. “Tam, we know you. Go with Mom. We won’t eat him.” He turned to look at Thomas with suspicion. “Not exactly.”

  Her father limped to the outside of the circle. He would understand why she must be there. But to her surprise, he said, “Tamsen, don’t worry. Go with the others now.”

  “Daddy,” she pleaded. “He’s not what they think. You have to protect him.”

  Her father gave a tiny smile. “We only want what is b-best for you, Tamsen.” But was he making a commitment to protect Thomas?

  “I will be well,” Thomas said to her from the crowd of male Tremaines. He tried to look reassuring, though she could see it took courage to do that.

  Tammy suddenly felt emotionally exhausted. “Okay,” she said fiercely. “But you better not harass him.” She looked past her father to Thomas. “I’ll be down in a minute to rescue you from these lugs. In the meantime, Daddy is going to protect you.”

  She couldn’t face the brisk nod Thomas gave her. She whirled and strode over to the women. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this over with. I know what you want, and believe me, I’ll tell you all about him, but no badgering. It’s time you started treating me like a grown-up.”

  Several pairs of eyes widened, including her mother’s, but Jane’s were not among them. Tammy stood her ground and looked around, forcing them to make signs of agreement.

  “Just a little badgering?” Kee pleaded.

  Tammy sighed. She’d grown up with two older sisters. She couldn’t expect miracles. But she had to tell Thomas’s story. She and Thomas were going to need the family’s help.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‡

  Thomas, flanked by four of the Tremaine men, was marched past a formal dining room with a very long table made of heavy wood and two wrought iron cha
ndeliers hanging over it through to the less formal room he had seen through the eyes of Tammy’s cat. A slightly smaller table sat off to one side. One of the men, dressed very neatly in crisp slacks and a shirt of blue stripes, strode toward the head of the table, then thought better of it and gestured for Tammy’s Daddy to take the seat. Thomas thought the older man wanted to demure. But then he set his shoulders and took the seat. The others arranged themselves on each side. Mr. Marrec lounged against a high serving bar. They all looked much the same, except one that was blond with hair that flopped over his forehead and Michael, who had come to get them in the helicopter. They were black-haired with fair skin and blue or green eyes. Michael had the olive skin Thomas was familiar with from Mt. Athos, and brown eyes, like the blond one. He glanced to Mr. Marrec. Though he was only Tammy’s half-brother, he also looked like the others. Well, except for the scars and the hardened expression.

  The neatly dressed brother gestured to the seat at the foot of the table. Thomas sat gingerly on the edge of the chair. They all stared at him. They didn’t look pleased.

  Thomas had never felt so bereft, at least not since the orphanage in Somalia. His purpose was gone. Morgan, who he had idolized nearly all his life, had killed his parents and locked him away from the world. He didn’t regret his life. It was all he knew. But she had kept him from all love, and now he knew that love was the most important thing in the world. Morgan killed the mates of her followers, else how did they have powers but no mates? Tammy would be in danger if he took her to Morgan. There was no love in Morgan’s fortress, not like there was here earlier tonight when he and Tammy eavesdropped through the cat. But that love would not be for him. These men knew he was their enemy. They might well keep Tammy from him.

  So he had to pass the test he knew was coming. He just didn’t know how to do that.

  “Well, young man,” Tammy’s father began, examining him closely. “Introductions are in order. I’m Brian Tremaine, Tamsen’s father. Kemble here is my oldest son, followed by Tristram.” Tristram wore a more world-weary expression along with his worn boots and denims. “Michael you know. He’s married to my eldest daughter, Drew. Lanyon here is my youngest. Devin is my son and son-in-law.” He paused. “That’s a story for another time.” Devin was the blond one. “And you know Luc.” He didn’t call Mr. Marrec his son, though.