He pressed his hands against his temples and stared at the treaty paragraph he’d read five times so far. Why did he care what Junian thought anyway? It was useless to ever ask for Junian’s approval, and he knew it, but he still seemed to keep trying. Youngest ambassador ever, countless treaties to his name, fame and fortune—now it all meant nothing in the face of this unborn child who made him feel helpless, terrified, and twelve years old, facing the death of his mother and the uncertainty of life all over again.
The door to his office opened and he looked up. Ketiana came in looking cool and collected.
“You don’t need to say it,” he said in Azellian. “I can’t work like this.”
Ketiana looked faintly surprised, but responded matter-of-factly in the same language. “How long do you need?”
Merran sighed. “I don’t know. I was actually doing pretty well, feeling up to working again, then this.”
Ketiana came to sit in front of the desk. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Merran shrugged. “Not much to talk about.” There was actually, but Ketiana wasn’t the one to talk to. He’d had a long talk with Greg the night before, when Greg had stopped by to tell him Tamara was getting out of the hospital, then again this morning when Tamara had interrupted.
“It’s yours, isn’t it?” Ketiana asked bluntly, surprising him.
He blinked at her. “What?”
“Tamara’s baby. It’s yours.”
Merran winced, the words shocking him to the core. They burned to hear them from someone else’s mouth. “Why do you say that?” he asked, after a brief interlude of considering and then discarding all kinds of responses to her question.
“Other than the fact that I am a Dorvath and a clairvoyant? There’s very little that would knock you on your ass to this extent, except that,” Ketiana replied. “You haven’t looked in a mirror lately, have you?”
Merran took a deep breath. “I know I look rough …”
“Rough?” Ketiana asked. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week. You also have the look of a man who’s just had a board between the eyes. You’ve been walking around in a daze since you got back from vacation and visited Tamara in the hospital.”
All of it was true. When he did sleep, it was to screaming nightmares in which his daughter lived the life he’d had, or in which he relived some of the less pleasant aspects of his own life. He thought he’d left everything behind, but the knowledge that he’d created a new life brought it all roaring back. Nothing helped right now—not meditation, not losing himself in the aaryaSong, nothing. It had to be experienced, and he was helpless in front of the force of it. He took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said. Even though her ability to see consequence probably told her exactly what was happening, ambassadors were trained not to give straight answers. Oblique ones were all right. “I’d appreciate you not mentioning the possibility to anyone. Alarin is claiming the child as his, and they’re going to be the official parents. The only ones who will know anything resembling the truth are the Keepers.”
“And you, and anyone else who’s seen you this past week. You need to get out of the office at least temporarily, Mer, if you truly want to convince people nothing’s wrong. Fortunately, we didn’t reveal to too many people that you were back, and you’ve only sporadically been in the office these past few days anyway. You’d better get yourself under control, though, or more people than me are going to figure it out. I’m sure Janille knows, too.”
Merran had wondered about that, especially when she’d interrupted his meeting with Greg earlier that day to tell him he had a very important phone call—and didn’t tell him who it was. He sighed. “All right, all right,” he said, raking a hand through his hair again. “I’ll take a few days to recover my equilibrium and get myself back on track. At least I don’t have any meetings, since I wasn’t officially back.” He rubbed his fingers on the desk. “I’m staying in Denver, though,” he told her. “I have some … thinking to do that requires me to be here.”
“Fine. But we’ll have to come up with something for the media or you’re going to attract the wrong kind of attention.” She studied his black-and-blond striped hair. “You might want to do something about your hair too. It’s rather eye catching, and not necessarily in a good way.”
“I’ll dye it back to my normal color.”
“But no matter what color your hair is,” Ketiana said carefully, “you’re going to attract media attention if you’re not careful.”
Merran sighed. “I know,” he muttered irritably. “Too many damned people know as it is.”
“Don’t hide it,” she suggested, going in a direction with her comment he didn’t expect at all.
“What?” Merran demanded, staring at her, certain he hadn’t heard right.
“Don’t hide your interest. After all, Alarin is your friend, Tamara is … was? … your employee, and they have a new baby coming. We’ll do a press release and make it seem boring and mundane. You want to celebrate the birth of your good friend’s baby. If you manage to get yourself under control, they’ll never know the truth.”
Merran was silent for a few moments. “That will bring attention to Tamara.”
“A little, yes, but isn’t that preferable to the media discovering the truth? You know as well as I do that a little misdirection works better to hide the truth than acting as though you have something to hide. We’ve manipulated the media enough in the matter of your image that a little leavening in the form of your enjoyment of your friends’ joyous news will perhaps help camouflage your true interest in their child.”
Merran shuddered. “I still have to think that through before we make an announcement, but I think you may be right. I don’t like bringing anyone’s attention to Tamara and Alarin at all, but I’ll mention the idea to them and see what they say. I’m seeing them tonight,” he said decisively, his voice sounding stronger, losing some of the lost despair it had held earlier. He leaned over and made a note on his tablet, then said, “I’m going to take a shower. You don’t mind handling the office for a little while longer?”
“Of course not.”
Merran walked into the bathroom connected to his office. “Oh,” he said, leaning back out of the door. “Remind me to give you a very large bonus this year.”
Ketiana grinned. “You bet I will. Now get showered before you stink up the office any worse than you already have.”
Merran felt better than he had since he’d found out about the baby and even grinned as he closed the door behind him. The shower and shaving didn’t take too long, nor did dressing, although he didn’t have much in the office but suits. He was finally able to dig up a pair of slacks and a white tank, over which he slipped a dress shirt. Studying himself critically in the mirror, he frowned. It was slightly more formal than he wanted, but he didn’t want to go back to his apartment and dig up more casual attire. It was getting close to dinner, and he wanted to get through this before he got any more nervous than he already was. He hesitated over what scent to apply, then stopped, remembering from somewhere that pregnant women have an enhanced sense of smell. Tamara might not like a scent. Slapping some gel into his hair instead, he tugged it into position. It was short, so all the gel really did was make his hair look wet, but it was too late to do anything else about it. All he was really doing by trying to get “just the right look” was stalling anyway. He opened the bathroom door.
Ketiana was on a video call, speaking in Atheran. She gave him a thumbs up away from the camera, but her expression of polite disinterest didn’t change a whit. The person she was talking to would never have noticed her distraction. Merran grinned and bowed, grabbing his coat as he left the office, his face settling into more thoughtful lines. Ketiana had done such a tremendous job of running the embassy while he was gone that he had to think seriously about giving her more responsibility. In the outer office, Janille silently handed him car keys and watched him leave.
He distracted himself with thoughts of
what more he could start having Ketiana do, as he walked toward the lot where the embassy kept its spare cars. He hoped a personal car would be camouflage enough, since he never went out in anything other than the limo, and the media had been slow to catch on that he was gone or that he’d returned. It helped that the Nuvo Film Festival was in town and the media had star power galore to follow—not just their colorful ambassador. Of course, news like this—Azelle’s playboy ambassador fathers child—would create quite the headlines and would add to the speculation of who slept with whom at the Nuvo Festival. He shuddered again. The rumors would spread faster than wildfire, he thought to himself. Whatever they could do to avoid that would be good. He got into the car and started it up.
It occurred to him as he drove over to the school that he’d only rarely been on campus and had never visited Alarin and Tamara before. This was an historic occasion for him, as he normally avoided drawing attention to his friends by visiting them. After he pulled into a parking spot on the street, he pulled down the mirror on the sun visor and frowned at his uncharacteristically blond thatch that had started to show its dark roots, giving him a reverse skunk look. He wondered if there was a hat in the car. Climbing out, and scanning with his psi to make sure no one was observing him, he popped open the trunk and started to laugh. Sitting quite primly in the trunk of the car that Janille had obviously prepped for him, was a black, ten gallon Stetson hat, very much like the thousands of others that Denverites had been favoring since the days when the area was first tamed and settled by the cowboys of the old West. Beside the hat was a beautiful pair of intricately decorated, very pointy toed cowboy boots, made out of stiff, dark brown leather. As he picked up one—it was his exact shoe size—a glint of silver caught his eye, and he reached out to touch a thin black string of a bolo tie, complete with a large silver-and-turquoise pendant.
Merran grinned to himself. Janille. She knows, all right. And, as was typical of Janille, she gave her tacit aid without his asking or her mentioning a thing. Although a cowboy sauntering up to Alarin and Tamara’s room might be a bit odd, it was better than Merran Corina walking up to the apartment—and no one would expect to see Merran Corina dressed up as a cowboy. He pulled the items out of the trunk and got back into the car to tug on the boots, using the open car door to hide what he was doing. He slipped the bolo tie around his neck, adjusting the pendant to a comfortable spot around his neck, and slapped the Stetson on his head, covering up the eye-catching black streak in his still mostly blond hair.
When he finished, he was surprised at how much camouflage the items provided. The boots and tie didn’t exactly go with the black pleated dress slacks and the crisp white Oxford button down shirt—jeans and a denim or flannel shirt would have been better—but it worked, and his hair was covered. Once he pulled the heavy, long wool coat over his haphazard ensemble, he certainly didn’t look like himself, which pleased him.
All the same, he took care to avoid people. Fortunately, that wasn’t too difficult, as everyone seemed to be at dinner. It was quiet, and he ran into no one on his way from the parking lot to the apartment. His scans revealed no one watching him either.
Tamara and Alarin’s apartment was the only one heavily shielded; even if he hadn’t known where it was, he would have found it easily. The shielding was powerful and expert, and he could taste the flavor of Alarin as he touched the outside of the firm, shining shields with his mind. He walked up the staircase toward the second floor, his boots clicking on the cement as he climbed to the landing. He had to duck around a corner only once as a young woman and man, draped over each other, came up the stairs to the second floor. However, they didn’t even notice him, much too lost in the spiraling pleasure they’d begun with each other. Merran had to smile as he slipped into the hall. The apartment they entered was most certainly not shielded, and it seemed like they were not going to make it to the bedroom. He had a moment of half-bitter thoughts about the possible consequences of their actions—not something he’d ever considered since he’d been trained to make sure he didn’t impregnate someone—then he firmly blocked them out of his mind and went up to the shielded door and knocked.
Alarin opened the door. A delicious smell spilled out of the apartment as Alarin momentarily stared at him, a look of shock crossing his face before he burst into laughter. “Come in,” he said, when he’d caught his breath enough to speak. “Quite a disguise, I must say.” He closed the door behind Merran. “Changing jobs?”
“No. Not really.”
“I don’t know. Looks good on you. Where’s the horse, though?”
“The pants and shirt don’t exactly go with the boots and hat. Or the long coat.” Merran pulled off his coat and hung it on the coat tree.
“Or the muscle shirt under your dress shirt. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this … haphazard.”
“I had limited choices. And I didn’t come up with the idea of a disguise until I got here. I used what I had available.”
Alarin laughed. “The embassy keeps cowboys in the trunk, does it?”
Merran flashed a brief smile, respecting Alarin’s cheer, but too nervous to share it. “Janille can be creative apparently. It was her idea.”
“Well,” Alarin said, his eyes dancing with barely suppressed mirth, “you’d better get at least the hat off or you’re going to send Tam into cardiac arrest.”
Merran snorted and took off the hat, hanging it on the coat tree in the entryway with his coat. “Where is she?”
“Resting. She tires easily still, although it’s not quite as bad as it was at the beginning. I’ve got dinner almost ready. We should be eating in about half an hour. Do you want to go in and say hi?”
Merran’s heart leaped. He couldn’t quite control the tremor that spilled through his hands. “Uh. Maybe she should wake up first. I don’t want to wake her.”
“Go in,” Alarin said firmly, taking the decision out of his hands. “She’s awake, which you would know if you weren’t shielding so hard. There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Merran remembered the feather touches of the unborn baby’s mind against his. At the time he’d had too much to process to let it affect him, and since then, he’d tried to block out all thoughts of having anything to do with the baby. Frankly, after their fight at the hospital, he hadn’t expected Tamara to let him have anything to do with the baby at all. But she was, and here he stood, nervous as he hadn’t been since his predecessor Saren died and he’d been forced to negotiate a treaty Saren had thought impossible to negotiate, while pretending that Saren was still alive. Actually, he was more nervous at this moment, because back then he’d known he could convince the other side to do as he asked, but right now he still wasn’t at all sure he was ready to be even a remote father. He took a deep breath and went to the closed bedroom door, knocking softly.
“Come in,” Tamara’s voice called from inside the room.
He opened the door, trying to hide the tremors that shook his hands, but knowing that it was almost impossible. Her shields were back to normal, but he didn’t relax his own. He didn’t want to feel the baby’s insistent touch yet. Merran looked at Tamara and was taken aback by the glow of her face—for all her struggle with the idea of being a mother, pregnancy had given her a luminosity that made her beautiful. “Hi,” he said, not daring to say more. Emotion was going to make his voice crack, like it hadn’t since he was thirteen and his voice changed.
“Hi,” Tamara said, looking at him. She said nothing more.
“You look beautiful,” he remarked, startling himself. He hadn’t meant to tell her that. He hadn’t meant to break the silence at all.
She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know if I’d say that. It doesn’t show yet, but I feel like I’m starting to puff out.” She touched her belly.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, shaking his head. “You glow.”
She flushed, color spreading up her cheeks. “Thank you. Alarin says it too. Maybe I have to start believing him.”
She gave him an arched look. “Of course, I know he’s biased. He has to tell me I’m beautiful … he wants to marry me. What’s your excuse?”
Her attempt at humor, at pretending everything was okay, touched him. Instead of laughing, though, he suddenly wanted to cry, and the emotion shocked him. His shields wavered, weakened under the force of his emotions, and he knew he was leaking. He couldn’t help it. He loved her. She was the mother of his child, and the aarya help him, it changed his view of her. He hadn’t expected to feel this way, and he feared it would take him apart.
Tamara slid her legs off the side of the bed. “Merran?”
Locked in a struggle not to show her too much and control the emotions surging through him, he couldn’t answer.
Tamara came to his side. “Merran?” She reached out to touch his arm. “Come, sit,” she invited.
He let her lead him to sit, too involved in keeping his emotions from overwhelming her through the physical link of her hand on his arm.
There was a moment of silence, then Tamara slid her hand down his arm to his hand. She picked up his hand and studied it for a moment, tracing her fingers across his palm, up his fingers. His skin tingled, and oddly, the emotional firestorm that still coursed through him calmed, the desire to cry fading so he could control it. Very softly, she placed his hand on her stomach.
As soon as his hand touched Tamara’s belly, the baby reacted, surging through his shields with a force he didn’t expect an unborn child to have. Her mind twined around his, not thinking, not quite yet, just needing and seeking, accepting and touching. She demanded him to accept her, to love her, and he responded with a ferocity that surprised him. He adored her, he told her without words, and it was true. She was wanted, needed, and perfect in every way.
The baby released him after she’d gotten the assurances she wanted, and Merran came back to himself, surprised to find himself crying. Silent tears slid down his face as he pulled his hand back from Tamara’s stomach.
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