Despite his misgivings, it sounded tempting. Maybe it was his recent sojourn with the skiers in the Rocky Mountains, maybe it was his own desire for company, but he shrugged and capitulated. “I’ve got some time free next Monday, if you don’t have too many classes. I’ll set it up and call you to confirm.”
Idara’s smile spread across her face and she looked delighted. “That works great. Mondays are pretty light for me; I only have an evening class that I could skip if we don’t get back in time. I’m so glad,” she said as she opened the door. “I’ll talk to you later then.”
Her mind brushed his as she left. I know you’re probably doing this because you feel sorry for me, but I do appreciate it, she murmured in his mind. I promise we’ll have lots of fun. Even though you’ve known of me for twenty years, Mer, I think we haven’t really known each other at all. I’m looking forward to getting to know who you really are.
He acknowledged what she said and watched her leave, not sure if he’d done the right thing or not. Turning back to his desk, he tried not to think about Idara. Fortunately, his afternoon was such that he didn’t have much trouble with that. After a long, agonizing conversation with the president, in which he discovered exactly what he wanted as a return favor for Justern, Merran didn’t have much time to worry. The president’s proposed deal would require some heavy arguments with not only the Council, but the Healer Conclave, too, since the president wanted more Healers on Earth.
That afternoon, Janille also fielded no less than fifteen requests for interviews—the media had most certainly discovered that he was back at work full-time. He hardly had a moment to think about anything at all, much less his impulsive date.
Later that night, across town, Tamara leaned over to answer the phone ringing on the coffee table—or tried to. Although she still wasn’t showing, she didn’t like to bend over. “Could you get that?” she asked Alarin, stopping mid-motion as she made a grimacing face.
Alarin grinned at her, leaning over easily to grab the buzzing phone and handed it to her. He muted the television.
“Hello?” she asked, swiping the phone to accept the call, facing the camera.
“Tam?” It was Kari. “Are you watching Celebrity Reviews Tonight?”
Tamara shook her head. “No, we were watching a movie,” she replied, settling back against Alarin as she spoke. He rested his arm over the back of the couch. “Why?”
“Turn on Channel 8. They’re talking about Merran Corina. Call me after.”
Alarin flipped the station, unmuting the sound as Tamara hung up the phone.
“Next on Celebrity Reviews Tonight, a segment about Merran Corina, that elusive bachelor. Celebrity Reviews Tonight recently discovered that he has just returned from a very hush-hush, private trip to the mountains of Colorado, posing as an unknown skier, not in the celebrity town of Aspen, where he usually spends his time skiing, but in another, much less known resort in the Rocky Mountains. Was he there for a secret tryst? Does he have a secret lover? Or was there another reason for the normally high-profile ambassador to hide himself away? Our reporter on-the-spot, Kaylee Carpenter, was able to catch up with one young man who spent time with the ambassador.” The screen flashed to a tanned, very fit young blond man, a pair of skis slung over a shoulder and a knit cap on his head, anchored by his ski goggles. He stood near a very pretty reporter wearing the Hollywood version of ski chic, including a puffy pink down coat that set off beautifully her dusky skin and dark hair.
“Yeah, he skied with us quite a bit. Hated to come off the mountain, actually. First one on, last one off. Great skier. He liked the black diamond runs the best. Anything that tested his physical abilities. You mean, he’s actually that alien ambassador from Azelle? I didn’t think Azellians had that kind of stamina.” The young man shook his head. “Man, you think you know someone. He said his name was Michel Caron and he was from Nova Scotia.”
“Besides testing the limits of physical endurance, did he spend time with anyone in particular? A woman maybe?”
The young man frowned and shook his head. “Not that I know. He spent most of his time on the slopes. He certainly got quite a bit of attention from everyone because he was a great skiier, but he was kind of a loner, you know what I mean?”
The show switched back to the hostess. “Know what you mean? No, we really don’t. A loner? That doesn’t sound like our very popular media star.” A series of old stories and pictures linking Merran to this starlet and that actress flashed across the screen. “But his unprecedented escape to the mountains does give rise to the question as to just what Merran Corina was doing in the mountains under the assumed name of Michel Caron and what might have driven him up there. Today, exclusive to Celebrity Reviews Tonight, we have a woman who claims to know the ambassador’s secret heart. Janice Cooper is a woman who professes to have been the ambassador’s confidante some years back. She will share with us what she knows about the ambassador.” The hostess smiled her empty, bright white smile at the camera, then the program flashed to a dowdy older woman with long dark hair parted exactly down the middle.
Tamara looked at Alarin. “Janice Cooper? Who the hell is she to Merran?”
Alarin made a sound. “Probably no one important.”
The phone buzzed again and Tamara jumped. “Hello?” she asked, turning on the camera feed.
“I have some good news for you,” the subject of the television show said into the phone. He looked mostly relaxed, sitting behind his desk at home with his feet up on the desk, wearing a t-shirt Tamara knew as his favorite and a pair of boxer shorts barely visible above the line of the desk.
“Speak of the devil,” Tamara commented dryly to Alarin.
“So, Mer, who is it?” Alarin asked, leaning into the camera range. “Mellis?”
“What?” Merran made a tent of his fingers. “Who is what? What are you talking about?”
“Celebrity Reviews Tonight has a whole segment dedicated to you and your escape to the mountains. They think you had a secret lover or were hiding out there for some other reason.” Alarin grinned into the phone.
Merran said something in Azellian, which made Alarin grin wider.
“Hey, no fair speaking a dialect I don’t know.” Tamara shoved at Alarin.
“And you don’t want to know besides.” He pulled her close. “It wasn’t very nice.”
Merran made an inelegant sound with his lips. “Don’t they have anything better to talk about?”
“Nope.” Tamara gave him a cheerful smile. “The Nuvo Festival is done, celebrities are laying low, so the hype is all about you and your love life.”
Merran rolled his eyes. “Human media. It’s so ridiculous sometimes.”
“Do you know someone named Janice Cooper?”
“Who?”
“Janice Cooper. Turn on Channel 8. She’s telling the hostess that you and she were lovers at one point and you told her that you were coming off a very intense long-term relationship.” Tamara studied the television. “You slept with her?”
Merran was silent as he flipped the station to match theirs. “Holy shit,” he swore succinctly in English, then added something in that Azellian dialect Tamara didn’t know.
Alarin laughed. “Apparently you did?”
Merran didn’t quite flush, but he did run his hands through his hair in his typical nervous gesture. “I was … really young. Of course, I wasn’t an ambassador then. I’d just arrived from Azelle and loved the high I could get from humans. I was not particular about whom I got that high from, either.” He listened to the broadcast for a moment. “By the aarya, I did not have that level of relationship with her.” He said something in Azellian, then added, “I spent one night with her and then moved on to the next one. She’s making most of that up.”
“Fame brushes by her and she wants a piece of it.” Tamara slid down on the couch a little. “You are the closest she will ever come to her fifteen minutes of it.”
Merran snorted and ran a hand through his
hair again. “They are trying to dig up as much as they can about my love life again. I’ve heard enough,” he muttered and turned off the television on his end. “They are being ridiculous, and the more left unsaid about this, the better I will be. Acknowledging any of this will give it importance it should not have.” He sounded almost robotic as he spoke, and Tamara knew he was upset, although, as usual, he showed very little outwardly.
Tamara shifted to alleviate pressure on her body. She took pity on him and changed the subject. “What’s your good news?”
Merran took a deep breath and visibly composed himself. “I called to tell you I managed to get you and the baby a visa to Azelle.”
“You what? How did you manage that?” Alarin demanded, leaning over so he could see the phone too. “Who did you tell them was the father of the baby?”
Merran shrugged. “I didn’t tell the Council anything, just resubmitted the visa request Tamara put through before.”
Alarin frowned. “Then how did she get the visa? You had to have done something. What did you do?”
Merran twisted his neck as though he were trying to relieve pressure. “I registered her pregnancy with the Keepers at the Temple,” he finally admitted. “There wasn’t much the Council could say to reject her visa when the Keepers stepped in. They need both our signatures on the registry, and the Keepers are going to want to communicate with both Tamara and the baby.”
Alarin shook his head. “How long do we have?”
“We’ll have to wait for the winter storms to end. Then we have to get her there and back before she enters her third trimester. It really isn’t good to take an expectant mother into space during the last trimester. It can trigger a premature birth.”
For the first time in a while, Tamara saw tension creep back into Alarin, that same tension he’d had while struggling with having to share her with Merran. She put her hand on Alarin’s arm. “We can go after the semester’s over, right after finals, before we get to the third trimester. I have a feeling we’re going to need Alarin there. We have to keep up the appearances, after all, and it would look strange to have me and you go without Alarin. It will give him the opportunity to tell his family about me too.”
Alarin twitched. A strange expression crossed his face.
“What?”
“He hasn’t told them yet,” Merran guessed. “You should probably do that before we arrive, you know. It’s going to create political waves at the very least and an uproar at the worst, Alari.”
Alarin’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
“Justy and my dad also think it will be a big deal, even though you don’t think so, Alari,” Tamara said, alarm spreading through her at Merran’s confirmation that Alarin’s news would be a problem. The baby was still too small for her to feel anything but the tiniest of flutters, but she responded to her mother’s alarm anyway. The oddest mixture of panic and soothing warmth spread through Tamara. Tamara stared down at her stomach, more than a little spooked by the baby’s efforts. Having her own emotions out of control was bad enough, but having another’s spill through her was positively disturbing.
Alarin burst out laughing and the tension shattered.
Merran raised an eyebrow. “What’s she doing?” he asked, guessing that it was the baby that changed things. “Tamara’s got the weirdest expression on her face.”
“Trying to control her world already. She’s going to be a feisty little thing,” Alarin replied, as he put his hand over Tamara’s stomach and helped soothe the baby’s ruffled feathers.
Tamara lifted her head after a moment. “She’s trying to calm me down. We got sidetracked. Is this going to be a problem, Alari? You told me your father already knows.”
“His father most emphatically hasn’t told anyone,” Merran replied for Alarin, who was still communing with the baby. “It’s his mother, his grandfather Kendrick, and the rest of the Raderth clan who will have the problem with it.”
“They’ll be fine with it,” Alarin said firmly, lifting his hand and leaning back against the couch again. “They have to be, because it’s what’s happening. If they don’t like it, they can join the cavers.”
Merran made a face. “I’d rather you didn’t use that particular epithet, thank you very much.”
“Sorry. The point, however, is the same. There is nothing that my mother and grandfather can do to stop me from marrying Tamara,” Alarin said firmly.
“Even if Galadrian doesn’t support you?”
“Even if.” Alarin hugged Tamara against his shoulder. “I don’t care what my family thinks, we’re going to get married and raise this baby together.”
Tamara rested a hand on her stomach, feeling it grumble under her hands. “You and I are going to talk about this more later, Alarin, but for now, I have a visa, and we’ll go to Azelle as soon as we can. So, are we meeting you for dinner, Merran? We’re hungry, this baby and me.”
Merran nodded. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“Then we’ll meet you at your place in an hour.” They said goodbye, and she hung up the phone. When she stood up, Alarin hugged her, letting her wrap her mind around his. She rested her head on his chest, as he pressed his lips into her hair. She relaxed into his embrace, and they stood like that for a few moments before the ringing phone pulled them apart. Alarin reached for it this time.
“It’s Kari,” he said, handing it to her.
Tamara pulled herself together enough to talk to her friend about meaningless stuff, including the earlier celebrity gossip show. Having a child was already changing her, she thought, after the conversation was over. She didn’t care as much about things that were truly irrelevant, and sometimes Kari seemed to care too much about them. She had plenty to deal with juggling the loves of her life in the face of the new reality they were all going to be sharing than to worry about Merran’s reputation with the media.
Chapter 9
Between his impulsive date and the child that tried to ensnare him in her emotional life, Merran found himself feeling overwhelmed. What had possessed him to agree to a ski date with Idara? Besides their history, most of which involved Idara steadfastly ignoring him, she was Alarin’s ex. That was bound to create more tensions, not less, between him and Alarin.
Although he’d changed his mind several times about going up to the mountains with her, when Idara met him at the embassy Monday morning to head out, he was relatively composed. He walked into the lobby area of the embassy before dawn and found Idara sitting on a bench in the corner of the lobby, decently shielded and calm. She wore a fashionable green ski suit, a pair of skis propped against the bench next to her. Her dark hair tumbled over one shoulder as she read something on her phone. She looked as well put together and stunning as she always did, and with his new awareness of her still lingering, it bothered him. His breath caught a little in his throat, aware as he hadn’t been until recently of the potentials between them. She is just a friend. Just a friend, he told himself. The potentials were that and nothing more. Idara was Idara, after all, and he’d never been sexually interested in her. He wasn’t going to start now.
Idara wasn’t obviously scanning around herself, but she must have been, because she looked up and saw him approaching. Her face split into a wide, welcoming smile. “Hi,” she said in Azellian. She caught his glance over at the skis propped against the bench. “My friend Jenna suggested I get a pair of skis down here because it’s cheaper and easier,” she said as greeting and explanation.
“She’s right.” He gave her the proper bow and greeted her, despite his misgivings, with a polite touch to her mind. “You ready?”
“Absolutely!” She returned the greeting as he picked up her skis, noticing that he wasn’t carrying anything else. “You already packed the car?”
Merran shrugged as they walked toward the door. “Yes, just wanted to get a jump on it. We’ve got a long drive ahead.” He slung her skis over a shoulder and made sure he didn’t slam into anything on his way out the door.
“Definitely prepared.” Idara smiled at him as she walked beside him.
“Always.”
“No spontaneity?” Idara asked curiously as they reached the car and Merran slid the skis into the compartment built for that purpose. “That doesn’t match the Merran of the past.”
Merran didn’t answer until they sat in the car and he started it up, heading for the one mountain town with the security for him to ski as himself—Aspen. “I’m surprised you knew that much about me.” He glanced over at her as he pulled out of the back parking lot of the embassy and merged onto the surface streets to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive up to Aspen.
Idara laughed impishly. “I might have been distant, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hear Mellis and Charina talk sometimes.”
Merran raised an eyebrow. “Charina?”
“Why not Charina? As your niece, she was in the perfect position to know her uncle quite well. There may have been certain … types of spontaneous behavior you indulged in that she didn’t get to witness, but there were most certainly others. Remember the time you and Alarin dared each other to a breath-holding contest?”
Merran coughed and rubbed his cheek. “It would have worked better if we hadn’t tried it underwater.”
“Or the time you built a rocket and tried to set it off? Let’s see, we nearly blew up the cave we were in. I remember running as fast as I could to get out of there. I was almost forbidden to have anything to do with you after that. If it hadn’t been for my mother’s concern that I stay on the Raderths’ good side …” She stopped abruptly and continued hastily, “Anyway, I was nearly grounded. My childhood was peppered with scoldings I got because of something you did. Of course, that was in between your other pursuits.” Idara gave him a sly look out of the corner of her eye.
Triangle Page 24