Nobody's Girl

by Love, Michelle

  Eden pulls on a white shirt, buttoning it as he walks to me, then pulls me to him. “You’re so kind-hearted, Alyssa. I love you so much. You have no idea how much,” Eden tells me with added warmth to his soft, velvety voice.

  “I love you too, Eden,” I tell him as he rocks me slowly back and forth, kissing the top of my head.

  When we walk outside, I see a black suburban parked in the driveway. “Is that the man’s?” I ask.

  “No, sweetie, it’s mine. Your mother and I found it at our new house when we moved in. Pretty cool, huh? The Phoenix Foundation always does so well by us,” Dad says.

  He opens the car door for us. “I don’t see our cars anywhere. Where are they?” I ask.

  Lyle turns to look at me as I climb into the seat behind him, and says, “We had them put into the garage and locked them up tight so that maniac can’t get to them. They’ll also be gone over with a fine-tooth comb to be sure he’s not done anything to them.”

  I look over at Eden. “I hope he hasn’t done anything to mess them up.”

  He smiles at me. “Even if he has, they’ll be fixed up good as new. You can count on that, Alyssa.”

  As we come to the gate, there’s an old, ratty-looking, brown Buick. “So this must be his,” I say.

  Lyle answers me, “Yes, it is. I’m very disappointed he was able to get through the gates. That means someone gave him the code or buzzed him in. Someone in our home.”

  I hadn’t even thought about that. I cannot imagine who would want us hurt. Everyone who works at the mansion seems so nice and genuine. The thought there’s someone in the house who’s against us is frightening. Why would anyone be against us?

  Eden buckles his seat belt, then mine, which I neglected to do. His constant attentiveness has me forgetting to do the most basic things for myself. “I cannot believe someone in our organization would be a part of this,” he says. He looks at me and smiles, then sends me, ‘I’ll try to control myself, princess. I don’t wish for you to become so reliant on me you forget to buckle your own safety belt.’

  I smile back and kiss his cheek.

  He’s so adorable!

  “Unfortunately, son, it’s impossible to be certain that every person has good intentions,” Lyle says. “That’s why we have to do the things we do to keep you safe. It takes many people to be sure of that, and sometimes we have to fight our own to keep the Phoenix couples safe.”

  Eden asks, “Do you think this person or people changed the way they thought about this organization because of us?”

  Lyle looks back at him. “People can change for many reasons. Maybe the person started out with good intentions and then something happened to make them fall away from what we’re doing. Hopefully we’ll find out soon, as not only do we have the New Orleans’s police department investigating, but also our own team of investigators. They should find something soon. This guy didn’t just disappear.”

  Eden looks down at me. “Promise me you’ll be good and do everything we’re told to do, even if it doesn’t make sense to you at the time, princess.”

  What? What is he talking about?

  “Eden, I don’t understand.”

  His arm slides around my shoulders and he pulls me into his chest. “Just promise me, please,” he not so much asks as demands.

  I nod my head, but internally I’m freaking out. I mean, come on, just do whatever I’m told to, without questioning anything? I don’t know if I can do that. What if someone I don’t completely trust tells me to do something I’m not comfortable doing?

  “Eden, what if the person who helped this guy get into the house tells us to do something we question? I mean, we have no idea who it is, right?”

  He smiles at me. “Okay, I see. Just do what I ask, or what anyone else who you trust asks, okay baby?”

  I smile back at him. “Okay,” I promise him and I feel a little bit better about it now.

  The gates open up at my parents’ new house. As we drive up to it I’m speechless. It’s gorgeous. It’s not nearly as large as the mansion we just came from, but it’s a mansion as well. Even though its brand new, it’s still full of the southern charm Louisiana is known for.

  Four large columns hold up an enormous balcony overlooking the front entrance area, which is spectacular. There’s a large area of pink flowers blooming up the middle of two stairways, leading up to a porch. It’s a shade of white, but has a slightly pink hue to it. Dad pulls up and we all get out.

  “This is beautiful, Toni. I haven’t seen it finished. It turned out so nice,” Sierra tells my mother.

  “It really did. They always do such a fantastic job, don’t they?” Mom asks.

  “That they do,” Sierra agrees.

  As we enter the house, we walk right into the main living area. I can tell my mother had her hand in decorating because I see several paintings which came from our house in Cloudcroft. The painting over the sofa is one that my mother’s father painted when she was a little girl. It’s of her and her little sister at the beach in California.

  “Come Ally and Eden, let me show you to your room,” Mom calls to us as she heads towards a gorgeous staircase that spirals up just off the living area.

  We follow her up the stairs. “This place is so nice, Mom.”

  She turns to me and smiles. “The first door to the right is yours. Make yourself at home, dears. You will find that, as usual, your closets are already filled with clothes, as are the dressers. Come down whenever you are ready to,” she tells us, then turns to go back down the stairs.

  I open the door to find a large four poster bed with a dark maroon-colored bedspread on it. The room only has one closet, but it’s huge. Eden’s things are on one side and mine on the other. I notice that in the back of the closet there are supplies such as gallon jugs of water and canned foods.

  “Eden, why are there supplies like this I here, do you think?”

  “This is a place where hurricanes come in on occasion, baby. Most homes have these things in them somewhere. You know, just in case. Once it’s known a hurricane is coming in, the stores get crazy and run out of things quickly.”

  Eden opens the only other door in the room to find a decent sized bathroom with a stand up tiled shower. It’s not nearly what we have back at our place, but it’s nice. My parents, as usual, scale back on things they find pretentious. I, on the other hand, love having a huge bathroom with all the bells and whistles.

  “Think you can be comfortable here?” I ask Eden.

  Suddenly, he picks me up off the ground, holding me in his arms and spinning me around. Taking me back into the bedroom, he lays me down on the bed. He reaches down, taking my sandals off and running his hand up my leg. My heart is pounding in my chest. His eyes are full of desire.

  He begins to unbutton his shirt. “Baby, as long as I’m with you, I can be comfortable anywhere. Now let’s break this sucker in.”

  CHAPTER 44

  EDEN

  He’s drugged her! I can’t find her!

  I run through the dark alley behind Bourbon Street.

  She has to be near here. This is where I last saw her thoughts!

  Alyssa sent the words, ‘I love you, Eden. My time has come, unless you stop this. I’ll see you on the other side, my love.’

  With those words, she also sent the view she was looking at. The dark grey stone walls of the back of one of the many clubs along Bourbon Street.

  I search as one of our doctors struggles to keep up with me. I know I’ll need his help once I find her.

  This is all my fault. Why did I have to get involved with that family?

  A dark mass looms in the distance. My heart pounds as I race to it. And there she is.

  The doctor shouts, “Eden, let me see to her first.”

  The look on his face as he turns back to me after he’s looked at her tells me all I need to know.

  He rises and looks away as I dive to my princess’s side.

  My body is shaking. It’s as if I’m being s
haken. “Eden! Wake up!”

  It’s Alyssa’s voice, but how can it be?

  The smell of barbecue fills my nostrils as I blink my eyes open. The room is cloaked in orange light and a figure moves in front of me, the sun’s light behind it, making it hard to make out.

  “Eden,” she says.

  It’s my mate! She’s alive! It was all a dream!

  I sit up. “There’s still time.”

  Alyssa looks at me quizzically. “Still time for what?”

  I shake my head to clear it before I grab her and pull her to my bare chest. Burying my face in her honeysuckle-scented curls, I breathe her in. “Alyssa, you’re in danger. We need Kyle here to help keep you safe. Laura, too. She’s key in keeping you safe as well.”

  Alyssa frowns. “Laura? She doesn’t even know what we are, Eden. How can she help? And about Kyle. Well, things have been so much easier to take since he left. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I don’t want him around. It’s just too hard,” she says as she drops her head.

  She’s been doing that a lot since Kyle went back to Cloudcroft. The inner confidence she gained when we first transformed into the Phoenixes seems to have left her.

  I reach out and take her delicate chin in my hand, making her look at me. “They love you, Alyssa. It would devastate them both if something happened to you. With their help, nothing will.”

  “Eden, you need to show me your dream. I can’t make a decision like that without knowing what might happen to me.”

  Now it’s my head which drops. “Alyssa, it’s hard for me to talk about it without getting upset. I don’t think it’s a good thing for you to see. That’s why I took so long in the shower this morning. I had a hard time getting control over my emotions. The idea of losing you is …” I trail off.

  I can’t let myself think like that!

  Alyssa walks to the chair where I threw her little summer dress right before I devoured her. “I’ve heard enough, as you’ve been talking in your sleep and even sleep walking, to know something happens to me. There’s a doctor you talk to, so it’s not good.” She pulls it over her head, then makes her way to the dresser.

  Finding my shorts on the floor, I pick them up and put them back on. “More than hurt, Alyssa. You don’t make it.”

  She stops looking through the drawer she opened and looks back at me. “I don’t make it? What could happen to me? It just has to be a dream, not a premonition. It can’t be my death. Not so soon. Longevity was promised to me. What about that?”

  “Alyssa, the dream is too real, too vivid. It continues when I fall back asleep.” I explain.

  She turns back to the drawer, pulling out a lacy pair of white panties. “What if you’re wrong and we get Kyle and Laura over here for nothing?”

  I give her a frown. “I hope I am wrong, but I have to follow my heart on this. I can’t just do nothing and let this happen to you. I have an idea that might help you to come to grips with this. If you die, Alyssa, you know I’ll be dead within a day of you. Kyle may follow as well. We’ve never understood how his connection to you will be affected if you pass before he does. Is that what you want, for us to leave this earth, never having accomplished more than one task on this planet?”

  She pulls on her panties and I nearly lose my train of thought. Her voice makes me look up at her eyes. “How do Kyle and Laura fit into stopping whatever it is that’s going to happen?”

  This is where she’ll really fight me!

  “Okay, here it goes. I’ve dreaded telling you this, Alyssa, because the answer is …I don’t know.”

  Her slim arms rise up into the air as she shouts, “What? You don’t know? Are you crazy?”

  “Something in my dream is why I say that, although I don’t know why. I say to myself in the dream, ‘If only Kyle was here. If only Laura had been with her.’ That’s why I think they’re key players in keeping you alive.”

  “Crap, I hate this!” she says as she slips on her sandals. “I don’t know why he’s putting us through this. Why, Eden, why?”

  I slip my T-shirt over my head and go to her, holding her to me. “Please don’t do that, Alyssa. Don’t question. It serves no purpose. For what reason, we may never know. It’s just something which needs to be done. Learn to have faith. Hasn’t anything we’ve been through brought that home to you yet?”

  Laying her head against my chest, she wraps her arms around me and says, “What’s so wrong with me that I keep questioning everything over and over again? You’re right and I know it, but I can’t stop myself. In the very beginning, I had so much faith. I’ve lost my confidence as well as my faith.”

  I rock her in my arms and place a kiss on top of her head. “You’re hiding from the pain, princess. You’re hiding from who you really are. Since Kyle left, you’ve changed back into the girl you were.”

  Her body shudders and she whispers, “I miss him like you can never understand. Only I don’t want him around because it’s so damn hard. I hate myself for wanting him. I love you so much and I don’t understand how I could want you both.”

  Her honesty fills my heart. “I know you love me, precious. Kyle is your primary protector and you two have to learn how to live with that. The attraction will have to be dealt with. You both are hiding from it right now and it’s not helping it go away.”

  She looks up at me with those sapphire eyes, batting her dark, full lashes. Unshed tears make them glisten as she says, “I suppose you’re right. I’ll call him and tell him about your dream and the crazy man. I don’t know if Laura will want to come or not.”

  “Bet she will, princess,” I say with a knowing smile.

  That girl isn’t going to let Kyle come out here without her!

  “We’ve been up here for hours,” Alyssa says as she pulls out of my arms. “I shudder to think what our parents are thinking about us right now.”

  She strides toward the bedroom door and I catch up, slipping my arm around her tiny waist. My laugh is a bit on the evil side as I whisper in her ear, “Probably something terrible, like we’re up here making babies.”

  She stops and bats at my chest with her small hand. “Don’t even joke about that, Eden. I forgot to pray before you devoured me while ago.”

  “What? You usually pray before we, umm …” I say.

  Her voice an octave higher than normal interrupts me, “Of course I do. It’s our only form of contraception. I hope Our Creator will accept an after prayer as opposed to my normal before prayer.”

  I laugh and give her a little squeeze. “Princess, we have no control over that. You’ll just have to accept what happens. A baby wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  “We’ve been married just over a month, Eden. Let’s be us for a while before we have to be parents. I mean, damn, we’ve had a lot of transitions. First we get married, then we become giant birds. Adding being pregnant then having a baby to care for, well it’s just too much. I can’t handle anymore right now.”

  I kiss her cheek as we trot down the stairs. “I love you, princess.”

  “I love you too, my prince. If you care about my feelings, perhaps you could join me in asking Our Creator to give us more time before he bestows a gift upon us.”

  I nod and smile, but hide my true feelings from her.

  It’s not in our hands after all.

  CHAPTER 45

  ALYSSA

  We go downstairs to find no one in the house, so we wander around until we see our parents out a door off the kitchen. “Look, Eden, they have a swimming pool.”

  Eden opens the door. “I see that. Let’s join them.”

  Lyle, saunters towards us, and says, “There they are. I was wondering if you were ever going to come join us.”

  “We were tired from all the drama, Papa,” Eden says with a smile.

  Lyle gives Eden the same devilish look Eden gets sometimes. “Tired? So that’s what they’re calling it now days?” he asks, then turns his attention to me. “Make it a baby girl, Alyssa. I want a sweet little girl
to spoil.” My face turns beet red and my head drops like a rock. Lyle’s arm wraps around my shoulders, hugging me to him. “Oh, how I love to see her blush.”

  I hit at him faintly. “You’re terrible, Papa,” I reprimand him, as my whole family laughs.

  Eden comes to my rescue. “Papa, leave my wife alone,” he tells Lyle and then the rescue effort takes a bad turn. “There will be no babies yet, as my wife has come up with a new way to stay un-pregnant. She uses divine intervention—a prayer prior to marital relations is keeping her safe from becoming a mommy before she’s ready to.” They all laugh again.

  Fantastic. I just found out my newly formed family is a bunch of real comedians!

  “You guys should take your act on the road sometime or at least off a short pier into alligator infested waters,” I quip as I find I’m madder at my husband for divulging our intimate secrets than I am embarrassed.

  Mom tries to help me by distracting the comedic line up that is my husband and Eden’s father. “Oh, come here my baby girl. Let me put some sun block on you before you burn out here,” she tells me as she pulls me away from the rat pack.

  “Thanks, Mom. They’re brutal, huh?”

  “It’s all in good fun, Alyssa,” she tells me as she lathers me up with sunscreen, then hands me the tube. “Go put some on Eden. I don’t want him to get burned either.”

  I take the tube over to my wonderful, yet overly talkative husband as he sits in the bullpen with our fathers. I say, flatly, “I have to put sunscreen on you. Mom said.”

  He looks at me and his naturally tan face has a slightly amused look to it. “I tan, Alyssa. I don’t need any.”

  “Um … but Mom said, Eden. So … I have to. It’s for your own safety,” I tell him, with a fake sweetness.

  “Oh, I see. Well, if it’s for my safety then by all means, please,” he responds, with the same fake sweetness to his velvet voice.

  I take a nice-sized dollop of the white goop and place it on his nose. “There you go. All done,” I tell him as a smile crosses my face at how silly he looks.

  He looks at me, then his eyes go dark. He leans over to whisper in my ear. “I see you want to play with me. You must feel like laughing since you’ve made me look funny for your amusement. I feel like hearing you giggle, Mrs. Fontaine. I think that will give us both what we want.”