by Nancy Gideon
“What the hell, Row? Don’t try telling me it was the liquor. That was Cale, wasn’t it? What did he want?”
Breathing shallowly, Turow tried to answer but his throat was too tight. He sucked up water from his palms, splashing it on his face, swishing and spitting out the taste of sickness in body and soul before saying softly, “Wes found a note this morning from Rosalee.”
Colin snorted. “Did the little twit run off with someone else?”
“With Sylvia.”
“Huh! I didn’t see that coming,” Colin mused, “but I wouldn’t mind watching.” His gaze grew dreamy for a moment until Turow clarified.
“Sylvia took her hostage to keep me from coming after her. So she can get safely back to James . . . and help him start producing Kick again.”
Colin’s erotic introspection disappeared in a blink. “Son of a bitch.” His brows lowered. “Cale wants you to go after her. What did he ask you to do?”
“I’m to come back with her in chains . . . or with proof that she’s dead.”
“You told him no. Right? Turow? You said no, didn’t you?” At the sight of his grim expression, Colin cursed again, loudly and colorfully, reeling in a small circle. “How could he ask you that?”
“I offered. It’s my fault.”
“You think every damned thing from global warming to that crappy dub-step music is your fault. I’ll go. Let me go. It shouldn’t be you. It can’t be you!” Studying him a moment longer, Colin sighed. “Dammit, Row! It’ll destroy you.”
A small, sad smile. “It already has. There’s no getting over this for me. I never saw it coming, Col. I’m such a fool.”
Colin hauled him in hard, squeezing his eyes tight in remembrance of those he’d loved and lost, then let him go, saying gruffly, “Take our charter. We can make other arrangements. Maybe you can get there ahead of her and . . . hell, I don’t know. If you decide to run off with her, I sure wouldn’t blame you. Just don’t throw in with James. I don’t want Cale to give me the job of coming after the both of you.”
“That won’t happen. Thanks, brother.”
“Maybe it’s all a mistake. Maybe you can make it right. I’ll do whatever I can to plead a case to Cale. I can’t believe she did this. I knew she was desperate but-”
“Why? Because a couple of females were mean to her? Why would she do this to me? I thought—” He turned away, embarrassed by the emotion tearing through him.
“If you’re a fool, so am I.” Colin pressed Row’s shoulder. “I never saw it coming, either. She’s head over heels about you. It has to be something else. Has to be. You remember that. Remember to ask her why.”
Turow heaved a cleansing breath, straightening, hardening for what he needed to do. “It doesn’t matter why. It just is.”
“You watch yourself around Jamie. I don’t want to burn another brother. Maybe you can get in and out before he knows you’re on your way.”
Row spoke with absolute certainty.
“He already knows.”
Sylvia stood in the amazing shower, letting hot spray beat down on her, wishing it could rinse away her body’s aches along with her shame and the surrounding feel of Turow’s love.
Everything good about their evening together, washed away.
I love you, Syl.
Those long desired words devastated. The way he spoke them so earnestly. The way they wound about her broken spirit the same way he’d somehow managed to twist about her heart.
Words she didn’t deserve to hear.
Because he didn’t know who she really was.
That innocence would be ripped away. She couldn’t stop it. Her queen’s warnings wouldn’t prevent it. Those nasty, vicious truths would seep into the beginnings of their blissful life together, poisoning it as insidiously as her mother’s herbs and her mother’s deeds.
Truth wouldn’t triumph over salacious rumor. Not when she didn’t know the truth. Not when she couldn’t bear to face the scattered bits and pieces she was sure of.
She was damaged. Tainted. Toxic. She’d ruin Turow’s reputation. His innate goodness, his decency, couldn’t vanquish the ugliness that would whisper around them. In defending her, he’d collapse his own unblemished standing in the House of Terriot . . . in the eyes of his king.
His king whose opinion meant everything to him. They lived under Cale’s rule, under his edicts, under his whims, and now in his damned rooms, sharing the same bed where the Terriot heir had probably been conceived. Turow might profess to love her, but he belonged to Cale. She couldn’t change that. And as much as it hurt to admit, she didn’t think she should.
Serving his king and his clan brought out everything that was good and honest and admirable in Turow Terriot. Just as she’d draw out all that was damned and destructive.
Her ghosts would call to his. Talk of her scandals would reawaken those in his past, tangling them together on every tongue, those embellished half-truths, speculation fed by lies meant to destroy her, and in doing so, her mate. And her brother.
The thought of their heartache made hers insignificant.
She sagged against the wet tiles and sobbed, letting her tears go down the drain along with all her foolish dreams.
One glorious night wouldn’t change a lifetime of darkness and deceit. That slate would never wipe clean.
Shivering inside and out, Sylvia turned off the water and stepped in front of the mirror. There, the truth stood out in a brutal roadmap. Horrid bruising marked her hip, her side, her temple. Purpling spots on her shoulder and ribs couldn’t be explained away as products of a fall. Turow wasn’t a fool, and she couldn’t hide those damning blemishes from him. He’d ask questions, and answers would lead to consequences. He’d refuse to let her brush off the encounter, because he was a decent man and erroneously felt she deserved better. He’d bring the matter before Cale, before the mates of those involved. And what could have been an ugly, isolated act of retribution would erupt in a clan-wide shakeup with her its volatile epicenter.
Some words, some deeds could never be unsaid or undone. Some truths could never be buried.
But they could be avoided.
She’d spent her entire life hiding from truths and circumventing consequences. She wouldn’t let them ruin the one good thing she’d ever known. Not if there was a way, no matter how insane it seemed, to make amends.
Sylvia smirked at her ragged reflection. A helluva time to discover nobility.
Resolved and resigned, she dried her hair and dressed for action in warm, casual clothes. Without turning on the lights, she packed a small bag with necessities, using the knowledge gleaned during that grueling trip from New Orleans about what was important. But she still had no traveling money.
Turow’s pants lay heaped on the floor, his wallet in the hip pocket. The thought passed quickly. She was breaking his heart. Wasn’t that bad enough? She couldn’t take anything else of his with her.
She should have just run. But the sight of him vulnerably sprawled in oblivious slumber drew Sylvia to the bed side. She might never see him again, which would probably be best . . . for him.
She sat carefully beside him, filling up her senses with the sight and scent of him as she denied the sweet ache inside her. Her heroic, hunky prince. What she wouldn’t do to be worthy of those words he’d spoken.
She’d soon find out.
Painfully, she leaned over to rub her cheek against his hair. Longing welled up, choking her like Stephen’s hand about her throat, squeezing back the words she wanted to say in favor of those she must, the words they’d both have to live with.
“I’m sorry.”
A pathetic excuse from a pathetic creature.
She moved quickly then. Surrendering what she must to do what she had to do. Yet she paused briefly at the door, a room and a lifetime away from everything that mattered to her, to confess what weighed so heavily inside her.
“I love you, too.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Though she never
felt the cold, Sylvia was shivering by the time she reached the door of the home where she and Wes had grown up as children, with their mother and her father, surrounded by luxury and secrets. A dark house, always swirling with eddies of mystery, magic and malevolence.
Martine Terriot had called herself a shaman. Sylvia thought she was a witch. Beautiful, selfish, dangerous, she projected an aura of regal compassion before the eyes of others like a dazzling glamour, lulling their family into seeing what she chose, not what really was. Her mother was pure evil. She hadn’t cared about her mate or her children or her clan. Power was her lover and control her only friend.
Both Sylvia and Wes had been terrified of her, fearing whims of affection masked darker purposes. The only kindness they’d ever known came from her father, Geoffrey. Until Martine had cut them off from it, viciously, then fatally. That act, like all her many self-centered actions, lay cloaked by lies and misdirection. Not even Sylvia had been able to see through her mother’s mask of tears and mourning to discover the truth. And then, Martine made sure she didn’t want to know.
Their family’s skeleton in the closet.
The Terriot women were rattling those old bones, and without her mother’s commanding presence to safeguard their secret, those lies and worse, those truths, would come spilling out like viscera, damning not only her, but her brother’s chance of ever achieving status within their clan.
The only way she could insulate the men she loved from those devastating claims was to remove the source and let the interest die away.
The only way she could return was with those same weapons Martine wielded so successfully. She needed cunning and leverage. Without it, she’d be a damaging liability to those who wanted to believe in her. She was through being an embarrassing less-than-they-deserved. If she didn’t succeed, at least they’d be free of her contamination.
And maybe, someday, could forgive her.
Holding onto that someday like a life line, Sylvia knocked on the door, not expecting a sleepy Rosalee to answer.
“Sylvia? Do you know what time it is?”
“No. I need to talk to Wesley.”
A laugh. “You’d be more successful in waking the dead. I don’t think you could faze him with an explosion.”
“There’s about to be one. Can I come in?”
Rosie made coffee and sat through Sylvia’s hurried purge of thought, respectful enough to listen to the very end before pronouncing, “You’re crazy.”
“It’s the only way I can think of that won’t destroy them both.”
“Crazy like a fox,” the girl added. “I’ll help you.”
That, Sylvia hadn’t expected.
“I know,” Rosie rushed on, “you think I’m silly and young and stupid, and I am all those things. But I love your brother, and I want the best for him. The things he deserves. He won’t take them of his own accord. And he would never, ever, agree to what you just suggested. You know that. Any more than Turow would.”
She was right. Their pride wouldn’t allow her to take such a risk, even if they’d benefit from it. That’s where they differed from their brother James. James was willing to use anyone to get ahead, regardless of the cost to them. And so had her mother.
“You need to get out of here quickly and undetected,” Rosie went on with an excited fervor. “We’ll take my car. You can crouch down in the back.” She giggled. “Just like a spy movie.” Then she frowned. “I don’t have much cash, but I have cards.”
“We can’t use them.” Turow would trace them. “I have a way to get money." The jewels she'd retrieved from Colin, along with the promise of his silence, weighted her coat pocket and her conscience. "We just need to get to Las Vegas.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Yes.”
“It'll be good to see Jamie again.”
Sylvia didn’t disillusion her as to what she’d see.
“Pack light.”
Rosie eyed her single duffle bag. “That’s all you’re taking.”
“Everything I need.” Except the most important thing she was leaving behind. She blinked, determined, and urged, “Hurry.”
The girl was fast and quiet, Sylvia would give her that. She’d just finished packing a cooler with sustenance for the road. The fewer stops they had to make, the better. Rosie hurried down the steps, shoes and carry-on in hand, bubbling with excitement as if going on a school trip. She had only one request.
“I need to leave a note for Wes. We can’t have him worrying about either of us.”
Sylvia nodded. “No details.”
“I’ll tell him we’re going for a girls' getaway in Reno, that you and Row had a spat, that you needed some space until things had a chance to cool down. He’ll believe that. And it’ll give us enough time to get where we’re going.”
Yes, he would. Clever girl, Rosalee.
While she scribbled a note, Sylvia used the bathroom and swallowed down the pain relievers Rosie provided. Not like they’d help the worst of it. Nothing was strong enough to numb the hurt of what she was running away from.
Rosalee drove a gutsy Ranger Rover that would get them through the worst of the weather moving in with a raging howl. Knowing the entrance to the compound was carefully monitored, and not wanting to alert the family as to her escape, Sylvia crouched down behind the driver’s seat beneath the drape of a colorful plaid blanket. Rosie tossed her carryon on top of it. As they wound through the drives, she tried not to think of what she was leaving behind, only of the opportunities up ahead. Redemption, return, reunion at best. Atonement, at least, if nothing else. The sense of leaving home behind knotted bittersweet inside her, more now than it had during that frantic flight only a few months before.
Because she was leaving her heart behind.
“All clear,” Rosalee announced as she turned out onto the road that wound about the lake. Snow was falling heavily, giving the wipers a workout as Sylvia unwound from her hiding place, abused muscles protesting.
“Want me to stop so you can come up front?”
“Let’s get some distance first.”
“Why don’t you to try to get some sleep? I’ve got this.”
Their gazes met in the rearview as Sylvia nodded gratefully, noticing for the first time that Rosalee had eyes just like Jamie’s.
The slap of windshield wipers that had lulled her to sleep was gradually replaced by the hum of tires on blacktop, coaxing her to linger just a few more minutes in the embrace of her dream . . . of a handsome prince inviting her out onto the dance floor. Instead of stiletto heels, she wore slippers of glass, and the malicious stares that followed were those of jealous sisters-in-law.
Just as her prince took her hand in his, and her heart with his smile, the dream dissolved.
“I’ve got to stop for gas.”
It wasn’t Turow’s voice. For a moment, Sylvia’s head swam in confusion, thinking she was back in that old truck, a prisoner of the man she’d come to love. But it was that nasty bitch Fate that held her chain now, and Rosie was at the wheel.
“How long have I been sleeping?” Surely just minutes.
“A little over seven hours.”
“Seven hours?” She sat up quickly, regretting the move as her body protested with aches and grumbles. What had been in those pills? Sure enough, the glare of past mid-day pierced bleary eyes and brain. Ahead, the towers of Las Vegas appeared like tempting palms against the desert. “You should have woken me.”
“You needed the rest and I enjoyed the drive.”
Rosie pulled in to a small oasis gas station, urging Sylvia to hit the bathroom while she paid for a fill-up inside. She didn’t need to ask twice.
Washing her hands in a sink far cleaner than the one she and Turow had used . . . how many days ago, Sylvia felt the full weight of her decision crush down on her.
By now, he’d know she’d left him. He’d have seen the jewelry, his diamonds, and realized he’d been abandoned. Would he understand the significance of he
r leaving them behind or see it as a vicious affront? Would he react with fury or . . . She shook off that question, unwilling to consider his pain. She couldn’t without it dropping her heart to its knees.
He’d go to Cale, of course, first thing. Would their king be kind or condescending? Kendra would soothe his uncertainty and distress. At least she could take comfort in that, as would he. Then what? Would he race after her, the aggrieved mate of a runaway bride? Or would he pace and stew and anticipate her return? How long before he’d realize that there was no girlfriends’ trip to Reno and no fond reunion in that big bed Cale had given them as a guilt offering? Would he try to understand or come unglued?
How long did she have before he put the pieces together and came up with a bitter betrayal?
Who would comfort him then?
Sylvia shook off those thoughts. She’d given up the right to feel for his anguish when she closed that door between them. Now, she’d only look ahead to the terrifying task laid out for her.
James.
Would he know she was on the way to him? Would the spy inside their compound have gotten word to him already? Was, as she feared, that informant her brother? Would her greeting be cautious or fatal?
Too many questions. Too little time. Too late to worry about them now.
She’d left her bulky coat in the Rover, wearing a baggy sweatshirt belonging to her brother, its hood pulled up to hide her hair, and dark glasses to give her a stick-up artist’s anonymity. Rosie took no such precautions, chatting with the cashier as if they were old friends while she paid for the gas and a couple of two-liters with the last of her cash.
Money became Sylvia’s priority. And safety. All her sacrifices would be for nothing if James murdered her at first sight.
Mind rested and instincts sharp, she posed her plan as they entered the outskirts of Sin City.
“Just drop you off?” Rosie cried, glancing at her co-pilot in alarm. “I will not! We’re in this together.”
“And what I need you to do is important. I need you to pave the way with Jamie. He may not be glad to see me. I left him, shall we say, rather abruptly, and he’s probably still holding a grudge. He has no reason to harm you. Go to his hotel. He’ll see you. Tell him I had the welcome home he predicted and have seen the light. He’ll know what that means. Tell him I understand now, and am eager to do my part.”