by Tara Rose
Nita shook hands with each one, but she didn’t say anything. In her younger days, she’d been obsessed with keeping track of who was related to whom and in what way. She’d heard the names of everyone Alaina introduced before, but no longer had an interest in which of them were cousins, or whatever, to anyone else.
Did all these men know what Keith had done to her? Had they helped Billy spread the lies that followed? Were they all laughing inside at her now, amused that she was on their turf and wouldn’t dare say anything?
There was nothing physically to set Brett or Mark apart from the others. Most of the Raleigh men had Mark’s blond hair and blue eyes, and every Durante man in the room had dark hair and gray eyes, like Brett. But they each showed more than a passing interest in her than the others. Was that significant? She remembered them from school. They’d been a year or two ahead of her, Keith, and Billy, but that didn’t mean they were clueless. On an island with less than twelve thousand residents, everyone knew everyone else’s business, at least on the surface.
Brett shook her hand firmly, like he’d shake a man’s hand, and the direct, admiring look he gave her caught her off guard. Was he hoping for some of what Keith had once taken from her? Her thoughts were suddenly all jumbled, as if she’d recently woken from a deep sleep. Brett asked if she’d ever been there before, and she almost didn’t hear him.
“N–no. First time in the complex.”
His warm smile held no trace of the contempt she’d expected. “Then welcome to our fort.” When he winked, her traitorous body responded. Nita wasn’t used to such immediate or intense physical reactions to men, and it filled her with dread. What the hell was wrong with her? He was a Durante. Get a grip on yourself.
Mark also asked her a question after shaking her hand, but this time she had to ask him to repeat it.
“You live with Phyllis, is that right?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I help her run the shop.” Good lord. She sounded like she’d left half her brain back there along the beach. And surely they all knew where she lived. Why did they have to play games? “She’s teaching me her skills.”
“How fascinating. Welcome to Phoebe’s Playthings.”
His comment, too, held no trace of bullshit or that tone people took when they were simply trying to say something nice. It sounded like he meant it. When she took her seat next to her grandmother again, her confusion deepened. She was hyperaware of Brett on her left and Mark directly across from her. She could actually feel their body heat.
When she dared to risk a glance to her right, her grandmother gave her a knowing smile, which of course sent a rush of heat to Nita’s face. If you only knew. If she did, she wouldn’t be sitting there with that look on her face. She’d be on her feet, her bony fingers pointed in Brett’s and Mark’s faces. She’d be threatening them with bodily harm if they came near her granddaughter.
If Alaina or any of the men noticed this struggle inside her, they didn’t show it. Alaina jumped right in, standing at the head of the table, clearly comfortable addressing a group. “Okay. So, thank you all for coming on such short notice, and especially thank you to Phyllis and Nita. The reason we’re here today is that I have what I believe is a concrete answer to the language on Estevan’s and Jagger’s medallions, and the documents that Taj, Brett, and Nando have.”
Alaina turned on her computer and adjusted a few controls, and then the pictures she’d taken of the documents in question were suddenly as large as life on a screen that took up one wall. Nita had seen a few of the documents once, when they were brought to the shop for help in translation. Phyllis hadn’t been able to translate them, but had told the men they each held powerful magick. Dark, evil magick. Now, even though Nita knew these were only photos, a chill ran over her body.
Alaina used a digital pointer to highlight a line of text. “These have been seen by handwriting and language experts before, but I was able to find someone who had extensive knowledge of the various dialects of the Arawaken languages, specifically the Taino languages, since so much of that culture is reflected in the art, and the tats of the men on this island.”
Nita eyed Taj as he and Alaina exchanged a quick glance. No doubt she’d seen the tats she spoke of up close and personal. Nita’s gaze drifted toward Brett and Mark. Did they also sport Taino tats?
Stop that! What the fuck was wrong with her? Hadn’t she been hurt enough by the men in these families years ago?
“My hypothesis was that the language might be a blend of these dialects, or even a previously unknown one, since the original inhabitants of this island were a mixture of multiple cultures in the Caribbean. My hunch paid off.”
She clicked a button on her laptop, and another document filled the screen. This one was interspersed with English. “This is part of the dissertation a professor at Pepperdine did for her PhD in extinct languages several years ago.” She clicked again, and the documents were now side-by-side. “As you can see, the text is similar. Professor Beale believes the language in the documents owned by our men is a combination of the Eyeri and Lucayo dialects, with a smattering of French Creole thrown in.”
Conversation erupted around the table, expressing doubt to elation, and every emotion in between. Alaina waited until it died down, then continued. “Jan is a good friend of mine. Rest assured she wouldn’t tell me she’d identified the dialects if she wasn’t sure she had. She’s going to work now on translating them, which might be quite an undertaking since it appears whoever wrote them mixed the dialects. Sometimes within the same sentence.”
“Maybe that was done to confuse whoever read it?” asked Brett.
“She thought the same thing. They’re written in what we might call code. Even the words used don’t necessarily mean what they say. So she not only has to translate, but she might have to figure out the symbolism, as well.”
“It’s farther than we’ve come before,” said Mark. “This is really exciting.”
Jagger leaned so far back in his chair that Nita waited for him to topple backward. “Well, there goes my alien theory.”
Most of the men laughed, and Taj nodded. “You have no idea how close to believing that I was. Do you know how many so-called experts I had look at this stuff?”
“Hang on,” said Alaina. “It doesn’t mean something was missed by them. Jan simply approached it from a different direction, that’s all. I told her we’d had the documents looked at before, and she said it was all a matter of angles. Someone else could easily have come up with the same approach, eventually.”
Nando glanced toward Phyllis and Nita. “What’s the other info you have for us?”
Alaina’s eyes twinkled. “Here’s the best part.” She clicked a few more times, and a third document filled the screen. The handwritten text on the left, and a list of loa on the right. “Jan believes she found the names of several loa within the documents we have on the island. This is where Phyllis and Nita come in. We were hoping you could help us make sense of why these names would be in the documents.”
“In other words,” said Liam, “she wants to know if you can tell us which of these loa cursed our great-grandfathers.”
Several of the men chuckled, but Nita caught the undertones in Liam’s words. They were dead serious. She hated to burst their bubble, but loa didn’t curse anyone.
Nita cut her gaze toward her grandmother, who narrowed her eyes and made soft noises in the back of her throat, like she always did when she was deep in thought. It was as close as she came to talking out loud during those times.
When she finally spoke, it was softly. “Nothing there evil, if that’s what you was hoping to see.” She glanced toward Nita. “You care to explain loa to these folk?”
Do I have to? “Sure. Okay. The loa aren’t deities. They intercede, much the same way Catholic saints intercede on behalf of the one praying. And contrary to popular belief, once their intercession is asked for, the loa don’t like to hang around. They don’t haunt a dwelling. And they’re not demons,
so unfortunately none of these would have placed the curse.”
She actually felt the deflation in the room, and in that instant she felt truly sorry for them. Nita had always found the curse both fascinating and unnecessarily cruel. She couldn’t imagine growing up on an island and knowing if you tried to leave, you’d die. Whatever their ancestors had done, did successive generations deserve to be punished for it?
Then again, her firsthand experiences with two of them were enough to make her wish she could cast a curse. One that would make their dicks fall off.
“So could their presence in the documents suggest someone had asked them for help?” asked Mark.
Why did he have to be so damn gorgeous, and address her in such a civil tone? He didn’t look like he wanted to hurt her. But then, neither had Keith. “Oh, absolutely. But until the professor can translate the passages around their names, we won’t know in what context that occurred, or even if the person who wrote their names was simply listing them for some other reason.”
“It appears we’ve wasted your time then,” said Brett.
He, too, looked harmless, as well as sincere. Was that part of their ploy? She cut her gaze toward Alaina. She wasn’t a woman who would let a man or two use her up and then spit her back out. Was it possible they weren’t all like Keith and Billy?
Nita forced herself to smile at Brett, but all that did was bring the memories of high school crashing down on her once again. “You haven’t wasted our time. As Mark said, this is more than you had before. Knowing where in the passages the loa’s names were placed will help us figure out their purpose in the documents.”
“Well done, Alaina.” Taj beamed at her. “On both counts. Sending them off to Jan, and asking Phyllis and Nita here today. He turned his attention toward them. “Can you two come back once Jan has translated the documents?”
“If she translates them,” said Nando. “Code-breaking and more than one dialect? Sounds like whoever wrote them didn’t mean for anyone to decipher them.”
“She’ll try anyway,” said Jagger, glancing toward Alaina. “Right?”
“Yes, she will.”
“We will return,” said Phyllis. “Or you is always welcome in my shop.”
Alaina looked deflated, as if she’d been expecting more of a revelation. Nita frowned, glancing toward her grandmother. “What about Shona’s diary? That might help. And it’s written in English.”
“Shona Durante?” asked Nando.
“Yes. Iago’s daughter. Does Graham still have her diary?” She glanced around. Why wasn’t he here? He had a huge clue.
“He still has it,”
“That never occurred to me,” said Liam, shaking his head.
“It didn’t occur to any of us,” said Taj. “But then again, I didn’t realize Graham had ever shown it to anyone outside the family.”
“He brung it to the shop years ago,” said Phyllis. “No dark magick in it. Just stories.”
“Unverified stories,” said Brett.
“Yeah,” said Mark. “The ramblings of a teen. We’re not even sure they mean anything.”
“I’ve only read a few pages of it,” said Nita, “but if it’s filled with stories about the curse, it might help if Jan is able to compare those stories side-by-side with what she finds in the documents.”
“That would mean it has to leave the island,” said Nando. “No way Graham is going to allow that.”
Alaina frowned in Nando’s direction. “Would he let us copy it then, at least? I can scan the pages in and e-mail them to Jan.”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
“I invited him here this morning, but he never responded.”
“Tim has us working on some BS project,” said Jagger. “Graham stayed behind this morning because Tim keeps checking on our progress. But I’ll talk to him when I get back to my office.”
“Thanks,” said Alaina. “I appreciate that. Good idea mentioning the diary, Nita. Thanks for bringing it up.” She turned off her laptop as the men rose, each of them thanking Phyllis and Nita. Brett and Mark hung around after the others left.
Alaina told them she had another meeting, and thanked them again for coming. “I’m so sorry. I feel as if I wasted your time.”
“You did not waste it,” said Phyllis.
“All right. But I do have to run. I promise I’ll call as soon as Jan has more for me.” She turned toward Brett, who stood closest to her. “Do you mind showing them the way back to the lobby?”
“Happy to do it,” said Brett.
“Thanks.” Alaina was out the door before Brett finished his sentence.
“This way, ladies,” said Brett, smiling at Nita.
“I’ll join you,” said Mark.
The two exchanged a glance so filled with testosterone and territory marking, that Nita almost laughed. An image of two male jaguars circling each other over a female danced through her mind. Their eyes alone were just as intense as any cat’s she’d seen, although she’d never been this close to a jaguar.
Nita had no idea what to make of them, and the words simply tumbled out before she had a chance to stop them. “And they say chivalry is dead.”
The looks on their faces—a combination of delight and more than a passing interest—would chase her down into dreams tonight. What the hell was she doing flirting with them?
Chapter Two
Brett couldn’t stop staring at Nita. He remembered her from school as a shy girl who always had her nose in a book about voodoo or Haitian culture. He also recalled some nonsense with Billy and Keith, both distant cousins, spreading rumors about her. But Brett had considered the source and never believed them.
Those two were still useless, as far as Brett was concerned. They’d always been far more interested in computers and gaming systems than people, and they still touted themselves as tech-savvy geniuses. From what Brett had seen firsthand, they weren’t any more tech savvy than the average ten-year-old these days.
He knew Phyllis had raised her, and he understood why she’d want to learn all she could about what her grandmother did. But how had he missed the vibrant, interesting woman she’d become?
He’d been too busy worrying over JD Construction, the company that his father, Davis, and his uncle Jesse owned. Asa had assured them all that it would not fold, but once Jesse’s son, Owen, had been arrested along with his idiot friend Penn Rosen, JD Construction’s business had been in trouble.
The two were accused of setting fires late in September that had burned up the progress of Palace of Eris, a resort that Jesse and Davis were building. Unfortunately, there had still been workers in the buildings and several were killed or hurt in the fires.
The police had enough evidence on Owen and Penn that their convictions for arson were a foregone conclusion. But as to the charges for involuntary manslaughter, the pair claimed not to have known the workers would still be there. There would undoubtedly be civil suits filed by the families of those who were killed or hurt. Either way, those two were ruined now.
Brett only hoped that JD Construction wouldn’t go under, as well. Owen had been their accountant before his arrest, and had apparently embezzled money for years. But his father and uncle didn’t deserve to lose their livelihood over this. They’d had nothing to do with Owen’s actions. Their only mistake had been in trusting him.
Owen and Penn were awaiting trial, and it might be a while before that happened because their attorney was trying everything possible to change the venue. But since Owen was a Durante male descendant, he refused to leave the island. And their attorney didn’t want to file a motion to separate the trials because he didn’t believe that would leave Penn in a better place.
The whole mess had taken its toll on all the Durantes and Raleighs, even though Asa considered Jesse and his sons outcasts. Asa’s feud with Jesse had more to do with certain extracurricular activities that Jesse had once engaged in with Dot, Asa’s third wife, than with the fact that Davis and Jesse hadn’
t gone to work for Phoebe’s Playthings like most of the current generation of Raleighs and Durantes had.
Still, because Davis was Jesse’s brother, Brett and his brother, Jagger, always felt as though they weren’t part of the inner circle at Phoebe’s Playthings. Jagger didn’t care as much as Brett did about all that.
But Nita wasn’t part of that mess. Brett shook away thoughts of his father and uncle, and instead concentrated on watching her walk. She had a lush, curvy body that made his dick hard and sent his imagination reeling. As they rounded the corner that would lead them to the lobby, he said the only thought that could be uttered in public. “You changed your hair. I mean, from when we were in high school.”
The underlying color was the same, jet black, but instead of the blonde streaks she’d had in high school, she now sported magenta and turquoise. It was an intriguing combination, and it set off her eyes.
“Yeah. I’m really into native colors right now.”
Why wouldn’t she maintain eye contact with him? He’d sensed what he swore was fear in her the moment they’d all entered the conference room. Or had she merely been intimidated? She had no reason to be.
None of them knew shit about loa, as evidenced by the fact that they’d assumed their names in those documents meant they’d found the deity who had cursed their ancestors. The nervousness he’d noticed had abated once she’d started explaining loa to them, but now she looked ready to bolt from the building again.
“She likes to experiment with that hair of hers,” said Phyllis, fixing her coal-black eyes on him.
He normally averted his gaze when Phyllis looked directly at him because he always had the uncomfortable feeling she could read his thoughts, but today he felt bold, so he looked her straight in the eyes. “Whose hair does she have? Her mother’s or her father’s?”