“Business school. What kind of business?” He wasn’t just asking to distract her. He was curious.
She took a long breath. “Br-brokerage account man-management.” She hiccupped, took her hands away from her face, and took another long breath. “When I get back to New York, I’ve got to start my job with CFG. B-but to tell you the truth”—her voice was wavering again—“I’m not very good at the k-kind of business that makes a profit regardless . . . regardless of the consequences.”
“No. Really?”
She didn’t seem to sense the sarcasm, just looked down at her hands, loose and upturned in her lap. In a cold, steady voice, she said, “On the other hand, I succeeded in killing most of my ideals in graduate school. I suppose I can kill the rest of them in pursuit of wealth.” Then her hands came up to her face again, and she cried so pitifully she sounded as if she’d never cried before.
How the hell did Genesis Valente manage to turn him on one minute and break his heart the next? He didn’t need this kind of crap.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch.” Which was about as polite a curse as he could think of right now. “Look. I lied. Lots of people cry up here.”
She raised her face from her hands. Her nose was red, her skin blotchy, and she looked like a kid who had dropped her ice cream in the sand. “Do y-you?”
“Do I what? Cry? No.” He didn’t care enough about anything to cry. “But I’m crazy, remember?”
“Yeah. I know.” She nodded emphatically. Tears flew. “I really do.”
He paced away, wanted to run.
He hated this whole scene; hated himself for getting involved, hated that he couldn’t stand to leave her like this.
Not that John liked it when a girl cried, but with Genny he quickly discovered he hated more that she was stifling her sobs as if she was embarrassed by her emotions. Or maybe she struggled because she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. In his experience—not that he’d had a lot of experience with crying women—it was better if they let it all out.
He came back to her.
She had pulled her knees up to her chest and put her head on them, hiding herself away.
Someone had really done a number on her.
“Shit.” In the bravest gesture of a roughneck life, John sat down beside Genny and put his arm around her.
Chapter 16
In a life filled with few moments of hope and much duty and wretchedness, this was the worst.
Because in addition to Genny’s unexpected breakdown caused by a brush with death, she was being comforted by the man she’d been sent to betray.A guy so crazy he dressed in skins and avoided human contact.
A guy who promised to fulfill her dream, make her a hero to her group, and show her a female lynx and her two kittens.
Genny was a living, breathing, traitorous creep.
Which just made her cry harder.
When was the last time she’d cried? Had it been when she’d been forced to give up her pets? When her mother left?
No. She knew exactly the last time she’d cried: when she had given up on living her own life, given in to her father’s wishes and applied to business school.
After that, nothing was worth crying about.
Except now, when for three months she could make a difference in the world. For that, she’d given up everything . . . including her integrity. Especially her integrity, crumpled and compromised as it was.
“Jes . . . geeze.” John’s voice rumbled in his chest. Under her ear. “Nothing is this bad.”
“Y-you’re ri-right.” She huddled into his arms, trying hard not to sob and failing miserably.
He waited, stock-still and stiff, like a rock on which her stormy emotions broke. “You’re reacting to the shock of your fall.”
“I know. You’re right.”
“Soldiers do that. Take a fit after they face off with death.”
She peeked up at him. He wasn’t drooling or twitching. He didn’t look so much mad as just . . . weird. Gifted. Traumatized, maybe, by something in his past.
She half laughed in the midst of her crying. “Imagine that.”
“Soldiers babble about what they almost missed. About the dreams they didn’t follow. About the loves they left behind.”
“At least I have no loves to regret.” Remembering the guys in business school, and how carefully she had ignored them in the pursuit of grades and success, she had to bite her tongue to avoid whimpering.
“You’re lucky,” John said.
He spoke so stoically, she knew he had suffered a love lost. She wanted to ask, but if he told her a sad story, she’d probably puddle up again. And not for his pain, either. She’d cry because if she had taken that fall and her life flashed before her eyes, it wouldn’t have occupied the whole trip down to the ground. She’d have to ask for a rerun. She’d been seriously dedicated to studying and nothing else.
She had no life. Oh, a few friends, some casual dates, but nothing that occupied her mind and her heart. When she returned to New York City, she was facing more no life.
She’d been the fool her father called her.
“You were a soldier?” She felt her anguish easing, used another tissue, and waited for his answer.
“Yes. In the wars in Afghanistan.”
And in the war between the Chosen Ones and the Others?
He didn’t mention that, though, and nothing about him encouraged her to think he would.
Her tears dried on her cheeks.
This mission she’d taken on . . . how could she accomplish it without hurting someone? Without hurting him, a soul already so wounded he avoided human company?
“Are you better?” He didn’t wait for her answer, just took his arm from around her shoulders and stood. “If you want to see Mama Cat and her babies, we’d better go.”
“Yes. Thank you.” She stood, dusted off her rear, and dusted off her enthusiasm. “Yes, let’s go.” After all, she hadn’t really done anything to harm him. And didn’t intend to. The people in New York only wanted to talk to him. She was merely going to steer him their way. There was no harm in that. If he didn’t want to leave his ways as a hermit, they couldn’t force him, but perhaps they could entice him to return to a life filled with good people and good deeds.
And if the legend was to be believed, good deeds were what the Gypsy Travel Agency was all about.
“Come on.” He started down the path that paralleled the river, continuing around a bend away from the cliff and the observation platform.
She hurried after him.
The river curved away from the bank, leaving a broad swath of sand below.
He jumped, then offered his hand to her.
She leaped, too, and landed on him, making him stagger. “Sorry!”
“We have to cross the river, but it’s shallow. Mama Cat is on the other side.” He indicated the stones scattered across the surface of the cold, green water. “Can you make your way across?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s go.” He leaped the rocks to the opposite bank, then called, “Are you coming?”
Like a goat, she sprang over the stones and followed him to the line where the sand ended and the forest began.
With a hand on her arm, he stopped her. “Wait,” he said softly. Then in the lilting tone of a lover, he called, “Mama Cat, we’ve come to admire your kittens.”
Morning had fully blossomed. Sunshine dappled the water. Genny had been assured time and again that the Ural lynx was a nocturnal animal, yet the cat responded to his voice, poking her head out of a narrow grotto in the pile of stones set five feet above the river.
The cat looked at him, then at Genny.
They were almost at eye level, she and the cat, and mere feet apart.
Genny shed her backpack and coat and sank to her knees in the sun-warmed sand. She marveled at the creature’s sleek coat, its neat mouth with its handsome side whiskers, its golden brown eyes that weighed her so intelligently.
She marveled
more that John Powell, a man with a reputation for being violent, insane, and a killer, could charm a wild cat out of her den in broad daylight.
Every moment of this encounter made her wonder if the legend was true. If the real world she had occupied all her life was the only world, or if special gifts and superpowers existed side by side with flow charts and stock reports.
“May we see your babies?” John crooned to the lynx. “I promise we’ll treat them like the treasures they are.”
The great cat gazed at him, then pulled its head in.
John knelt beside Genny. “Now we wait and see what she decides.”
Genny couldn’t stop smiling, at the den where the cats resided and at him. “No matter what, I’ll never forget being so close to such a beautiful beast.”
His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile back—and she thought that if only she could see more of his face, he might be a handsome man. Certainly in this moment, his eyes no longer were the chill ice of a glacier. Instead, they reflected the blue of the river and the sky.
He looked back at the den as a bundle of fur tumbled out and fell down the rocks to the sandy riverbed. Another followed, propelled by Mama Cat’s nose.
Genny barely contained a gasp of delight.
The two kittens blinked in the sunshine, and mewed piteously. Mama Cat slipped out of the den and followed them, nosed them, licked them, nudged them to let them know she was nearby. They were the size of small house cats, fluffy and soft; their coloring blurred and pale, an indistinct brown and gold.
“How old are they?” Genny whispered.
“They’re seven, almost eight weeks old, a boy and a girl.”
Genny trembled with the desire to touch, but she knew better. Mama Cat was wild with forty pounds of muscle and a predator’s instinct. These were her offspring, and if Genny made the mistake of alarming her, she would attack with tooth and claw—and they were very impressive teeth and even more impressive claws.
But if Mama Cat had doubts, the kittens did not. They had met John before, felt his touch, and when he made a deep, rumbling sound in his chest, they scampered to him and into his lap.
Mama Cat seated herself and watched, on guard but at ease.
Genny watched as he picked up first one, then the other, and lifted them to his face. They sniffed noses, the three of them, and something about that gesture of trust made her heart catch.
Was she supposed to be scared of this guy? Really? The guy who rescued her, who showed her the great cats, who held her when she cried?
No. She couldn’t do it. Like the kittens, she wanted to touch her nose to his, her lips to his, her body to his. Like the kittens, she trusted him.
Slowly, she sat up straight, forcing her mind back to reality.
She’d heard way too much about John Powell and his sexual prowess, and dreamed far too often, and now her mind had skipped merrily along to daytime fantasies. Great.
Greetings over, he placed them back in his lap. There they bit at his fingers and scratched at his leg, and when Genny chuckled, they turned their attention to her.
Mama Cat sat straighter, at attention, her eyes narrowed as if to warn Genny that she, like Lubochka, did not want any trouble.
But the kittens saw in Genny a potential new playmate, and pounced. One kitten grabbed her hand and gnawed.
“That is the boy,” John said.
One kitten dashed up the bank and down again, skidded to a halt at the edge of the river, then ran back to John. She jumped into his lap, and he absentmindedly gathered her close to his chest.
Genny carefully did not smile.
“This is the girl,” he said. “She frequently imagines she’s missed an important appointment and races to keep it.”
“They’re so alive.” Genny marveled as her fingers sank into the kitten’s soft fur and felt his wiry muscles contract and stretch. “You should name them.”
“No. They’re wild cats. They’re not my pets.”
Rebuffed, Genny sat back on her heels. Yes, John Powell, if you name them and some harm comes to them, you can’t pretend you don’t care. But so small a distancing wouldn’t protect the man who now cuddled a kitten under his chin.
He sounded deliberately casual as he said, “Tell me about Brandon.”
“Brandon.” What had she said to him about Brandon? “Why?”
“I deserve to know about some guy who is calling me a yeti.”
“Ohh.” Now she remembered. “Brandon is this little creep on the team. One of those guys who has to pick on somebody, and I’m the one.” She shrugged. “It’s not important.”
“What does he do?”
“Not a whole lot. Lubochka is exasperated. She suspects he’s going out into the woods to sleep rather than looking for signs left by the lynx.” Genny thought Lubochka was right.
In a patient tone, John said, “No. I mean—what does he do to you?”
“Oh. That. It really isn’t important. He makes fun of me. Blames me for the lack of lynx sightings.” She smiled at her lap full of kitten. “No one pays attention to him, and I feel sorry for him. He’s such a loser.”
“He’s in love with you.”
She chortled. “Hardly.”
“Some men never grow up. When they like a girl, they pinch her. This Brandon is still on the play-ground.” John sounded sure of himself.
And his talk of Brandon reminded her of what she should do next. “I’ll tell you what.” She grabbed her camera. “This will fix Brandon. I can take him down a few notches tonight with the pictures I take of these cats!” She pointed the camera toward John, toward the kitten sleeping against his chest.
He moved so swiftly, she saw only a blur.
Catching her wrist in a strong grip, he turned the camera away. His voice sounded low, rough, like the warning a lynx would give before it attacked. “Genesis . . . do not betray me.”
Chapter 17
John’s grip on her wrist made Genny wince. He showed his teeth like a threatened wildcat, and his eyes glinted icily.
“Don’t take pictures of me. Don’t tell them that you saw me.”“Them?” He knew. John knew about the deal Genny had made to talk him into going back to New York. “I didn’t mean . . .” Fear made her tremble. Guilt gnawed at her nerves. “I shouldn’t have, but I was desperate . . .”
Through their joined flesh, she felt his rising emotion. Not anger at her, but rather an old, curbed anguish. “Do you know where I lived . . . in the summers of my childhood?”
That was not what she expected him to say. “In Rasputye? No, wait. You said you lived there in the winters.”
“But not the summers.” As she watched, his eyes bleached to a pale blue.
Yes, she was right to be afraid. He was a former soldier. He knew how to fight. He knew how to kill. And he had run away from the world because . . . because he had suffered too much? Or because he’d done something heinous?
He could hurt her; she knew that for sure. Yet still she believed . . . that he would not hurt her, not as long as she kept faith in him. She kept her voice hushed and calm, the way she spoke to the lynx. “What happened in the summers?”
“Every year, Olik and his wife sold me to the circus.”
“The . . . circus.” If this was anyone else, she’d say he was pulling her leg. “Like . . . under the big top? Tents and trained seals and acrobats?”
“No. Like fortune-tellers and puppet shows and . . . freaks.”
A picture formed in her mind of broken-down vans, of tents covered with grimy stars, of a large, bearded, heavy-handed master named Stromboli—she had tapped into her childhood memory of Pinocchio. “You’re kidding.” A burning started in her gut. “What kind of people would sell a child?”
“People who seize the opportunities presented to them.”
“What idiot told you that?” Her voice rose in indignation.
“Olik’s wife. Tanja is not an idiot. She is shrewd. They had no children, so Olik brought me home to work. She he
ard the story of my return to life, remembered the legend, and saw a greater prospect. The circus paid them very well for the chance to showcase me.”
Genny cupped her hand over the kitten in her lap as if to protect it from harm. “She’s a horrible woman!”
“Don’t you know? There are many horrible people in this world.”
“I do know. But I don’t have to like it!” The boy kitten dug his claws into her sweatshirt, walked his way up to her shoulder, then rubbed his chin against her ear. “John, what did you do in the circus?” She tried to imagine the worst job. “Clean the elephant cage?”
“It was a small, run-down circus, a Russian circus run by people who had no place in the world. They certainly had no elephants.” He held her wrist in an unbreakable grip, frozen in midair as if he’d forgotten he even touched her. “Gaspard was old and cruel, and he owned the act. Owned his wives. Owned his children. Everyone was afraid of him. We traveled from town to town. You can imagine. A dancing bear. Cockfights. A few freaks.”
“Freaks.” John’s story sounded like some horrid retelling of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame. “What do you mean, freaks?”
“Freaks like me.” John released her wrist, but not before she felt a surge of desolation.
She rubbed her skin and knew she ought to scoff at his contention he was a freak. But his hair was wild around his face and his eyes glinted hard as ice, and she was afraid—of him, and for him. “How did you . . . ? What did you . . . do . . . in their act?”
“There’s a legend that says when a baby is abandoned by its parents and dies, then returns to life, that child has special powers.” He spoke intensely, yet so quietly the lynx kitten snuggled into the wilderness of his beard and purred.
But Mama Cat read his mood, reflected his torment. She began to pace. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Genny lifted the boy kitten off her shoulder. She set him down, found a long, spindly twig, dragged it across the sand, back and forth, while he pounced and played. “I’ve heard that legend,” she admitted.
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