by Jillian Neal
“Come on in,” Logan unlocked the door in from the garage. Adeline smiled at Lucas as they entered and turned on the lights.
“So, this is it. I mean, obviously, this is the living room and kitchen.” The hint of color was becoming more pronounced in her cheeks. “And that’s Rainer and Emily’s room, and this is mine and Logan’s room.” She flipped on the light to their bedroom.
Logan thought she was adorable, but confusion was the predominant expression on her father’s face. “It’s…uh… very nice, dear.” No one believed he thought the house was nice. Adeline’s face fell in disappointment.
Emotion cinched in Logan’s throat as Adeline proceeded to try and prove their home to her father. She was both offended and wary.
With the few quick steps it took to get back to the living room, she gestured to the old sofa. “We watch movies here, and we eat here.” She moved to the ancient table in the kitchenette. “We eat up at the farmhouse a lot, but Emily’s a great cook, just like Mrs. Haydenshire.”
“Adeline, you’re a great cook, too,” Emily immediately argued.
“Your nachos are phenomenal,” Rainer agreed as everyone realized what Adeline was trying so desperately to prove.
With a quick inventory of their home again, she abruptly stopped speaking. She wasn’t going to point out the activities that went on in her and Logan’s bedroom, so there wasn’t much else to elaborate on.
Fury seared through Logan’s veins. He didn’t need Adeline’s father marching in and making her feel like their home, the first place she’d ever felt completely comfortable and content, was somehow not good enough.
“She loves this house,” he narrowed his eyes at Lucas.
“Right, of course,” Lucas realized that he’d given himself away.
“Perhaps, dear, you could expand it or, if you and Logan would like to live somewhere else on the farm, maybe the Crown Governor would let you build in one of the pastures. The land is quite expansive. I’d be happy to give you the money.”
Logan moved to Adeline as she reached her hand discreetly towards him. “But I don’t want to live anywhere else. I really like this house. Logan built this.”
Logan studied her energy as she drew from him. Confusion and the pain of rejection swirled in the depths of fear.
“It has everything we need, and it’s the first place we ever lived together,” her voice was now barely a whisper.
Uncomfortable silence filled the room as Rainer offered Logan sympathetic glances, and Emily blinked back tears. She could feel Adeline’s pain move through the air.
“Mr. Nguyen, why don’t Em and I take you back up to the farmhouse? I know that time difference is a bear.” Rainer’s shield had tensed a moment before he’d come to Adeline’s rescue.
“Well I was hoping to get to spend a little more time with you, Adeline.”
“Oh,” Adeline forced a smile, “well, I have to work an early shift in the morning. I’m pulling several twelve-hour days, so I can have off on Christmas Eve. But I’ll see you when I get home tomorrow night. Emily and I were going to make you dinner, here.” She now sounded concerned about that plan.
“That would be lovely. Well, then, I guess I’ll bid you good- night.” Lucas looked bereaved as he moved towards Adeline. She gave him a hesitant hug, and Rainer gestured him out to the garage, grabbing the keys to the Hummer on the way out.
Adeline fell against Logan’s chest as Rainer stopped at the door. “Em and I are gonna go grab some milkshakes. We’ll bring you some back.” He knew Logan would need time to try to repair the damage Lucas had caused.
“You okay?” Logan knew perfectly well that she wasn’t.
“Why doesn’t he like it here?”
Logan hadn’t realized until he’d allowed Lucas into their home that what he thought really did matter to Adeline.
“I don’t know, baby. I guess because you’re a princess, so I think he was probably thinking we had something a little closer to a castle,” Logan tried not to let his irritation perforate his tone.
“Don’t say that,” Adeline fumed. She slipped away from Logan and blinked back tears. “I’m not a princess. I don’t want to be a princess. I want to be your wife, and I want to be a Medio. I want to live here, and that’s all I want, nothing else. Why can’t he understand that?”
Logan moved back to her and placed his hands gently on her shoulders. “You are my wife, Adeline, and you are a phenomenal Medio, baby. You’re quickly becoming the best in your field, and you delivered twins today. I’m so proud of everything that you do. And I love our house too, because when I get off work you’re here, and that’s all that will ever matter to me. So, if you’re happy here and I’m happy here, then I don’t think it should really matter what Lucas thinks.”
Adeline tucked herself back into his embrace and nodded against him, but she was still devastated. “But you worked so hard on this house, and it’s so nice. And you did it for me. It’s more than I could ever have dreamed of,” she gave in and drowned in tears of heartbreak.
“Shh, baby, it’s okay. Please don’t cry. I love you so much. It kills me to see you hurt.”
Adeline immediately tried to stop crying, only serving to make Logan feel badly for asking. “That wasn’t very nice, after all of your hard work. You built the entire house, and you did it for us,” she restated the thing that galled her more than anything else.
“I had a lot of help, baby, and he’s your dad, remember?”
She gave him a quizzical look. “I know that.”
Logan chuckled at the misunderstanding. “So, you know how really nothing that Rainer ever does will be quite good enough for my dad, because at the end of the day he’s the guy crawling into bed with my sister?”
Adeline gave a slight giggle as she nodded.
“I think maybe that’s how dads are; especially about their little girls.”
“I’m not his little girl, Logan, and I don’t want to be. I want to know him, and I’d like to see him occasionally, but…” She paused, hesitant to say whatever was on her mind.
“But what?” Logan pushed a strand of her long, jet-black hair behind her ear.
She blushed. “I just want to be your baby. That’s the only thing that really matters to me.”
“You are always, always my baby, Ad, and I will always take care of you.” He’d never realized, in all the years they’d dated, in his relentless, dogged drive to protect her from her mother and from the world, that the one thing Adeline would fight for above all else… was him.
Where You Are Going
~Rainer Lawson~
Rainer and Emily shared quick concerned glances on the way back to the farmhouse.
“How long did you say you’d lived here on the farm, uh,” Lucas paused, “may I call you Rainer?”
“Of course.” Rainer tried to remember what Lucas had called him in Sydney. It seemed an odd question. “I moved out here just before I turned fourteen, a few weeks after my father was killed.” He still found those particular words haunting and afflicting. Emily took his hand. He felt her intoxicating cast work through him discreetly.
“And where did you live when your father was the Crown Governor, Rainer?”
Rainer tried not to be irritated with Lucas’s line of questioning; Lucas didn’t know that every time Rainer drove past his old neighborhood, he ached with fresh pain. “My house wasn’t too far from here. It’s out in Great Falls, just in a subdivision. We didn’t have any land like this or anything.”
“But the president of the Non-Gifted Realm lives in the White House, an expansive mansion with places for visiting dignitaries and the like to stay, does he not?”
“He does, but my father really believed that it wasn’t where you came from, it was where you were going. He always taught me that the Gifted people have been given so much, that there was no need to lord our powers over the Non-Gifted Realm. Governor Haydenshire and Governor Vindico, the entire governing board, agree with that.”
&
nbsp; “Trust me, if you saw where Adeline grew up you’d realize how lucky we all were to grow up here,” Emily stung from the rejection of her beloved farm and of her best friend. Rainer squeezed her hand and shook his head slightly.
Instead of parking in the large barn, he parked near the side of the farmhouse. Lucas followed them onto the porch as Emily opened the unlocked kitchen door.
“Stephan, what on earth are we going to do with twenty pounds of live crab? I can hardly reach the stove! I do not know how to cook crab that is still living,” Mrs. Haydenshire was huffing furiously.
“I know, honey. I’m not asking you to cook them. It was that ridiculous article Women of the Realm ran that said that crab was the Crown Governor’s favorite meal, and that we’d gone out for crab on our first date. Not only do I despise crab, but I couldn’t have afforded to take you out for seafood if I’d wanted to.”
“Uh, hi!” Emily nearly shouted as both of her parents whirled around to see her.
“Well, that was a quick trip. How did you like the guesthouse? Didn’t the boys do a great job?” Miss Haydenshire turned her frustration off quickly.
“It’s really something. I think I might just retire to my bedroll. Been a bit of a day,” Lucas sighed.
“I’m certain it has. Can I get you anything before you head up?” Governor Haydenshire studied Lucas.
“No, Crown Governor; I’ll just send Fred down for a spot of brandy if you have any.”
Governor Haydenshire moved to the built-in liquor cabinet that stood in a very short hallway between the kitchen and dining room. “Here we go,” Governor Haydenshire pulled a bottle of brandy from the cabinets and poured Lucas a shot. “Save Fred the trip.”
“Thank you, Crown Governor.” Lucas looked appalled that the Crown Governor of the American Realm had fixed him a drink.
“Please call me Stephan. Being Crown is my job. It isn’t who I am.”
“Yes, I think I’m beginning to understand that. Well, good night then,” Lucas turned to stalk quickly up the stairs.
“What happened?” Governor Haydenshire demanded as soon as he was gone.
“Well, he was kind of a jerk about the guesthouse, and it really hurt Adeline’s feelings. She was crying when we left,” Emily’s tone increased with her acrimony.
Mrs. Haydenshire looked crestfallen as she sank down in the rocking chair in the kitchen, and accepted the tea the Governor made for her.
“He has got to stop judging Adeline’s life by his standards,” Governor Haydenshire poured himself a shot of the same brandy he’d given Lucas. He settled down at the table.
Emily moved to the refrigerator and withdrew two Dr. Peppers. She handed one to Rainer and joined her parents at the table.
“He really upset her. I didn’t know she was going to get so worked up about what he thought.”
Her father smiled at her and patted her hand.
“That’s the home that Logan built for her, baby girl.”
“And that means the whole world to Adeline,” Mrs. Haydenshire concluded.
Un-‘Will’ing Confessions
~Dan Vindico~
“I don’t even want to know what this is going to cost you, nor do I want to think about the sheer amount of money you have spent since we started dating, all because of me. You are not allowed to buy me a single Christmas, Valentine, or birthday present for the rest of our lives,” Fionna ordered as Dan opened the door to the Ferrari for her and then moved to the driver’s side.
He laughed. “That will most definitely not be happening. You’ll hardly let me buy you anything. What do you mean all the money I’ve spent since we started dating?”
“Dan, you just spent millions of dollars on stock in the Angels.”
“No,” he corrected her as he drove the gravel path off of the Haydenshires’ farm. The Ferrari drove with ease, as if he was on a smooth track. “I invested in one of the best professional summation teams in the American Realm, which I will most definitely be getting hefty returns on.”
“And this car?”
“This car is a sweet, sweet ride and an even sweeter deal. And you were right; I do rather enjoy having heat in the winter,” he winked at her. He saw her eye-roll from the glint of the streetlamps off the windshield.
They rode in silence back towards their home. Something else was bothering Fionna; Dan could feel it when he held her hand. He just couldn’t seem to figure out what it was exactly.
“Do you like the car, honey, really?”
“Dan, it’s a Ferrari, and you’re driving it. It’s kind of the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
He’d fallen in love with the car as soon as Sam had tossed him the keys, so her assessment thrilled him. “Tell me what’s wrong then.” The scowl that hardened her beautiful face dampened his enjoyment of the car dramatically.
“Nothing.”
A sudden bolt of lightning off the impending storm burned a horrifying memory in Dan’s mind. Her tone and manner made him tremble. He gripped the steering wheel and fought the haunting memory. “Amelia, what? What the hell is wrong now...? “Nothing…”
“Fi, please don’t do that. Please.”
Her face lost all signs of irritation. She swallowed down what Dan finally figured out was fear.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out by holding the baby.” Her devastation settled on her features. With several measured breaths, Dan came back to the living. He reviewed her explanation in his mind and finally let his body relax.
“That didn’t freak me out, sweetheart. You’re great with kids. It won’t freak me out if you’d like to have a few. I just don’t want to do that for quite a while. As long as you’re okay with that, then I’m fine.”
“I don’t want to for a while either, but maybe… someday,” her tone was full of desperate hope.
“’Maybe someday’, sounds perfect,” he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
“And you aren’t freaking out?”
Dan allowed himself a half-second to regulate his heartbeat. After deciding that he was fine, he lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed a tender kiss along her knuckles. “I’m good.”
Fionna’s energy settled as she sank back into the plush leather seat. Dan debated, but his curiosity won out over his good sense. “Will you tell me something?”
“Sure.” Fionna smiled up at him as a few raindrops splattered against the windshield making shadowed images across her features.
“Why don’t you tell me about how badly I hate Will Haydenshire right now?”
Her eyes goggled, and her face flushed hot before she turned to stare out the window. “Why would you hate Will? You’ve been the best of friends since elementary school,” her reply was choked and laced with regret.
Dan felt sick. He gripped the steering wheel tighter and tried desperately to think about anything but his best friend and Fionna, doing what he suspected had happened at some point in the distant past.
“That bad, huh?” modulating the anger from his voice proved impossible. He wasn’t angry with her. He was furious with Will.
“No, not really.”
Not certain why he wanted to know, as the concept made him nauseated, he went on with, “Come on, Fionna. You and I both know we were with other people before we were together.”
“I wasn’t with him, with him. Please don’t ask me this. It was a horrible thing to do, and I still feel so guilty, especially now.”
“Honey, don’t feel bad. I was just curious. You didn’t do anything wrong. I mean you just said you didn’t even sleep with him.”
She nodded but looked pale and terror-ridden.
Persistent resentment formed rapidly in his shield. He tried to push it away. “So, how far did he get? I won’t be mad.” ‘At you’ he amended quickly in his head.
“Well,” Fionna looked like she would rather be anywhere else, with anyone else, at that moment.
“You don’t have to tell me.” Dan felt a harrowing sense of
loss as Fionna’s energy move away from him and back into her own protective shielding.
“I’ll tell you,” she sighed, “just please believe me when I say how bad I feel about this now.”
Thoroughly confused, Dan nodded his agreement.
“Let me think… uh… I guess he probably got somewhere between second and third base.” Her hands trembled. She folded them in her lap and refused to look his direction.
Dan clenched his jaw tightly and kept his glare fixed on the road ahead of him.
“Maybe a little closer to third.” Crimson fire burned in her cheeks. Dan was quite certain he didn’t want her to go on.
“I wasn’t exactly all that into him, so I stopped him about two seconds before Mrs. Haydenshire walked in on us.”
A mirthless chuckle escaped his lungs.
“I keep telling myself that she’s forgotten about that, or praying that she’s forgotten. I hope she doesn’t still hate me.”
Her fear doused some of his gall. “Honey, she has a whole lot of boys. At one point or another, she or the Governor walked in on each and every one of them with their hand down some girl’s pants; trust me.” He hoped to bring her a little peace, although his stomach churned combatively when he thought about Will’s hands on what he considered to be his and his alone.
“Why’d you let him do that if you weren’t that into him?” He recalled that part of her confession.
Fionna’s eyes closed in defeat as she let her head fall into her hands. She mumbled something that Dan had no hope of translating.
“Come on, baby. See? I’m not mad,” he willed her to believe his lie. The incredulous look she finally granted him told him that she didn’t.
“You’re about to be.” She cringed as Dan’s brow furrowed. “I did it because I had such a huge crush on you, and I thought maybe he’d tell you. I thought maybe you’d ask me out, but Will’s not like that. He would never have told you that. I was trying to get you, and you were going out with Amelia. I am a horrible, horrible person.”
Dan shifted the car into park once he’d pulled into the garage, and turned to gaze at Fionna. “I never knew you had a crush on me.”