Finding Forever

by Nika Rhone

  From the way he looked at her as he spoke, Des meant those words of warning for her. She swallowed and looked down at her plate then back at him, seeing the understanding in his dark, Mediterranean eyes. “What if you don’t know who that is?”

  “Oh, kitten.” He placed his hand over hers on the table. “I think you know exactly who you are. You just have to be brave enough to step out of those shadows and embrace it.” He gave her hand a pat and retrieved his coffee cup. “So, are you still planning to beard the lions in their den? Because you might want to reconsider that. Moving to neutral territory may make things a bit easier. Even the playing field, so to speak.”

  Daryl tipped his head. “He’s not wrong.”

  “If you want it, mi casa and all that. Sheila and I can make ourselves scarce for a few hours.”

  Sheila nodded and smiled at Amelia. “Just say the word, and we’re the wind.”

  “Thanks, but I really think I need to go to them.” Amelia couldn’t imagine the response if she suggested her parents meet her someplace other than at home for the coming talk. Although, talk might be too optimistic a term for what would happen when she faced them. Everyone thought her mother was the worst of the two when it came to being unpleasant, but it was her father who had the truly ugly temper. She didn’t see it often, but then, she’d shaped her entire life to be as accommodating as possible so she wouldn’t have to.

  It had been hard enough putting off the coming confrontation until today. Her mother had called Amelia’s cell not long after she and Daryl arrived at Des’s duplex, demanding she return to the house at once. She’d almost relented as the harangue went on and on about ungrateful children and selfish actions creating disastrous consequences for others, but Des’s warm hand on her shoulder had grounded her enough to remember that she had the right to say no. Even to her parents. So she did.

  It hadn’t been pretty.

  Amelia had been on the verge of tears when Daryl plucked the phone from her fingers and very firmly told her mother that Amelia would call her back after everyone had a chance to calm down. And then he hung up.

  On. Her. Mother.

  When he handed Amelia back the phone, she had the incredible urge to kiss him for that simple act of gallantry. There weren’t many people who faced down Meredith Westlake and didn’t walk away from the encounter bloodied. Even Des looked a little awed.

  After a dinner she only went through the motions of eating, Amelia had reluctantly called the house and found out there was something worse than her father’s anger, and that was his condescension. She’d forgotten just how cruel and effective he could be when he wielded it.

  It was then she decided she wasn’t in any shape to go home and face them yet. If five minutes on the phone could leave her feeling flayed, there was no chance at all she’d survive the full-on lecture that awaited without quietly bleeding to death. She’d told her father she’d present herself at the house by lunchtime the following day. Then, before she could gather her courage to hang up on any protest he might have made, her father had beaten her to the punch and ended the call with a curt “see that you do.”

  Her mother might be the queen of the dramatic exit, but her father was the master of the last word.

  Daryl’s phone rang. After a few quick words, he excused himself and left the kitchen. A moment later, the front door opened. There were quiet voices before the door closed, followed by another door somewhere else in the apartment.

  After helping to clear the table despite Sheila’s protests, Amelia wandered the bright and airy living room, propelled by nervous energy. The room was a comfortable mix of Thea’s expert decorating eye and Des’s eclectic taste, with a few pieces of Sheila’s Irish heritage tossed into the mix to make it all feel like one homogenous whole.

  As the appointed time drew nearer, the delicious omelet that had gone down so easy was caught in the whirlpool of stomach acid her nerves were pumping out by the gallon. She desperately wanted to get the antacids from her purse, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it in front of Sheila. It would be an insult.

  So she paced, and she worried, and the acid flowed unchecked.

  Part of the problem was that some of whatever recriminations her parents threw at her would be true. She had backed out of the wedding a mere ten days from the event. She hadn’t given any hints in the past few months that she’d been having doubts or second thoughts. Her actions would create problems for both families, not just social but political ones, and while Senator Davenport would most likely ride out the scandal with only a few bumps and waves, it was Charles’s budding career that would suffer the most. Might, in fact, implode.

  Because of her.

  “You’re thinking much too hard about something.” Des took her by the shoulders and gently led her toward the sofa. As they sat, he pressed two familiar shapes into her hand. She could have cried in gratitude.

  “Just wondering if I could have handled things different. Better.” With a wince of apology to Sheila, who shook her head and rolled her eyes in response, Amelia popped the tablets and chewed with a desperation that betrayed just how close to becoming ill she’d allowed herself to get.

  “Probably,” Des replied in his usual pragmatic way, “but should-haves and could-haves are a useless waste of energy and a wonderful way to make yourself sick.” He gave her an admonishing look before patting her knee. “Concentrate on the here and now. You made a decision about what was best for you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”

  “But that decision didn’t just affect me.” And that was the crux of the problem. Her parents weren’t angry about her ruining her life. They were angry about how her decision impacted them. No amount of justification in the world could fix that.

  “Maybe not,” Sheila said, “but you have to stop owning all the blame. I’m sure there’s plenty to go around.”

  There was. More than enough. But Amelia wasn’t about to admit the scene she’d walked in on the night of the party. Telling Thea and Lillian had been hard enough. She supposed she’d have to tell her parents, though, to explain why she ended the engagement so seemingly out of the blue. Although she wasn’t certain that even Charles’s infidelity would be a good enough reason to satisfy her father for the abrupt end of his dream of having a son-in-law who might one day make a run for the White House.

  With that depressing thought lodged firmly in the front of her brain, she accepted hugs from both Des and Sheila as she left with Daryl a short time later, working hard to summon a smile in response to their words of encouragement. The tote bag she’d dragged with her all the way from Connecticut she left in Des’s care, since the only thing it contained was the gorgeous dress she now associated with her first step toward taking back control of her own life. She hadn’t wanted to leave it behind for fear her mother might do something spiteful like destroy it.

  Amelia followed the redbrick walkway from the front steps to the sidewalk behind Daryl, who was now clean-shaven and wearing a fresh pair of dark slacks and a crisp white dress shirt, courtesy of whomever had been at the front door earlier. A black knapsack was slung over one broad shoulder, which probably held the previous day’s clothes.

  Guilt nipped at her conscience. As cushy as it was, she doubted the sofa had been comfortable. Once it became obvious he was staying the night, she’d offered to switch places, knowing the queen-size bed in the guestroom would be a much better fit, but he declined with the strangest look on his face.

  It wasn’t until much later as she lay in bed trying to find sleep she figured out what that look meant. He’d been charged with seeing her safely home. To her, that meant Boulder. Daryl had evidently taken his orders a little more literally. Until she was delivered to her front door, he was in full bodyguard mode. That was why he stayed. And that was why he wouldn’t take the bedroom. Necessary or not, he had put himself between her and any potential danger that might come through the front door.

  He wasn’t by any means the first bodyguard she ev
er had. She’d been surrounded by them her entire life. But it was the first time she ever felt such a visceral tug of appreciation for a bodyguard’s actions on her behalf. Maybe it was simply the fact that he didn’t work for her father. Or maybe it was because she was so conscious of what he was doing instead of those actions being lost in the background of her everyday life as they usually were.

  Whatever the reason, she was grateful he’d stayed because what she had to do today she didn’t want to have to do alone.

  When they reached the sidewalk, Amelia hesitated, not seeing the expected Town Car waiting. Instead, Daryl pulled a set of keys from his pocket and thumbed the fob. The lights flashed on a big, black four-door truck parked at the curb that looked about a mile off the ground. He opened the front passenger door and waited.

  “Yours?” She rolled her eyes. Of course it was his. She cast a wary eye at the open door. At five-eight, she wasn’t short, but it still wouldn’t be an easy ascent.

  “I thought it might be better if we showed up in a personal vehicle, rather than one of the Fordhams’ cars. Here, put your foot on the running board and grab the handle.” He tapped a handgrip molded into the inside of the doorframe.

  “Hmm.” It still looked tricky, but Amelia did as instructed, wishing she’d borrowed a pair of Sheila’s jeans rather than the skirt and kitten heels she was wearing. The skirt was long and flowing, which helped hide the few inches too short it actually was, but it also managed to tangle itself around her legs as she maneuvered into the high seat.

  “No, the other foot. There you go. Now just turn…wait, not…just…here, this way.” Daryl put his hands on her waist and hip and guided her into the seat. He closed the door, went around the front of the truck, tossed his pack in the backseat, and got in, cursing under his breath as he whacked his knees on the steering column. “I told Sam not to let Kirsten drive it over,” he muttered.

  Amelia sat frozen in confusion by the strange zing of heat that accompanied Daryl’s touch. It hadn’t been inappropriate. In fact, Daryl touched her a whole lot more than that as he guided her through both airports the day before, using his size and personality to create a jostle-free zone for her. But for some reason, this touch sent a shiver deep inside where she’d never shivered before.

  It was disconcerting, to say the least.

  Lucky for her, Daryl was too busy readjusting the seat, mirrors, and radio, all the while softly cursing Kirsten—another of the Fordham security team—to notice her confusion. After buckling her seatbelt, Amelia sat watching him, trying to understand her strange reaction.

  Nerves, she decided. It had to be nerves. That, and she was more aware of Daryl physically than she was most of the other people on either her or her friends’ security teams, thanks to Lillian frequent commenting on his…assets in such artistic detail. Lillian had mentioned more than once she’d love to sketch him, but as far as Amelia knew, she’d never gotten around to asking him to pose.

  But oh, what a picture that would be if she ever did.

  Done reclaiming his space, Darryl turned to her. “Are you okay with showing up in this? Like I said, I thought that since you wanted to keep the Fordhams out of things, it might be better than using one of their cars. But if you’d rather, we can always stop by the estate and switch it out for the Town Car. Sam said they did offer it. Or the limo, if you wanted it.”

  She weighed the pros and cons of showing up in a stretch limo versus a Godzilla-sized truck and shook her head. “This is fine. Besides,” she added with a wry grin, “I really don’t think my parents will be waiting outside for me, do you? I could show up on a Segway and they wouldn’t know the difference. Or care.” No, the only thing that would matter to her parents was that she presented herself as demanded.

  “A Segway, huh?” Daryl’s lips twitched.

  Amelia lifted a shoulder in a delicate shrug. “They’re fun.”

  “I’ve never tried one.”

  “The three of us used them when we went down to Denver last year. It was kind of cool. Until Lil started goofing around and nearly got us kicked off the tour,” she added, smiling a little at the memory.

  “Why don’t I find that hard to believe?” As he pulled into the street, Daryl asked, “What did she do, chase pigeons?”

  “Pedestrians.” Amelia regaled Daryl with the story of how she and Thea had fought a losing battle to rein in their impulsive friend when she’d gotten bored of the historical sites and cruised the tourist crowds for artistic subjects instead. There had been one man in particular she’d been keen to get a photo of so she could do a sketch of him later on.

  “Except she didn’t take into consideration his very jealous wife, who wasn’t at all happy about some strange woman following her husband around on this big Segway, snapping pictures of him from all different angles,” Amelia said, laughing. “Or that he was letting her.”

  Daryl shook his head. “I’m guessing it got a little ugly.”

  “Very ugly. And loud. Things sort of devolved into a robust multilingual argument between Lil and the wife that ended in a few words and hand gestures that it’s safe to say were not an invitation for Lil to come visit them in Italy sometime.” And not all the gestures had been the wife’s, either. Though she started out in the wrong and tried to apologize, Lillian had quickly been drawn into the energy of the argument and, strange as it seemed to Amelia, had enjoyed it. Something someone who had spent her entire life avoiding any kind of conflict found difficult to understand.

  It wasn’t until her phone rang that Amelia realized they were almost at her parents’ house. Reminiscing about the Segway fiasco managed to both distract her and help settle her nerves, both of which she would have thought impossible under the circumstances.

  Yet another thing for which she had Daryl to thank.

  Recognizing Thea’s ringtone, Amelia slipped her phone out of her purse, a faint smile still on her lips. “Hi, T.”

  “Mellie, sweetie.” Thea sounded tense, which was enough to make Amelia tense up herself. So much for settled nerves. “Where are you?”

  “We’re on our way to my house.” She’d spoken with Thea the night before, bringing her up to date on everything that had happened and what the plan was for today. “Why? What’s wrong?” There was a long hum of silence on the line, long enough that Amelia started to think she’d lost the call, but then Thea spoke.

  “Sweetie, we got a call just a few minutes ago from Louisa about the luncheon scheduled for today.”

  The wedding planner’s secretary. “To cancel,” Amelia murmured, feeling the tightness of extreme anxiety pinch her chest at the thought of all those people getting the news about the wedding being called off.

  “No. To reschedule.”

  Amelia froze. “What?”

  “She said that due to the bride being a bit under the weather, they were pushing the luncheon off until tomorrow and then have tomorrow night’s dinner reception start two hours later than planned to accommodate the guests who were invited to both.”

  Panic fluttered in Amelia’s chest. “Wait. Why would they do that? Why would they have the parties when the wedding is cancelled?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It hasn’t been cancelled. Nothing has been cancelled. The wedding is still on.”

  Chapter Six

  “Breathe.”

  Daryl dragged his large hand up and down Amelia’s back, trying to coax her into taking in enough air to keep from passing out. Which she looked in imminent danger of doing at the moment. Either that, or throwing up.

  Neither was a preferable outcome.

  He had no idea what brought on the extreme anxiety attack. One minute she’d been talking to Thea on the phone, the next she’d been wheezing for breath like a ninety-year-old asthmatic. He’d nearly taken out two cars in his haste to pull the truck to the side of the road.

  Hampered by the wide center console, he went around to the passenger side and yanked the door open, unclipping Amelia’s seatbelt.
Thea’s voice was still coming from the phone clutched in Amelia’s hand, faint but demanding. Daryl thumbed off the call and dropped the phone to the floorboard next to Amelia’s feet, realizing only after he did it that he probably should have said something first.

  Sure enough, the phone rang again almost immediately. He ignored it. Amelia was his priority at the moment. He rubbed her back, his voice quiet and firm as he urged her to relax and just breathe. After a few moments, the phone on the floor fell silent, but the one in his pocket vibrated almost at the same time.

  This one, he couldn’t ignore. He thumbed it on, said, “Call you back in five,” and hung up. Both phones stayed silent after that, although he was sure Doyle was having a hard time on his end convincing Thea to lay off the speed dial.

  Slowly, Amelia’s body unclenched and her lungs accepted precious air more readily. As her breathing deepened, Daryl changed from the brisk rub to slow circles, pretty sure the crisis had passed but not willing to stop until he was certain.

  It was only then he noticed he could feel all of her delicate bones through the soft cotton top. Shoulder blades, vertebrae, ribs…the girl had absolutely no meat on her. She wasn’t exactly tiny, but she’d always seemed almost fragile, even more so now, like a china doll that could be smashed with one careless gesture.

  Judging by the almost translucent paleness of her face, it would appear someone had done exactly that. Whatever news Thea imparted, it had to be pretty bad. He’d find out what when he called Doyle back. Right now, he was worried about the young woman in front of him. She was too pale, too quiet.

  Too broken.

  Give him a car chase or a shootout any day. That he could handle. Crazed stalker with a gun? No problem. But this? This was emotional shit, and he didn’t know dick how to protect against that. So he just kept rubbing her back in what he hoped was a comforting way, and prayed there wouldn’t be any tears. Tears were usually his signal to head for the door. That wasn’t an option here, though.