by Roxy Harte
She stops inches from me and I realize that one of us may yet die in this room.
“I know you would have tried,” I whisper.
She smiles. “You can thank the woman for your life. She loves you more than I ever did and soon she will need you.”
“What do you know? That is the second time you have mentioned Celia.” I think back to the moment when I first returned and I was alone with Celia. Something was different. There was something about her that I attributed to her fear that I was going to leave her for Eva, but there was more desperation to the situation than that. Had she overheard my conversation with Garrett? Was she afraid that if Garrett was arrested and I left her for Eva, she would be alone?
Eva interrupts my thoughts. “I don’t want to die at The Agency.”
I look at her, not believing what she is asking. I shake my head. I won’t kill her. I couldn’t bear it.
“I will tell you Celia’s secret.” She takes hold of my hands and lifts them to her neck. I squeeze, but only slightly, testing her, testing myself.
“Celia doesn’t have any secrets,” I tell her, and then I squeeze. Her eyes grow wide just before she passes out. I step away from her. I refuse to be the one to kill Eva.
“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.”
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Eva
Puss ’N’ Boots
I awaken in the back of a limo and the first thing I realize is that the car isn’t moving. I swallow hard. I’m not dead. I sit up, wondering whether that makes me happy or sad. Obviously someone dressed me. I have on a leather halter and leather pants that are tucked into leather boots that extend over my knees and have four-inch heels. A large manila envelope lies on the seat beside me, partially hidden by a leather cap. I put the hat on my head, adjusting the tilt of the bill, using my reflection from the opaque glass window to confirm that I look as sexy in this outfit as I think I do. I close my eyes against my reflection. I can’t see through the glass, and I could as easily be in Hong Kong or Paris as still in San Francisco.
He didn’t kill me.
I couldn’t have…I wouldn’t have…killed him.
That’s quite a stalemate you’ve led me into, Henri, and I cannot be entirely certain that an execution squad doesn’t wait for me on the other side of that window. My hope lies in the assignment. I face the envelope and accept that my life is not over.
I have an assignment because I’m a valuable agent, if only because I keep coming back to them. I take a deep breath and smile, because for the first time in years I am happy to be alive. I shake my head, wondering what magic was in Celia’s tears. Something. It couldn’t be just because she cared…and I hate to admit that I crawled into the grave with Luka and only with his resurrection have I faced that I too want a life—just not with him.
I open the package, having delayed long enough, and spill out the contents. An eight-by-ten glossy is on top. Nice. The man who stares back at me is quite the looker, dark hair, dark eyes, but what makes him absolutely gorgeous is the mischief captured in his smile.
I like it when they’re pretty…that is, if I’m going to have to fuck them. I sigh, reading the dossier. No fucking required. Too bad, I might have enjoyed this one. I decide that since this might be my last ever assignment, I might take my time and enjoy him anyway. At least find out what it is about him that makes his smile seem so naughty.
“Frankie Perez, this is your lucky night.”
I tap on the window between me and the driver. The window goes down. “Got a cigarette?”
He does. He hands it to me and I touch the leather of his driving gloves before I take the cigarette. I put the cigarette between my lips, pinching it tight as I ask, “Got a light?”
Flame appears from an apparently ready lighter. I inhale, the heat of the flame traveling through the tobacco to sear my throat.
“Let me have your gloves.”
Without question, the gloves come off and are handed to me. I smile before exhaling smoke into his side of the car. “Tell me I’m beautiful.”
I meet his gaze in the reflection of his rearview mirror. He doesn’t have to say the words, his look says it all. I smile wider and wink. “Thanks.”
One last thing before I go to work…
I palm the tube of poison-tainted lipstick that was also in the package. With a smirk, I tuck it beneath my cap so it will be readily available when I’m ready…not anytime soon—I plan to have a little fun first.
“Yet birth, and lust, and illness, and death are changeless things, and when one of these harsh facts springs out upon a man at some sudden turn of the path of life, it dashes off for the moment his mask of civilization and gives a glimpse of the stranger and stronger face below.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Curse of Eve
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thomas
I didn’t question her choice of meeting place; no one ever questions Glorianna. I merely arrived at the appointed hour and sat in a comfortable chair in the elegant lobby of the San Francisco Omni Hotel. She arrived with her full entourage moments later and made her way into the restaurant. I followed, discreetly of course, even though the dining room was empty, closed between two and five thirty, when they would reopen for dinner.
No one asked her to leave.
As I join her, a pitcher of iced tea is delivered to the table. We wait while the server pours her glass and mine. Her security force litters the room, being as unobvious as an elephant in a china shop.
She speaks only after the server steps away, her voice pinched with well-practiced aristocracy. “It is a rare thing that someone fails me, Thomas. I am very disappointed.”
I do not apologize. I don’t say anything at all.
She throws a file onto the table between us, challenging, “Go ahead. Open it.”
I know immediately that I do not want to see what is inside that enclosure.
She shakes her head at my delay in opening it. “I wanted you to bring him to me so that I could save him from his fate. As a favor to you, Thomas. I knew your twin would be a strong emotional pull for you, and I did not want your loyalty to him to put you on the wrong side of this war.”
I swallow hard, knowing that the beginning of the end is near. Lines are being drawn, sides taken. I hold her gaze, knowing that I am the one who is really on trial here.
“What would you have me do, Thomas?”
I lower my eyes to the folder and, not wanting to, hating myself for doing it, and against my better judgment, I rip it in half and lay it back down in front of her. “This man is not my brother.”
She tilts her head, watching me closely, and I know she will gauge my next reaction. “Then it won’t matter to you that a team has been sent to Europe to find him and bring him before the Council for trial…and should it be necessary, dead is as acceptable as alive.”
I hold her gaze, inhaling deeply as slowly as I can to keep from reacting. There will be plenty of time to show emotion away from the ones who could, in this moment, kill me and not have a second thought about it. I’ve been in those shoes too. I take her hand because time and past rendezvous afford me this privilege. She squeezes mine softly before standing and leading her men from the room. I don’t stand, I don’t move. All I can do is pray that Nikos will hide and never again come out of hiding.
I am still sitting in the same chair an hour later. Glorianna and her men are long gone but I can’t seem to move.
I feel her behind me but I don’t turn to look at her. “You followed me.”
“I needed to talk to you.”
Sophia walks around to the other side of the table and sits in the chair previously occupied by Glorianna.
“But it seems that now would not be the right time,” she says.
I look up at her, sighing heavily. “Yet you are still here.”
She nods, looking down.
“I wanted to make sure that you are okay. Even from across the room, you seemed so—”
“I need to get out of here,” I tell her, feeling suddenly nauseous. In response, she stands and holds out her hand.
“I’m here, Thomas. For whatever you need me for. I’m here.”
I take her hand and stand, feeling as though the floor is moving beneath my feet. “Don’t let go.”
She pulls me deeper into the restaurant and through a swinging door that leads into a dark hallway. There she pushes on a heavier metal door and we step into an alley. I don’t even bother to ask how she knew which way to go. My Sophia. My always-surprising-me Sophia. I turn abruptly to face the concrete wall and vomit, bending and heaving until there is nothing left to come up. Straightening, I start to steady myself against the wall with my right hand but realize that she is still holding that hand. I lift my left hand to the wall and, for a second, its solidity is all that keeps me standing.
“You shouldn’t have followed me, sweetheart.”
“I know,” she tells me softly, running her hand over my back in a soft massage that is meant to be comforting. “I saw more than I should have and now you are worried about my safety.”
“You recognized the woman I met?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Forget you saw me talking to her,” I command.
“I will.” She pulls my hand. “We need to get out of this alley, Thomas. I don’t think I’m the only one following you today.”
As soon as she says it, my radar goes on full alert and a second later I confirm that she is right. I am so stupid.
“I may have put you in danger, love.”
“No, the fault is mine. I shouldn’t have followed you here.”
“We need to go.”
“Garrett’s car is three blocks away,” she volunteers.
I pull her down the alley, away from the danger I feel in the shadows. “No time, just stay close.” I take her in through the front lobby of the Omni and from there, straight to the concierge, where I request a luxury car pickup. Sophia stands nervously beside me but the smile on her lips never waivers and I think for a second that she looks as if she has been taught the Agency-issued save-your-asssmile. I don’t comment. I know her life story. I researched her thoroughly. I’ve been to the town she grew up in, walked in the shadows of her nightmare life and held her hand at her father’s funeral. One thing I am certain of is that Sophia is not an agent. I sigh, thankful that she isn’t.
A ringing phone jolts me back to the present.
“Your car has arrived, sir.”
I nod and draw Sophia quickly out onto the curb and into the awaiting limo. I instruct the driver to take us to Lewd Larry’s, even though it is out of his contractual range. Handing him two Franklins saves us an argument and the car takes us to Lewd’s, using all of the shortest shortcuts to get there. No one follows us. I watch closely to be certain and Sophia watches me. For a moment I am able to focus on something other than my fears for Nikos, but as we draw closer to Lewd’s, a soul-wrenching ache of loss fills my gut.
* * * * *
I awaken in The Attic. Both Sophia and Garrett are in bed with me, though I barely remember how I got here. The room is pitch-black except for the soft green glow of a single smoke detector. I spoon into Sophia’s back and as I readjust, they readjust, she backing into my warmth, he folding his body around mine so that he is spooned around me.
All of us still wear our clothes.
I slide my fingers under Sophia’s shirt, wanting to feel her skin. I rub her stomach and mid-stroke I pause. She takes my hand and pulls it up between her breasts and, though she pretends that it was a sleep-filled reaction to my touch, I know she is awake.
“That’s what you’ve wanted to talk to me about?” I ask stupidly, trying to think of any other excuse for the new firmness in her pelvis. But as a father of four, I know what I felt. My heart skips several beats as I recall just how many times I put her off, always promising that we would talk tomorrow, but then there would always be something else. It’s been weeks—perhaps more than a month.
She’s always naked. How could I not have noticed?
I pull my hand away and rub her again, making certain that I felt what I thought I did. Her stomach is almost as flat as it’s always been…almost, not quite. Her feminine softness is gone.
“Three months?” I guess.
“I don’t know,” she whispers, and I swallow hard.
“Garrett doesn’t know?”
“He can’t find out,” she whispers close to my face. “Not until we talk.”
My head spins with the implication.
“I can’t find out what?” Garrett demands, and in the dark we all sit up. He palms the remote first and adjusts the lighting to dim, just enough light for us to see each other but not so much as to be uncomfortable after lying in the pitch-black room. “Well? I’m waiting.”
I look at her. She glares at me before looking around me at him to announce, “I’m pregnant.”
The lights go up several notches and we are all blinking in the brightness. He is stunned. I am stunned, even after feeling the evidence, even after hearing her say the words. I can’t quite believe it.
“This is something you thought you could keep from me?” he asks, bewildered. “You wanted to keep this from me?”
“Only for a little while,” she says. “Only until I knew what I was going to do.”
“What you were going to do?” he questions.
“So much is at stake. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this baby.”
“From the conversation I just overheard,” he says angrily, “it seems that you still aren’t certain.”
Sophia starts to cry. “No, you have it wrong. You don’t understand. There are so many questions to be answered before I can be certain I want to bring a child into our lives.”
“Like?” Garrett asks.
“How Eva being in the picture is going to change things. Will Thomas be around to help us raise it? I needed to know that answer before I told you.”
Hearing her name makes my blood chill. I forget that just because I have closed the door on any relationship we ever shared, I have yet to tell my lovers. “Eva is gone. She will not be coming back.”
Sophia blinks back tears. I believe they are relieved tears. I kick myself for giving her doubt about my feelings.
“It somehow matters?” Garrett asks.
“Why wouldn’t I stick around?” I demand.
“I was afraid you would use the baby as an excuse to leave us for Eva. I needed you to make your decision to leave or stay based on your love for us, not because of a baby.”
“As if,” Garrett states nastily, and the look of challenge in his eyes is all I need to take out on him every ounce of fear and frustration I have been holding in. My fist collides with his jaw and sends him flying off the bed and onto the floor.
Sophia rubs her face with her hands, saying from behind us, “This. This is why I didn’t want to tell you both at the same time.”
Garrett lunges at me and I take a hard hit as we collide, shoulder to shoulder. I grab him and roll, taking most of the bed coverings with us as we fall onto the floor, but manage to keep Sophia from becoming tangled in the middle of us.
“As if?” I ask. “Are you doubting the love I have for you and Sophia, or that I would stay because of a child?”
The thud of our fists colliding with each other’s chests seems to punctuate the conversation. I knock the air from his lungs and his answer, “Both,” comes out as a grunt.
The outer door slides open and six of Garrett’s security team swarm in to separate us. Held away from each other, we both glare at Sophia, knowing she hit the emergency button. She walks over to us and in her nakedness the soft swell of evidence that has probably been there for weeks becomes painfully obvious.
“Do you think you can each behave now? Or should I have them put the two of you in the Isolation Sphere to cool you down?”
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“Why?” Garrett asks, and he looks devastated. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
She walks closer to him and the guards hold him in check, though in his defeated state he sags, no longer a threat to me…never having been a threat to her. She takes his cheeks in her hands and holds his face in a solid hug, making him connect gazes. “I wasn’t sure how to hold on to everything I wanted. You, him, the three of us together, a baby…it seemed that I might have to give something up, and I wanted to give up that which would hurt least. And as painful as it is to admit it, for a moment I believed that to be our child.
“But the thought lasted only a moment. I could no more live without this child than I could live without you…or without him.” She kisses him and he doesn’t pull away. “I’m a greedy bitch, Master, if you haven’t already figured that out. I want you. I want Lord Fyre. I want this child. And I will do whatever it takes to keep all of us together. So I expect no less effort from you.”
She kisses him again before turning her flame-filled gaze on me. “Or you.”
* * * * *
Sophia sits on the leather couch in Garrett’s office. She is naked and completely at ease with her nudity. She wanted to speak with me alone even though Garrett was clearly devastated by her request. “This isn’t fair to Garrett.”
“I just need to talk to you about this and there hasn’t been time and now there is.” She pats the leather seat beside her. “Please sit? Please talk to me?”
I sigh and sit, frustrated that chaos has ruled the day ever since I got on that plane to Paris. I worry for Nikos, I regret Eva, and now, even though I seemed to have come to my senses in time to save my relationship with Garrett and Sophia, fate seems to be conspiring against me. I look at her, wanting to take her into my arms, wanting to tell her that everything is going to be okay, that the three of us can carry on as if nothing has changed, but all of that seems a lie, and honestly, the next move is hers.