by Lynsay Sands
“Fine, no kissing.” Ildaria sighed the words with resignation as she checked that her abrupt removal from the vehicle hadn’t left her blouse rumpled or her skirt twisted. Everything seemed in order, though, so she turned to the second SUV that was pulling to a stop next to them.
“Angelina, dear. Where are your shoes? Did you leave them in the SUV?” Mary asked as she stepped out of the vehicle and moved to join them.
“We forgot them at home,” G.G. answered for her.
“Oh dear, I was so worried about this meeting I didn’t even notice. I should have checked you over before we left,” Mary said with a frown and Ildaria found another smile lifting the corners of her mouth that everyone seemed to want to take responsibility for dressing her now.
“Well, of course we do,” Mary said, obviously reading her thoughts. G.G.’s mother gave her a quick hug, and added, “You’re family now, dear. And family take care of each other.”
Family. Ildaria swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. She hadn’t had family in a very long time and now she had them everywhere.
“Are you ready?” Robert asked as he joined them. His expression was as concerned and compassionate as G.G.’s when he met her gaze. They may not be related by blood, but he had obviously influenced his stepson. They shared a lot in the way of personality and mannerisms.
Straightening her shoulders, Ildaria nodded and then found herself surrounded by people and escorted up the short walkway to the door of the Enforcer house.
The door was opened by Mortimer’s wife, Sam, before they even reached it. The woman offered a tense smile of greeting, her concerned gaze sliding from Ildaria to G.G. as she stepped back for them to enter. That smile and look, worried Ildaria.
“Angelina left her shoes at home,” Mary said as Sam started to close the door. “You don’t happen to have any here that she could borrow, do you?”
“She does not need shoes to talk,” Lucian announced, appearing in the doorway of the living room just ahead and to their left. “Come, Angelina. The rest of you can wait in the kitchen with Sam.”
Ildaria’s heart stopped at the thought of meeting Juan alone without her new family to support her. But she raised her chin and acted like the idea didn’t bother her. She’d be damned if anyone was going to see how afraid she was in that moment.
It was G.G. who protested, “Not gonna happen, Lucian. I’m coming with her.”
“As am I,” Robert added, and then when Mary elbowed him, quickly changed it to, “I mean we. We are coming too. Angelina is part of our family now. We will be there to support her.”
Lucian scowled at the Guiscards, but then relented. “Fine. You can be in the room, but no talking. You’re to sit where I say and listen. This is between Angelina and Juan.”
She felt G.G. stiffen beside her at those words. Apparently Lucian noticed it as well, because his gaze turned stern on the man. “This is immortal business, Joshua. You are not immortal. I’m allowing you to be there only because you are a possible life mate to Angelina. I will not have you interfering. If you do, I shall remove you myself. Understood?”
G.G. grunted in the affirmative, and then Lucian took Ildaria’s arm and walked her into the living room across from the kitchen. After one quick glance over her shoulder to be sure the others were following, Ildaria turned her gaze forward and scanned the room for her nemesis.
The first man she spotted was not Juan. Standing in the center of the room, the man had long hair that was a combination of deep red and chestnut. It was pulled back into a ponytail. He was tall, and built like a construction worker or a medieval warrior of old with broad shoulders and strong upper arms bulging under the black T-shirt he wore. He looked like he would have been comfortable wielding a heavy broadsword.
Scotty, the head of the UK Council, she thought before continuing her search of the room for Juan Villaverde. Ildaria didn’t see him though, and was about to turn a questioning gaze to Lucian when Scotty suddenly moved to the side, drawing her gaze to the man he had been blocking from her view. Juan Villaverde had been seated on the couch, but now stood up, his eyes hot and hungry as they roved from her bare feet to her untamed hair.
Ildaria stumbled under the weight of that look, the old confusion and uncertainty returning to her as if she were fourteen again and seeing him for the first time. She would have stopped walking altogether if Lucian hadn’t tugged her gently forward by the grip he had on her arm. With no other choice, she allowed herself to be pulled along, and made herself examine the man who had made her life such a hell.
Juan Villaverde was a beautiful man. With full black hair, golden-brown eyes, and a face only the angels could have chiseled, he could make any woman’s heart race. And the suit he wore couldn’t hide the fact that he also had the body of Adonis, she acknowledged, and wondered that she’d never noticed these things two hundred years ago. But she supposed she’d been too anxious and nervous around him to notice much more than that he made her feel incredibly uncomfortable. It was that hungry look he was eyeing her with even now. As a child, it had scared her silly. Now . . . well, actually it still made her uncomfortable and a bit confused. It held none of the rage that had contorted his face that last time in the alley.
“There,” Lucian said abruptly, and Ildaria glanced at him and then followed his gesture to another sofa at the end of the room, as far from the one Juan was standing in front of as you could get. He was directing G.G. and his parents to sit there, she realized when Robert urged Mary to the sofa.
G.G. didn’t follow them right away. His gaze shifting between her and Juan, he hesitated until she gave a slight nod. She’d rather he was closer, right at her side would be good, but she wouldn’t risk Lucian making him leave if they didn’t obey him. Ildaria tried to convey that in her expression. She wasn’t sure if he understood, but he did follow his parents to the couch. None of them looked relaxed, however. They were all perched on the very edge of the sofa, looking stiff and grim and as if they were ready to jump up and intercede if Juan did anything not to their liking.
Ildaria heard Lucian sigh next to her and then he urged her around in front of the sofa facing the one Juan now stood in front of. A coffee table was all that separated them, she saw unhappily. When she didn’t sit at once, Lucian pressed down on her shoulder, making her sit.
“Now,” Lucian said once she’d dropped onto the couch. “Tell her what you told us.”
Juan finally dragged his gaze from Ildaria. First he shifted it to Lucian, and then to the Guiscards and he scowled. “Who are these people, and why are they here? Why are any of you here? You said I could see her alone.”
Ildaria stiffened at those words until Lucian countered with, “I said you could see her, I did not say it would be alone.”
“I want to see her alone,” Juan insisted.
“That’s not going to happen, Juan,” Lucian said sounding almost regretful, and Ildaria glanced at him quickly, wondering whose side he was on here.
Juan cursed with frustration. “I have waited two hundred years, Luc. I deserve to—”
“You messed up two hundred years ago, Juan. You attacked her. Now she does not feel safe with you. And I will not make her face you alone and afraid.”
Ildaria scowled and sat up straight at that, annoyed with Lucian for revealing the anxiety she was presently feeling.
“I never meant for that to happen, I told you it was the—”
“Now tell her,” Lucian interrupted. “You can either do it in front of everyone, or give her up and leave.”
Give her up? Ildaria peered at Lucian, but he ignored her and simply stared at Juan, waiting for him to decide what he was going to do. Giving up on getting an answer to her silent question, Ildaria tore her gaze from Lucian’s stern face and turned her eyes down to her hands as she acknowledged to herself that there was a bright side to all of this, whatever this was. It was looking less and less like she had been brought here to be executed.
Ildaria actually felt the scowl
Lucian turned on her. “Of course, you are not going to be executed. You are to hear what Juan has to say. There are things about the past that you do not know, and should.”
“You thought you had been summoned for execution?” Juan exclaimed, sounding upset. “Madre de Dios,” he muttered and then paused and said with wonder, “And yet you still came. You are brave, mi amor.”
Ildaria stiffened at the term of endearment, but it was Lucian who responded.
“I told you she thought you had been hunting her all these years to punish her for biting off your—”
“Basta!” Juan interrupted with a wince before Lucian could state exactly what she’d bit off. He then shook his head and dropped to sit on the sofa across from Ildaria. Juan scrubbed his face briefly with frustration, and then raised haunted eyes to her and breathed in Spanish, “I have been searching for you for two hundred years, Angelina. But not to punish you. Never to punish you. I was searching for you because you are my life mate.”
Fifteen
“What?” Ildaria gasped, jumping to her feet.
“Let me go!” G.G. snapped, and Ildaria turned dazed eyes his way to see that he was trying to rise from the couch and come to her. But Robert was holding him in his seat, a grim expression on his face that made her think the immortal understood Spanish.
“What did he say? Did he threaten you? Why are you upset?” G.G. asked her, still trying to break loose of his father’s iron grip. Strong as G.G. was, he was still a mortal. His immortal father had no problem keeping him in his place.
“He just told her that she is his life mate,” Lucian said with exasperation.
“What?” G.G. gasped in the same shocked tone she had used just moments ago, and then rage slid over his face and he began to struggle again. “The hell he is. I—”
“Silence,” Lucian growled. “And be still, or you will be removed.”
G.G. glowered. “Then make him tell his lies in English.”
“I will translate if he does not,” Robert assured him, and then added apologetically, “I only hesitated about that first part because I knew what he had said would upset you, son.”
G.G. grunted at this and stopped fighting, but his expression was rebellious.
“Angelina.”
Ildaria turned reluctantly to stare at Juan, not sure she wanted to hear anything else he had to say. He had to be lying. They weren’t life mates. He’d been hunting her to punish her. He just knew Lucian wouldn’t have let him punish her and was hoping he could convince them all that she was his life mate, so that he could try to get her to turn from G.G. and go with him. She was positive if she had been that foolish, he would have taken her away and then punished her. That made more sense than the nonsense he was spouting. Life mates?
“I can read his mind, Angelina,” Lucian said quietly.
“So can I,” Mary murmured, and then added softly, “And he is not lying.”
Ildaria turned sharply to look at the woman. An immortal as young as Mary would not be able to read one as old as Juan . . . unless he had met his life mate. The newly mated were often easily read no matter their age. But that usually only lasted a couple of years, and then they mastered control of themselves and their thoughts again. How could he be easily read two hundred years after encountering her and supposedly discovering she was his life mate?
“We regain control of our thoughts once we adjust to the whirlwind of emotion and need that the nanos cause in new life mates,” Scotty said, speaking for the first time. “Juan has never been allowed to do that. He was never able to claim you. Seeing you again today has the same impact for him as it did two centuries ago.”
He allowed a moment for that to sink in, and then added, “His thoughts and feelings are clear as a bell to any immortal within shouting distance no matter how new they are. Except for you,” he added even as she thought it.
She could not hear his thoughts, and she had been immortal nearly two centuries longer than Mary.
Apparently picking up her thoughts, Scotty nodded and said, “And that is another reason why we know he is not lying. It is also why we had to bring you here. You need to know. You have been running from your life mate, not a monster bent on killing you.”
Her knees suddenly weak, Ildaria sank back onto the couch and turned to stare at Juan Villaverde. Bewilderment whirled around in her head as she tried to merge the monster of the last two hundred years with the man who claimed to be her life mate. “But you attacked me.”
Juan sighed miserably, and ran a hand wearily through his thick hair. “Lo siento, mi amor. I’m sorry,” he added grimly when Robert translated for G.G., his low voice a distracting murmur from the end of the room. Continuing in English now, he said, “I never meant to. I had planned never to touch you until you were older and ready. But that night—” He shook his head. “Let me start at the beginning.”
When he paused, waiting, she gave a slight nod. The beginning was always a good place to start.
“I first saw you in my daughter’s kitchen,” Juan said quietly. “I had come to visit Ana, but she was still above stairs. Dressing, the maid said. She suggested I wait in the salon and she would let her know I was there. I started into the salon, but the sound of laughter caught my ear. It was like the angels singing. So clear and beautiful, without the artifice other women employ to try to sound enticing. This was a laugh of true delight, so lovely and musical. I could not help but follow the sound down the hall to the kitchen. There I paused in the door and watched you with your abuela. She was teaching you to make Pasteles en Hoja. Do you remember that?” he asked eagerly.
“I remember Abuela teaching me to make them, si,” she admitted slowly. “But not you being there.”
“I never went into the kitchen. I never even spoke,” he told her quietly. “I stood there and watched like a child at the window of a sweet shop. You were so beautiful to me. I was enchanted.”
Ildaria heard G.G. growl from the end of the room and his mother shush him, but didn’t glance that way for fear Lucian would make him leave if she drew attention to him.
“I admit, I wanted you,” Juan continued. “And I even decided to have you as my mistress.” He shook his head with a chagrined expression. “Even though I had not been interested in taking a lover since the death of my beloved life mate, Xochitl, three hundred years earlier, I did not yet recognize that you were another chance, another life mate. I only knew that I wanted you. But,” he said unhappily, “you looked extremely young; little more than a child, and I would never take a child as a mistress.”
“No, you just rape them,” G.G. snarled from the other end of the room, earning a warning look from Lucian.
Juan’s mouth had tightened at G.G.’s words, but otherwise he ignored him and said, “I wished to know just how young you were, so I tried to slip into your mind to find your age, but”—he met her gaze gravely—“I could not read you, mi amor.”
Juan paused briefly, but when Ildaria didn’t say anything, he continued, “It was only then that I realized you were my life mate, and the knowledge was shocking to me. I was still trying to accept my good fortune when I heard someone on the stairs. I glanced around to see Ana descending. I didn’t want to leave you, but I needed to know about you and could not read you, so I left without you or your grandmother ever knowing I was there and went into the salon.
“I did not tell Ana that you were my life mate, and I tried to make my questions sound casual as I asked about you. I wanted to keep the knowledge that I had found a new life mate for myself for a while. You were so precious, I . . . I just wanted to keep you to myself,” he repeated helplessly, and then sighed and said, “I did not find out much from my daughter. Ana did not know much. I learned that from reading her mind. She knew only that you were her cook’s granddaughter and that you were thirteen years old.”
“Fourteen,” she corrected.
“Thirteen,” he said firmly. “You did not turn fourteen until three weeks after you disappeared.”
Ildaria blinked in surprise and sat back. He was right. Her fourteenth birthday had passed weeks later, unnoticed. She’d been alone, struggling to hide and feed and avoid the hunters and only realized her birthday had passed a month or so after the day. Even then, she hadn’t much cared. She was too busy trying to survive.
“I visited with Ana until I heard you leave,” Juan continued when she remained silent. “And then I made my excuses and left as well, promising to return for that evening’s party. It was to introduce Ana to her life mate’s family,” he added. “I was expected to attend and really shouldn’t have left when I did, but I was desperate to see you again. You were too young to claim, but I could look and torture myself with what I could not yet have.”
Meeting her gaze, he said, “You do not know how badly I just wanted to touch you. I wanted to brush my fingers down your cheek and feel if your skin was as soft as it looked. I wanted to tangle my hands in your hair and press it to my nose to see if it was what smelled like flowers, or if that was a scent you wore. I wanted . . . so much,” he almost moaned and then shook his head. “But I dared not touch you. You were far too young.”
Sighing, he muttered, “I should have sent you to a convent or somewhere else until you were old enough to claim. Failing that, I should have at least stayed away from you. But every time my daughter had a party and you walked home alone I was there to walk with you, trying to engage you in conversation.” He grimaced as he added, “You were a very shy child and hardly responded to my questions at all.”
Ildaria frowned at the description. “I was quiet because I was uncomfortable with you. I could sense that you wanted something from me, but—” She shook her head.