by BETH KERY
But Alice had no such personal ties or strong feelings toward Adelaide Durand. To her, that privileged, adorable little girl was a distant tragedy. If anything, that child was relevant primarily because of the singular effect Addie had on Dylan’s life.
That’s what Alice told herself, anyway, as she stood in that cool dark room, chilled to the bone.
She wavered on her feet, suppressing a powerful longing to get back into bed and cuddle against Dylan’s solid length. The vision of Lynn Durand’s exquisite bracelet flashed into her mind’s eye again.
Bizarre as it seemed, that bracelet was not just a random dream created by Alice’s unconscious mind. Her recollection of that bracelet was a genuine memory. Because as much as she was struggling to believe it, Dylan swore it was the absolute truth.
According to Dylan, Alice Reed and Adelaide Durand were one and the same person.
IT was the second time in a week that Dylan awoke in the dark room to find his arms empty. Instinct told him that it was still too early for him to escort Alice to the camp, a clandestine ritual they went through every morning before dawn. Neither of them wanted the Durand managers or the VP of human resources, Sebastian Kehoe, to know that Alice had taken up with the CEO of the company. What was between Alice and him was complicated and powerful.
And it was their business alone.
At least for now it was.
Dylan wasn’t sure how long he could keep Alice and Durand Enterprises in separate spheres. For all intents and purposes, Alice was Durand Enterprises. She just didn’t want to—or couldn’t—accept that reality as of yet.
“She’ll let you know when she’s ready to hear certain things, Dylan. She won’t ask what she doesn’t want to know. That’s nature’s way; the unconscious mind’s attempt at shielding her from the truth until she’s ready to handle it.”
It was his friend Sidney Gates’s voice that he heard in his head. Sidney was a psychiatrist, and an old friend of Alan Durand’s. He was very familiar with Addie’s—and Alice’s—history. Dylan trusted his opinion more than anyone else’s when it came to Alice’s state of mind at that point.
The problem is, Sidney had also compared Alice to an undetonated cache of explosives. No one knew for sure what would set her off at this point.
Alarmed by the thought, he reached blindly, finding his cell phone on the bedside table. He squinted at the time. No, he’d been right. It was only a few minutes past two in the morning, way too early for Alice to be up and preparing to return to the camp.
He rose from the bed with just as much haste and alarm as that first time, but on this occasion with more certainty that he knew where to find her. The knowledge didn’t quiet his worry any. He switched on a bedside lamp and hauled on some jeans.
He found Alice standing square in the middle of the empty large bedroom suite in the west hall, her fists clamped tight at her sides. Her long toned legs were naked. They looked strangely vulnerable in the bright glow of the overhead chandelier.
Tension coiled tight in his muscles. On that other night when he’d found a disoriented Alice standing in the hallway, she’d claimed to have seen a woman; a woman Dylan knew to have been dead for nearly twenty years. It was as if her long-buried, resurging memories were too foreign for her to process, so they’d leapt into the solid surroundings of her waking world, like a weird unconscious hologram effect. Or at least that’s how Sidney Gates had tried to explain it to Dylan.
It was so hard, not knowing what to expect from her from one moment to the next. He felt like he could only be certain of her when he was making love to her, when she was entirely present in the moment with him, abandoning herself to pleasure.
To him.
“Do you remember who this room belonged to now?” he asked from behind her, his voice echoing off the bare walls of the large, mostly empty suite. She’d accused him of manipulation and lying when she’d realized he’d purposefully kept her from entering this room. That was before he’d told her the truth about her identity.
He was glad when she started slightly and turned her head, meeting his stare. She looked fully alert. Since Alice had come to Castle Durand, there were a few times when she’d go still in his presence, and it’d been like the ghosts of her past flickered in her eyes.
Is that what he was to her? A ghost?
“Was it Addie Durand’s room?” she asked slowly, her low hoarse voice causing his skin to roughen.
His heart knocked against his sternum, even though he knew his appearance remained calm. No matter how hard he was trying—no matter how much he understood—he couldn’t entirely adjust to Alice’s distant, disconnected attitude about Adelaide Durand. It was . . .
Eerie.
He nodded and stepped toward her. “It was originally the nursery, and it had just been remodeled as a bedroom before Addie was taken. Addie’s ‘big girl’ bedroom,” he added with a small smile. “Are you remembering?” he asked her again cautiously.
She shook her head adamantly. Her short dark hair was growing. Her spiky bangs fell into her eyes. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew up on her bangs to clear her vision. The uncontrived, sexy gesture distracted him.
Just like most things about Alice did.
“I don’t remember.”
Despite her quick, firm denial, he wasn’t entirely sure he believed her. “Then why did you come here?”
“I was curious,” she replied, eyebrows arching in response to his quiet challenge.
“And how did you guess this was Addie’s room?”
She shrugged. “You tried to keep me from it. And it’s the best situated in the house, so large and airy . . .” She faded off, glancing around at the ornate crown molding, the bluish-silver-colored silk wallpaper, and the enormous bay window with a built-in curving cushioned bench that looked down on the gardens and the sharp drop-off of the craggy limestone bluff to Lake Michigan. Because it was night, their reflections glowed brightly in the opaque black glass. The room was nearly empty, only a few of his personal items remained from his recent occupancy. “You and Sidney had suggested how the Durands prized Addie so much, always giving her the best,” she continued. “So I guessed the best bedroom suite had belonged to her. And it belonged to you. Alan Durand prized you, as well,” she added, once again meeting his stare squarely.
Slowly, she spun to face him. She wore only the fitted T-shirt she’d worn at the bonfire and a semitransparent pair of white cotton panties. Instinctively, his gaze dropped over her, trailing over her elegantly sloping shoulders, the full thrusting breasts that stood in such erotic contrast to her slender limbs, narrow waist and hips. His gaze lingered between her thighs. Alice dyed the hair on her head to an obscuring near-black color, but her true shade was a dark red-gold, a combination of her father’s blond and her mother’s rich auburn. Despite the tension of the moment, he felt his body flicker with arousal at the vision of the auburn triangle of hair beneath the see-through fabric. There was something about the contrast of Alice’s tough-girl strength and her potent vulnerability that lit a fire in him, something elemental and strong.
He dragged his gaze to her face.
“It must be strange for you, thinking of me living in Addie’s room. Here. In the Durand’s house,” he added, taking another step toward her. He was often approaching Alice like he might a half-wild animal, highly aware that she might bolt at any moment.
He was determined to catch her, no matter what move she made.
She shook her head. She wore not a trace of makeup. Without the heavy eyeliner and mascara she often wore to hide herself or intimidate—or both—her dark blue eyes looked enormous in her delicate face. God, what he’d experienced when she’d walked into that office last May, so awkward and yet so defiant in her inexpensive new interview suit. The truth had slammed home, jarring him, rattling him to the center of his bones, even though he’d taken great pains to hide his shock. He had seen those sapphire-blue eyes before. But even if it had been the first time Dylan had ever se
en her, he suspected he might have been nearly as shaken. No wonder she’d been drawn to the eye goop. Her eyes would draw men with the noblest intentions.
And the foulest.
“No, it doesn’t seem strange to me at all. I can see you in this room. Did Alan suggest you take it?”
“He did, yes. Just before he died.”
“You moved out of it”—her chin tilted and her eyes sparked in that familiar defiant gesture—“because of me, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what to expect. Sidney thought we should cautiously expose you to the surroundings,” he admitted. Sidney had suggested bringing her to the estate under the pretense of hiring her as a Camp Durand counselor when they discovered that—miraculously—she was a business major. In those circumstances, Dylan could determine what she recalled about living there—if anything—and see how she reacted to the environment. If not Dylan personally, then the two Durand security employees he’d ordered to covertly watch her while at the camp could give him insights as to her state of mind.
“I was familiar with Addie Durand’s habits,” he said slowly. “There are a few places that I worried might be more likely to trigger memories too quickly. This one, even though it’s been redecorated. Alan and Lynn’s suite. The den, the stables, the library . . . and the dining room. The entry hall, the kitchen, the living room, the terrace gardens, and the media room have been extensively renovated, so I didn’t worry as much about that. Most of the other bedrooms here weren’t used much—either by the Durands or me, so they weren’t of any concern.”
He hesitated. “I never imagined you’d inadvertently find your way into the dining room that first night at the castle. Or the stables the next day,” Dylan told her, choosing his words carefully. Alice had made it very clear to him that while she would discuss the details of Addie Durand, Addie’s kidnapping, and Dylan’s part in the tragedy, she wouldn’t talk about Addie and herself as if they were the same person. Currently, they were treading on volatile ground.
Her eyelids narrowed slightly, and he knew he’d made some kind of misstep, despite his caution. “You suspected I was going to be in your bedroom, even before I came here? And so you moved suites, in order not to trigger any . . .” She faded off uncertainly, aware she was skimming close to the fire. Her defiant expression made a quick resurgence. “I thought you said that you hadn’t planned for anything sexual between us . . . that it just happened that morning in the stables?”
“That’s true. And since you seem to need a reminder, you’re the one who seduced me, Alice,” he said with a stern, pointed glance meant to quash her suspicion immediately. It didn’t work. He damned her defensive posture and closed the space between them. Satisfaction went through him when he took her into his arms, and the tension melted from her muscles. She pressed against him.
“If that’s what you want to call the first three seconds of what happened in those stables. It was all you after that, baby,” she grumbled under her breath.
“I didn’t hear you complaining.”
Her eyes flashed up at him.
“I’m telling you the truth,” Dylan said succinctly. “I didn’t plan for us to be together in the stables that morning. How could I have? I didn’t know you’d show up there. I didn’t plan for us to get involved in that way when you came to the Durand Estate.”
“Then why would you worry about me being here . . . in this room? Why did you pack up most of your things and decorate a whole new suite, if you didn’t plan on us sleeping together from the first? Why else would I be in the CEO of Durand Enterprises’ bedroom if you didn’t expect us to become lovers?” she demanded.
Dylan suppressed a sigh. Despite the fact that she grasped his waist and lightly pressed her breasts and belly against him in a tempting gesture, her trademark wary expression remained as she stared up at him.
“I didn’t do it because I had plans to seduce you,” he told her with an air of finality, mapping her elegant, supple spine and the tight curve of her hip with his hands. He felt his need for her mount. How would all of this have played out, if this powerful attraction hadn’t been there? It was so hard to say, but he would have contrived something to bring her closer to him.
“Why, then?” she insisted, undaunted by a tone that Dylan used regularly to cow some of the most tried and hard-boiled executives in the world. Of course it didn’t faze Alice. He closed his eyes briefly. Damn it, she could be impossible.
“Dylan?”
“I felt like an interloper, being in here . . . knowing you were about to come to the Durand Estate.”
“You felt like an interloper?” she asked slowly, looking dazed. “Because this was Alan Durand’s house? Because of your history with him?”
He held her stare. “Because it was no longer my room, Alice. No longer my home, really. Not since you came. Period.”
Regret sliced through him at his harsh tone when he saw her lush lower lip quiver.
“I’m sorry,” he said, frustrated. “It’s just that sometimes, you keep pressing. And it’s hard to know when you want the truth and when you don’t.”
“I know,” she said quickly. She, too, looked regretful. “And it’s not true, what you said. Of course Castle Durand is your home. You own it, don’t you? You bought it?”
“Yes, but only because Alan Durand offered the house to me as part of the special contract he created to make it possible for me to purchase Durand shares when he made me the CEO. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it at that time in my life if he didn’t offer me certain concessions.” He exhaled at the memory of their negotiations for his taking over Durand Enterprises. Alan had been so stubborn. So insistent. So generous in contriving a way to set terms that would allow Dylan to smoothly and completely take over the helm of the company. He missed Alan Durand, more than he liked to admit.
“Once, a lord’s title was tied to the land. That’s what Alan explained to me. Alan loved his European history and traveling,” he recalled with fond, wry amusement. “He insisted that I’d be taken more seriously as the head of Durand Enterprises if I was master of the company’s symbolic domain.”
“The castle and the estate,” Alice said, a small smile flickering across her lips. She sobered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard what he died of. Alan Durand.”
“Testicular cancer.”
He saw a shadow cross her face. He tensed. But she’d asked, hadn’t she? She’d been prepared for that truth? He was wary of her asking more questions. Instead, she inhaled and looked away.
She’s not ready to discuss their deaths any further yet. He didn’t know if he should be worried or relieved about that. He did know one thing. If he ever made the bizarre discovery that he’d once had a loving mother and father, he wouldn’t be too eager to plunge into the topic of losing them before he’d ever even known them. Her denial was the only way she was coping right now, and he had to try to respect that while she slowly assimilated to a new reality. It’d only been a few days since he’d told her about Addie Durand, after all.
He felt as if he navigated a minefield with no map.
“You are the master of this house, Dylan,” she said, sounding subdued.
“No. Not entirely.”
He cupped her jaw, trying to ease her sudden troubled expression . . . her abrupt fragility. She looked up at him through her spiky bangs, her glance reminding him again of a cautious, wild thing.
“It’s just so impossible to believe,” she said in a rush. “I mean, it’s not that I think you’re lying. Why would you? It’s just . . .” Her expression grew a little desperate as she seemingly searched for words to explain. “You can’t just start thinking of the world as round in a second when you’ve thought it was flat for your whole life.” She gave a sharp bark of laughter, as if she’d just absorbed the meaning of her words only upon hearing them. “It’s not a bad analogy, really,” she mumbled to herself. “I sort of feel like I might fall straight off the earth into nothingness every time I think about w
hat you told me. Please understand.”
“I do,” he assured quietly, his fingers delving into her silky short hair. He cupped her skull. It was hard to be the rational executive when it came to Alice. It was hard to be clearheaded in this situation period. But he had to try. So much was at stake.
“What do you think would help you to make it real?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. Just time, I guess.”
He nodded, lowering his head until her upturned face was just inches from him. “Do you think it might help to see tangible proof?”
She blinked. “Like what? More photos?”
He pulled her tighter against him. Her T-shirt felt cool and slightly damp against the naked skin of his torso. Despite the chill of the fabric, it was the sensation of her full breasts pressing against his ribs that made his skin roughen. Her erect nipples were a distraction. He forced himself to focus.
“Not just photos. You’ve said yourself you don’t experience any connection to photos of Adelaide Durand.”
“What, then?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“Alan and Lynn Durand’s physician still practices at Morgantown Memorial. He’s in possession of some of their genetic material. Alan arranged it that way before he passed, because he wanted to make sure there was a potential means of identifying Addie. You could find out without a doubt if the Durands were your parents.”
She stared up at him blankly. “You want me to go for genetic testing?”
“Only if you’re up for it. It doesn’t have to be now,” he said, caressing her neck. He’d learned from experience in the past week that his touch helped to ground her. Soothe her. Distract her from her phantoms. It was selfish, too, but he wasn’t above using that fact proactively to help her through this process.
He wasn’t above using anything, in that cause.
“You mean . . . it doesn’t have to be now, but it does have to be sometime.”
He strained to keep his expression impassive, very much aware that he was once again walking through a minefield.
“I knew the truth almost the first second I saw you. I don’t need any proof that what I told you is one hundred percent true,” he said, holding her stare.