The sky was an ominous gray and it looked like more snow was on the way but her uncle’s cabin looked as it always did—a little rundown, the porch in need of painting, but quaintly nestled in the woods and a mile in every direction from the nearest neighbor.
“You are shivering.”
“Yeah. December. Smoky Mountains. Pretty fucking cold.”
Ke’lar’s eyes were troubled. “I should have secured you more suitable clothing for this weather.”
She reached out, her fingers intertwining with his. His hand was warm, strong—as always.
“I wasn’t complaining. I was actually trying to be funny.” She gave a half smile. “Though I’m really sorry those boots you made got left behind on Hir. They rocked.”
He smiled faintly. “I wish there was time to make you others.”
And we’re almost out of time, aren’t we?
He could never return here; the briefest visit would endanger him and not even Beya awaited him on Hir now. He would return as a criminal on his world, alone and hated, without even the unconditional comfort of the multari’s steadfast presence.
Ke’lar was making the greatest sacrifice a warrior of Hir could, to be separated from his bound mate, for her sake and the sake of a child he had never met, yet considered his own . . .
All I want to do is cry till I don’t have a tear left but I can’t make this harder for him. I have to honor his courage; I have to match it— he deserves that from me at least.
Summer swallowed hard and wrenched her gaze from his and back to Uncle Lester’s cabin.
Her car, covered in snow, was still parked outside. The lights inside the cabin were on, and shifting a bit she could see the TV still on as well. If someone—or even the police—had come by the cabin they wouldn’t have left everything on like that, would they? They would have towed her car, checked it for evidence or something.
“Well,” she murmured, “everything looks just like it did when I left it.”
“You do not sound certain.”
“I won’t be certain till I get inside,” she admitted. “But no one has even cleared the snow off the steps. I don’t see any sign anyone’s here—or has been here. Let me take a look. I’ll be right back.”
He caught her before she’d taken more than a single step. “I will go and ascertain if it is safe.”
So beloved to her now, his brilliant eyes were alert as they scanned the cabin and the area, his rippled brow lowered a bit, the showing fangs a dead giveaway he was anticipating danger.
“I think it’s better if I go,” she said. “If Uncle Lester’s come home early, you won’t have to lift a finger. He’ll take one look at you and have a heart attack.”
His glowing eyes turned to her. “I will not let you go alone.”
Summer sighed inwardly. At this rate they’d be here till nightfall.
“Fine, we’ll just go together, okay? But I go first and if there are any humans around, don’t let them see you.”
Her feet, still in slippers, were half-frozen by the time they made it to the door. It wasn’t locked.
“Hello?” she called but silence answered.
The Christmas cards she’d been addressing were still spread across the table. Her mug still stood beside them, the once-hot chocolate inside now dried up and nasty looking.
Ke’lar’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “What is that stench?”
“That’s what you get when nobody takes the trash out for almost two weeks.” She pulled her cloak off and flung it across Uncle Lester’s comfortable but ugly green patterned sofa. She grabbed the remote from the coffee table and shut the TV off. “But no one’s here,” she said and pushed a few of the windows open. Better cold air than that old trash smell. “No one’s been here either.”
Summer held her breath as she bagged up the trash. She went out the back door and threw the bag into one of the cans. Set on wheels to be moved to the road for trash collection, they hadn’t been touched either.
“This is a very primitive shelter,” Ke’lar commented as she scrubbed her hands at the sink. The heat was still on—thankfully or the pipes might have busted—but the fire she’d gone out to the shed to fetch wood for had long since burned out.
She grabbed a towel to dry her hands. “Says the man who suggested we live in a cave.”
They grinned at each other for a moment then the smiles faded.
She was home, in time.
And he should leave this world—now—return to his own before there was any chance he was discovered here. Get back to the ship that waited in the nearby woods, cloaked from view by holo-reflectors that made it invisible to the human eye, and lift off immediately.
Ke’lar looked away first. “Can you track where Emma is?”
“I have been meaning to get her ear tagged,” Summer joked, reaching for her bag, still hanging where she’d left it over the back of the dining room chair. “But I think I should start with my cell phone.”
Ten days and forty calls, but only two from Dean. One where he didn’t leave a message and the second confirming he was dropping Emma off today as planned.
“I should change,” she said, indicating the blue gown she still wore. “Looks like I owe Jenna a dress.” She looked at the wet slippers she wore. “And some shoes.”
“I will see she is compensated,” he rumbled.
When you get home.
“I repacked our things to carry them better for the walk to the clanhall and . . . I have something for you,” he said, uncharacteristically clumsy when he reached into his pocket to draw it out. “Something someday—” His throat worked. “For you to give to our daughter.”
A lump formed in her throat when she saw the carved comb in his hand, the one that had been his mother’s.
She took it from him. “Ke’lar . . .”
He met her gaze and in those glowing pained eyes she saw she didn’t have to say what she was feeling. He understood perfectly.
He reached for her and then she was in his arms, his mouth against hers, the cinnamon scent of him warm and soothing. He brushed his nose against hers, slowly up one side, down the other, a tender g’hir kiss, then his mouth touched hers and she wished this kiss could last forever.
But none ever could and she leaned into his strength, suddenly finding that all of hers had gone.
He touched his forehead to hers. “My own sweet Summer.”
“Ke’lar,” she murmured. “My mate . . .”
Suddenly he lifted his head, looking toward the cabin’s front windows.
“What is it?” she asked, looking that way, but she couldn’t see anything, hear anything, outside.
“I am not sure,” he murmured. “It is unpleasant sounding.” He sniffed and his expression went taut. “It smells like your land transport. The smell is getting stronger. It is coming this way.”
Dean.
Even if it wasn’t her ex, it was someone. Someone who couldn’t be allowed to see an alien warrior.
“No, wait.” She dropped the comb on the table to reach out to him, to catch him before he could go. “I’m not ready. Please, not yet . . .”
He cupped her cheek. “I wish I could express to you what it is for a g’hir male to be bound to a mate. My people have poems, songs, stories, and through them I thought I understood, but I did not, I could not. Truly it is not something a male can understand until he knows it. It is more than love, deeper than loyalty, greater to me than even the All Mother. I would do anything for you, my Summer.” His glowing eyes were tormented. “Even let you go.”
She could hear the car now too and her tears welled up. “I can’t do this. I can’t be without you.”
He placed her hand over his heart. “You will never be without me. I am yours. For always. No matter how many stars separate us.”
“It might be nothing. Maybe it’s somebody I can send away. Don’t go yet,” she begged. “Just a little more time. An hour. A minute. Anything.”
“A lifetime would scarce
ly be enough.” He gently brushed the wetness from her cheek. “We do not cry as humans do but know, my mate, I will keen for you all my days.”
His glance darted toward the door, toward the crunch of footsteps in the snow. She felt the barest brush of his mouth against her lips, and then with a g’hir’s speed and a warrior’s stealth he was through the back door, silently closing it before she could blink.
She took a stumbling step after him. “Wait . . .”
Behind her a heavy knock fairly rattled the front windows.
“Sum!” Dean called through the door. “Come on, girl! I ain’t got all day!”
Blinking away her tears, she turned that way, toward Dean’s hammering, her fingers numb as they wrapped around the doorknob.
Dean was no longer handsome, not like he had been in college when he’d been a blond baseball player, a square-jawed All-Star with an easy smile, confident he’d make the majors someday. When he’d hurt his shoulder, after they were married and Emma was on the way, the life just seemed to drain out of him. He was drinking more these days, or maybe it was just finally catching up to him; it showed with the puffiness in his face, the gut he was starting to get.
“Where the hell you been?” he demanded. “I done called you about a million times.” He scowled, apparently forgetting that everyone had caller ID now; she knew exactly how many times he had called. “You’d think a person be by the phone day and night worrying about their child.”
That he had hardly visited his daughter in three and a half years, that it sometimes took Summer three weeks to get him on the phone only to have him tell her he didn’t have time to talk about “kid stuff,” went right out of her head.
Because there, in his arms, a tumble of white-blond curls and rounded pink cheeks, sound asleep in her Hello Kitty pajamas, was Emma.
With a cry Summer reached for her daughter, ignoring Dean’s surprised grunt as she swept her baby right out of his arms. She closed her eyes, cradling Emma against her, breathing in her scent, feeling Emma’s soft, downy hair against her cheek.
“Baby,” she murmured. “Momma’s home, sweetheart. Momma’s home.”
Emma didn’t even stir. Thanks to all the time in daycare, the child could sleep through an earthquake.
One unfamiliar with how g’hir moved might have dismissed it, might have thought that quick movement among the snowy branches a bird or small animal, but Summer, turning her head that way, just caught a flash of glowing blue eyes on her, on Emma, making sure they were both safe.
Then he was gone.
Twenty-two
Her vision blurred and she looked down at Emma.
“She’s so beautiful,” Summer murmured thickly. “I can’t believe I forgot how beautiful she is.”
Dean was looking at her askance.
Right. Act normal; this is just a normal co-parenting kid hand-off ’cause nothing weird has happened at all.
“What the hell you all dressed up for?” he asked. “You look like the blond chick from Frozen.”
Summer glanced down, dismayed to see she was still wearing Jenna’s dress and the jeweled slippers.
Perfectly normal.
“Christmas party,” Summer mumbled, laying Emma on Uncle Lester’s green patterned sofa. He kept the blanket that Granny Crawford crocheted across the back and Summer pulled it down to tuck around Emma. “Sorry. My cell was busted. I, uh, dropped it in the toilet.”
“That was pretty fucking careless.” He let the storm door shut behind him and leaned Emma’s small suitcase against the wall. “You ought to be more responsible.”
“Well, you know me.” Summer smoothed Emma’s hair back. The little girl’s face was speckled with what looked like that neon orange powdered cheese from Cheetos and she wondered when the child had last had a decent meal. “Anyway, they had to send me a new one. I just got it half an hour ago. How did the visit go? She and Marthe have a good time?”
He looked troubled. “She got bad news. The cancer’s back.”
Summer bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Dean. What are the doctors saying?”
He gave a shrug but it was far from careless. “That she probably won’t make it to spring.”
Summer’s glance went to the beautifully carved comb on the dining table. “It’s real hard to lose . . . someone you love.”
“I forgot,” he said. “Yours died a while back, didn’t she?”
Her mother had died just before they’d met but that was just like Dean, not to notice something that didn’t impact his comfort directly—like the needs and grief of other people.
“Yes,” she said instead. “But I’m sorry about Marthe. She’s always been good to me, good to Emma.”
“She was glad to see her.”
“I’m glad she could.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
He shifted his weight again and it occurred to Summer that this might be the longest and most meaningful conversation they’d had since before she’d gotten pregnant with Emma.
Her brow creased. “Something wrong?”
Dean cleared his throat, looked at her and then away. “Chrissie and me are getting married.”
Summer had been so focused on Emma she hadn’t even noticed the woman waiting in the car.
Chrissie looked enough like her that they could be sisters. Same platinum hair, same fair tone to their skin, but this woman had a hard look to her. A partying girl where Summer had always been more a homebody. A girl up for anything, a wild one, happy to stay out half the night doing shots then throw her tank top off and run topless through the bar’s parking lot just for the attention. The kind of girl Dean always wanted Summer to be, only to be disappointed to discover she was anything but.
“Oh,” Summer said, surprised that he’d even think she’d care after all the misery he’d put her through. “Congratulations.”
That she hadn’t flown instantly into a jealous rage at the news seemed to melt the tension right out of his shoulders.
“I bet your momma’s excited about you get married again,” Summer said, just to say something. “I bet she’s all about doing up the wedding.”
He looked away, reaching into the pocket of his jeans. “We don’t want to tire her out. We’re just going to head out west. Get married in Vegas. Listen, I just—here.”
He shoved some papers at her, folded into quarters to fit in his front pocket, the edges worn.
“What’s this?” Summer asked, her frown deepening, already opening the papers to look at them.
Her mouth parted.
“I got it notarized and everything. Should be good to go.”
“Why?” she got out, looking right at Dean’s signature scrawled on the paperwork that waived his parental rights to Emma. “Why after all—why now?”
He glanced out the window, out at Chrissie sitting outside in the Hyundai. She was half-kneeling, the rearview mirror skewed so she could see herself to fix her makeup, apparently completely unaware that the passenger side sunshield would have a lighted mirror just for that purpose.
“Chrissie . . . Look, she just don’t want to be a mom.”
She stared. Your boyfriend having his kid once in a blue moon could hardly be called being a mom.
“I tried to call you,” he grumbled.
Summer scanned the paperwork, her heart pounding, trying to check it before he vanished again.
It looked all right. Everything looked in order.
“No,” she breathed. “It’s okay.”
Her grip tightened on the agreement as if he might snatch it back. Chrissie was regarding her reflection with a critical eye, turning her heavily made up face this way and that.
“You know this means you don’t get no child support or nothing.” His tone was halfway between surly and triumphant. “Not anymore.”
With Dean bouncing from job to job, taking one crap job after another and getting fired when he didn’t up and quit, the support the state forced him to pay was less than three hundred dollars a month. And h
e was late paying every damn time. The time and trouble it took to file the paperwork with the family court and have her lawyer remind him they could get a bench warrant for failure to pay, plus all the time and worrying herself sick he wouldn’t take proper care of Emma when he did take her wasn’t worth a million times that.
She gave a nod. “I got it covered.”
He paused at the door to the cabin. “She’ll be okay, right?” He glanced at his daughter, asleep on the sofa, her soft golden curls and rounded baby cheeks. “Even if she don’t have a daddy.”
“She’ll be fine.”
Summer pushed the storm door open in a not-so-subtle hint that he should get going. He took his time about it too, this boy who, no matter how old he got, would never really be a man, crossing to his car and getting in.
He said something to Chrissie and she gave Summer a catlike smug look as she settled into her seat. He fixed the rearview mirror she’d skewed and put his arm on the back of her seat, looking over his shoulder as he backed up, going fast enough to kick up a bunch of snow and ice.
“You look like a princess, Momma,” Emma murmured, her big blue eyes sleepy.
Summer smiled through tears and shut the door, sitting beside Emma on the sofa to smooth her hair back. “I missed you so much, sweetie.”
“I missed you too, Momma. Where’s Dean?”
“You mean Daddy?”
“He said I can’t call him Daddy no more.” Emma rubbed one eye with a chubby fist. “It makes Chrissie mad.”
“Oh. He’s gone home.”
Summer turned her face toward the window. It was starting to snow.
“Daddy’s gone home . . .”
Emma was blinking up at her.
“Come on, baby,” Summer said quickly, wrapping the blanket around her daughter and scooping her up.
“Momma?” Emma asked as Summer ran with her through the back door, her slippered feet crunching in the snow.
“It’s all right,” Summer panted, balancing Emma on her right hip, her daughter’s little arms tight around her neck. “Everything’s all right.”
“Why we out in the woods, Momma?”
Stolen: Warriors of Hir, Book 3 Page 18