Lost : The Little Sisters Book One

by H. M. Irwing

  It is time, Ara.

  Time, you revert to your real name and resume your real life, here with me.

  Your dad,

  Knyte Starr

  Ps: I have word that your brother is returning to us. We will be a family once more.

  “My brother?” Lucy gasped, her startled gaze rising to clash with Jace’s icy blues. “My twin brother is found.”

  “So, it seems.” Jace didn’t look anymore happy by the news than she felt. Lucy’s heart thudded with shock and mingled excitement. Her brother! Found at long last.

  “Do you think mum knows?” Lucy raised a wondering eye at Jace. She hadn’t recalled her mother being all that excited that morning, but she did recall her father saying they had read the letter. They knew its contents.

  They knew. But their lack of surprise at this news must mean they had known about her brother much earlier. That made sense. While Lucy herself had never spoken with her father, she knew her parents had been in constant contact with him.

  Not exactly ‘penning letters, per se’, but who even did that anymore? Lucy waved off the customary eyeroll over what she gathered was merely a flare of Knyte Starr’s artistic licence and considered the conversations she’d overheard between her parents over the years. All those phone calls must have meant one thing—they had never given up hope on her brother being found. And now, he has been.

  “I don’t want you to go,” Jace bit out explosively, ignoring the stupidity of her question to continue from where he left off earlier. “This doesn’t feel right. All these years and your brother turns up now? And what does he mean by ‘he is returning to us’? Is your brother back, or isn’t he? If he is, then how? That letter, if you could even call it that, says absolutely nothing.”

  “His letters were always short.” Lucy found herself inexplicably jumping in to defend the father she had never known or wanted to know. The shock of his summons had finally worn off. Lucy was now feeling a budding excitement at the thought of finally meeting her twin.

  The brother she had always been aware of. The brother who existed somewhere in this world and who she mourned the loss of ever knowing. Her very own twin. She would finally have what Em and Cat had, but more importantly, she’d have someone who understood her, the diversity in her blood, and the difficulty of being forever different from those she loved.

  But then she recalled that Blaze Starr had not had the privileged upbringing that she had. He hadn’t had the love of parents and siblings—he had been abducted and torn away from that life. There was no knowing just how his life had turned out. What hardships he’d had to bear…?

  “Did you hear me, Lucy?”

  Lucy snapped back to attention, only then realising she had drifted off in her own thoughts and not heard a word Jace had said. She stared up into his startling gaze, seeing within their blue depths the concern he was no longer bothering to hide. It was moments like this, rare and treasured as they were, where she saw the real Jace peer through the mask.

  The Jace that cared more about her then he led on. The antagonising façade that he wore like a barricade lowered so that his sincere concern could shine through… and shine they did.

  Lucy lost herself in the sparkle of his gaze, overwhelmed by the raw emotions she saw within. All she’d ever hoped for was there in that gaze, but she knew with absolute certainty that the sight would not last. Very soon the barriers would be back up and with it the prickly façade he wore like an amour. Always teasing, always taunting, but never more. Slowly, she shook her head mutely, not trusting herself to speak just yet.

  His sigh was audible. His lips twisted into a rueful grin. But it didn’t carry to his eyes. Those blue depths remained hard and unyielding.

  “You’re not going,” he said, irrefutably.

  As usual, her hackles rose at his high-handedness. “It’s not your decision to make.” With that, Lucy rose to her feet agitatedly. She didn’t want to start a fight, knowing that their battles were the stuff of legends and could last way longer than either of them would like. Longer than the month she had, certainly.

  A month she would rather spend with her friend—being friendly. Friendly? Her gaze automatically dropped to his lips at that point, luckily the ugly smirk was still there, and just like that the equilibrium was reinstated. Her world righted back on its axis and her breathing resumed as was normal, albeit still a little puffed for the agitation he had put her through.

  His gaze clashed with hers, oddly fierce and disturbing. Its crystal-clear depths luring her in, but she fought it. With great effort, Lucy tore her amber gaze away to stare out at the deep, tanzanite blue of the ocean spread out before them. The glow of gold in her gaze turned effervescent as she spun through her own inner turmoil while trying to make sense of Jace’s denial. She drew a blank.

  “Why?”

  The one-word demand should have been enough, but the narrow-eyed look that Jace turned her way told her she would need to say more to get answers from him. “Why don’t you want me to go?”

  She hated that her words came out brokenly, weakening her in his eyes, but their disagreements had that effect on her. While she was always careful to maintain a concerted effort to remain calm in the eye of his storm, she found that she had low tolerance for his displeasure. He meant too much to her. She didn’t like this vulnerability, but she couldn’t seem to rid herself of it. So, she did what she could to keep it hidden. And she did that well enough with her own abrasive nature.

  “Why must you be the one to go? Why can’t he come here?”

  A bubble of laughter threatened to spill at his words. It was just like him. All this while he had been the one doggedly encouraging her to meet with her father only to do an about turn when it happens and simply because he wanted it done on his terms.

  “What difference does it make, if I fly there or he pops over here?” She offered him a small smile, needing to know.

  “The difference is you won’t be alone here. Everyone you know, and love, is here. They would all be there with you. I will be there with you. Over in the States, you’d be alone, facing two men you have never met… both claiming an intimate connection to you.”

  Put it like that… and Lucy felt her heart rate notch up a bit. All the fears of her past, accelerating forward in one swirling rush. Weirdly, in all her past imaginations of this moment, she’d never considered a scenario where she would be the one flying over to meet the two men missing from her life yet who should have been a staple from childhood.

  Her gaze dropped worriedly down to the letter she still held. Her mind scrambling for a way out of it. She never wanted to meet with her father anyhow. She was happy with the way things were.

  She had a father whom she loved with all her heart and who loved her in return, but she knew, even as she contemplated the possibility of not going, that her own stubborn nature would allow her no peace until she saw this through. Jace’s heavy sigh told her he’d come to the same conclusion too.

  “Well, there’s a month between,” said Jace, more to calm himself than her. “A lot could happen between now and then to change things.”

  Lucy merely nodded in response, not trusting herself to speak. She dropped to her haunches, allowing her knees to burrow into the still-sun-warmed sand. The ocean swept in tauntingly, flicking out a long stretch of foamy tendrils, reaching out towards her before stopping and drawing back on itself. Lucy’s amber gaze went seemingly out with it, yearning for a solution to her confusion to emerge from its inviting blue depths.

  Jace folded his long frame to settle down onto the soft sand beside her. They sat there quietly for a while as Lucy turned to stare up at Jace, and he out to sea. After a moment of useless perusal, she turned away to look at the wild ocean swells and surging waves breaking onto the shore.

  The skies had turned a dusky grey hue, matching the wild furies of the roughening sea. She watched as the waves rose high before slamming against the rocky surface of the cliffside. It was relatively milder closer
to the white sandy beach where it broke gently to soak up the sand not too far from where they sat.

  “It’s going to rain,” he said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  They sat there in relative silence, lost in their own thoughts, watching the sunset cast a strange orange hue across the greyish skies, and then it was gone. Abruptly, darkness fell, and the chill of the night swept across the previously heated beach. It roused them from their reverie.

  Lucy rose and dusted the sand off her bottom, then draped the beach towel about herself as she turned to head back to the house, gathering her belongings with her as she went.

  “Wait for me,” murmured Jace, and just like that the strange tension that had been relatively absent in their shared moment earlier, hovering tauntingly on the edges of her senses, now flooded back in with a vengeance. Lucy bit off a muffled curse as the trembling awareness of Jace-the-man settled in bone-deep, and her limbs all but rattled because of it. It was akin to the flu, this unhealthy infatuation she had for him. A sickness from which there was no healing. It would run its course. However long that may be. And she would simply have to survive the shivers, fight the fevers, and then simply grin and bear it.

  They walked back in silence. Lucy shivered and trembled each time he reached out to touch her to guide her up the narrow path. But later she clung to the arm he offered, deciding to give in to the delicious feel of his touch and simply enjoy the luscious sensations rushing down her spine. They made their way slowly back to the little cottage, the light from the kitchen casting a beam across the footpath lighting their way back.

  Lucy stopped by the door to listen to the conversation and laughter within, feeling oddly remote. Detached from the merriment inside but strangely connected to the man beside her. The thrill in her heart grew unabashed. She knew she would only suffer the disappointment that came after, but for that moment, she didn’t care. She allowed her senses and her imaginations their flight of fancy.

  “Shall we go in,” Jace asked quietly, almost hesitantly, seeming to share the poignancy of the moment. Lucy mutely nodded in reply, not trusting herself to speak, then stepped forward to move in ahead of him.

  Emily’s bright laughter was the first she heard, but it sounded strained and false to Lucy’s sensitively knowing ears. She did not look to Jace to see his reaction or to judge him. He was not at fault. Emily’s affection had been a figment of her own imagination just as her own was. Jace couldn’t be expected to return it.

  Lucy fixed a fake smile of her own as she hurried past everyone to Jace’s room where her belongings were stashed. Pausing only for a change and her towel, she grabbed a random pair of shorts and t-shirt and moved to quickly shower in the tiny bathroom.

  She was quick in the shower, washing off the salt and sand but not the confusion of her time spent with Jace. Her heart ached heavily for something she didn’t understand. But she didn’t linger over the toilet, knowing she had to help with the barbie for dinner.

  If there was one thing Jace was terrible at it was grilling meat on the barbie. Bumping into Jace on her way out, Lucy couldn’t avoid meeting his gaze and found herself unexpectedly scorched for her efforts. Dropping her own like hot bricks, her head followed in a droop as her senses were swamped in a sudden bout of shyness and confusion.

  She hurried past him, unwilling to say anything and needing to put some distance between them. She hated these feelings Jace made her feel. Feelings that had only gotten worse over time and seemed to oddly magnify as much in his absence as it did in his presence. She was so over drooling after him. But it seemed that nothing she did would release her from this unhealthy obsession with him.

  The girls were already gathered around the old coal-fired barbie, helping Mrs Neil spear the meat onto sticks. The gathering clouds in the skies above blocked out the twinkling stars only to release a spectre of pyrotechnics lighting up the darkened night skies.

  “We might be in for rain this night,” said Mr Neil, looking at the display critically. Lucy ignored the hair-raising sight and busied about igniting the starter. She added dry wood into the mix and then expertly fanned the flame until the barbie hissed and spat out fire.

  “I hope all that heat is not aimed at my tender behind.” Jace’s quietly murmured words sparked a bout of laughter around them, but neither Lucy nor Jace himself joined in. Their eyes met over the grill before Lucy tore hers away to lay out the marinated meat. The sizzle of its juice falling onto hot coal hissed in the air, sending up the scent of the charred lather of ingredients. The heat fanned out over the meat as the flames grew. But Lucy’s gaze was back where they started—glued on Jace’s.

  “Don’t let it burn,” called out Mrs Neil, returning Lucy’s wandering attention back to the grill.

  “Not burn,” she murmured considering. That was exactly what she was trying not to do. Get burned in meeting her father and get burned in her feelings for Jace. Getting burned was all that appeared to be on the horizon for her. She sighed unhappily before resolutely turning her attention to the task before her. The dinner she was preparing at least would not be suffering that same fate.

  The fire under the grill flared bright, and soon the idle chatter around her subsided to a silence that greeted ravenous appetites who were busy indulging in a feast after a day whiled away inhaling the refreshing sea air. Lucy snuffed out the last of the coal embers with a splash of water and then she too joined the others with a plate of her own.

  “So, what have you younglings got planned over the next few days?” asked Mr Neil over dinner. Lucy chowed down on her Caesar salad and waited for Jace’s answer. She had no idea what he’d planned for their weekend, but that was not unusual. Jace was known to make impromptu plans and Lucy was more than used to simply riding along with it.

  “There is a party at Richard’s place. I’ll take the girls there Sunday night,” said Jace, raising instant doubts in her mind. Richard Reeves was not her favourite person. “Tomorrow, I was thinking we could just chill on the beach and maybe check out the local haunts at night.”

  But Lucy’s thoughts were stuck on his plans for Sunday night. Richard Reeves was another of their childhood friends. Only he was more Jace’s friend than hers. She never really got on with him when they were kids, and later she simply lost touch with him when he stopped hanging with Jace while he was with the Littles. Richard was older, twenty-six to Jace’s twenty-one. He had never really belonged, and now he was simply the billionaire playboy who lived in Jace’s neighbourhood. The pal he hung out with when he wasn’t with the Littles. Lucy was never comfortable with that side of Jace. His rich friends and their never-ending need to make the tabloids with some wild outing or other. It was not hard to keep abreast of Richard over the years; his news was, as always, splashed across the news. It had always disturbed Lucy to see Jace’s face right there beside him.

  “The twins are underaged for that kind of party.” Mr Neil, thankfully, reminded Jace.

  “But Richard told me his sisters will be there too, and the younger is of their age. I’ll keep an eye on them,” Jace said, before winking mischievously at the girls, reducing them to squeals and giggles. Emily was smiling then. Lucy understood a party like this would be right up her alley, but she wasn’t sure she wanted her sisters mingling in that kind of crowd, even if Richard’s sister were there.

  This wouldn’t be the first time Jace had dragged her to one of his rich friend’s parties, but in the past she had managed to manoeuvre her own pre-planned exit before things got too wild for her standards. She had been nearly invisible right there beside him, so those exits hadn’t been too hard to contrive.

  But that didn’t stop the anxious roiling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of attending such a party again. It wasn’t the drugs and drunks that got to her; it was the horrible people. Rich snobs who thought they were above everyone else. They hated her friendship with Jace, but had respected him too much to do no less than tolerate her presence. She didn’t want her sisters in that
sort of company.

  “Okay then,” agreed Mr Neil, reluctantly. “I’ll trust Lucy to look after you guys and make sure no one gets in trouble.”

  “What…?” Lucy started to voice a protest, but Jace cut in quickly, “That’s great, Dad. We’ll have a smashing time of it.”

  Lucy could only glare at him.

  “Let’s wash up, darlings,” Mrs Neil reminded them then. The rain was already starting to patter down around them in a light steady drizzle that would likely continue all night long. The girls were back to their usual selves, giggling and squabbling over tales of their past.

  “I can’t believe it was you who put that huntsman spider on my bed,” cried out Cat in mock affront, as she moved to carry the plates back to the kitchen

  “You better believe it,” said Jace, unapologetically proud of the feat. Lucy only shook her head remembering that incident. She’d been as much to blame as Jace. The spider had been her idea.

  “Are you sure it was just you?” Cat questioned knowingly. It was always hardest to put one past Cat. Such a feat was only possible if Cat chose to allow it. She was too cunning for them, otherwise.

  “Of course, it was just me. Don’t you think me capable?”

  Lucy smiled at Jace’s steadfast denial of her ever being involved. He had always been one to take the blame for her misdeeds, refusing to let her face the music. She had gotten away with way too many mischiefs because of Jace… and he protected her still, Lucy realised, thinking back to his adamant refusal to let her travel to San Francisco to meet her father.

  Jace and Cat bickered as they helped clean up. Picking up the dishes, Lucy went to help Mrs Neil load up the dishwasher. Then, after saying a round of good night she went to change into her pyjamas, but as she got there, Emily was already in her night clothes carrying a pillow and blankets out to join Cat on the sofa-bed in the living room.