Unconditional: A Coming of Age Romance Novel (Always)

by Cherie M Hudson

  “Hey, Bear.” Mom’s softly husky voice stroked my senses across the thousands of miles separating us. “I’m missing you so much. Just wanted to make sure everything is okay over there.”

  Throat thick, eyes prickling with hot tears, I nodded.

  Heather nudged my shin with her foot. “She can’t see you,” she mouthed at me.

  “I’m okay,” I gushed on a wobbly chuckle. “I’m missing you too.”

  Mom paused. Long enough for me to know something was wrong. Mom never paused during telephone conversations. It was like she was scared the line was going to be cut and she’d never get the chance to talk to whoever was on the other end again.

  My heart slammed into my throat. My stomach rolled. “What’s up, Mom?”

  “Your cousin Nathan just called me. You know, the one who lives in Dallas?”

  I frowned. Cousin Nathan was a grade-A jerk who thought it was hilarious to follow Mom around at family get-togethers, shaking his hands like an idiot. He thought he was being funny. I thought he was asking to have his teeth smashed in by my foot. “Okay. Why?”

  “He said you’re on the internet.”

  Remember that sensation I had earlier when Horn offered me a check to never have anything to do with Raph again? Yeah, I got that again.

  “Something,” Mom went on, her voice laced with concern, “about two Australian men fighting over you, actually punching each other over you and one of them is from a royal family. And the other is a bodybuilder or something. He said you were in a hospital as well because the royal family guy left you behind and you got attacked by some photographers and that the bodybuilder one came and rescued you but then beat up a member of the media.” She paused again, a heartbeat of silence. “Is that correct, Bear?”

  Something sucked all the air from the room. Must have, because I sure as hell couldn’t breathe. I gripped my cell, my chest one big heavy weight of holy-fuck-what-was-I-going-to-do. The last thing I’d wanted when I came to Australia was my mom to be stressed. But now, me being in some insane European-royalty-Australian-celebrity internet controversy was clearly doing that. It was stressing her out.

  It sure as shit was stressing me out.

  “Bear?” Mom repeated, worry clear in the nickname she’d used since I was too young to remember.

  Heather was staring at me. Actually, she looked like she was about to leap across the table and do something to me. Maybe shake me?

  Blinking, I cleared my throat. “That…that sums it up.”

  “You didn’t want to tell me about it?”

  I shook my head at Mom’s question. Heather pulled an exasperated face.

  “No,” I said quickly into the phone. “I didn’t want you to worry.” I let out a weak laugh. “Remind me to beat the crap out of Nathan when I get home.”

  Mom, God bless her, let out her own chuckle. Hers wasn’t as lame as mine though. “I can understand that. He is a bit of a douche, isn’t he?”

  “Mom!”

  She laughed again. The sound sent wonderful warm licks of happiness through me. God, I missed her, missed her stability. I know that sounds stupid, given how much time I’ve spent telling you how Parkinson’s makes us unstable, both on our feet and emotionally. But Mom—even with her tics and shakes and emotional moodiness—was the one constant in my life. A life with a bleak, lonely future.

  “I want to come home,” I burst out.

  It wasn’t until the words were past my lips that I realized how true they were. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be hugged by her. I wanted to shake and tremble with her and not fear pity and sympathy. I wanted to stop hiding what I had and let her brush my hair from my face and curl up on the sofa and watch cheesy Hallmark movies with me.

  I wanted to be a little girl again.

  On the other side of the table, Heather regarded me with sad eyes. A lump formed in my throat. Maybe I could take her with me? Mom would love her. Mom would smother her in love and hugs and make her s’mores and cookies—the real kind, the American kind—and we could show her what life in Plenty was—

  “I’m not going to let you do that.”

  The steel in Mom’s response caught me by surprise. I frowned, shocked. “Why not? I should be home with you, not over here being the star in some messed-up media threesome thing. Did Nathan tell you the media is implying I’m sleeping with them both? Both, Mom. Did he tell you Brendon had to bodily carry me away from the reporters? That Raph has a bodyguard because he can’t leave Mackellar House without people wanting to touch him?”

  “Raph is the royal one, yes?”

  “Raph’s sister married the future king of Delvania.”

  “And Brendon is the bodybuilder?”

  “He’s the gym manager. He’s studying applied sciences and he’s been working out with me every morning. His aunt has Lou Gehrig’s Disease so he knows how horrible Parkinson’s is.”

  “Do you like these boys?”

  Mom’s question tore a rough snort from me. “I do. Brendon is incredible, like the brother I never had. And Raph…” I stopped, scrunching up my face as I thought of Raph. “Raph is…is…”

  Shaking my head, I opened my eyes. Ignoring Heather’s kind smirk, I dragged my hand—yep, shaking. Booyah!—through my hair. “None of that matters though, Mom. What matters is that I’m going to be hounded by paparazzi here, harassed and talked about. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to—”

  “Oh, Maci.” Mom’s murmur cut me off. Even though I was on the opposite side of the world, I could see her face, could see the kind disapproval on it. “This is not how we raised you. We didn’t raise you to run away from tough things, did we?”

  I swallowed. The lump in my throat was hot and big and miserable. “No,” I mumbled.

  Mom made one of those sighing noises only moms seem to be able to make. The kind that tells you they love you even if they’re monumentally disappointed with you. “Honey bear,” she said, “I know you think your life isn’t worth sharing with anyone now. I know you think it’s better to hold everyone at bay so they don’t get hurt by what you have, or to stop them from hurting you, but by doing that, you’re just robbing yourself of a life.”

  Tight pain shot through me. I squeezed my eyes shut, aching all over. Aching and trembling.

  “You are so young and beautiful and smart, Maci. And I am so proud of you, but you’re not doing yourself any favors shutting your heart off from the world. Do you think your dad would have wanted you to do this? Do you think he’d be happy?”

  “No,” I whispered.

  A soft sigh tickled my heart through the phone. “When I was diagnosed,” she said, a sigh in her voice along with a maternal steel reserved only for times of disappointed lectures, “all those years ago, I told your father to leave me. I told him to go find a new life with a new woman who wasn’t broken. I ordered him to walk away from me. I wanted him to take you and start again. I hated him for not doing it.”

  Cold disbelief and shock chilled me. My mouth fell open. “Mom!”

  “I did,” she went on. “I didn’t want him to stay around to watch me become something less than what I was. I didn’t want him or you to be burdened by what was happening to me. I hated that he wouldn’t leave. And I loved him, oh God, did I love him for not listening to me. He refused to give up on my life, even when I had. He refused to let me give up on living. He refused to let me wallow in my misery. He was my strength and he took the future I saw for myself—a scary, horrible, humiliating future—and turned it into something wonderful. A future of love and happiness and support and togetherness. Don’t rob yourself of that, Bear. Don’t.”

  Something hot trailed down my cheek. I suspect it was a tear.

  “But you loved Dad,” I said, the words a hoarse croak. “And he loved you. And he was Dad. He was, he still is, the best guy ever born. Ever.”

  “He farted in his sleep, picked his nose when he didn’t think anyone was looking and never, ever put the toilet seat down,” Mom counte
red, gentle laughter in her voice. “And he used all those weird Australian terms and insisted we watch cricket on ESPN. Cricket. The most boring game in the world.”

  It was my turn to laugh. Shocked as I was, I laughed. I missed my dad so much every molecule in my body hurt like fucking hell. “Mom,” I gasped for the third time. But this time it was a gasp of love.

  She made a soft little snorting giggle. “It’s true. And I wouldn’t have changed him for anything. But if I’d pushed him away, I never would have lasted, Bear. I never would have watched you grow up to be the woman you are now. Although I’m worried the woman you are now may be a tad too stubborn. And foolish, if she doesn’t see what she has now for what it is.”

  Throat tight, I closed my eyes. “And what is it?”

  “An adventure that life—or God, if you’ll permit me—has given you,” she answered. Compassion and strength filled the statement. Her compassion and strength. “Grab it with both your hands, Maci, and hold on to it with such force there’s no way they can shake.”

  Silence stretched between us. A heavy pressure wrapped around my chest. The lump in my throat grew thicker.

  “Don’t give up on life yet, Bear,” she whispered. “Life hasn’t given up on you.”

  I chewed my bottom lip, incapable of finding words.

  A very unmotherly snigger, one that made me blush, bubbled through the phone connection. “You only have to look at those two Australian men to know that,” she said. “Even if you want to turn your back on it, life is coming after you. And Maci, Australian men really know how to make you feel alive. Trust me.”

  And with her thoroughly dirty observation in my ear, she ended the call.

  “If that was your mum telling you to stay here and enjoy your fame,” Heather said, watching me over the rim of her coffee mug, “I think I love her.”

  I let out a wobbly laugh. “It—”

  My cell phone burst into life in my hands. I am ashamed to say I squeaked in surprise.

  I didn’t recognize the caller ID but I answered and pressed my cell to me ear. “Hello?”

  “Maci Rowling?” a strange male voice rumbled through the connection. “This is Professor Watkins, the Dean of Students. I think it’s best you come into my office ASAP. We need to discuss your place here at the University of Sydney.”

  Well, fuck.

  Unexpected Changes

  An hour later, I walked out of Dean Watkins’s office.

  Wow. In the short time I’d spent sitting in the musty room full of leather-bound science tomes, the austere man’s cataract-gray stare fixed on me with unwavering focus as he read me the riot act, every plan I’d made for my time in Australia shifted.

  Apparently, the university wasn’t exactly pleased with the media attention my…situation…with Raphael Jones and Brendon Osmond had caused. Apparently, they’d decided it was time I moved to the field study component of my scholarship.

  Apparently—and I’m only assuming this based on the way he went bright red and stammered about for a bit when I mentioned the royal family of Delvania’s part in my accelerated timeframe—he’d pocketed a nice bribe to help get me out of Raphael’s life. When Horn had failed dealing directly with me, he’d moved onto the dean, who was now getting rid of me. I wondered if he’d get a knighthood in Delvania for a job well done.

  It was hard not to be angry when he called an end to the meeting with a laborious wave of his hand at the door and a condescending, “Perhaps you will be less distracted and more focused on the reason for your studies in Australia once on the farm.”

  The farm was a cattle property roughly the size of the town of Plenty, situated some four-hundred miles northwest of Sydney on the fringe of the Outback. A large koala population existed on it, left alone by the owners of the property for the sake of ongoing research into the marsupials’ survival and existence. My original pre-RaB schedule (that’s pre-Raph and Brendon, in case you didn’t figure it out) called for me to spend the last five weeks of my studies there, tagging koalas in the wild and collecting data on their movements to support my thesis. Those last five weeks weren’t meant to occur for another three weeks.

  But due to the media circus—or due to a phone call from Horn, I wasn’t sure which—I was being shipped off at the end of this week. In four days. According to Dean Watkins, it would have been tomorrow if not for the fact the family I was staying with had yet to return from a holiday in Fiji.

  In four days, I was leaving Sydney for good.

  Four days.

  For some reason, I couldn’t feel happy.

  In fact, for some reason, I felt…cheated. After Mom’s incredible pep talk, after the encouragement Heather had given me on the drive to the university to “rip off Raph’s clothes and ride him silly”, I was more than just a little excited about facing the rest of my adventure here in Oz.

  Okay, I didn’t have plans to confess to Raph I thought I was falling in love with him, and golly-gee wouldn’t it be wonderful if we spent the rest of our lives together in splendid bliss. That definitely wasn’t part of my plan. But I had decided, between climbing out of Brendon’s car in the student parking lot and knocking on Dean Watkins’s door, that I was going to enjoy myself for the rest of my time here.

  It wasn’t like Raph and I could have any kind of relationship once I returned to Plenty. For starters, he lived in Australia and I lived in America. As far as long-distance relationships went, that was freaking far. By the time the dean’s secretary showed me and Heather into his office, I’d made up my mind to spend the next three weeks enjoying myself with Raph. If that meant we made out from time to time—and by made out, I mean…well, you probably know what I mean, and if you don’t you really shouldn’t be following my story, should you?—all the better.

  Three weeks of living. Three weeks of not worrying about my future.

  Three weeks of just enjoying my adventure.

  Three weeks now robbed from me.

  Goddamn it.

  “Man, is he a sour old sod,” Heather muttered as we crossed the threshold of his office’s anteroom into the administration building’s main hallway. She looped her arm through mine and nudged my hip. “Think we should invite him to the next Mackellar House Underwear Bash?”

  “Probably not a good idea,” a deep male voice uttered at our right.

  Both Heather and I let out matching startled eeps and spun to face our unexpected companion.

  Raph stood just beside the door, one shoulder pressed to the wood-paneled wall, arms folded over his chest, ankles crossed, dimple creasing his right cheek in that sexy way it did when he was almost but not quite smiling.

  My heart damn near slammed out of my chest.

  “Raph?” Heather’s laughter echoed along the silent hallway. “You scared the bejesus out of us.”

  With grin and exquisitely sensuous grace, he levered himself off the wall and stepped closer. “That wasn’t my intent.” His dark gaze found mine, an unreadable question in their depths. “Are you okay, American girl?”

  My pulse rapid, my throat tight, I nodded.

  Four days. I only had four days left. Goddamn it, four days…

  “Errr…” Heather slipped her arm free of mine. “I have to return The Biceps’s car keys to him. You two just…go have…yeah, you know what you two want to have.”

  Her playful innuendo should have set my cheeks on fire. It didn’t. Instead, it made my pulse race and my sex constrict. Or maybe that entirely carnal and physical response was due to the way Raph studied me. The way he drew closer to me, not looking anywhere else. Just looking at me.

  Just me.

  If Heather said anything else before taking her leave of us, I didn’t hear it. All I could do was gaze up at Raph, my pulse wild, my tummy—

  “You’re not having lunch with Osmond?” Raph asked, the low question playing hell with my sanity.

  Christ, he was gorgeous. Have I mentioned that yet? How gorgeous he was? Heart-clenchingly gorgeous.

 
; I shook my head. I was sure at some point I’d recover the higher brain function to form words, but at that moment in time, all my higher brain function was occupied being in awe of how gorgeous and wonderful and sexy and there, right there, Raph was.

  Four days, Rowling. The thought whispered through my roaring head. Only four days.

  Now so close his knees brushed mine, Raph touched the line of my jaw with the back of his knuckles. “Lunch with me instead?”

  I swallowed. My pussy contracted. My heart beat faster. Words still failed me.

  His nostrils flared. Nervous doubt flared in his eyes. “Please?”

  I don’t know if it was his uncertainty that helped me find my tongue, the fact it was obvious he wanted to be with me but feared I was going to deny him or the way the distinct scent of him threaded into my very breath. All I know is, as he waited for my answer, I wanted to spend the rest of every minute I had in Sydney with him.

  “Lunch would be wonderful,” I said, my voice husky.

  The smile that spread across his face at my words sent a shard of wet, tight, delicious heat straight to my sex. Oh boy.

  “Excellent. I know just the place.”

  He took my hand in his, fingers gentle and firm as they threaded through mine, his palm warm and slightly rough. The friction reminded me he’d grown up on a cattle ranch and that reminded me I was heading to the farm in four days and that reminded me I wasn’t going to see him anymore after I left Sydney.

  My chest clenched at the thought and, nerve endings thrumming with an elemental need I didn’t want to name, I tightened my grip on his hand.

  Four days. I could live a lifetime in four days. I could.

  We walked together through the university grounds, our conversation relaxed. Neither of us brought up our previous tension, the one caused by me throwing Brendon’s name in his face. It didn’t need to be addressed. The simple fact I was here with Raph now was the only thing that mattered.

  By the time we got to his ute, we were both laughing. And ignoring the people we passed who attempted to photograph us on their smartphones.