Hers To Keep: THE QUINTESSENCE COLLECTION I

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “That’s good. Boredom is bad,” he declared, seemingly satisfied by her response.

  “What are you doing up here, anyway? I thought you were busy.” When she’d popped her head around his door earlier, he’d been so lost in his work, he’d not heard her call his name.

  “I knew you’d come,” he stated with a huff. “I thought I imagined it.”

  “Imagined what?”

  “Your knocking at the door. But I wasn’t sure if my mind was playing tricks on me.”

  The way the man’s brain worked, she wouldn’t have been surprised either. Truth was, for all his strengths, Devon was remarkably fragile, too.

  Over the weeks, she’d come to see why the others shielded him so much. Something she found herself starting to do.

  She reached over to cup his cheek. “It’s fine. I just wanted to know if you were hungry.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

  “You were busy,” she said softly, smiling at him. “But you’re not now. Do you want to nap?”

  He pursed his lips. “Is that a euphemism?”

  “No. It’s not. Agathe is still down in the kitchen, cleaning up. She said she’d buzz me on the intercom when she was leaving. You can’t have your wicked way with me while she’s here.”

  He pouted. “Why not?”

  She rolled her eyes and tapped his chin with her finger. He had a butt-chin, and she stroked the dimple in the center of the padding. “Behave.”

  He winked. “Tell me about why you came to London.”

  “What about it?” she asked, somewhat surprised by the change in subject.

  “What made you come here? How easy it was to get a visa, that kind of thing?”

  Eyes flaring wide, she asked, “Why?”

  “I’m curious.”

  And if Devon was anything, it wasn’t curious. Not outside of math, anyway.

  Suspicious, but wanting to know where he was going with this, she murmured, “I told you already. I came over with a boyfriend.”

  “You didn’t marry though?”

  “What? To get a visa?” She huffed. “No way. If it had rested on that, I wouldn’t have come. I liked him, and I wanted it to work, but deep down, I knew it wouldn’t. Still, it was a chance to come over here. It’s always been a dream of mine to visit the UK.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled a little. “My mother visited London when she was younger. She had so many stories about it. When she died, it was always on my bucket list to come here, to see the things she’d seen, to be in the places she’d been.”

  He frowned. “That’s very sentimental.”

  “Why does that surprise you?” she retorted wryly. “I was a little girl when she passed. Most of her stories became legend to me.”

  “When my mother died, I was relieved,” he whispered quietly.

  Stillness overcame her. “Was she ill?”

  His eyes had turned inward as they had a habit of doing when his mind was elsewhere. “No.”

  “Then why were you relieved she’d died?”

  “She escaped.”

  The simple answer had her gulping. “Escaped what?”

  “Escaped whom. My father. He used to beat her.” He closed his eyes. “I can still hear her screams. She tried to leave once. Went without me. I was glad though. I knew she was leaving me behind, but I was just hopeful that she’d escape. That someday, we’d be together again.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t to be.”

  “He brought her back?”

  “He had contacts in the Military Police.” He jerked his chin in the air. “They brought her back. The bastards.”

  She reached over and trailed a finger over the length of his clenched jaw. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I meant it when I said I was relieved for her. There was no escape but death.”

  “Jesus,” she breathed. “How old were you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Did she…?” She swallowed. “Did she kill herself?”

  He nodded.

  “W-Who found her?”

  “Me.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, Devon.”

  “What?” he asked, taking her literally.

  Feeling tears prick her eyes, she shook her head. As her hair whispered against the sheets with the movement, she murmured, “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” He wouldn’t understand the need she had to comfort him, to try to take that pain away… Such an effort would be futile anyway. How could she make that better?

  Those memories would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  “Tell me about your mom,” he asked.

  She bit her lip as his expression blanked, like he was wiping away the painful memories. Wanting to help him, to soothe his hurt, she did what she could—changed the subject. “She was a nurse.”

  “She was?” His brows lifted. “How did I not know that?”

  She snorted. “I didn’t tell you, silly.”

  “What kind of nurse?”

  “Palliative.”

  “That’s a… difficult branch.”

  Sascha pulled a face. “Agreed. She was very brave. But she loved what she did, even when she lost someone she’d grown close to. She was like that. A giver.”

  “And she went to the US when she was how old?”

  “Early twenties.”

  “When she was here, did she work?”

  She smiled. “When I was a little girl, I just thought she came on an extended vacation. I think that’s what my dad believed too. But when I applied for a visa, went through half the process, I learned she had permanent residency over here.”

  “Your mom was a citizen of Great Britain?” he demanded, eyes widening in response.

  “I was shocked too. She had to have worked over here to live here long enough to be a resident, but she always downplayed it.” She shrugged—at the time, she’d had so many questions but with her mom long gone, and her relationship with her dad DOA, she’d had to bank her curiosity.

  He frowned. “Wait a second. Permanent residency, what does that mean? Was she a citizen or a national?”

  “A national. I was surprised. She had an American accent and I thought she’d been raised in Chicago!”

  He froze.

  “What is it?”

  “I-I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying to me,” she growled, eyes narrowing with her irritation. “What’s going on?”

  “Have you seen her birth certificate?”

  She shook her head. “My dad has all her stuff, and though I was curious at the time, I never asked. Didn’t want to upset him or get into a row over it. To be honest, I was just grateful because it made it easier to stay over here without a lot of paperwork.” When he fell silent, she asked again, “Devon? Why are you asking all these questions about my mom?”

  She was used to him being inquisitive and used to him digging into a topic and never letting go, but the sudden interest in her mom was disconcerting.

  His jaw flexed. “I really don’t think I should be the one to tell you. Sean, the others… they know better.”

  Before the last word had left his lips, she screamed, “Kurt!”

  Twice more, she hollered his name, and though Devon winced, he didn’t move from his spot on the bed.

  The sound of footsteps clomping up the staircase was audible, and she winced when the door smashed open.

  “Sascha?” Kurt’s eyes flared wide when he saw them in bed. “What the hell’s wrong?”

  “What’s going on, Kurt?”

  He stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why is it suddenly a big deal that my mother was a national?”

  “A national of what?”

  “A national of Great Britain,” she snapped.

  His gaze connected with Devon’s, then slowly, he admitted, “We should wait for Sean.”

  “No. We shouldn’t wait for fucking Sean. We should tell me what’s going on. Right this god
damn minute. Or I’ll go and find Sean myself!”

  “He understands the particulars in a way that we don’t,” Kurt reasoned. “He has access to information he can’t share with us.”

  She swallowed, his tone, his urgency bleeding through to her in a way that freaked her the fuck out. “You’re scaring me,” she admitted shakily.

  “That was never our intention,” Devon told her gruffly, his hand coming over to rest against the small of her back. The warmth penetrated the chill that was overtaking her limbs. “If anything, we wanted to protect you.”

  “From what? Why do I need protecting?” she shrieked, starting to freak out now.

  Kurt sighed, looked at Devon again, and stepped toward the bed. As he perched on the side, he kicked up a leg, so he could lean closer to her. “I’ll tell you what we know, okay? It isn’t much.”

  “It’s more than I do,” she snapped. “Something’s going on, and if I’m involved, I have a right to know, dammit.”

  His jaw flexed, but he nodded. “A few hours after you were taken to the hospital, a man walked into a police station, confessed to stalking you with an intent to mowing you down.”

  She blinked, gaped at him. “You’re not being serious?”

  “I am.”

  “He is,” Devon confirmed darkly, his fingers pressed into the base of her back, and he palpated the skin, trying to soothe, to remind her of their connection.

  Her shoulders sank as she realized they weren’t joking. This wasn’t a joke.

  Gulping, she whispered, “Why would anyone target me? Or was it—” She gritted her teeth. “Was he just a… stalker?”

  Kurt shook his head. “As far as we know, that’s not the case. But like I said, Sean isn’t telling us everything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he signed the Official Secrets Act, Sascha. Some things, he just can’t share with us,” Kurt explained.

  “What happened to the man? Did he explain why he wanted to hurt me?”

  “No. He just confessed. Said if you hadn’t run into the road, he’d have mowed you down on the sidewalk, and that it was fortune on his side.”

  She gasped, her hand flying up to her throat. “He’d have killed innocent people to get to me?”

  His lips flatlined as he nodded.

  “B-But I’m nobody.”

  “Exactly.” Devon curled into an upright position. “You are. But somebody wanted you dead. So, you’re not. You understand the dilemma.”

  A fine tremor took over her body, and she gladly cuddled into Devon when he tugged her against his side.

  “W-Why?”

  “We don’t know,” Kurt repeated. “We just know there’s something going on that’s beyond our ken.”

  “Sean looked into your father. We figured maybe it was someone with a grudge against him. A criminal he’d put away. But he couldn’t find anything like that.”

  She shook her head. “He worked traffic, then a small beat before he could take the sergeant’s exam. He’s always had more of an admin role than anything else.”

  “Yeah. We figured that out too. So, if it wasn’t him, and your paternal grandparents were nothing more than a butcher and a homemaker from Phoenix too, then it had to be on your mother’s side.”

  “Her parents died before I was born.”

  “We know,” Kurt stated grimly. “Which meant the person targeting you was because of something you had done or something your mother had.

  “Considering you were allowed into the country, we figured it wasn’t something you’d done as the regular checks would automatically shoot up a notification if you’d done something illegal, for example. But if you’re entitled to be a passport holder because of your mother, then maybe it is something you’ve done,” Kurt reasoned, running a hand through his hair, agitating the blond locks and making them fall onto his scowling forehead.

  “B-But I’m a housekeeper. That’s it. Before this, back in the States, I was in college and I waited tables in a coffee shop. Why would anybody want to hurt me?” she asked, her jaw trembling, making her words stutter.

  “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Kurt explained softly, and reaching forward, he pressed his thumb to her chin, and cupped her cheek. “Everything will be okay,” he told her. “We’ll keep you safe.”

  “Safe from who?” she exploded. “How can you keep me safe from someone when you don’t know who it is?”

  Kurt sighed. “I understand you’re scared.”

  “You’re damn right I am. Shit, you guys should have told me this before. Why didn’t you?”

  “You were injured, and then the bombing made things extra tenuous.”

  She gulped, and her eyes flared wide as she hissed, “You don’t think I was the target of the bomb?”

  Though he could have dismissed the definite jump to that conclusion, he didn’t. And that scared the shit out of her.

  What the fuck was going on here? Sascha wailed inwardly.

  “We don’t know,” Kurt answered softly.

  Staggering out of the bed, pulling free from their gentle holds on her, she got to her feet and strode from one end of the room to the other. It didn’t even matter that she felt sick from the pounding at her temples, it didn’t matter that even her goddamn eyeballs were aching. She had to burn off this energy before it burned her.

  “This is unreal,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her waist to hug herself.

  Devon cleared his throat, drawing her attention to him. He held up his phone, but from the other side of the room, she just saw the picture of a woman.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sawyer just sent me this picture,” Devon explained softly. “You remember the event you and Andrei were attending was because of his work with a tech mogul called Jacobie?”

  “The software guy, right?”

  Nodding, he continued, “They went to talk to him. Went to see if his security had fielded any major threats recently. We wanted to figure out if you were the target, or if he was.”

  “So, the bomb might not have been for me?” she demanded, hope lacing her words as she strode forward. But the nearer she walked, the closer the image on his phone was. And the more down the rabbit hole she felt sure she was falling.

  She gasped. “Who is that?”

  “Sawyer didn’t say,” Devon murmured, tilting the phone so Kurt could see the screen.

  “Jesus. You’re her double, Sascha,” Kurt whispered, scowling at the screen like he could make sense of what the fuck was going on if he could just make sense of the picture.

  “He said he’d explain later.”

  “Is that photo why you came to see me? Why you were asking questions about my mother?”

  He shrugged. “This is… You have to admit, Sascha, it’s crazy.”

  “Crazy?” she squeaked. “It’s worse than that! I-I’m the target of a murder plot! The only interesting thing I’ve done in my life is sleep with you five people.” Her eyes widened. “When I woke up in the hospital, I heard one of you asking if Sean was the target… if he’d been hit on purpose.”

  Kurt shook his head. “It happened once, years ago. It was a tough time. But we know it’s got nothing to do with it. Why would the driver confess to intending to hurt you, but not Sean? Who, like the rest of the pedestrians, would have been collateral damage? Plus, if the bomb was for you, Sean was never invited to the ball.”

  “But Andrei was. M-Maybe this is something to do with him,” she reasoned, then clenching her eyes closed, she whispered, “Jesus, I’m trying to backtrack and pin this on one of you.” She slammed her hands against her face. “I-I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

  Kurt got to his feet, cautiously headed for her. When he was close, he cupped her elbows and tugged her against his chest. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  “N-No, it’s not. I don’t want this to be about any of you as much as I don’t want it to be about me.” Her lips quivered as she pressed her forehead agai
nst his chest. “I-I care for you guys too much to even think what was just going through my mind.”

  “Say it how it is, Sascha,” Devon stated from his position on the bed.

  She turned her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  “Say it how it is,” he repeated. “You love us.”

  “Devon,” Kurt barked. “Don’t put words in her damn mouth.”

  She jerked her chin up in the air. “What if I do?” she demanded. “What if these feelings for you are love? Isn’t that crazy? As crazy as this fucked up situation is?”

  Kurt tensed behind her, but he tugged her into his arms again. “It’s not insane. We’re all falling for you, Sascha. You know that. This house is… it’s alive because of you.”

  She gulped. “That’s not enough. You’re falling… what if I’ve already fallen?”

  Sascha pulled free from his arms and headed for the bed. Devon tried to reach for her, but she evaded his hold to grab his cell phone.

  Staring down at the image, she whispered, “This can’t be a coincidence.”

  Devon’s eyes turned cold. “There are no such things as coincidences.”

  Shakily, she ran a hand through her hair. “I need to know who this woman is.” So saying, she pressed the ‘phone’ symbol on the messaging app to connect the call.

  “I can’t speak now, Dev. I’ll call later.”

  “It’s me. I need to know who that woman is.”

  “Shit. He told you?”

  “I asked.”

  A hiss sounded down the line. “We’ll be home shortly.”

  She heard Sean and Andrei’s voices in the background. “No, dammit. I want to know now. Who was she? Why do I fucking look like her?” Sascha gulped because the similarities were more than uncanny.

  Aside from the lack of hue to the hair, the strange woman was her spitting image.

  “She’s Jacobie’s great-grandmother.”

  Sascha’s frowned. “I don’t understand. How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know, but Sean’s running a background check now.”

  Before she could say a word, Devon snatched the phone back from her. “Tell him that he needs to grab a hold of the background check the police did on her. She’s half-British, Sawyer. Her mother was a national.”

  “Her mother was English?” Sawyer demanded, his tone so strident, so loud that she could hear him from a short distance.